My wife and I went out to dinner with another couple last night, and I find it interesting how different I think than many other people when it comes to a whole lot of seemingly basic areas. For instance, my wife brought up that her colleagues use a whole range of "family apps" to organise their lives, even scheduling "me time" into the apps on a calendar. They think this is harmless, but I see it as the pathway to dystopia, because rather than actually having discussions and learning all the skills around organising personal lives, it is increasing the distance of interpersonal relationships with the people we are meant to be the closest to. Similarly, there are apps so that teachers can send notes directly to the parents, rather than the child having to remember or be the bearer of bad news. Again, more social skill degradation.
As I see it, we are degrading as a society rapidly, but I don't believe that most people really pay that much attention, because the degradation comes off-set with convenience. It seems so much more efficient to have all the systems that plan our day, reduce error, and increase our free time, but for every tool, there is a cost. As I have said before, these are competitive cognitive artefacts, meaning they compete directly with our cognitive skills - and the very things that make us human.
Yesterday I ended my article with:
Breathe. Create. Live.
I did this because the steps to creativity are thought, word, action and it is these processes that we do so well as humans. Our ability is our competitive advantage in the animal kingdom, and this is driven by our ability to predict the future, plan for it, and act toward it. As I see it, if we aren't creating, we aren't living a human life. Yet, creativity is filled with mess, mistakes, failures, and our ability to stand up and take another shot. The problem with all of these apps and all of the algorithms organising and curating our lives, is we are losing the unstructured human life and replacing it with a robotic, automated, ordered life.
From an economic perspective, it is far more valuable for the corporations for us to firstly be isolated from others, and secondly be unable to do things for ourselves. We have been taught that "financial independence" is key to freedom, but this is not quite the case - because having the money just means being able to buy the needed goods and services. As you can see, this is great for business, but also bad for humanity, because we rely on the faceless, at the cost of interaction with other faces. Look at the delivery apps that people use, and now the robot delivery services so that people can stay in their house and "interface" with no one but a a screen. There is no relationship with the chef, the waiter, or the restaurant atmosphere, and no chance for random interaction.
Safe, convenient - robotic.
And there are thousands of similar ways that we can structure our life to be more convenient, by trading off what makes us human. Go into a public space and see how many people are on their phones with earbuds in, consuming something so they firstly can avoid interaction with others, and secondly don't have to listen to the voices in their head. People say that they need their "quiet space" to themselves, yet fill that space up with all kinds of noise, with nearly all of it looking to capitalise on their attention.
We were talking about the economy a bit last night and we got onto the wealth gap and stock prices and all of that - something that I wrote about recently here also. However, what they hadn't really considered is that no matter what the stock prices say, ultimately the value of a company is going to be tied to consumption of what they offer. That is not the case now, but while the corporations keep maximising their profits by reducing their headcount, eventually it gets to a point where there are not enough consumers with disposable income to demand their products, and the whole thing collapses. Like it or not, there is a "reality" to the economy, but we are currently operating in a fantasy world.
But rather than dealing with the mess we have created by not paying attention to the things that matter for humanity, we keep looking for ways to play in a game that is stacked against society. We are trying to outperform the algorithms, by using the very algorithms we are trying to outperform. It just doesn't work that way.
My friends think that I am depressing because of what I see in the future trajectory of humanity, but I see it quite the opposite. What I wish people would realise is that humans are awesome, but if we keep looking to optimize our lives through how we behave and consume, we are going to create less. Things will be more convenient, but that doesn't mean it is better. Being human means being a creative force in the world, and the more we give that up, the worse our life becomes. Not just as individuals, but as a whole.
The economy doesn't work, but it isn't going to change by us doing the same things, by valuing the same things. In our not too distant past, the value came from producing things that helped people improve their lives and yes, a lot of this made it easier, cleaner, more hygienic. But, there is diminishing return on this and now we are heading in the opposite direction, where our very control of the random is turning to make us weaker across all the factors that count.
What we would need to do is rediscover what value as a human means, and it isn't making as much money as possible, it is creating as much wellbeing as possible in our society. It is in building the systems and tools that make our lives better now in the world we have, not the things that take our mind off the degradation for a little bit longer.
Most of the corporations in the world make their money through distracting us from reality, rather than connecting us with our humanity. And if we are to survive and thrive as a species in the longer term future, we are going to have to reimagine what value is, how it is measured, and what we as individuals and communities need to do in order to deliver the goods and services that help us be our best selves, our highest rated human.
And our best selves, the person we should want to be, is the one who is able to deliver the most value to humanity, those we care about, and in return get the value of the community back. To share in experience and love, and take joy in creating for others, and they for you. It isn't in disconnecting and making our lives more sterile, more alone - it is about understanding that the beauty in life comes through random interaction, chance meeting, unexpected discoveries and a lot of failures and breakages that force us to think again, predict the future, and create something new.
It is depressing to think that with all the beauty we have within us, we buy convenience to wash it all away.
Taraz
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