Earlier this month we revisited Yerevan, Armenia, for Ian’s visa run. One evening we went to see a show of dancing fountains. You must know what it is: a colorful show when water flows to a tune and their are light effects too. Ian made some ironic comments about too many soundtracks from Hollywood movies involved, but I still liked the performance. Of course, I saw many people (mostly women, I must admit) taking selfies in front of the fountains. I only took pictures of fountains. I hate selfies. It made me think, and think and think. Here is the result.
We live at a time of a gradual yet fast loss of subjectivity in individuals. Selfies are a great example. When you make a selfie, you become an object, not a subject. And it is a wierd desire, to be an object. Or, is it? An object has zero responsibility, zero stake, zero impact…zero carbon footprint maybe? Being an object seems something millennials and zoomers might love. You become a character in your own anime or k-pop show with filters applied later.
Now, look at acting. Why all modern movies and modern actors are so bad? Well, some are not, but those are usually much older or have just started. I think it is the same issue. Every movie for them is a selfie in motion. Not acting. Acting means portraying someone. But, odd enough, to become someone, to apply the System or other acting technique, you need to be the subject of the process. You must make a conscious decision, a conscious effort. Making a selfie in motion is easier, is so much more fun and so appealing to the human vanity! Look at Tom Cruise. Who can remember that he actually started well in Interview with the Vampire (I hate the idea of the book series, but he did well in the movie) or in the Rain Man? He is just a cool guy from that series of Tom Cruise movies(!) Mission Impossible. Who can actually remember the name of the character he plays there?
Even James Bond became a series of selfies, photo stand-ins of all the actors who played the part. None was James Bond after probably Roger Moore, and every new Bond is less of a Bond and more of a face in the hole…
Now let’s move from particular to the general. The loss of subjectivity is a general trend assisted by IT and now the AI. The majority of people spend hours browsing through secondary, repetitive content on social media. They ruminate the same ideas again and again like a mental gum. I don’t think you actually exist as a subject, as an actor when you kill time watching ASMR where someone crushing bubbles of a bubble wrap. I don’t think you actually exist when you listen to a podcast that voices comments to some popular post on Reddit or Quora (yes, videos like this exist on youtube). I don’t think you exist when you want women doing make-up again and again.
A very large part of the society leans on the Internet to avoid subjectivity, because subjectivity is where both the joy of freedom and the pain of responsibility lie. Sometimes it is more pain. Actually, quite often. Every choice is pain. People tend to instinctively avoid all kinds of pain, yet, this path away from pain is futile and delusive. AI will only make things worse replacing in a schizophrenic way more parts of your personality, of your experience or would-be experience. Your personality will be a set of crutches and nothing outside it. The loss of subjectivity removes some of the pain of existence, yet, it removes the freedom too.
Yet, when someone needs your involvement, they will have the necessary buttons at hand that can easily turn a gullible object, a techno zombie you chose to be, into an obedient tool of, say, democracy (read: the global capital).
They don’t even need drugs. They just add digital poison to the sources where you are used to get your painkiller from. Suddenly your favorite podcasts become full of “stand with Ukraine”, or “BLM”, or LQBTQ+”, etc. And you become a part of an upgrade to the good, old divide and conquer game at a given level: national (election campaign), international (fight for democracy), etc. You become a human robot fighting for the cause that doesn’t exist. I now call it “joining the fools games”. Everything can be a fools’ game: men vs women, Russian vs Ukrainians, Orthodox vs non-Orthodox, etc.
The real cause is actually simple: money and power. Someone wants to become a president, someone wants to rob the richest country of the world, etc. It has never been about democracy, equal rights, God, social justice, etc. It is about the money. Yet, I think the masterminds are no smarter than the victims. It’s a house of glass. It doesn’t work this way. But being subjective and having the grasp of your life is still a good choice, even though it may come with more pain.
Your thought is an echo of Kierkegaard.
People are content with being NPCs, adrift on world historical developments.
If the globalist totalitarians win out and introduce digital IDs and cashless CDBCs, cancelling people (as has happened to Dutch, German, UK, French journalists covering Donbas or Syria) by making it impossible to carry out financial transactions (no bank accounts; with no explanation or process) will become as routine as censorship is now on Twitter and Facebook. There will be no good people, because you cannot choose to do good or bad. There cannot even be the thought of justice/activism, because at the first step you would be cancelled.
People will live with no thought about becoming their true selves, or as Kierkegaard puts it: willing to be what you are.
There used to be a school here sporting the exhortation: “Be human” (it sounds better in the original: ‘Wees mensch’).
This dated from the thirties, but was taken down in the 1990’s, because some chemist on the board claimed he did not want to be exhorted to become something he already was by nature.
I’m glad I’m not alone in this)
This is a good well thought out post. If you don’t want to be who you are and want to follow the herd, you become easily herded.
i could not agree more.
Per
Norway