The Mountain We Climb
Mark Fisher and The Search For Real Meaning in the 21st Century
It was 6am on a cold Tuesday morning when I woke up to check my phone. There were a couple notifications, nothing serious. I decided I’d get to them later and should get the rest of my much needed beauty sleep.
Then, it was 3 hours later and I’d been scrolling through Instagram reels since 6. I was a little bewildered as to what had happened — something was wrong but I couldn’t really tell why…
In 2003, the late Mark Fisher, British writer, cultural theorist, and philosopher, began posting under the pseudonym K-Punk on a blog of the same name. An instant success, Fisher’s revolutionary blog attempted to bring back the intellectual fervour of the postpunk music press, and challenge readers in an increasingly digital world to critically engage with their lives and assess the impacts of a growing digital sphere in the developed world.
Put simply, we should use [the internet] — as a means of dissemination, communication and distribution — but not live inside it. The problem is that this goes against the tendencies of handhelds. We all recognise the by now cliched image of a train carriage full of people pecking at their tiny screens, but have we really registered how miserable this really is, and how much it suits capital for these pockets of socialisation to be closed down?
Fisher, Abandon hope (summer is coming), 2015
After reading one of his last blog posts, Abandon hope (summer is coming), it became evident to me that Fisher had some interesting ideas on the ways in which the growing attachment to technology in modern life has affected the way we experience and interact with the world around us.
Studies generally report negative associations between mobile phone use and well-being, but the reasoning behind this is unclear. Volmer and Lermer indicate that mobile-phone usage is strongly correlated with “lower well-being, life satisfaction, and mindfulness.”
By providing the ultimate ‘easy-way’, technology has undermined the way that we choose to spend our time
I would posit that the use of technology has casualised the way we connect with each other, the way we view the world, and the way we express ourselves. Moreover, there appear to be wide-sweeping impacts on the human psyche, and seismically proportioned shifts in what we think gives life meaning. Some scholars have indicated that the overuse of technology has led to a more widespread adoption of self-escapism as a coping mechanism for trauma, emotional upheaval, and stress, causing people to refrain more and more from introspection. Other studies indicate that the overreliance on our phones for daily tasks is atrophying our ability to remember, and preventing us from forming and retaining memories. More concerningly, the constant presence of technology in our lives appears to distract from the present moment, and detract from a person’s experiences — emotionally and physically.
Now it’s not all bad. Imagine the usefulness of your phone in a long-distance relationship, or the godsend that is Google Maps in a foreign country…
However, we are seemingly blindsided by the negative changes happening in our own brains. I tend to liken the journey of overcoming these to the climbing of a mountain.
If I wanted to see the view of Brisbane from Mt Cootha in 1960, I would’ve had to get up, get to the bottom of Mt Cootha and climb all 287m by myself. That’s a lot of work. In 2024, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of photos of Brisbane from Mt Cootha online, accessible in about 4 seconds from my phone.
Thinking a bit bigger, if I have access to a 360° photo from the top of Mount Everest (which is on Google Maps!) from the comfort of my bed, why would I ever bother flying to Nepal to climb Everest and risk death, frostbite, and exhaustion for 2 months?
I wouldn’t.
Ok maybe that was a bit hyperbolic. How about this:
What if the mountain was an early-morning run club, and the challenge of climbing was actually an awkward surface level conversation starting with “hi, how are you?”. That sounds like a lot of effort when I could comfortably watch reels on my phone and get my dopamine hit with infinitely less effort?
What about going to a café to spend time with my family when I could just send them a quick “love you lots” text (with an obligatory heart eyes emoji) and save some time?
You get the idea.
To us on our moral high horses, the answer to these questions is clear — phone bad, not phone good. But really, it’s not that black and white. The common thread among these examples, and countless others, is that we are hard-wired to do things the easy way. By providing the ultimate ‘easy-way’, technology has undermined the way that we choose to spend our time; not because of some microchip disease but because it enables us to pick the easy thing in a fraction of the time it would take to otherwise.
In doing so, we miss out on the innumerate benefits of face-to-face interaction, the personal growth that comes from facing our fears and anxieties, and the experiences that give life real meaning and remind us what really is special.
In not climbing the mountain, and getting our phone to do the work for us, we miss out on the benefits of climbing the mountain ourselves: the fun drive where I get to listen to my favourite Taylor Swift songs, the challenging but rewarding climb where I get to spend time connecting with those close to me, and the awesome experience of seeing the view for myself in all 576 megapixels (which is apparently what the human eye takes in). But there’s actually more at stake, which, thinking about is a bit confronting.
In a present that relies on rapid, mediocre stimulation and a repetition of the past, the search for meaning has become increasingly difficult.
