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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alan Noble
Read between
May 24 - May 27, 2023
In his book The Technological Society, the philosopher Jacques Ellul gives us a definition of technique that is extremely valuable to interpreting our society: “Technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency . . . in every field of human activity.”8 Whenever we use reason to create methods to achieve efficiency, we are practicing technique.
the drive for maximizing efficiency in every activity is a considerable aspect of modern life.
Efficiency has many healthy applications when it is not treated as an ultimate good. But according to Ellul, technique does not easily abide other values. Efficiency tends to push out other considerations, or at least subjugate them. For example, it’s a wonderful thing to develop a more efficient way to farm so that you can provide more food for your neighbors, but when your concern for efficiency leads you to ignore the way a farming technique harms your neighbors or the environment, you are under the spell of technique.
What’s remarkable is the way technique has effortlessly crept into every single corner of modern life. And in virtually every instance, we treat the more efficient method as a moral obligation.
If legalization reduces sexual and state violence, incarceration rates, and venereal diseases, and enables impoverished women to provide for themselves and their families, then clearly it is more efficient to legalize it. After all, every social harm is a drain on society and, therefore, an inefficiency.11 There are considerable problems with our justice system, but left out of this logic is the question of whether there may be some nonquantifiable moral reason for opposing prostitution. This question is not worth answering, however, because if it cannot be measured, we cannot publicly debate
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There is no space in contemporary life that has not become subject to the dominion of rational methods for achieving maximum efficiency,
So long as the state remains committed to neutrality in regard to the good life, the “common good” can only ever be toleration.
Identity politics is one way that society offers us a vision for political action in the absence of a common good.
But it is possible to name and oppose discrimination against groups of people while placing that fight for justice within a larger vision of the common good.
We are naturally social beings and when we live in a community, that community will organically draw us into its life, making us a member, placing burdens and responsibilities on us as well as conferring rights and privileges.
Not only does technology allow us to move more easily, it also allows us to stay unattached wherever we are. I am not obligated to get to know my neighbors.
Virtually all of my consumer needs can be met with little human contact and, therefore, very few obligations to belong. I don’t have to witness my neighbor’s suffering or joy. I don’t have to feel like we have something in common. I don’t have to feel responsible for their well-being.
What if this whole time society has been constructing systems, techniques, and norms based on a false understanding of what a human person is? If that’s the case, we’d expect to find an inhuman society. And so we do.
Rather than bringing us closer to our humanity, it dehumanizes at every turn, turning our intimacy into instrumentality and leaving us addicted, depressed, exhausted, lonely, and bored—which also happens to be an accurate description of our society in general.
We can consume the most intimate human experience, taking in image after image after image, amassing a collection of human intimacy so vast and diverse that you come to feel that by rights you should have access to anyone’s body for your own pleasure.
By consuming moments of intimacy, you feel yourself become a little more real and more powerful.
As quickly as you can imagine a fantasy, you grow dissatisfied with it. The thrill of the hunt, of discovery, is always inevitably followed by the letdown. Possession loses its edge.
This is the unspoken logic of pornography: this beautiful, unique human is giving themself to me, exposing themself intimately for me, and so I must matter.
Any abuse of sexual intimacy is a uniquely evil affront against someone’s personhood precisely because it treats that personhood as a means to an end.
It is an “unspoken” logic of pornography because if we name it, if we admit that in pornography we momentarily allow ourselves to believe that a mass-reproduced image represents intimate and personal affirmation, then it would lose much of its power. It is also unspoken because, for men at least, it’s easier to admit to being biologically driven by lust than emotionally driven by loneliness or inadequacy. And as the sociologist Alain Ehrenberg argues in his history of depression, inadequacy is the pathology of contemporary depression.
I am free to treat others as means to my ends, as tools, as instruments for my personal fulfillment—so long as they are compensated.
The dynamic of choice, consumption, power, and identity in pornography mirrors our broader cultural practices. The same spirit of endless choice that gives contemporary pornography so much of its power can be experienced walking down the cereal aisle of a grocery store. In other words, porn doesn’t ask users to adopt new or different ideas of choice, consumption, and identity. It’s the very same dynamic of choice we have practiced our entire lives. Consumption is one way we cope with depression, anxiety, insecurity, and identity crises. We choose, consume, and dispose of objects in order to
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And if you aren’t a fully realized human, it’s either because there’s some injustice in the environment (an inefficiency), a flaw in your will to improve (another inefficiency), or some natural/biological hinderance (also an inefficiency!). But society is self-correcting: collectively, we are purging the injustices, improving ourselves, and overcoming the burdens of the natural world—a process we call “Progress.” Our hope in Progress lets us overlook the brokenness of society.
the sovereign self has no discernable ends, only an ever expanding and ever demanding number of means.
All we have are options and shifting opinions and an overwhelming feeling that whatever the standard might be, we aren’t measuring up. Our work is inadequate, our house is inadequate, our tastes are inadequate, our spouse is inadequate, our body is inadequate, our education is inadequate, our cooking is inadequate, and so on. Society cannot fulfill its promise because it never really offered a clear goal.
