cancers of the soul

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“Hatred is not the norm. Prejudice is not the norm. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy, scapegoating ― none of those are the transcendent facets of the human personality. They’re diseases. They are the cancers of the soul. They are the infectious and contagious viruses that have been bleeding humanity for years. And because they have been and because they are, is it necessary that they shall be? I think not.”

Rod Serling

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“If you wanted to dismantle an entire generation from the inside out, it wouldn’t take much. Forget bombs or economic sabotage—too messy, too obvious. No, if you really wanted to destabilize a generation, you’d start with something far more subtle: you’d convince them that the world revolves around their feelings. You’d make them believe that every thought, every impulse, every fleeting emotion is sacred, and that the universe is obligated to rearrange itself to accommodate whatever’s going on in their heads.”

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Hatred. Prejudice. Suspicion. Dislike. Jealousy. Scapegoating. All are feelings. Just as another tautophrase suggests, “the heart wants what it wants,” this tautophrase exists, “the mind wants what it wants.” This becomes important when you are faced with a world run on feelings. What I mean by that is that ‘feelings’ is a fragile construct so if you live in a 24/7 world, cable news/talk radio/social media/search engines/algorithms, which is constructed to game and use your feelings, well, you/we are fucked. In fact, in a ‘feelings world’ individual purpose is replaced by individual validation. Or let’s just say even the most well intended Purpose construct gets deconstructed in a feelings validation world. And when feelings are the compass, we become emotionally fragile and hyper-focused on self and ‘making it’ becomes less an objective, but rather a construction where you do not have the hammers, nails or architectural plan. This gets compounded because the worldwide web is a 24/7 sharing machine. We barely notice this constant input and output of information, this ceaseless sharing, yet, it has psychological, social, and emotional consequences. Our feelings become our stories and we instantly share our thoughts, feelings, experiences and stories with hundreds or even thousands of people. This ceaseless sharing subtly shapeshifts your behavior (even if you think it doesn’t). Multiply that by the millions of strangers who, day by day, offer you unsolicited input and you have entered into the ‘feelings overload’ zone. Simplistically, you have dematerialized.

Which leads me to concrete dematerializaton.

It was Annie le Brun who coined this term. It constitutes the progressive loss of all tangible relationship with the world. Basically, it encourages us to accept feelings as THE impression of living. Its kind of a subversion of a world of experiences where everything of value is in the experience not fundamental, pragmatic, tangible value received. It becomes a substitute for reality (and makes it easier to substitute value in what we may see as a failing world, i.e., a failing world of feelings. A ‘world’ can become a failing world if it ‘feels’ like it is failing (even if progress is occurring, prosperity is increasing and by any tangible measure living and life is improving). It just ‘feels‘ wrong. Oddly, ironically, this feelings world deprives us of real emotion inspired by originality and reality. It is a more banal view of reality and the world because there is no personal relationship to time and space – other than feelings. And because feelings are so nebulous and intangible, we begin shaping ourselves based on fragmented, crowd-sourced feedback, adjusting in real time like a social marionette. Ultimately our feelings aren’t really ours, but rather a conglomeration of strangers’ expectations. This has always been true, but as Toffler pointed out in Future Shock, in the past the audience feeding our feelings input system was finite. In today’s social media world that input machine is infinitely larger in scope. The entire world offers every impulsive input into your world. Visibility-on-steroids leads to vulnerability-on-steroids which leads to defensiveness-on-steroids which leads to feelings overload (feelings-on-steroids). We are not completely unaware all this is happening and, yet, we end up living semi-aware that all our ‘feelings’ are a little skewed, a little infected, a little warped by strangers, and,, generally speaking, fucked up. We grow into gnarled versions of ourselves in this fucked up algorithmic soil.

Which leads me to powerlessness.

Just like we are powerless against cancer, we are powerless to the manipulations of algorithms. It takes a great power, and objective responsibility, to fight back against algorithms. Unfortunately, it’s a responsibility that most of us are poorly equipped to handle. We tear ourselves apart over and over again not exactly knowing how or when to stop engaging with algorithms. Our privacy, and private thoughts, are now public. Yeah. In today’s world it takes an exorbitant effort to maintain privacy. We have to actively choose not to share, to resist the temptation to engage online, to keep our thoughts and experiences to ourselves. The truth is most of us are not willing to put in that effort and, in fact, almost believe sharing is the status quo. And here is where it becomes a danger in a ‘feelings world.’ When sharing is the default, we share without thinking providing a constant stream of outputs to a world waiting to offer unsolicited input. From there it begins feeling like, well, every feeling, in every moment, is a guiding star. Minor feelings feel like existential crises. This is where true powerlessness sneaks in. When people believe that their feelings define reality, they’re incredibly easy to manipulate. Outrage and fear are powerful tools, and when you feel them deeply, you will ‘feel’ like you deserve to take some extreme measures to alleviate those feelings. This obsession with feelings is a psychological quicksand. The more you try to control the environment to protect your feelings, the more vulnerable you become to any shift in the public context. In fact, you get pulled further and further away from reality. You stop looking at hard facts, inconvenient truths, or anything that might challenge the feelings bubble you exist in. In addition, you become an easier target for the algorithms and the dubious actors who reinforce your feelings, no matter how disconnected from reality it might be. Uhm. But it ‘feels’ right and, well, making it gets tied to those feelings. Making it, in this world, elevates feelings above logic, where validation is found through input, not tangible output. In fact, in this feelings world if your output doesn’t match up with what you believe you deserve, or ‘feel’ you deserve, it is no longer your problem – it’s because of someone or something else impeding what you feel is yours. You just become a pawn in the feelings game and ‘making it’ is nothing real; just a feeling. While ‘making it’ is a different post for a different day, suffice it to say if your idea of ‘making it’ is based on feelings and external definition, you are fucked.

“Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another.”

Susan Neiman, Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists

Which leads me to civic responsibility.

Civic responsibility is a way of insuring that even if you are self-focused, you don’t fuck over the collective ‘we’ (the community or society writ large). Civic responsibility is about caring for others, for everyone, not just oneself.  I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the easiest way to defeat societal norms is to limit access to civic education. This doesn’t mean someone is less smart, but they are less well educated in basic civic principles which, inevitably, makes it possible to abandon the morality of  a civil society. Without the basic education civic responsibility is often replaced by nostalgia or its partner – history. Ah. History is a tricky thing. History provides important context, but history also exerts a dangerous narrative gravity. If you expect the present to be a continuation of the past you aren’t actually looking at the present through clear eyes. The past suggests you can reasonably expect things. It suggests that things will obviously occur. The reality is the past only offers some patterns and patterns are only as good are only good until they’re broken. The past never predicts the future it simply offers possibilities and probabilities. What I would say is that civic responsibility is a drug to combat the cancer of the soul of society. Civic education diminishes hatred, prejudice, suspicion, dislike, jealousy, scapegoating. Civic education tamps down, well, personal feelings and enhances feelings of community. And, its quite possible, that a combination of civic education and civic responsibility increases one’s ability to fight back against the “feelings algorithms.” Ponder.