Tuesday, August 29, 2017

The Internet and Its Discontents

One of the more interesting things about the Internet is that, being a totally abstract plane composed of symbols, images, and other abstractions, it allows ideas, their consequences, and their effects on people and society to be seen quite clearly.
Technology as such is nothing other the reification and externalization of the human will, which itself acts based on the ideas contained in the human mind. Technology, then, always creates systems that are to some extent rational in nature; and as such these systems necessarily shape all those who, as rational beings, make use of them or exist in the environments they create.
The Internet takes this basic principle to a heretofore unseen level. The digital frameworks into which people pour themselves are human artifacts composed of abstractions. The digital identities into which people invest themselves are human artifacts composed of images, symbols, and abstractions. There are no concrete natural substances at all on the Internet; only universalized abstractions. The man who interacts with the Internet takes his place in a vast system of ideas--and he cannot help but be shaped by it.
Most of the characteristic social and political realities of our historical moment are the direct result of the Internet as a shaper of society and personality alike. The identities and frameworks and images and ideas that people imbibe and are shaped by on the Internet have come to profoundly affect and even define them--and so increasingly, whenever people act in the political and social spheres, they act out of those identities and based on these ideas and images.
The modern 'alt-right' is only the most obviously pathological form of this phenomenon; it is far from the only one.
This is not, of course, in itself a negative thing. Human beings are rational creatures, and abstractions and systems are to an extent necessary if people are to find the truth, grasp it, and learn to live it out. Yet symbols and images are, by their very nature, infinitely interpretable and so infinitely deceptive; and even more decisively, a world composed solely of abstractions cannot contain those things of which the world is actually composed: that is, concrete particular substances, including those rational, relational substances known as persons.
Hence it is that people trained in the Internet as it exists now naturally, as a matter of course, ignore and elide natural realities and concrete particulars in favor of symbols, images, and other abstractions; and they likewise learn, in varying degrees, to ignore, instrumentalize, and be indifferent to the actual concrete existence of persons, including themselves.
Even so, it is in fact possible to create technological systems, as well as systems of ideas and abstractions, that communicate truth, goodness, and beauty--systems that mediate and embody and make known the concrete existence of persons, the world, and God. This basic principle is the basis of the sacramental economy of Catholicism--as well as essentially all cultural and artistic production, of whatever sort.
The problem, then, is not so much the existence of abstraction as (1) the relationship of abstraction to reality, and (2) the particular ideas reflected in our systems. It is not merely that the Internet is abstract, but that, as it exists now, it relates to concrete realities in certain ways, and embodies certain ideas; and so causes great harm.
If we are unsatisfied with our society and its politics, we would do well to look to the Internet; if we are unsatisfied with the Internet as it now exists, we would do well to look to the ideas, the philosophical and moral conceptions, that it is shaped by and shapes. If our ideas, embodied in the Internet, torment and destroy people, make their lives a living Hell, and plunge them into falsehood and shame and hatred--then there is something wrong, not just with the Internet, but with our ideas, and ourselves.
If we wish to actually save our society and ourselves, there is no other option but sincere repentance founded on the examination of conscience. To examine our conscience, as individual persons and as a society, requires a recognition of the systems we have built and lived in, what ideas they embody, and the relationship of these ideas to the concrete reality of other persons, the world, and God.
Let us pray that God will give us all the ability to do this, soon--for all our sakes.

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