Managing Multiple Identities On The Internet

            The Internet provides kinds of opportunities that people could never have imagined before it came into existence.  One kind of opportunity relates to the ability of people to assume many different identities within the different social media, other websites and e-mails in which they participate.  People today like to assume different presentations of self with the different groups of friends and acquaintances with which they interact in different Internet formats.  On the Internet, this is so easy to do.  Before the Internet, people needed to take extra time actually traveling to and from meeting places for their external world groups.  And because physical travel required additional effort, once a person arrived at a group, he was going to spend some significant time there in order to make the trip worthwhile.

            When the telephone came along, people no longer had to physically travel to communicate with other people in real time, but it proved cumbersome as a tool for communicating within groups of several people, and it certainly proved very cumbersome for trying to go back and forth between conversations with different individuals.

            But with the Internet, a whole different situation arises.  One can switch back and forth between different chat conversations on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.  What constitutes communication within an encounter in a group can be a few phrases here and there.  And traveling between group conversations is not carried out by actual physical travel, but by a click of a key on the computer or smartphone or tablet.  So this means that a person can maintain the time, energy and state of mind to be a member of a much larger number of groups than when he was only engaged with groups in the external world.  And he can communicate with a much larger number of people.  Granted that there can be some overlapping membership between some groups, but being on the Internet also means that one has a greater opportunity to be a member of some groups that the people in other groups will know nothing about.  It also means that because one doesn’t have to be physically present, except maybe through an avatar, one can be an anonymous member of a group or a member with a made-up name and identity.  One can wear a cyber-mask, and no one will know the difference.

            Because these groups exist in the cyber world, in the screen world, they are vacuumized groups that don’t create organic bonding between members and that don’t create organic grounding in a palpable organic external world filled with flowing blendable continual stimuli.  These groups create numbing ghost-like connections, and as people focus on making and keeping connections within all of their disparate Internet groups, they become numb and lose their capacity to make and preserve solid organic connections with the solid organic manifestations of other people.  These Internet groups do not involve a lot of time, energy or state of mind to maintain.  They do not involve the organic friction that allows a person to feel fully alive in his interactions with other people.  So there is this paradox regarding the Internet.  It allows people to make more connections with people than was ever possible in purely external world social interactions.  But the nature of these interactions is such that they don’t generate bonding with others, grounding in the template of the organic external world, or organic friction to help a person feel fully alive and to move him through meaningful narratives in the external world, where he can make, preserve, and receive organic imprints which allow him to prepare a surrogate immortality and thus prepare for death.

            Now this covers the people who have basically well-meaning intentions in their social manipulations on the Internet.  There are the people who use their social manipulations on the computer to get the kicks they crave from so many interactions that simultaneously pull them out of the base numbness that they feel while spending so much time in the experiential void of the Internet screen.  And yes, having to make so many unbonded, ungrounded presentations of self leads to their actual senses of self becoming fragmented, one might say even pixilated.  Which, of course, leaves a person vulnerable to becoming robotized or avatarized in order to defend himself against crumbling apart from entropy.

            And then there are the people who use their multiple connections on the Internet to do things that they consciously know will hurt the people with whom they cyber-connect.  I am talking about those users of the Internet who create false identities in order to scam other people.  I am talking about users who create cyber-masks that allow them to generate bogus business opportunities that draw strangers to invest money with them.  Once the pretend businesspeople get their money, they, of course, disappear, something that is very easy to do on the Internet.  Then there are the bogus courtships, where cyber-users, particularly from foreign countries, seduce lonely partners and convince them to send large sums of money to help their new cyber-lovers out of difficult financial circumstances.  Once the cyber-lovers receive their money, they disappear.

            It is easy to condemn these cyber-criminals for taking advantage of their anonymity on the Internet in order to extort money out of their unsuspecting victims.  But it is also useful to understand them, to realize that these cyber-criminals are extremely numb people as a result of  the technological experiential vacuum in which they live.  They are people who, over and above the financial advantages that they gain, use their criminal acts as incredible kicks to pull them out of the extreme base numbness that they feel.  The criminal action still requires taking a risk of getting caught and a risk of simply not being able to carry the scam through to its desire conclusion.  The cyber-criminal lives for these risks that stimulate him out of his profound numbness.

            Certainly, the relationships that the cyber-criminal forms don’t lead to deep bonding, deep grounding or the normal balanced kind of friction - organic friction - all of which help people to feel more vibrantly alive.  But like the first category of Internet users discussed in this article - the more ordinary law-abiding users - they immerse themselves within the field of experience that has been made so readily available to them and to which they have grown accustomed.  The template of a more natural more traditional organic environment is no longer as readily available for those who live in modern technological urban living environments.  And even for those who live in rural environments, the exposure to modern technology has made them less capable of absorbing the organic stimuli that surround them.  Hence, the opioid epidemic in rural America where abrasive kicks are substituted for organic stimuli.  So people today relate to others as best they can – in many relationship fragments that correspond to their fragmented pixilated personalities.  Lots of different presentations of self and very little core.  In terms of satisfaction, fewer quality truly bonded truly grounded relationships can’t be beat.  But one has to be receptive to such relationships in order to have them.

