For
the most part, in my column, nature has been the good guy, and modern
technology has been the villain, at least in modern society. It is because I have tried to show that
modern technology is creating a lot of sensory distortion which, in turn, is
creating a lot of pathological states of mind and pathological behavior in
people. When the column first began, I
discussed both understimulation and overstimulation as sources of sensory
distortion. But as time went on, I
realized that most people were fully aware of sources of overstimulation like
overcrowding in modern cities, noise pollution, air pollution, modern
construction sites, and speeding highways.
What they weren’t focused on were the negative effects of sources of
understimulation: smooth mediated frictionless living environments and spaces
like modern suburban subdivisions, highrise residence and office buildings, the
interior ride of modern trains, planes and cars. And modern minimalist
architecture and modern minimalist apartment and office interiors. These understimulating living environments
have been what people aspired to as a means by which they could rise above the
perishability of more natural and traditional living environments. At the same time, these environments
generated so much numbness. And the
numbness has been exaggerated by all the time spent in the mediated world of
screen reality: movies, television, video games, computers, smartphones and
tablets. It has also been exaggerated by
the increasing encroachment of robots on modern human work activities.
On
the other hand, I have painted nature and more traditional living environments
as sources of grounding, oases within the larger context of the desert of
modern technological society. If in the
earlier history of humanity, nature was a source of constant perishability with
its hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, extreme cold, extreme heat, drought,
famine, disease, wild animals and poisonous plants, in more recent times, in
spite of these dangerous manifestations, nature has seemed to be a good
counterweight to modern technology. A
source of grounding, a field of experience that provides experiential surfaces
for organic imprints. A place to gain
traction as one moves through life to create a narrative.
Anyway,
as modern technology became more and more powerful and more and more all-
encompassing, it became increasingly the enemy and nature and more traditional
living environments became increasingly the good guys. Nature was that which supported our mammalian
foundations with organic stimulation and prevented us from becoming robotized.
But
recently certain things have happened that, on the surface at least, have
shifted the way that nature and technology are being seen. As a result of encroaching on nature and its
territory by eating wild animals, nature is lashing back with a horrific
pandemic caused by the Corona virus.
Another more global encroachment that has been occurring for a long time
has been our reckless destruction of natural environments in order to use their
resources and this has led to the resulting climate change-based weather events
that have occurred: the melting of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, the rising
sea levels, the growing intensity of storms like hurricanes and tornadoes, the
growing number of wildfires in the Western United States and in Australia. All these situations are making nature more
an environment to protect oneself against, rather than an environment to
commune with. Nature is becoming
increasingly uncomfortable to live with and increasingly lethal.
With
technology, it is ironic that the very thing that has been the tool for
destroying nature in so many ways and that is provoking the extreme reactions
from nature is now being increasingly valued as that phenomenon that can help
to protect us against these extreme reactions.
As we increasingly feel uncomfortable with nature, technology is what is
increasingly clung to as our source of comfort, reassurance and grounding. And because technology appears to be in our
personal lives so safe, this augments its role in human psychology as a source
of both mirroring and modeling.
All
of this is potentially very dangerous.
If we become numb to our mammalian natures, we lose our capacity to have
a lot of meaningful experience. We lose
our capacity for organic bonding, both within ourselves and between us and
other people. And we lose our capacity
to create coherent senses of self that are capable of creating a sense of
personal agency, so that we don’t act like selfless machines with
interchangeable parts. And we lose our
capacity to create strong deep relationships with others: family, friends, and
significant others. These mammalian
natures are the foundations of a society with agency so that our societies
don’t become conglomerations of robots that are valued only as long as they are
useful. We as individuals should be valued
by others for intrinsically unique selves in the same way we value others for
theirs.
And
we can lose our capacities to make, preserve and receive organic imprints. By making and receiving organic imprints, we
have rich vibrant lives. By preserving
our imprints, we create a surrogate immortality, something which allows one to
ease the passage to death, by being able to leave something of ourselves
behind.
We lose
our capacity to create coherent meaningful life narratives, narratives that
normally allow us to turn our whole lives into journeys that by the end can
hopefully make and preserve one enormous coherent imprint. Such that our lives do not simply end up
being a series of disjointed robotic actions and activities.
Finally,
as robotic people, we lose our sense of purpose – our sense that somehow we are
living for something larger, something beyond our day-to-day actions and
activities. Whether it is a religious
belief, or a political belief or a social belief, something that allows us to believe
we are more than just the obsolescence of our organic material body parts.
And
this is why it’s very important that we go deep inside of ourselves for our
mammalian roots. This allows us to more
comfortably accept the reality that during the pandemic we have to use the
mediation of modern technology to compensate for the social distancing this
pandemic imposes on us in order to physically survive.
© 2020 Laurence Mesirow
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