As someone who’s struggled with depression and anxiety in my past, alongside 40% of people under 24, I’ve always struggled to properly draw the connection between the world around me and the meaning I derive from it. In a (retrospectively) funny way, I remember thinking why people would care about their favourite 80s music, or a nice view, or their favourite dessert. It’s not really that meaningful is it? Maybe Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey is an amazing song, but there’s newer music and it’s all just notes and words anyway — surely there isn’t much genuine meaning one can derive from it. But as I’ve grappled with the complex and melancholic feelings of growing up, and leaving behind a past I both long for and run from, I’ve begun to understand the complicated and deeper connection that can underlie otherwise rather meaningless things. This is something Fisher discusses quite extensively (and more elegantly than me) in his work; the hauntology of our modern age more so than ever before has taken a crucial role in the development of meaning in modern life.
This neologism was first introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and refers to the persistence of elements of our collective cultural and social past (in French hauntology and ontology are pronounced the same in a really hilarious move by Derrida). Moreover, hauntology expresses the idea that the present is ‘haunted’ by lost futures that the twentieth century taught us to anticipate. For example, imagine you were given a trinket by your husband before he went to war, and he never returned. That trinket would come to represent your husband to you — and the lost future you once shared. More broadly, and more troublingly, the disappearance and malignment of a 21st century that was imagined previously has meant the deterioration of the capacity of society as a whole to conceive of a world radically different from the one in which we currently live. There has been an unprecedented trend toward the known and the status-quo in the 21st century, cultivating a deep sense of longing that, in my experience, now comes with maturing and existing in the 21st century.
Fisher touches on this in his idea of the ‘cancellation of the future;’ where all of us long for nostalgic sounds and stimulants from the past to comfort us in this time of technological overstimulation, increasingly expensive basic needs, and an ever-more precarious job market that continues to demand more of its workers.
In the last ten to fifteen years, meanwhile, the internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered the texture of everyday experience beyond all recognition. Yet, perhaps because of all this, there’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore
Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 2014 p.7
Fisher’s depressing elegy for cultural progress and passion in a world dominated by cheap stimulation and the marketplace provides a bleak prognosis. It has become increasingly evident that nostalgic rumination is the only way that many feel a sense of meaning in their life. Some long for the sound of the Beatles (I can’t relate). Some feel a longing for the lost promise of an American Dream. Some, to rewatch E.T in cinemas with their high-school friends for the first time. For younger audiences, the sense of longing might be more abstract, but in each case, we are all longing for meaning. Real meaning. A sense of deep connection to the world around us and each other that has all but evaporated in the 21st century. In a present that relies on rapid, mediocre stimulation and a repetition of the past, the search for meaning has become increasingly difficult.
And this is where our phones, TVs, and laptops work so well. They fill the gap in our lives, not necessarily with quality, but quantity. And quantity will suffice. Quantity is easy. But this quantity has only exacerbated the erosion of the tenuous bonds that keep us connected to one another and the world around us. Now instead of talking to each other we send Tik-Toks. Instead of covering our soccer uniforms in mud and grass stains (sorry mum) we watch TV. It takes an extraordinary and previously unimagined amount of effort and commitment for us to choose quality.
Allow me one more, concluding, mountain metaphor. Perhaps, the mountain isn’t physical, but mental. The climb is actually a continuous search for meaning in the world around us. Perhaps the summit may not really exist, but it is in the climb that we find out what makes life truly special. And that takes strength, resilience, and perseverance and a lot of relapsing onto Instagram reels.
For me, deciding to take the first steps on my first hike was insignificant to anyone but me, but tectonically shifted how I felt about myself, the world around me and the way I live life. In doing so I slowly started to recognise the meaning that one can create by living life with passion, enjoying effortful experiences, and connecting with people. It reminded me that the world is so much bigger than what’s in my head, and the dopamine I can derive from my phone.
For me, the mountain was quite literal, but the sentiment remains. Regardless of whether your mountain is reading a new book, watching some clouds while listening to your favourite Ethel Cain anthem, or finding the time to write about your search for meaning in life through hiking, the importance of actively searching for and creating meaning in your life is undeniable. However overdone it may be, finding the ability to feel the wind on your face, or listening to a tree rustle is more than a de-stressing technique, it’s a reminder to connect with and find meaning in the world around you.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my phone and the unbridled ability to connect with the entire world from my fingertips, but maybe it’s time to really consider the mountainous challenges we face in the 21st century, and do some hiking of our own. This may be an underwhelming conclusion to come to, but there really is no one answer; the task of finding true meaning is perhaps the hardest thing we are each faced with. But a life without meaning isn’t much of a life at all — so maybe it’s worth a shot.
This piece was contributed by first-time statecraft writer and expert day tripper Sam Weir, who can be seen above standing on top of a very big hill.
Thank you to editors Elliott Collins and Daniel Quill for their work on this piece.