© 2017 Laurence Mesirow

Talking To Machines As If They Were People

            One of the cores ideas consistently discussed in this column has been mirroring.  A baby reaches out to his mother to satisfy his needs and his mother’s response to him is based on how she perceives him and what she feels for him.  The baby picks up on his mother’s attitudes as the mother mirror’s her child by the nature of her response to him.  Primarily positive mirroring leads to the baby’s development of a positive attitude towards himself.  Primarily negative mirroring leads to a negative attitude towards himself.  Such mirroring actually occurs, on some level, throughout a person’s youth and even later on, not only with parents but with other authority figures and even contemporaries, and has an enormous influence on how he evolves.

            In my own ruminations, I have concluded that a kind of mirroring occurs with the interaction between humans and another class of complex behavioral entity: namely modern complex machines.  Modern machines don’t have a coherent sense of self or a coherent consciousness, but they do have complex defined discrete responses to human attempts to control them and operate them.  To the extent that machines operate primarily with defined discrete processes, they operate best with instigation from defined discrete actions on the part of humans.  To the extent that humans get sloppy with their actions and start interacting with machines through more flowing, blendable continual behavior, through accidentally hitting the wrong keys on a computer or pressing the wrong buttons or hitting things too hard or for too long, they get poor responses from the machines.  This then reflects fully on the humans’ capacity to properly control and operate the machines and, by extension, on the humans’ effectiveness and potency  in the modern world.  Machines are not built to respond properly with the imprecision evinced in improperly targeted or managed flowing blendable continual actions on the part of humans.  To get optimum responses from a machine, humans receive the implicit mirroring that comes from poor performances as a result of sloppy operating of the machine and then start molding themselves after the machine in order to demonstrate the behavior that gets the machine to operate properly.

            It is this combination of mirroring and modeling involving modern machines that is leading to the gradual robotizing of humans in modern technological society.  But now comes voice control as the vehicle by which more and more modern machines will be controlled and operated.  Talking to modern machines could become as commonplace as talking to other humans and to domesticated animals.  Talking to machines to do things will replace using touch to manoeuver machines in order to complete our tasks.

            One more category of nuisance taken away from the human condition.  Right?  Voice control is one more step in the modern journey to remove friction from our lives.  Get rid of friction and you can get rid of stress.  Get rid of stress and you can be a happy person.  At least, one can say, that this is what is implied in our modern philosophy of life.

            But actually people need a certain amount of friction in the real world in order to feel fully alive.  Get rid of too much organic friction, and a person sinks into a sensory vacuum, an experiential void.  Because touch involves direct sensory rubbing or grating with tactile phenomena in the external world, there is a lot more immediate organic friction involved in doing things with one’s hands than with one’s voice.  Speech is a much more mediated interaction with phenomena in the external world than manual manipulation.  Speech was not created for direct manipulation of the external world, but rather for communication with other humans and with domesticated animals.  One might say that speech traditionally has acted sometimes as a complement to manual manipulation as when riders of animals like horses or of chariots, carriages or stagecoaches driven by animals have talked to their animals in conjunction with their actions to either spur them on or to make them stop.  Speech has also been used by slaveholders to order around their slaves, by generals to order around their soldiers, and by bosses to order around their workers.  But this is not the same as what is happening today where speech is replacing manual manipulation not only for control of other organisms, but for all sorts of direct control of different tasks in the external world.

            So what will a transition from manual manipulation to voice control do to how people experience not only the technology and other physical phenomena in their world but also themselves?

            The use of voice control means that the form of sensory engagement that was once used for communicating with humans and animals in order to fine-tune relationships or to coordinate group projects that involved some manual manipulation is now being used for the direct manipulation by individual people of the things around them.  But because of the sophistication of many of these things, namely complex machines like computers, smartphones and robots, some of the vocal engagements with these complex things involve interactions that approximate dialogues with humans.  Obviously, the technology is still evolving and efforts are being made to increase both voice recognition and vocabulary on the part of these machines.  To the extent that these dialogues between humans and machines start to increase, the line that separates other humans from machines in the mind of a communicating human begins to blur.  Machines are increasingly being endowed with many of the qualities of humans (and humans are being endowed with many of the qualities of machines).  We increasingly are acting with machines as if they had a coherent sense of self and a coherent consciousness.

            And to the extent that we implicitly endow machines with human attributes because of their response to human vocalizing or their capacity to vocalize themselves, we become susceptible to mirroring from the machine (the way the machine appears to respond to our strengths and limitations) as well as modeling on our part with respect to an implicitly idealized crisp well-defined discrete relatively smooth frictionless performance on the part of the machine.  When we vocalize to a machine, we are treating it like a human being.

