How the Machine Cult de-sensualize us
Series on Arnold Gehlen
The cult of the machine has long taken a central position in society. Even more so, it has become a law of human life.
Here, I already discussed in more detail how technology is just a result of projecting parts of ourselves into nature and from nature into ourselves. The law consists of augmenting step-by-step human power over nature in order to control it.
This process consists on the one hand to project our own automatisms into nature as some kind of self-objectification to understand our surrounding better. At the same time, such an unconscious transfer alienates us from ourselves as we separate an inner process through objectification from our subjects. On the other hand, it conversely also allows us to use the rhythm of nature to stabilize our own rhythm through concrete action. In other words, it helps us understand humans better by taking nature as a sort of role model.
The consequence however of informing of this process of objectification is the replacement of direct sensual experience with intellectualisation. Intellectualisation, for example, the mathematisation of psychology, of course, continues to de-sensualize us. Like in the case of psychology, we exchange the direct experience of perceiving the actual human being in front of us with conceptual information.
The mathematization of psychology also means that the individual is confronted with a higher degree of multidimensional information and interdisciplinarity. The arts are also affected by this phenomenon. While the word is already a created distance of the directly perceivable sensual experience, poetry goes even further now than this simple objectification of moods. The artistic techniques to perfect one’s poem includes also the process of analysis after having actually written it. The same is true for architecture which can be completely separated from the physical and material reality during the design phase.
In this similar methodic style, the arts and science make use of the intellect in the same manner:
1. Reversing conditions (e.g., the architect can start with abstract designs before thinking about the material).
2. Attraction towards the purity of these abstract solutions.
3. Independence of the self-explanatory, that is isolating the object of discourse.
What is fascinating about all this is the realisation of the unconscious inner human process as described above. As if we invented technology just for stabilization purposes without even realizing it and the logic of our instincts is simply using our highly developed consciousness instead of the other way around.
Arnold Gehlen went so far as to say that even morals are continuously replaced by what is useful and doable by technology. I would respond that we are further down the road regarding this aspect. In the world of technology (and I would argue especially IT), the race for the newest software (or artificial intelligence) is so prominent, “fun”, and seemingly necessary for a society that a lot of people in these areas don’t think about what they are doing. It is just about doing, nothing else. Reflecting on new technology is secondary at most. As if we are stuck in an addiction to innovation that demands from us more and more conscious effort while we are not able to take a break from it. We are always on the hunt for the next kick in ever-decreasing periods of time.