“What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.”10 In other words, the burnout that many people feel is not merely the product of being overworked. There’s an existential restlessness beneath our drive to “self-optimize.”
Risk management used to be a business practice; now it’s our dominant child-rearing strategy.
If we live in a strict meritocracy, parents ought to do whatever they can to prepare their children for competition. That means reducing risk and increasing activities that provide some discrete benefit.
To be a modern parent is to live with the anxiety that you are not doing everything you possibly can to raise children who can compete in a global marketplace.
“The more we view ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, the less likely we are to care for the fate of those less fortunate than ourselves. If my success is my doing, their failure must be their fault. This logic makes meritocracy corrosive of commonality.”
Whether or not capitalism necessarily makes us hypercompetitive is not my question. But when workers compete for limited jobs, coworkers compete for promotions, and companies compete for shoppers, we should not be surprised when we also quite naturally compete for social media platforms, for attention, or even love.
Taken individually, many of these data points are healthy and helpful, but collectively they overwhelm us with the sense that all of life is essentially a competition.
it. I find that millennials are far less jealous of objects or belongings on social media than the holistic experiences represented there, the sort of thing that prompts people to comment, I want your life. That enviable mix of leisure and travel, the accumulation of pets and children, the landscapes inhabited and the food consumed seems not just desirable, but balanced, satisfied, and unafflicted by burnout.
Let’s call this the posture of Affirmation. It is an endorsement of contemporary society as it is basically constructed, but more importantly, an affirmation of self-belonging.20 Yes, life is difficult, it says. But if you apply yourself, visualize your goals, believe in yourself, and commit to perpetual self-improvement through technique, you can achieve a kind of mastery over life, at least in comparison to other people. You can be responsible for your own existence.
The system basically works, they feel. And where it doesn’t work, they can be part of the sacred effort to perfect it by ending injustices, inspiring individuals, and overcoming nature. Theirs is a life of Total Work, self-improvement, and measurable successes, of momentum, movement, adaptation, progress, and self-reliance.
Busyness feels satisfying to the affirming. They may even feel a sense of moral justification when they are exhausted and overwhelmed. There is a rightness to it. That’s not to say that they exactly enjoy being busy all the time, but it does feel less distressing than rest. Knowing that they have productively used every moment of the day to improve themselves and their world and move toward some larger goals keeps away most of the guilt of life and fear of inadequacy.
Everything must be done at full volume, at peak efficiency, at full speed. There is no rest because rest is defeat, it is wasted time. Play is work in a different key. Just as with work, there are always ways to improve the way you play. Like the rest of us the affirming watch TV, but only while they exercise or message friends or answer emails. They may be constantly on their smartphones so that they can network and keep up with the news, but they’re just as likely to be committed to mindfulness and self-discipline, which makes them more productive and well-balanced. Whether they use
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“I never thought the system was equitable. I knew it was winnable for only a small few. I just believed I could continue to optimize myself to become one of them.”
“Things that should’ve felt good (leisure, not working) felt bad because I felt guilty for not working; things that should’ve felt ‘bad’ (working all the time) felt good because I was doing what I thought I should and needed to be doing in order to succeed.” To work is to feel your life justified existentially; to pause from your labor is to risk a life of failure.
our society presents no actual ends for human existence, no purpose, only an increasing number of means. Justifying your existence is not a definitive action, it is an ongoing process. You’re always journeying and never arriving.
Often the only thing that separates people who affirm their self-belonging from those who resign themselves to it is the quality of the tools they use to cope—their self-medication.
The competition is much fiercer than she anticipated, and despite working determinedly her entire life, she just isn’t good enough. She thought she was ahead of the competition, now she’s learned just how far behind she has always been.
poverty does not tend to increase the number of suicides in a community—but a fast-growing economy does. Durkheim concludes that one of the primary causes of suicide is not suffering but disequilibrium. When societal values rapidly change, including economic values, people lose the ability to clearly evaluate their lives.
“Unlimited desires are insatiable by definition and insatiability is rightly considered a sign of morbidity. Being unlimited, they constantly and infinitely surpass the means at their command; they cannot be quenched. Inextinguishable thirst is constantly renewed torture.”
But really there’s not a whole lot of difference between the person who relies on Xanax to get through life and the person who relies on marijuana or alcohol or whatever. One is socially acceptable, the others are not. One requires some wealth, education, advocacy, and health insurance. The others are more easily accessible. And while it’s probably easier to be a high- functioning user of Zoloft than marijuana, both can become a dependency. Both can be self-medicating.
a massive portion of our economy is devoted to coping mechanisms. And most of these mechanisms lead to some form of addiction.
“Depression and addiction are the two sides of the sovereign individual, the person who believes herself to be the author of her own life.”3
But if we were truly living in communities that included obligations to one another, we would eventually have to say something to somebody when we are depressed or anxious or addicted or whatever. The environment would make vulnerability a necessity, not an option.
When communities (like churches, neighborhoods, clubs, and so on) are voluntary and “liquid,” they become places we visit rather than dwell.
The result is that our moments of vulnerability are often carefully cultivated and prepared for public consumption to maximize attention and develop our image.