            By the same token, we start to view people from the perspective of their functional instrumental machine-like qualities.  How good are they at performing the narrow functional tasks that are required of them?  Just pay people for their services at a given time and don’t worry about their needs as whole human beings.  In the modern U.S., companies try to get workers on a part-time basis, as independent contractors for particular jobs or projects in order to avoid having to pay for benefits like health care, time off for child birth and pensions.  During those times when a worker is not actually functioning for his company or companies, he is on his own.  For young men and increasingly young women, there is a growing tendency to focus on sexual performance in their partners and to be less interested in emotional bonds that can create grounded relationships.  As a matter of fact, increasingly all relationships become contingent on performance rather than providing the foundation for a more unconditional connection.

            These are some of the developing deleterious effects that are at least partly due to relating to modern complex machines through voice as if the machines were human.  I have talked about the blurring of the lines between humans and machines as manifested in androids and cyborgs.  But voice control represents a more subtle functional blurring of lines between humans and machines.  It is nevertheless a blurring that is every bit as pernicious and one that threatens the very essence of our human identity.

(c) 2017 Laurence Mesirow

Being Swallowed Up By The World Of Cartoons

            Like most little boys growing up in America after World War II, I was absolutely fascinated by an American version of animated films, namely cartoons.  I recently started thinking a lot about cartoons after reading Masters of Animation by John Halas (Salem House, 1987).  Reading this book gave me a foundation for developing my own ideas related to how cartoons fit into people’s technological fields of experience. 

Cartoons, at first, usually preceded full-length feature movies, but later, as television came into its own as a medium, whole programs appeared that were filled with cartoons.  What made them so great for kids is that there was so much action, so much movement.  And the characters were simply drawn and two-dimensional, both literally and figuratively.  No complex nuanced character development to think about a lot and no complexities to focus on in the story line.  Just a lot of fast action, a lot of quick breath-taking movement in ways that could never have taken place in real life.  And, of course, a lot of sadistic violence.  Stuff happens to cartoon characters that would not be permitted to be shown with real people.  Terrible things happen that would traumatize real people for life or leave them permanently disabled.  But cartoon characters are able to bounce back both psychologically and physically from terrible treatment as if nothing had happened.

The short cartoon, with its fast action and violence, became a highly addictive kick for children.  As kids grew up in environments where technology did more and more for them, and where increased crowding in cities and suburbs left less and less real-life space in which to move around, cartoons provided a different kind of space and environment where characters could show all kinds of unusual powers and resilience.  Children could feel like they were having a magical life narrative making magical life imprints, even though, in reality they were merely living as spectators.

As cartoons evolved into full-length feature animation forms, the violence diminished, because there was a limit to the violence that people could tolerate.  With the development of a full-bodied plot, there was also a diminishing of ongoing action, because time had to be spent developing interesting characters.  Nevertheless, these being primarily children’s movies, children’s stories formed the base of these full-length feature cartoons, and the magical use of movement, space and things continued to be present.  Flying people in Peter Pan, a flying elephant in Dumbo, a puppet that came to life in Pinocchio, an underwater kingdom in The Little Mermaid, dancing implements in Beauty and the Beast, a magic carpet in Aladdin.  These long cartoons continued to expand possibilities of life narrative in the minds of people who had increasingly rejected new possibilities of life narrative in their daily lives.  And as both short and long cartoons increasingly became available, first on VHS and then on DVD, children could acquire the possibility of watching and living vicariously through their favorite imaginary life narratives over and over again, and, in this way, merging in their minds with their favorite characters.

One form of cartoon presentation has not been fully discussed yet.  Many half hour children shows on television are hybrids of short cartoons and full-length feature cartoons with some of the actions of short forms combined with some of the more significant character development of full-length features. Two good examples of this kind of show were the Flintstones and the Jetsons.  There have also been more adult cartoon shows like the Simpsons and South Park which are more sophisticated than children’s shows both in content and language, but which still maintain some of the magical aura of animation.  Finally we have to mention the more complex imagery of computer-generated animated films like Toy Story and Shrek, which, with their three-dimensional effects, really draw people into the narrative.

To the extent that people are now living in front of a screen for more interactive reasons, they have found a way to more directly jump into the screen reality which they are experiencing.  This, of course, is what the computer experience is built for.  And to the extent that it is necessary, some computer users use a simplified graphic image of themselves that they have developed to participate in some computer functions.  This image, called an avatar, has some things in common with cartoon characters.  Now cartoon characters are not usually based on real people and are not in any way susceptible to real-time manipulation by a spectator.  And, of course, manipulation within a screen reality is the whole reason for the existence of an avatar.  But both an avatar and a cartoon character are simplified figures that dwell in some kind of screen reality with all the possibilities and limitations that that entails.

