The human mind has industrialized to prefer ever more structure and order. How much of that is the industrial society tapping into what was already there (certainly religion shows we find a soothing peace of mind in meaningful repetition) and how much of it is being engineered? I will leave that for people with more time on their hands to endlessly argue over.
These are effects that Kaczynski have noted as well in his analysis of Industrial Society. Kaczynski’s obsession with the debilitating and controlling functions of the technocapital system led him to remark upon this about freedom. Which is better understood as autonomy when Kaczynski speaks of it:
“…modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence. This is not accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any technologically advanced society. The system HAS TO regulate human behavior closely in order to function…It is true that some restrictions on our freedom could be eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING the regulation of our lives by large organizations is necessary for the functioning of industrial-technological society. The result is a sense of powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however, that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires of us.”
“The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system…It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn’t function if everyone starved; it attends to people’s psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn’t function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system…The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress."
As I noted above, you have a bit of a chicken-egg situation here about which is causing what. The details of it don’t matter all that much. It’s what we’re seeing and how it functions that matters. The way I view it. It is the chaotic pressures of this fast-twitch system causing people to seek any therapeutic and meaningful form of order. To seek out structure and repetition because this society produces no form of it for them. This seems counter-intuitive. After coming back to this post I started to wonder if I had it backwards. When you look at society today. You see what has to be some kind of perverted order with the systematic way people go to school, work, and chase dopamine on social media. This is structural, is it not? You could say the same thing about prison. Many prisoners once released still act within the protocols and parameters they were taught to follow in prison. This is conditioning. It is not meaningful.
I noted that on some level what religion responds to is humanity’s need for systemic order. The physical world is chaotic, dangerous, and insecure. So the answer to that is an ordered, safer, and secure world that has predictable patterns which can be called upon in the service of a just and loving God guiding it all. The duality of man exists as an oppositional dialectic. Highlighting the need to find a world in balance (the Hopi word Koyaanisqatsi means “a life out of balance”). The order that this society provides is chaotic and inverted. Things that are said to have one meaning actually mean something else (“Racism is hatred for another race. Oh except that it now it means power plus privilege. Also power and privilege are very nebulous”). Everyone repeats certain maxims, but look at the results being the exact opposite (“diversity is our strength”). Everyone’s social interactions come largely more and more through technology. A medium that gets to decide how reality will ultimately be shaped for people and which frequently turns life into a dopamine-based video game that most people are losing. The results speak for themselves in this unbalanced life we are living. The pressures people live under in their daily lives that cause many people to cope in increasingly unhealthy ways.
When things were not industrialized. You saw balance in the duality of this order and chaos. The need for meaningful structure and order often expressed in the form of beautiful buildings like cathedrals. The chaotic pressures of our anxious and inverted society require a rubberband response. Which you see in the likes of something like Things Organized Neatly, and the rise of very persnickety and particular people. It causes a rise in the kind of people who make histrionic threats over a mistake they themselves made. It frankly causes people to become autistic and have to be managed as such.
And when people reach that state. When they have been molded and over-socialized so severely by the technocapitalist system. To be responding to so many pressures of which many of them contradict themselves. They’ll find nirvana in the smallest things and seek to impose that sense of meaningful orderliness back on the world. Repeating numbers feel great. Everything in its proper place feels good. It’s just as it should be. It’s just as they promised it would be.
Corporations are well aware of this. They aren’t judgmental in the way I am and they don’t have the nerdy-pants critique of society that I do. They just see it as the way things are that will help them sell Product. They see the direction people are moving in from the inertia of this capitalist system. Built upon over a century of conditioning now and just nudge it ever so slightly in their favor. People like repeating numbers? Instead of 14.99 make it 14.88. Nice, soothing repeating numbers. Nothing ugly like 14.87. BLEH. What psycho in their right mind would buy Product for the ugly price of 14.87? No! 14.88 is beautiful. Look at the shape of those 8s! The way they repeat. Perfection!
I would expect more of this in the future as corporations examine more of the micro reasons that set people at ease. They’re well-aware that people in this day and age are being completely wound up with no feeling of any sense of mental security. They now sell weighted blankets for the masses and increasingly orient places to be more accommodating for those on the spectrum. It’s a perverted order they may have helped to engineer. They can now exploit and profit off of it. They are responding to the changes that are happening in our society. Our desperate need to feel secure and find some meaning in this world. They're there to provide just a taste of it but not too much for us.
