Distracting Ourselves to Death: The Reign of Technological Instrumentalism
“Just do it” is the creed of contemporary technological, instrumentalist, practice-centric mass mentality. The world of humankind is so “busy” that it has no time for human itself. The mindless acceleration of time, heading towards “un-thought” abyss, has trampled everything “non-artificial” under its mindless motion of wheels. This is the fear that few thinkers towards the end of the last century had raised with regard to the rising technology i.e. the obliteration of human itself. It is technology that is using human now and not the other way round. There is no human now.
The world has no time, giving the impression that something important is being done; when in fact the more busier contemporary human gets, the more deteriorated the world becomes. As the world gets busier, it also increasingly approaches its proximate extinction. It seems that, not idleness or speculation or leisure, but “activity”/work/manipulation is more problematic & threatening. There is a certain violence in every kind of “work”; working upon nature, manipulating it for our use, and now “using”/abusing each other as well since human being has also now been declared as a new “human resource”. This, we need to realize, is the overarching background underlying ontology of our technocratic instrumentalist world where the primary category through which the world is revealed to us is that of the “resource” and with it the tonality of “working upon”, using, exploiting, acting, consuming and what not.
But is human life solely driven by “use”? Is it not the case that all great facets of our lives, which make our lives truly worth living, are “use-less” & thus “priceless”! Do relationships fail and become toxic precisely because they too have now become “transactional” as money-resource-use-practice-result is raison d’être of contemporary life? A “priceless” moment shared with one’s parents or kids or old people or friends or all great works of art are all “use-less”. And it is this “uselessness” that salvages meaning in our lives — like a gift; and a “gift”, as we know, dissolves all transactionalism. A gift is an ex-nihilo act and need not be reciprocated; sadly, even “gifts” are now “exchanged”, tainted with the “logic” of transaction; abused by capitalism to churn out more profit. The ontology of gift is to violate the violence of transaction.
A person who keeps downplaying art, literature, poetry & philosophy, should be invited to throw old parents out as they are quite “useless”; “expenditure”, with no “profit”. Technology is “plastic”; it is human face of the “other” (as Levinas would say) or nature looked at disinterestedly (with no motive of exploitation) that allows us to taste something of the “Transcendence” in a (technological) world that alienates. Nothing is more “banal” — and thus more dangerous — than the celebration of the obliteration of humanities and social sciences from our public spaces and collective lives amidst the rise of scientific instrumentalist pragmatism. Full blown focus on “use”, “resource” and “instrumentality” is taken as a given “good” when in fact it is this instrumentalism which is destroying both humanity and environment. Capitalist mass consumerism, exploitation of nature, technological and arms race, madness over “numbers” and acceleration of time obliterates “human” itself. It is precisely this void of “human” that mass consumerism unsuccessfully tries to fill up.
Human desperately looks at the “smart” phone 24/7 but cannot find himself/herself there. Extinction of human unconsciously haunts human, only to be repressed by over-eating, over-using, over-doing in the swim of blissful distraction. Losing oneself to senseless “chatter”. Sadly, humans have forgotten to talk to each “other”. Smart phone is both a fascinating & “fantastical” digital void/abyss that distracts us to our own deaths. The social media therein with all its algorithms run comfortably on the auto-pilot of overarching egotisms which feed off of the same overarching background metaphysics of “violence” i.e. usurping/consuming/eating up of other “humans” as mere “followers”. Reducing humans down to mere “means” to certain ends. Again, the obliteration of “human” in the “digital”. There is no “human” in the digital; only “numbers”. The “other” human is not understood here in terms of enlightenment humanism but in the sense of “infinite” as Levinas has it. The “other” is the radical other that I cannot reduce down to an object. I can never “know” (& thus never essentialize) the other. This transcendence of the other evokes awe, respect & reverence; and this is ethics.
When the digital/technological “thoughtlessness” becomes the norm then the sudden spurt of horrendous violence follows suit. The rise of populism, cultism, demagoguery and mob mania in today’s world is the result of the crystallization of the thoughtless amorphous “mass” — half sleeping in the mindless distractions. Add to it the factor of “speed”, as people have no time to “think”, the mentality of getting quick results manifests into brute mechanical violence or indifference as both are “un-thought” and heartless.
Highest concern of human is not “technology” but a certain “way of life/being” which makes us alive to ourselves. The most important questions for humans are not technological but existential. Biggest crises of politics today are not technological but ethical. To reverse this technocratic malaise today, we need a re-orientation towards life, world, nature and humans — not dictated by the logic of use and resources. This re-orientation, again, is a philosophical (i.e. ontological, phenomenological, existential and hermeneutic) issue and not technological. It warrants a certain humble receptivity towards Being/existence. It is the humble registration of the Sacred mystery of Being which always recedes if attacked with concepts and techniques; it hides, conceals itself, whilst emitting out mere “numbers”/quantities that the scientist happily latches upon.
P.S: This piece was partly inspired by the writings of Professor Saitya Brata Das & his University classes.
Originally Published by Kashmir Observer:
