Sacrificing our humanity

Sacrificing Our Humanity

What is it that makes us human? We are rational animals. Something critically important about being human is having a body. Everything we know comes to us through our senses. We can think - we are rational - but the content of those thoughts cannot be separated from our physical experience. No matter how hard you try, your thoughts are always going to connected with images from your sense experience (traditionally called 'phantasms').

The digital world is flat, malleable and transient. It is flat because it does not have the contours of our sense experience. Everything is experienced through button presses and lights on a screen. There is little physical difference between pressing some buttons on your keyboard and pressing another set of buttons. It is flat because it doesn't have the physical associations of the world of our senses. In fact, it only really engages two senses: sight and hearing.

The digital world is malleable. Because it is just light sources and button presses, it can be whatever we want it to be. Music does not require the reverberations of air waves or strings, it just requires a button press and some wires. It happens the same way you (digitally) write a letter to someone you love. You craft the digital experience to suit you.

It is transient. It comes and goes. You can, once again, use a button to turn it off or turn it on. You can use your will to do this. You don't need to engage with the will of anyone else. You just decide for yourself when things can start and when they end.

Because we spend so much time in the digital world, this is how we start to see reality. Yet this is not how the world really is. The world is not flat, malleable or transient. The world has more to it than sight and sound - it has things which require physical contact such as touch, smell and taste. Reality is solid, it doesn't move out your way just because you want it do. It has height and depth and width and length - things the digital world can only mimic through images. Reality is not malleable, it cannot be whatever you want it to be. If you don't treat it as it is, you will have some uncomfortable run-ins with the things that do.

We are rational animals. We need to engage our minds and the digital world is often a world of nothing but mind. But we are animals too. Self-moving bodies which work in a certain way and interact with other bodies.

As digital things become more and more embedded in our lifestyles, we need to be on guard against sacrificing our humanity for the goods which digital tools can achieve. Because they are flat, malleable and transient, they are especially suited to fast deployment, communication and change. Yet the rules of the digital world are not the rules of the physical world. If we forget this, and start treating other people and ourselves as malleable things which can be rearranged, rewritten, or even turned off simply at will and without consequence, we are going to have more and more of these uncomfortable run-ins with real things.

The false gods of the digital and technological world will encourage us to kill ourselves for the apparent goods of digital technology. We must not give in to them, but as much as we adopt digital technologies we must also resist the encroachment of digital technologies into the most human parts of our lives. Unless you really need to get something done efficiently, digital tools are not going to make something better. We need to live lives which match the reality of our bodies, and not try to make the reality of our bodies fit with the speed of the digital world. We need to get away from the screen as the centre of our lives and remember that your body is the centre of your life.

Only by doing this often, intentionally, and in varied ways can we avoid sacrificing our humanity to something that doesn't deserve it.