And yet we have already indicated that many children live through their favorite cartoon characters, by ongoing viewing of cartoon programs and repeated viewing of DVD’s.  They do this to identify with the magical possibilities of movement and narrative that these characters have.  What happens when adults start identifying with their own screen reality presentations of self?  It is one thing to use an avatar as a vehicle for representing oneself within various processes in screen reality.  The avatar is a tool of the person using it.  But as has been indicated throughout this column, people tend to become merged in their minds with things that they use frequently.  So often, the avatar becomes such a salient defined discrete image in a person’s mind that it begins to take over the mind.  And sometimes, even without the presence of an actual avatar, a person becomes like an avatar after immersing himself for a long time in his screen reality. The person becomes increasingly shallow and two-dimensional and demonstrates a lack of both emotional and intellectual depth and texture.

Does this description remind you of someone who has been in the news a lot these days?  How about Donald Trump: the man who communicates most of what he has to say in short succinct surprising shallow tweets?  During the course of the American presidential campaign, Trump gradually became his own avatar: a man who spoke in shallow sound bites and constantly shocked the world with what he had to say.  A man who had an air of unreality about him and who seemed to lack a core self. 

            The difference between a cartoon character and an avatar is that a cartoon character does not usually represent and is not directly manipulated by a real human like an avatar is.  But Trump’s life narrative has the magical surreal absurd flavor of a cartoon character.  It could be turned into an animated cartoon series, even if he didn’t actually exist.

And it’s a cartoon series that so many Americans, those who supported Trump, could so easily enter.  To the extent that they merge into a collective identity with him, they too become cartoon characters, characters who belong on a screen rather than in the real world.

One of my earlier articles was titled “Life Has Become A Cartoon”.  Boy, is that true now more than ever before.  This is why it is so important that we find a way of protecting people against the sensory distortion that emanates from our screen realities and other manifestations of modern technological society.

(c) 2017 Laurence Mesirow

How Conspiracy Theories Help Us To Feel Alive

            Our news these days seems to be literally overflowing with stories about conspiracies and accusations of conspiracies.  One very prominent conspiracy to come to the surface recently is that where Russia supposedly influenced the American presidential election through hacking into the e-mails of the Democratic National Committee as well as those of other organizations and individuals.  Trump, who is an admirer of Putin, of course, vociferously denies this possibility and says that because the C.I.A. made a mistake with regard to missiles in Iraq that, in effect, it can’t be trusted about anything.  However, supposedly the C.I.A. has made corrections to its methods since the Iraq days.  And a bipartisan group of members of Congress wants to further delve into this matter.  The truth is that it is a rather serious accusation that is being made, and, therefore, one that merits further investigation.

            But some accusations of conspiracies remain accusations without any foundation to them.  For instance, the accusation that the news media were conspiring against Trump in his bid for the American presidency.  This accusation has turned out to be totally baseless.  If anything, the ongoing free coverage in the media that Trump and his outrageous statements received were a major factor in his election.  But the accusation of conspiracy certainly riled up Trump’s supporters and helped to stimulate them to life out of their numbness.

            This is because, in general, the accusation of conspiracy generates a lot of abrasive friction both between people and within people.  The accusation of conspiracy creates a little focused tension-pocket of overstimulation.  And we can define the idea of a conspiracy as a focused tension-pocket narrative where one person or group of people supposed tries to secretly control and manipulate some aspect of the life or lives of another person or group of people.  Obviously the individual or group of people supposedly being controlled or manipulated resents this considerably and wants to shut down the supposed actions of the perpetrator or perpetrators and wants to see some kind of justice appear.  Perhaps even punishment if possible.

            In more traditional organic societies, a focus on a conspiracy was a way for a person to handle excessive flowing blendable continual emotions that threatened to swallow up his sense of self and cause him to lash out uncontrollably in an undifferentiated manner.  Such emotions tended to predispose a person to act like a savage, an animal.  With a focus on a conspiracy, a person could channel his strong emotions in such a way that he could more easily maintain the integrity of his sense of self and thus maintain his identity as a human.   The conspiracy theory allowed a person to expel his excessive flowing blendable continual emotions in a safe way.  There could be a focused target for his emotions that would necessitate his concentrating his emotions so that they could be directed outside of himself in a defined way.

            In modern technological society, a focus on a conspiracy serves a different purpose.  Now the emotional problems that a typical conspiracy theorist would experience are numbness and jadedness as a result of a lack of organic stimuli in living environments today.  So the conspiracy theory today is not used to help shape and guide an excess of organic stimuli but rather to shock a person to come alive with the abrasive friction generated by the presence of a supposed conspiracy.  As in other forms of abrasive friction today, the conspiracy theory is like an addiction that gives a person kicks and that never fully goes away.  Because once you believe in it, and it keeps you alive, it’s hard to give up.

