Planned
obsolescence is a term that we have normally heard applied to cars and other
sophisticated modern machines. It
relates to the notion that companies cannot make machines last for too long of
a period of time, if they, the companies, want to continue to survive. Companies need to have their machines break
down, fall apart, according to this reasoning, so that a customer will be
motivated to purchase a replacement. The
American automobile industry was particularly influenced by this idea for many
years, and it was not uncommon for many car owners to replace their cars
annually. Of course, Japanese car
companies took advantage of this American strategy to start producing cars that
didn’t have to be replaced so often, that in fact lasted years and years. In so doing, the Japanese were able to
capture a large segment not only of the American automobile market, but of the
international automobile market as well. Nevertheless, the American strategy
has continued to have a large effect on other areas of work apart from cars. Around the world, in many societies, workers
are thought of as machines that break down and have to be replaced. When their parts wear out, they are disposed
of. Machines are after all a coordinated
agglomeration of parts. It’s not that
they have a special coherent bonded organic identity that is greater than the
sum of their parts. And the model of
performing like a machine is of course what is used for the workers in modern
technological society. In many cases,
they are put into the role of contract workers with no benefits. In the United States, the number of unionized
workers has decreased dramatically, so most workers aren’t receiving the protection
of unions. Universities are filling
their teaching posts with more and more part-time, non-tenured-track
professors.
This
is all because workers are not looked on as being fully human beings who are
part of a bonded community. Workers are
being treated like machines. And
therefore it is like they were being treated like aliens, like strangers. Like outsiders. Particularly, older human beings are being
discarded when their utilitarian value diminishes. It becomes much easier to do this when the
person being treated in this way is not considered, on one level, to be part of
a community anyway, but rather is considered to be a stranger.
And
the horrible thing about this is that as machines become mirrors for how we
should behave and we start to model ourselves after machines, we reject
ourselves as we become let go by companies.
We become strangers to ourselves.
We turn on ourselves when we can no longer meet the public expectations
of our job. And this is true when we are
let go, not just because we are no longer performing our jobs well, but also
when companies let people go as a cost-cutting measure. And when the cost-cutting occurs, a part of
us still asks ourselves what we did wrong to merit a kind of expulsion from the
work community. How did we fail as
machine wannabes? And wherever there is
this kind of public rejection, not only does the shamed part of us become
detached from the rest of us, not only does the shamed part of us become a
stranger to us, but it is almost like we develop psychological auto-immune
disease, when we turn against a part of our minds, a part of our senses of
self. Modeling ourselves after machines,
we become predisposed to lose the coherence of our senses of self. Which means we develop a predisposition to
lose an important aspect of our humanity.
As we
increasingly become defined by machines and machine processes, we, in turn,
define ourselves and others by some supposedly objective standards of machine
behavior perfection. To the extent we
don’t live up to our standards, we discard ourselves and the people around
us. The truth is that not only do
employers let their workers go frequently today, but workers tend to jump from
job to job. Couples get divorced more
frequently these days. Friends break up. Members of families stop speaking with one
another. It is difficult for families to
hold together when its members are expected to operate and think like machines
in their work life and do things perfectly.
And
as we push people away from us, and we become strangers to everyone including
ourselves, we end up barely alive in an experiential vacuum. And we become numb like machines. Because, when all is said and done, machines
don’t have a coherent sense of self that allows them to feel things. Machines are programmed to carry out a series
of consecutive actions to achieve a goal outside of themselves. The goals are human goals. As people increasingly become machines in modern
technological society, it becomes more difficult for them to develop a coherent
human sense of self. Humans have a
non-delimited infinity set of behavioral possibilities, while even the most
complicated of modern machines only have a delimited infinity set of behavioral
possibilities. Machines are good for
certain patterns of work action, but when people start to increasingly model
themselves after machines, they are giving up a lot of the behavioral
possibilities that define then as humans.
When humans model themselves after machines, they give themselves up to
diminished infinities of behavior.
Finally,
an ultimate goal of humans is that of making and preserving organic
imprints. Organic imprints are
extensions of an organic coherent sense of self. Imprints are the vehicle by which defined
coherent beings feel alive and prepare for death. Machines, lacking an organic coherent sense
of self, can never feel alive, and if they can’t feel alive, they have no life
for which to prepare for death. Humans
give up so much modeling themselves after machines and allowing others to treat
them like machines. In essence, they
give up the whole human narrative.
© 2020 Laurence Mesirow
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