Becoming Primitive in a Complex Society
Series on Arnold Gehlen
The Gap between Culture and Technology
With the ever-increasing speed of technological evolution, the gap between reality and cultural values keeps expanding. We seem to expect that what qualifies such values would be these de-sensualized topics. The greatest minds and inventors that drive the economy with cutting-edge technology lead us by example. After all, pioneers are those who show us the new direction to go.
However, even though we expect to orient the whole society to follow them, it seems that our values stand still. They evolve very slowly and remain constant for a whole generation or even multiple ones. It remains a task of the young generations to define new and adapted judgments regarding everything social, political, and prestigious.
So, while we look into the bright future, the pioneers promise us, we are unable to move. Every day we hear of new tools, gadgets, and inventions, while in all studies regarding art and humanities, we focus still on the old classics. It is a futile task to attach our hopes for what is coming if we are not even done processing what already was.
Conservation and Progress
Two processes that continue next to each other. On one hand, cultural conservatism, we can’t avoid and on the other hand, we follow practical progress.
As a consequence, we live in a world where education becomes an aesthetic endeavour. Everyone can choose what they want to study and learn, regardless of any moral values. The interests in education lose its connection to any societal pragmatism. As an example, in wealthier countries, the pursuit of art as the content of life can exist without interest in economic success or even stability.
Due to this aestheticization of studies, some interests remain superficial, as one can always be interested in multiple things. At the same time, if we try to avoid superficiality and go deeper into some topics, progress forces us into isolation because only a few can achieve this depth. All this results in a decoupled societal reality.
Mass media
Since most of our endeavours become superficial and most people have these, the media has to adapt to this phenomenon. For example, these niche art movies are often financially risky as the broad mass isn’t familiar with the depth of this niche. As a result, mass media has to produce an accessible and flat product so that the mass of people can consume it.
Here comes then the primitivity of the title into play. For every topic (e.g., movies) the broader mass of people has only a more superficial interest. Hence, to be financially viable, mass media has to rely on the primitivization of the product at hand.
Secondly, primitivity is then not only achieved by this superficiality. Due to the sheer mass of consumable media, we have constantly overdosed on it while it is often relying on strongly exiting the consumers. Take, for example, the old Western movies which were incredibly slow in building an atmosphere. This seems to be something that the younger generation does not have time for anymore. Constant action and engagement are expected.
Finally, this primitivity, in combination with ever-increasing de-sensualization through technology, often has to exclude art from popularity as a consequence.
Language
Ultimately, this introduced primitivity also affects language. The words we use in everyday language lose poeticity as it’s more important to achieve catchy and memorable expressions: a phenomenon one can especially see in modern advertisements.
In a more abstract sense, this process describes a trend towards simplicity, vividness of knowledge, application, and practice. In other words, it describes a decay of more subtle thought patterns: a trend that might be more and more problematic when observing modern artificial intelligence replacing the human need for such thought patterns.