            And, in truth, it almost doesn’t matter if the conspiracy is real or not.  In both cases, the belief in a conspiracy in today’s world helps to pull a person out of the numbness and jadedness that he is experiencing, helps to pull a person out of the sensory distortion – the understimulation and the overstimulation – that he experiences living in modern technological society.  Perhaps it could be said that it is almost better that the conspiracy is a product of the believer’s imagination.  A real conspiracy is subject to being exposed.  Then the perpetrators can, at least potentially, receive their appropriate punishment and the conspiracy terminated.  And the perpetrator loses the source of his focused abrasive friction, his kicks, his shock therapy.  Whereas, if the conspiracy is imaginary, no perpetrators can be effectively brought to justice.  Unless charges are effectively trumped up (no pun intended), there usually just isn’t enough evidence to charge a supposed perpetrator for his misdeeds in an imaginary conspiracy.  As a result, the believer can feel perpetually aggrieved. There simply do not exist the means to get to the bottom of the perceived conspiracy, to resolve it by effectively exposing the perpetrators and punishing them and preventing them from ever trying to repeat the conspiracy or create a new one.  Having the lost cause of perpetually fighting an imaginary conspiracy can pull a person out of his numbness and jadedness and keep him alive indefinitely.

            The case of Russia may be the one instance where Donald Trump is fighting against a conspiracy theory.  Most of the time, Donald Trump is constantly coming up with his own new conspiracy theories.  To the extent that his supporters psychologically merge with him to become a part of the collective sense of self that he generates, they too believe in all of his conspiracy theories.  The supporters, together with Trump, are all stimulated to life by the abrasive friction generated as a reaction to these theories.  And the fact that Trump is always coming up with new conspiracy theories, new surprises, new shocks to his supporters nervous systems, gives them ongoing new kinds of abrasive friction, new stimuli to give them new kinds of kicks.  Trump is an addiction and each of his conspiracy theories is an addiction.

            The notion of Trump being like an addiction to his followers is, of course, just a metaphor.  It gives us a handle on what he is doing to his followers, so we can understand how he was, as it were, thrust upon us.  Just as a metaphor I used in a previous article of Trump being like political Viagra also gives us understanding of the strange political situation he presents not only to Americans but also to people in the rest of the world who are going to feel the effects of his governance.  To the extent that Trump jolts people out of their numbness, he is like a political addiction.  And to the extent that Trump gives numb people a way of feeling a sense of potency in their lives again, he is like political Viagra.  So both of these metaphors can be used to explain Trump’s meteoric rise on the American political landscape.

© 2017 Laurence Mesirow

Robots That Deliver The Goods

            In the ever increasing search to find ways to eliminate unnecessary human connections in the modern world, an online food ordering and delivery service company from the U.K. called Just Eat is going to be using robots to deliver food that has been ordered online.  Seven of these special robots, which are really sort of like boxes on wheels, have been leased from Starship Technologies, the British company developing these sidewalk self-driving drone robots.  Each of these boxes can hold a large bag of delivery food.  No longer are customers, who receive their deliveries from these robots, going to have to worry about tipping a delivery boy or girl.  In addition, sometimes there just simply aren’t enough humans to deliver all the orders that are generated at peak times at traditional delivery restaurants.  With these robots, no one is going to have to wait an unusually long period of time for their food.

            In the U.S., there is a gourmet sandwich company called Jimmy John’s that prides itself on how fast its delivery people can deliver its food.  It has these ads where there are conversations between a driver and a manager, and both people are talking superfast as a sign that the company is aware of how important time is for its typical customers.  Sometimes people’s work in today’s world doesn’t allow them much time to eat, but very often it is simply a matter that when modern people are hungry, they want to eat right away.  It’s not just that they feel physically hungry.  It is also that they want immediate gratification to fill the experiential void they feel inside themselves.  By talking fast, the actors for these ads are trying to indicate that the people at Jimmy John’s can operate like high-speed machines to help customers fill the void.  A machine is thought of as being fast and efficient and it doesn’t waste time.

            But now with the Just Eat robots, we won’t have to worry about people who try to work like machines, and who, therefore, inevitably make mistakes.  We will have machines making the deliveries, entities that can just be themselves and do the work they were meant to do.

            Now pretty soon, even without these chests on wheels, machine delivery for all sorts of items will become fairly common, as all kinds of drones are used more and more.  But there is something particularly disturbing about the Just Eat robots delivering food.  Food is perhaps the most experientially grounded thing that humans produce.  It is nutritious for the body and nurturing for the mind and the spirit.  It provides an important grounded component to a person’s field of experience both internally and externally.

            And because it is such a special phenomenon for human beings, it was traditionally surrounded by other grounded components to make a more fully grounded field of experience in the lives of people.  In traditional societies, people would normally sit down together at meals with family and guests and break bread together.  Among many groups, people would give thanks to their spiritual entity through prayer for the bounty of their meal.  The grounded connection was made of food, family or community, land or sea, and spirit or spirits.  All was part of one organic entity.

            As societies evolved, and more vocational specialization occurred, there developed inns, tea houses and public houses – gathering places where people could eat, drink, and sometimes sleep away from home and family.  Nevertheless, there was still the idea of bonded human connections between the server and guest.  Frequently, along with food, the server would provide the guest with conversation to make him feel welcome.  These places could be so welcoming that community meetings were sometimes held in them.  As the food business grew, and more and more people ate out – sometimes because of work and sometimes because people simply had the discretionary income to eat out more and didn’t want to bother with cooking – restaurants evolved and servers became more focused on serving food rather than on making small talk.  Dining became less leisurely, and most restaurant owners and managers became more focused on volume of customers – getting customers in and out.

