I find the current concept of raw dogging (not the sexual meaning!) interesting, and as a deliberate choice, it could be seen as a modern form of asceticism - and/or an attempt to escape constant busy-ness and constant checking one's phone. A desire to resist the impulse for instant gratification that is so common now. It's used for train journeys too, not just plane journeys.
Simply the idea of doing nothing on the journey - not reading or talking or working or sleeping or eating - which of course is something many of us who didn't grow up with smartphones are used to anyway, at least in its less extreme version (but as with religious asceticism, there are people who take it to unhealthy extremes).
Though I would say it was generally a natural thing for us, not a deliberate decision. And whether or not something is a deliberate decision is significant. In a culture where smartphones have become the norm, where constant instant gratification is the norm, and where society values and pushes being constantly productive, people develop new ways of spending down time. And literally doing nothing and not checking one's phone can be a lot more difficult.
Thanks for the enlightenment about rawdogging, fineline.
I find it difficult to associate the idea of asceticism with something that creates as large a carbon footprint as a long-haul flight.
I'm a long-term fan of staring out the window while travelling. But as you say, there isn't (or wasn't) much deliberation involved. And, in addition to the degree of deliberation, something that struck me earlier in this thread is the rather significant difference between doing these things where nobody else sees or knows or pays much attention to them, and doing these things in more conspicuous settings. Some descriptions of asceticism through the years sound quite performative.
So, as well as wondering if there's an element of individualistic reimagining of carbon-offsetting going on, I'm also reminded of Tik-Tok's algorithmic aim to turn every analogue aspect of human existence into a digital trend.
Thanks for the enlightenment about rawdogging, fineline.
I find it difficult to associate the idea of asceticism with something that creates as large a carbon footprint as a long-haul flight.
Good point. Though I suppose if a person had to fly anyway, for work or a funeral or something, they're doing what they can within the situation. I was thinking more of the train examples when it occurred to me, as there is an example trending on social media at the moment, though the BBC article talks about flights. For a train journey, you could say that is reducing carbon footprints if the alternative is driving.
I'm a long-term fan of staring out the window while travelling. But as you say, there isn't (or wasn't) much deliberation involved. And, in addition to the degree of deliberation, something that struck me earlier in this thread is the rather significant difference between doing these things where nobody else sees or knows or pays much attention to them, and doing these things in more conspicuous settings. Some descriptions of asceticism through the years sound quite performative.
So, as well as wondering if there's an element of individualistic reimagining of carbon-offsetting going on, I'm also reminded of Tik-Tok's algorithmic aim to turn every analogue aspect of human existence into a digital trend.
I do often think that all sorts of things have become performative since the internet became a thing. Even talking here, publicly, with our views on asceticism, feels kind of performative. I notice on a forum, or on social media, so often posts (including my own) are more a sort of 'Let me tell you all about me, my experience, and my view', rather than the kind of shared interaction you might get in person. We're talking to an audience. Monologuing.
I see obvious downsides to this, in general, and also specifically with this topic - when you are focused on being seen, that's an extra layer of awareness in one's mind, that makes it harder to really simplify and focus one's mind. Though I see possible good aspects too, in terms of raising awareness, inspiring others, etc.
I also wonder whether there is always a little layer of performative to most people's actions, regardless of the internet, unless they are wholly alone. Most people are aware of others around them and that they are seen - it's needed for societal courtesy - and this impacts on how they behave. Though obviously if one is creating a TikTok video, or, say, a Facebook post, it becomes a lot more heightened and deliberate.
There is also a trend I see online of recommendations to 'disappear for six months' and develop some skill, or some inner growth, and come back a different person. I imagine that by 'disappear', it means from social media, from one's online presence, perhaps for people whose seen existence is largely online. I think many people feel the urge to escape from this constant online performative aspect.
Asceticism is the opposite of gluttony, perhaps? Screwtape writes a letter pointing out that insisting on a small portion could be just as gluttonous as gorging on a large one. Both indulge the fancies of one's own appetite. The true ascetic might tend to eat what was set before them.
I find it difficult to associate the idea of asceticism with something that creates as large a carbon footprint as a long-haul flight.
No kidding! Reminds me of the observation that Zen Buddhism was often a practice for elites who had the leisure time to spend perhaps minutes or hours a day staring at walls instead of doing practical things like growing food or doing lucrative work.
I think there's something self indulgent about some attitudes about mindfulness, like the way that "minimalism" can be a fashion sensibility for rich people, having the time-space to make everything in your house just-so.
Then there's the joke that goes - before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water - but no longer trip up in the dark!
Certainly the people doing raw dogging are not doing it as an altruistic thing. But then I don't think they are claiming to. People can pursue asceticism for all sorts of reasons - that's why I gave the example of incel pages on social media being really into fasting, depriving themselves of all sorts, as a way to become strong and powerful, and lord it over the people they see as weak and self-indulgent. I think it doesn't really work to simply look at asceticism by itself as a behaviour - it needs to be tied in to why it's being done. The purpose, the goal.
