‘[T]he dominance of the social media mediated web has been a fundamental transformation that creates a gap between the world we knew as children and even young teens, and the world we inhabit now.’—That captures really well a feeling I have. Born in the 80s, the world today seems totally alien to the world of the past. I’m sure many generations felt that way, but I do wonder if today the feeling is notably intense. This was also a great point:
‘[I]n Africa today, a single generation of alphabetic literacy is enough to wrench the individual from the tribal web. When tribal man becomes phonetically literate, he may have an improved abstract intellectual grasp of the world, but most of the deeply emotional corporate family feeling is excised from his relationship with his social milieu.’
I believe the great William Ong argues that the scientific treatise was impossible before writing, so it would seem that the very technology which makes science possible also contributes to individualization away from the family—all the more reason for us to make a clear and direct effort to involve the subject in science and systems (as you have written on and discussed with Davood).
Our situation today tempts us to throw out science and technology, but that is not the right response: we must negate/sublate them. But how do we think that? Indeed, how…Sounds like the work of an underground scene…without which I think it will prove hard to avoid this error you note: ‘I think it means that we should be very skeptical of any ideas that seek to homogenise us via processes of undifferentiation back into a psychically-integrated cybernetic collective.’ Exactly right.
‘[T]he dominance of the social media mediated web has been a fundamental transformation that creates a gap between the world we knew as children and even young teens, and the world we inhabit now.’—That captures really well a feeling I have. Born in the 80s, the world today seems totally alien to the world of the past. I’m sure many generations felt that way, but I do wonder if today the feeling is notably intense. This was also a great point:
‘[I]n Africa today, a single generation of alphabetic literacy is enough to wrench the individual from the tribal web. When tribal man becomes phonetically literate, he may have an improved abstract intellectual grasp of the world, but most of the deeply emotional corporate family feeling is excised from his relationship with his social milieu.’
I believe the great William Ong argues that the scientific treatise was impossible before writing, so it would seem that the very technology which makes science possible also contributes to individualization away from the family—all the more reason for us to make a clear and direct effort to involve the subject in science and systems (as you have written on and discussed with Davood).
Our situation today tempts us to throw out science and technology, but that is not the right response: we must negate/sublate them. But how do we think that? Indeed, how…Sounds like the work of an underground scene…without which I think it will prove hard to avoid this error you note: ‘I think it means that we should be very skeptical of any ideas that seek to homogenise us via processes of undifferentiation back into a psychically-integrated cybernetic collective.’ Exactly right.