            The trend of perceiving food as defined discrete hopefully tasty nutrition and less as flowing blendable continual nurturance has continued to grow with the advances in technology.  The availability of the car meant that food could be acquired even more quickly at drive-ins.  Furthermore, the use of advanced cooking machinery meant that food could be acquired quickly with a minimum of bonded connection with a server.  Hence, all the fast food outlets that serve people quickly, even when the people don’t use the drive-through windows.

            There has also been the acquisition of food at automats and vending machines.  Automats seem to be extinct now, but vending machines continue to be as popular as ever, and many places like hospitals have rooms filled with them.  At both automats and vending machine rooms, there has been no bonded connection between the customer and the person who puts the food in the appropriate places in the machine.  Here the customer receives his food from within the complete experiential vacuum of the machine.

            And yet to use an automat or a vending machine, a person still has had to go out into the external world, where he is likely to encounter other people with whom he can socially interact.  With the Just Eat robot, a person can stay in his home and have food delivered to his home and, if he is not living with someone or some ones and if he is not having people over to visit, he never has to encounter other humans.  He can build a social vacuum in his home.

            For many food service places, the idea of a delivery robot is very appealing.  As robots replace humans in the food services industry, it will mean getting rid of the cost involved with wages and insurance for delivery boys and girls.  It will also mean that food service places won’t have to purchase vehicles for delivery people.  In addition, robots don’t take vacations and don’t need days off (unless, perhaps, there is a repair issue).  So robots could be potentially a cost effective substitute for human delivery people in the food services industry.

            But, as has been discussed many times previously in this column, there is a different kind of price to pay for the substitution of robots for humans.  Not only does it involve shutting humans out of one more form of work, but it involves disrupting one more area of human connectedness, one more part of the larger social grounding in human communities.  If robots take over everything in the area of human services, the experiential distortion will be enormous, and social isolation in an experiential vacuum will lead not only to growing mental health problems but also to growing robotization, as people become more and more like the complex behavioral entities (namely, the robots) that surround them.  And this will be because more and more robots and other complex machines will become their dominant sources for mirroring and modeling.  In short, we will increasingly become like the complex behavioral entities that we use.

© 2016 Laurence Mesirow

Can Apps Improve Mental Health?

            People are increasingly turning to psychiatric apps these days for all kinds of mental health issues.  Among other things, these apps help to monitor psychological symptoms, give advice and counseling, teach relaxation exercises, give cognitive behavioral therapy, and alert friends and family members in support systems when a person is having a crisis.  There are many concerns about the effectiveness of these apps, leaving aside any concerns that some people may have for the whole concept of using a kind of intimate contact with complex machines in order to improve mental health.

            In the past, there has been an article in my column about potential negative consequences of using Skype as a vehicle for obtaining psychotherapy from a therapist.  But the number of apps that create different kinds of interaction within supposed therapy situations between computers and clients has proliferated enormously.  It would be beyond the scope of this column to do a systematic review of even a few of these apps.  Such a review has been conducted often in other places and continues to be conducted on an ongoing basis.  Instead, the focus of this article will be a continuation of an ongoing general discussion about the intense interaction of humans and computers with a focus on the use of these machines for mental health issues.

            For those of you who have read this column regularly, you will know that a recurring theme has been that the continual use of computers creates sensory distortion, which, in and of itself, can lead to mental health problems.  The computer screen is an experiential vacuum, something that numbs a user as a result of its smooth frictionless empty surfaces and its intrinsic capacity to separate a user from all the activity on which he is focusing behind the screen.  At the same time, many of the digital data and images that streak across the screen create tension pockets of overstimulation.  So the computer environment is a self-contained vacuum and tension-pocket environment, alternating understimulation and overstimulation, thus creating sensory distortion and making the user alternately numb and jaded.  Independent of specific content, the computer environment by itself can create mental health issues.

            And apart from the computer as an environment, the computer as a complex behavioral entity can create problems.  Particularly with children, but also with adults, computers can begin to replace humans as sources of both mirroring and modeling for users.  The user starts to see himself through the “eyes” of the computer and, furthermore, starts to unconsciously imitate the behavior, the activity of the computer.  In the process of unconsciously imitating the behavior of the computer, the user starts to become more like a robot or more like an avatar. He unconsciously imitates the processes occurring in the computer.

            So as a medium, the computer creates such sensory distortion and such inappropriate channels for mirroring and modeling, that it stimulates pathological states of mind and pathological behavior.  This is true even as the user attempts to heal his psychological disturbances with the psychiatric apps.  And even here, many independent mental health workers are themselves not convinced of any positive effects from these apps.  The one thing that can be affirmed is that the content of these apps is so filled with defined discrete stimuli - questions, directions, and descriptions – that it may be easy to absorb it cognitively, but not necessarily so easy to absorb it on a more primitive emotional level.  It is this emotional level where absorption has to take place in order to truly heal a person’s sense of self.