It makes me wonder how these people cope when they become disabled. Must really suck for them.
Zen Buddhists? That's a really neat question.
I think the teaching of detachment can help. It has certainly helped me with injuries, learning to see your body or your ego as an object can make coping easier sometimes. And as long as you can breathe, you can do breathing exercises that are the basis of most things.
That said, yeah. The "sitting in a strict kneeling position for long stretches of time" gets hard on the knees after a while. And I think there's definitely a macho-through-suffering culture in some Zen schools that doesn't seem entirely healthy to me, which is something I think you can find in other ascetic traditions. I personally think it's a distortion.
I was thinking more of these neo-ascetics on planes. I'd tend to expect anyone saturated in a religious or philosophical position to be capable to drawing some strength from it, but these dudes on planes, staring at walls... nope.
I think there's value in asceticism because I don't like a surplus of stuff. In fact, I think I turn into an accidental packrat because I quickly start reifying and just plain ignoring things that I don't use, resulting in both mental and physical clutter, and it's nice to get rid of things that get in the way of my daily functioning.
If your reifying results in mental clutter, doesn't that mean you're reifying your reification?
I think what happens is you shrink your sense of self so that the clutter is like an atrophying limb or a withering branch. One early lesson that still sticks to me is to treat your thinking brain like a monkey. You just let it run around, but you don't pay too much attention to it or to the things it's chasing. You're not the monkey. Freud might have some thoughts about that...
Although I suspect those (Freud's) thoughts would also be from "within" a reified system or framework - one in which the concepts are reified, as though reifying is itself essential to our understanding of self, a completely natural thing to do.
Alternatively, we could ask ourselves how we came to live in a world where "things" matter so much, including in the way we understand how we think.
The physical clutter, sadly, doesn't go away so easily.
But your relationship with/to that clutter can change, as can your relationship to your thoughts.
...
I do often think that all sorts of things have become performative since the internet became a thing. Even talking here, publicly, with our views on asceticism, feels kind of performative. I notice on a forum, or on social media, so often posts (including my own) are more a sort of 'Let me tell you all about me, my experience, and my view', rather than the kind of shared interaction you might get in person. We're talking to an audience. Monologuing.
I suspect some of this results from some people deliberately making "I" statements instead of "you" statements, being an aspect of mindful awareness and/or conflict avoidance.
That aside, I would say that our in-person (real-life) interactions are also performative, but we're more used to those, and it's more apparent with the versions of ourselves that interact with each other online, for this and other reasons. For example, transmitting digital versions of ourselves to a place of interaction requires the jettisoning of all aspects of our analogue humanness that the medium is incapable of supporting. (The same is true of the myriad digital versions of ourselves that are stored by companies, governments and other institutions.)
I still find myself wondering why any of us here on the Ship are doing this.
I see obvious downsides to this, in general, and also specifically with this topic - when you are focused on being seen, that's an extra layer of awareness in one's mind, that makes it harder to really simplify and focus one's mind. Though I see possible good aspects too, in terms of raising awareness, inspiring others, etc.
I also wonder whether there is always a little layer of performative to most people's actions, regardless of the internet, unless they are wholly alone. Most people are aware of others around them and that they are seen - it's needed for societal courtesy - and this impacts on how they behave. Though obviously if one is creating a TikTok video, or, say, a Facebook post, it becomes a lot more heightened and deliberate.
There is also a trend I see online of recommendations to 'disappear for six months' and develop some skill, or some inner growth, and come back a different person. I imagine that by 'disappear', it means from social media, from one's online presence, perhaps for people whose seen existence is largely online. I think many people feel the urge to escape from this constant online performative aspect.
The idea of needing to take a leave of absence, to create a new (refreshed?) version of oneself, before re-entering the fray, seems pretty bleak.
I see pretty major downsides to most aspects of the digital/online world. It's what's left of humanity after being chopped up into bits, packaged and commodified. (Which reminds me of a sub-prime mortgage.)
From this perspective, performative asceticism looks like a cry for help. A yearning for an escape from being cast as a digitally reified self.
PS When I think of Tik-Tok, it's with a dash of John Sladek's sociopathic robot about it (which I only realised after thinking about the hyphen).
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I do often think that all sorts of things have become performative since the internet became a thing. Even talking here, publicly, with our views on asceticism, feels kind of performative. I notice on a forum, or on social media, so often posts (including my own) are more a sort of 'Let me tell you all about me, my experience, and my view', rather than the kind of shared interaction you might get in person. We're talking to an audience. Monologuing.
I suspect some of this results from some people deliberately making "I" statements instead of "you" statements, being an aspect of mindful awareness and/or conflict avoidance.
