Contemplation: Which Values, What Actions?
By mediating between our minds and social reality, the all-encompassing communications media processes such raw social facts into more digestible morsels of factoids, benighted biases, ignorant assumptions, distorted opinions, and alluring pseudo-pleasures.
But imagine the following scenario: all interactive media break down. Silence–and a blank, darkened screen. No more conditioning and intermittent reinforcement and puppeteering–which string us along the information-glutted blind alley with its deafening roar of talktalktalk.
Cognitive dissonance: one sits alone, or perhaps fetishistically fondles one’s dead smartphone, Aladdin-like. Panic: what is one to think? But then, almost imperceptibly… one’s mind enters a state of relaxation, even repose. Freed from the constant stream of intrusions and distractions, one has time to reflect:
“What exactly have I been doing–and why? And where am I going with all this?
What are the possible negative (unintended) outcomes of all this unremitting effort?
Will this undeviating path turn into a blind alley–and lead to new problems? And who decided on the impositions which structure my life?”
Suddenly liberated from the pseudo-activity of constant re-activity (“messages,” “tweets,” “alerts”), one feels adrift. Adrift and floating freely, into the rediscovered realm of self-awareness and conscientious reflection. Coming up for air, so to speak, one may feel the rush of new insights and creative alternatives. One suddenly recalls: didn’t Socrates himself remind us that “the unexamined life is not worth living”?
Each individual, even in an emerging totalitarian technocracy, retains a secret treasure: the capacity for inner enlightenment (and the resolve to retain an optimal degree of autonomous self-direction). Deep in thought, one may resemble Rodin’s brooding sculpture of The Thinker (who is not smiling).
Drastic measures may be necessary. Despite the weight of insidious habituation–which over time has normalized a world of nuclear arsenals and melting ice caps–one may fiercely resist the all-encompassing impositions which are falsely presented as desirable choices. Modern medicine: drugs, drugs, and more drugs. The “smartphone”: a brazen invasion of one’s privacy, volition–and dignity. “Democratic” elections: lies, lies, and more lies. The trivialization of one’s social encounters: excessive chatter and pointless garrulity. The binary fallacy of two “genders”: rather, simply two sexes with an overwhelmingly shared set of (human) emotional and behavioral predispositions. A lifelong occupation or “career”: for what, exactly? The “necessity” of a relationship: personal fulfillment or constant adjustment to the expectations of another?
It may appear that I am advocating a solipsistic withdrawal from socio-political engagement and activism. But, paradoxically, a revolution in values begins in the free thought of each individual. And it is only in those precious periods of solitude that the individual feels free to transcend what Karl Marx, solitary thinker par excellence, termed the socially prevailing false consciousness.
Moreover, given the constants of human needs and aspirations, individuals who regain such contemplative awareness are likely to realize the same new values and alternate solutions which can revitalize communal cooperation. The first step, anticipated by Thoreau and Gandhi, is negative revolt: non-cooperation, non-participation, and, to a large degree, “not-doing” (Lao-Tze). Or, in contrast to the frenzied, pointless activity all around us: “Don’t just do something, sit there.”
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