            It may sound old-fashioned, but to heal from deep emotional problems, a person needs another human, a professional psychotherapist.  And preferably a therapist with whom a client can be in the same space rather than a therapist that a person communicates with over the phone or through Skype.  The therapist has to be experienced as a total sensory entity in order to be able to provide the sensory grounding that a patient needs, while he goes through the personal transformation process that is needed in order to heal.  The physical process of the therapist’s behavior is like a full affirmation of a healing reality, something to which a person can anchor while he tries to deal with his distorted feelings and thoughts.

            But people today are obsessed with apps of all kinds, so why not be obsessed with psychiatric apps as well?  The obsession to interact with apps in general is basically founded on the craving to interact with and become more like the technology that is being used today.  For more and more people, becoming more and more like a robot or more and more like an avatar is the only the way that they feel they can defend themselves against the sensory distortion that surrounds them in their living environment.  On another level, it becomes a very meaningful way they can identify with and become more like a complex behavioral entity that seems to be impervious to organic perishability and that looks like it could just go on existing forever.  But this is a false immortality, because neither a robot nor an avatar has the coherent organic consciousness or the coherent sense of self that are the hallmarks of a human feeling vibrantly alive.  What good does it do to go on existing forever (which neither a robot nor an avatar actually do anyway), if a person can’t feel vibrantly alive in his eternal existence?  Apps in general are a false road to true human immortality.

            And as long as we haven’t yet found a provable way of achieving immortality in this life, let us at least try to make these years that we do have as filled with vibrant life as we can.  And let us use these vibrant life experiences as a foundation for making and receiving good life imprints and then preserving some of our imprints to form a meaningful surrogate immortality.

            And let us use the organic healing power of good psychotherapy with a real live human therapist to help a person arrive at a state of mind where he is capable of fully experiencing and participating in a rich vibrant life.  A rich healing primary experience that leads to rich primary experiences for everyday life.  Psychiatric apps are a false road to organic human healing.  Let us use people and not machines to make us psychologically well.

© 2016 Laurence Mesirow

Trump As A Form Of Political Viagra

            One of the most significant threats that can occur to any democracy is that of the election to a position of leadership of someone who has the potential to be an autocrat.  Such a person can attempt to undermine the checks and balances with respect to other branches of government in order to use dictatorial powers.  Such a person can consolidate his control and decide that elections would only potentially upset his long-term plan for the country.  It would then become much simpler to declare himself president for life.  This course of events has unfortunately happened before in history.  Two of the most notable examples of this happening in the last century were Russia under Lenin and Germany under Hitler.  In many cases, autocratic leaders maintain the pretense of multiple candidate elections in order to satisfy the expectations of the world community.  The elections are fixed, as the autocrat keeps winning election after election.  A good example of this is Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

            One of the secrets of an autocrat’s success is his capacity to take advantage of the frustrations of the populace in order to get the populace to back him.  It is a matter of getting people to back him and his vision and his sense of destiny.  It is a matter of getting people to merge psychologically with him and to make the imprints that he wants to make and preserve on the world their imprints.  The reason that people are willing to give up so much of their individual identity and merge with the autocrat is that they perceive their own opportunity to make and preserve individual imprints to be significantly diminished.  A major reason in the modern world that the opportunities to make and preserve individual imprints are significantly diminished is the effects of modern technology on human fields of experience in the external world.

            This diminishment occurs on several distinct levels.  First, technology has replaced what once would have been called artisan work with mass production by complex machines in factories.  Second, robots are replacing the human workers who used to work with the mass production machines.  Third, more recently, there has been the introduction of 3-D printers which make products from scratch with only the most minimal involvement of human beings.

            Finally, there is the replacement of natural organic surfaces and the surfaces of artifacts and architecture of more traditional cultures with the hard cold unyielding surfaces of modern technology, modern technology-based artifacts and modern technology-based architecture.  The more natural and traditional surfaces created fields of experience that yielded to new ongoing organic imprints, so that a person could feel potent and fully alive, able to make and preserve his own organic imprints and create a surrogate immortality built both on actual products and on the memories that remained with other people after his death.  But now that technology is so good at preserving indefinitely all kinds of imprints, there seems to be less and less room in the fields of experience of people today for truly new imprints. That is, apart from the invention of new devices, that either get rid of work and the possibility of new imprints being made by other workers, or else create more and more layers of mediated experience that remove people more and more from the immediate sensory world and the opportunity to make and preserve new meaningful organic imprints.

            So this is a difficult time for people in a country like the United States, people who want to feel alive and create their own individual surrogate immortality.  Along comes someone like Donald Trump, who not only offers to bring back manufacturing jobs, but who, on a deeper level, offers to restore a sense of potency.  Believe in Trump and you can participate in his vision which will create a collective imprint on the U.S.  A collective imprint that will endure and turn into a collective surrogate immortality.  Believe in Trump and blur into him.