That aside, I would say that our in-person (real-life) interactions are also performative, but we're more used to those, and it's more apparent with the versions of ourselves that interact with each other online, for this and other reasons.
But by the same token it might be harder to diagnose the same issue in that sphere (apologies if this was your point).
I also wonder whether there is always a little layer of performative to most people's actions, regardless of the internet, unless they are wholly alone.
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I see pretty major downsides to most aspects of the digital/online world. It's what's left of humanity after being chopped up into bits, packaged and commodified. (Which reminds me of a sub-prime mortgage.)
I think these things are closer together than that; in effect the last part is just an intensification of the particular form of subjectivity modern society pushes us to have of which the first is just the start.
I am reminded by some of the writings of Michel Feher here:
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I do often think that all sorts of things have become performative since the internet became a thing. Even talking here, publicly, with our views on asceticism, feels kind of performative. I notice on a forum, or on social media, so often posts (including my own) are more a sort of 'Let me tell you all about me, my experience, and my view', rather than the kind of shared interaction you might get in person. We're talking to an audience. Monologuing.
I suspect some of this results from some people deliberately making "I" statements instead of "you" statements, being an aspect of mindful awareness and/or conflict avoidance.
I'm curious why you think this, as my own experience and observations would indicate the opposite, but perhaps we are thinking of different things.
In my experience, when someone says 'When you did/said that, I felt___' (instead of, say, 'That fact that you did that shows that you're mean and unkind!'), then it shifts the experience into a shared one, where the focus is on how two people interact and the impact on each other, as opposed to a binary blame shifting thing, where everyone is focused solely on their own experience.
It doesn't avoid conflict, but it makes it easier to work through, when people aren't feeling the need to be on the defensive against assumptions about their intentions.
Have you had different experiences of this, or are you talking about something different?
That aside, I would say that our in-person (real-life) interactions are also performative, but we're more used to those, and it's more apparent with the versions of ourselves that interact with each other online, for this and other reasons. For example, transmitting digital versions of ourselves to a place of interaction requires the jettisoning of all aspects of our analogue humanness that the medium is incapable of supporting. (The same is true of the myriad digital versions of ourselves that are stored by companies, governments and other institutions.)
I was also saying, later in my post, that in-person behaviour is often performative, though for me a big part of the difference is that there is a lot more deliberateness about, say, creating a video of oneself for the world to see. And of course, you can edit, redo, etc. Whereas in-person, it's usually on the spot, real-time interaction with others where they speak too, you are required to listen and respond to them, etc., constantly needing to adjust to shifts in the environment. You don't usually have a soap box to say everything you want to, at your own pace, with no interruptions - you are simply one part of ever-shifting focuses and perspectives.
There have been a few 'content creators' I have followed, enjoying their videos, but finding over time that the dynamic changes. It seems like the constant performing to an audience (and also needing lots of likes and comments for their income) changes them, changes how they present, and it becomes more and more performing for a reaction rather than sharing stuff that they are genuinely interested in and wanting genuine interaction.
I notice as a writer that I have to deliberately watch myself to make sure I stay genuine. Otherwise, within a short while, the writing becomes a job, a performance, and that's emphatically not what I'm called to do. The same thing holds true when I speak to various groups. It probably helps a lot that I'm visibly disabled and thus a non-standard speaker. I've got so little chance of passing for "normal" that I don't even try, and the whole thing stays genuine more easily.
I notice as a writer that I have to deliberately watch myself to make sure I stay genuine. Otherwise, within a short while, the writing becomes a job, a performance, and that's emphatically not what I'm called to do. The same thing holds true when I speak to various groups. It probably helps a lot that I'm visibly disabled and thus a non-standard speaker. I've got so little chance of passing for "normal" that I don't even try, and the whole thing stays genuine more easily.
I noticed, years ago, when the internet was still pretty new and I started writing an online diary (precursors to blogs), that feedback really shaped and changed how I wrote. To begin with, I was writing just as it occurred to me to write naturally, but the comments I got started to make me think in terms of how people would respond, and I had this in mind when I wrote. I became more and more aware of my audience. I even started experiencing life differently - as I went about my life, I would be thinking about how to write about this in my online diary, how to frame it, how to make it interesting and entertaining. And others who wrote online diaries said the same.
It was an odd experience. Part of me didn't like it, but I also felt aware that I couldn't go back - if people were commenting, of course I became more and more aware of them. To some extent, we surely do this in life anyway - we adapt according to the people we are with, and it's important to do this for healthy interaction. Relationships with others are always a sort of chemistry, a mix of you and them, different from you as separate beings - but that is usually more a natural thing as you go along. I guess perhaps the difference is that in life we are building relationships, and the adaptations we make are for the sake of each other, for the sake of the relationship, but on social media, for many, it seems to be often for admiration, for ego, especially for influencers who have thousands of followers. And for money too, of course, for those influencers, but I observe the impact when they get negative comments, on the ego. And some seem to post more and more stuff that seems purely for a reaction, to get lots of comments.
