IN-DER-WELT-SEIN

Digital technology devices support a ‘way’ – and are of a world -  that is quick; one that moves to order and re-order everything and everyone. Even every thought. ‘Everything’ can be captured into digital technology. People busy themselves with digital technology devices.

One observation is that digital technology – and from here, t/Technology – encourages mindlessness, or a lack of thinking. Of course, this is an observation that needs to be grounded and confirmed in the phenomenon (this very ‘blog’ is an example). One does come across references to it and all the time.  Here is one in regards to typerwriters and digital word processing software supported on electronic hardware.

“You type so much quicker than you can think on a computer,” Ms. Kowalski said. “On a typewriter, you have to think.” She and Ms. Brady began their vintage typewriter business last April. So far, they have refurbished and sold more than 70 machines, many to first-time users. Their slogan? “Unplug and reconnect.”^[1]

The observation is that digitial technology fosters a rapid spilling forth of jibber-jabber, organizes it and sends it forth as commentary. Thinking is secondary or gets sidetracked all together. Whole, coherent thoughts are lost or unformulated. The skill of doing so fades away (and thinking is a skill, too). An entire commentary matrix arises that makes ordinary journalism seem like literature. Literature fades away. The ‘fading away’ is lamentable when what fades is not replaced and there is a lack, which is felt and percieved, and a hollowness whose echo chills every person who is sensible to the seriousness of the condition. The feeling is saddness. Saddness can go in many directions.

1 Jessica Bruder,  “Click, Clack, Ding! Sigh …”, The New York Times,  31:3 2011. It is interesting to note that many ‘critiques’ of contemporay or modern culture (i.e. Western or Technical) took the typewriter (i.e. mechanical writing) as their example of a technological device, or, better, a mechanical device for technological being,  that would be very likely to encourage poor thinking and ‘business’. Thinking needs to be grounded and supported and it is this way of supporting that can be harmful or helpful to the task of thinking. Much like the very ordinary observation that certain tools are better for the task at hand then others. It is these tools  – and not those tools -  that enable certain  craftsman to become masters.

Well composed and articulate politicians are very rare. In the United States, they seem to be extinct because intelligence, or the appearance of intelligence,  does not sell to Americans in general.^[1]

François Mitterand was an interesting ‘political animal’. Here is a video recording of Mitterand on “Actuel 2″ shortly after he lost to Valérie Gistard-d’Estaing in 1974.^[2]

Actuel 2 – 02/09/1974

3 mois après les élections présidentielles, F.Mitterand définit les rapports de l’opposition et du pouvoir, il fait le bilan de la campagne électorale, du résultat des élections et de la politique qui va être suivie per le nouveau Président ; il répond à des questions sur la crise économique et sociale, sur le comportement du pouvoir face à cette crise et à l’inflation et fait une critique des différentes mesures envisagés par le Président pour la relance économique.

Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/v/10150448415365123

Coming back to Mitterand, here is an interesting clip of him and Chirac:

http://www.facebook.com/v/10150449846305123

1 The allure of the common denominatory, or the common type of person, into an opposition with  the refined, cultivated or powerful (not that these elements go together in the least) in American political discourse seems to have come into play at the very beginning of the Republic when the entire American adventure was being sorted out.  There seems to have been a pull to cast everything into simplistic homespun terms. Why? Well, to align what is being said to the founding paradigme of values or estimable ways of being. The task though, seems to backfire much of the time. Wandering a bit off the topic, when Dolley Madison set about planning the inaugural ball for James Madison, the question arose in stark relief. She decided to invite anyone and everyone to the ball – that is, anyone who could afford to pay for a ticket. Farmers and merchants found themselves with American political figures and European ambassadors. The move set a tone and precedent in molding the presidency as well as positions of authority and dignity within  American culture. For fun, see the documentary “Dolley Madison” on the site of American Experience. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/dolley/

2 Not that French presidents are more articulate or intelligent than American presidents, or, for that matter, that American politicians are less intelligent than their counterparts in the world. No. It is merely interesting to see the difference between the styles, the types of comportment that pass in each ‘political world’ – the way of going about politics or what politics is about – and, furthermore, the difference of vision. The difference – and the sameness, of course – is the interesting aspect and should serve as the base of reflection.

“In ‘‘Elephant Breakdown,’’ a 2005 essay in the journal Nature, Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species­wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.”^[1]

It is interesting to read this article and to reflect upon what is going on in ‘human’ culture in the ‘T’echnical ‘A’ge. As the way of being of ‘man’ is more and more distorted and becomes confused – that is, lost from sight – ‘man’ exhibits similar symptoms.

It is interesting to reflect upon what occurs to ‘people’ when the patterns that hold them fray, break or are simply  ignored. What happens when a ‘person’ (or a ‘people’) is not given a ‘holding’ of relations that nurture them into becoming a ‘person’ and allow them to come forth as who they are?  What occurs when these relations are broken by care-less-ness or shattered by mercenary egos only ‘looking out for themselves’ as such, as a mere ‘self’? And from this question,  what about the entire push of ‘being an individual subject’ that the ‘T’echnical ‘A’ge glorifies? The ‘T’echnical ‘A’ge holds up an aggressive, self-seeking individual who goes about asserting ‘it’s self’ in an imperious way;  tending to its passions and desires in a drive to some ‘state’ called ‘success’. Does such a style (call it a ‘lifestyle’, if you wish ) tend to ignore the relations and responsibilities that go to constitute an individual in the first place?  What about these prior and thus primary relations? And what happens when the entire mesh of relations is shrugged off as irrelevant or secondary?  What type of ‘people’ are created in such a culture?  And what types of behavoir do they engage in? What happens to  kinship? The community? Others? Selves?  That is, how are we doing?

Here is the article:

An Elephant Crack Up? NYT 2006

1Charles Siebert, “An Elephant Crack Up?”, The New York Times, 10:8 2006.