            Blurring into a political leader in order to leave a collective imprint is not what one would normally consider a typical strategy in a modern democracy.  One of the supposed advantages of a democracy is its focus on the individual.  In the United States, according to the Declaration of Independence, there is a fundamental belief that all human beings have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The implication is that each individual has a right to pursue his own distinct path to personal satisfaction and will not feel predisposed to give up his own distinct path by blurring into someone else’s path.  Although political leaders can be charismatic, they are not supposed to use psychological tactics that seduce people into becoming a part of an enveloping collective identity.  Having a good chunk of the populace merge into an enveloping collective identity is the foundation for setting up a totalitarian government, which, of course, is antithetical to the maintenance of a democracy.

            And this is why Trump is such a dangerous man.  His sense of entitlement, his belief that he has the right to go around all kinds of established rules and conventions with regard to the American government, complements perfectly the desperate dreams of his supporters who want nothing more than to believe there is some magical way for them to bypass their sense of impotence with regard to their daily lives.  Trump allows them to live their dreams, if only vicariously, through him.  By letting them blur into him, Trump allows these people to participate in creating vicarious organic imprints on their field of experience.  The vicarious collective organic imprints of a Trump presidency.  In so doing, it allows these supporters to feel fully alive and to feel they haven’t lived their lives in vain.  So that when they are about to die, they will know they have participated in leaving a meaningful impress on the world.

            Trump is unique in the way he changes many of his positions so often both out of expediency and out of a desire to be able to control and manipulate Americans by throwing them off balance.  He also is constantly making new surprise attacks on individuals, corporations and movements with no warning.  And although it throws them off balance, Trump’s supporters love the abrasive friction of all of his changes and surprises.  But in other parts of the world, there are leaders and movements that are also penetrating the numbness and the jadedness of their constituents by coming up with revolutionary proposals to change things dramatically.  The change is not necessarily focused on actually fixing particular problems with particular solutions, but rather is oriented to leaving new dramatic splashy collective imprints that pull people out of their numbness and jadedness and allow them to feel more fully alive.  Many times the changes brought about by these new leaders and movements don’t really fix the problems of their supporters and may actually exacerbate existing problems situations.  But, on some levels, increased abrasive friction may be exactly what these supporters need.  And someone like Trump, who flip-flops on many issues and creates ongoing shows and surprises is actually perfect for creating the ongoing intermittent kicks that keep these people alive.  And his flip-flops and surprise attacks are perfect for making many new imprints in which his supporters can participate.  And many of these imprints can be preserved in people’s memories leading to a constantly expanding collective surrogate immortality.

            Now Brexit was a big collective imprint and a big shock and it is going to precipitate all kinds of other shocks as the leaders of Britain and the European Union try to navigate Britain’s separation from the European Union.  This was not a change that was very well thought out by most of its supporters, and it could very easily produce unforeseen consequences that will repeatedly impact in a negative way the very people who wanted to promote it.    

There will be more votes in the future that bring about unfocused dramatic change, as people try to promote the kind of change legislatively that they can use as a psychological substitute for the kind of change they would actually desire to bring about in their fields of experience within their daily lives.  It is highly unlikely that these changes will deal effectively with the underlying problem that people have today of a loss of organic grounding in their living environments.

In one of my earlier columns, I wrote about two different kinds of crime that corresponded to adaptations to two different kinds of living environments.  In more traditional more natural environments, a person could be overstimulated by organic stimuli, by the flowing blendable continual stimuli that are the foundation for strong emotions.  This, in turn, created the foundation for crimes of passion.  I use the term crimes of passion in a much broader sense than it has been traditionally used.  In my construct, it means not just revenge for unfaithfulness in love, but also any crime based on greed, lust, anger, envy and other strong emotions.

Then, as modern technology started moving into living environments and creating sensory distortion: understimulation and overstimulation, people started to use crime to pull themselves out of their numbness and jadedness in order to feel simply alive.  Thus began all the seemingly senseless crimes like the mass shootings by one or two gunmen that have become so prevalent in modern American society.

Somehow, I am beginning to think a similar pattern is appearing in the process of voting in modern democracies.  People used to vote based on passionate beliefs, passionate connections.  This was how it happened as people were transitioning to modern technological living environments.  During the transition, people still had some significant connection to more traditional styles of living environments.  In America, homesteaders kept pushing further and further west, keeping alive the idea of the American frontier.  Even those who remained in the big cities could fairly easily escape to rural areas.

But now even rural areas are dominated by the transformative experiential effects of modern consumer technology.  People are increasingly numb and jaded and feel increasingly impotent in terms of their capacity to make and preserve imprints in their fields of experience.  A man like Trump comes along and he pulls people out of their numbness and jadedness and out of their sense of impotence.  And the more he flip-flops, the more he makes people feel more alive and that they are part of a movement that is making things happen.  It doesn’t matter what is happening, just that something is happening in their lives.  This is what we are dealing with in the Trump phenomenon.

© 2016 Laurence Mesirow