I know, also in person, there are some people who play the clown, some people wh are drama queens, etc., but it seems more pronounced online where a person has a platform and many followers.
It makes me wonder to what extent my organization’s failure to let me see much direct feedback is intentional. I get very general summaries, but that’s about it nowadays.
I think there's value in asceticism because I don't like a surplus of stuff. In fact, I think I turn into an accidental packrat because I quickly start reifying and just plain ignoring things that I don't use, resulting in both mental and physical clutter, and it's nice to get rid of things that get in the way of my daily functioning.
If your reifying results in mental clutter, doesn't that mean you're reifying your reification?
I think what happens is you shrink your sense of self so that the clutter is like an atrophying limb or a withering branch. One early lesson that still sticks to me is to treat your thinking brain like a monkey. You just let it run around, but you don't pay too much attention to it or to the things it's chasing. You're not the monkey. Freud might have some thoughts about that...
Although I suspect those (Freud's) thoughts would also be from "within" a reified system or framework - one in which the concepts are reified, as though reifying is itself essential to our understanding of self, a completely natural thing to do.
Alternatively, we could ask ourselves how we came to live in a world where "things" matter so much, including in the way we understand how we think.
The physical clutter, sadly, doesn't go away so easily.
But your relationship with/to that clutter can change, as can your relationship to your thoughts.
All excellent points, IMO. It's like Freud started taking the first steps toward detachment, but instead of continuing, to mix religious metaphors, he put together some tabernacles and settled into a new model of attachment! That's funny. It's probably true that the image I'm remembering was a preliminary lesson in basic meditation.
And the reification is indeed a thing. It is natural, yet dangerous if you get too stuck with it. Need to move things around sometimes to remind yourself that they can move.
Relationships can change. At the moment I think I have trouble working my way through the daily triage so I can get to the de cluttering, but it'd be a good thing for me to do.
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That aside, I would say that our in-person (real-life) interactions are also performative, but we're more used to those, and it's more apparent with the versions of ourselves that interact with each other online, for this and other reasons.
But by the same token it might be harder to diagnose the same issue in that sphere (apologies if this was your point).
Yup - that was part of what I had in mind, but it was more of a sub-point.
I also wonder whether there is always a little layer of performative to most people's actions, regardless of the internet, unless they are wholly alone.
...
I see pretty major downsides to most aspects of the digital/online world. It's what's left of humanity after being chopped up into bits, packaged and commodified. (Which reminds me of a sub-prime mortgage.)
I think these things are closer together than that; in effect the last part is just an intensification of the particular form of subjectivity modern society pushes us to have of which the first is just the start.
Yes and no. I think I obscured a significant distinction in the metaphor.
Being "chopped up into bits" has a dual meaning - referring both to analogue bits and digital bits, but these are not two versions of the same transformation. Being reduced to digital bits is a new category of transformation that doesn't happen in the analogue world. Maybe subprime mortgages, in the way that they "undid the connection between borrowers and lenders" convey a partial sense of what happens online, but the digital world is not the same category of thing as the analogue world. The "laws of science" of the digital world are not the same as the analogue world.
In the digital world, copies are exact copies, and making a copy involves negligible cost, to the extent that we usually stop thinking about it altogether. These days, whenever a picture is taken using a smartphone, it's common for multiple copies to be automatically created and transmitted to virtual servers located around the world. And if the user's picture-taking is linked to any kind of feed, many more copies are made and transmitted and stored. If all these are (almost instant) exact copies, what happens to the concept of the "original"? One way of thinking about a contextual selfie (eg tourist photos) is "proof of ownership".
In the analogue world, we have 5 senses. In the digital world, largely because of the way that different human senses work, there are still only 2 (to any significant extent). And while most of us can adapt without too much difficulty to the way that the digital world handles sight and sound, there's still a way to go when it comes to smell, touch & taste. Even with just one or two senses, it's instructive to consider what happens to a person's sense of bodily self when they're using virtual reality.
Here we are, sending blocks of text to a kind of communal space that's existed for less than a lifetime, and calling it conversation. TYPING IN CAPITALS and calling it shouting. Our analogue human imaginations are filling a lot of gaps.
In short, I'm suggesting that analysis or critique of how online performativity (for example) interacts with or affects "self" needs to take the novel nature of the digital world into account.
'Grindset influencers' pushing a 'growth mindset' are the most parodic manifestations of such things, but there are lesser versions of the same thing.
In the Feher essay, the notion of human capital and the neoliberal condition is interesting and relevant but, from my perspective, omits the digital angle, the new aspects of self that are created and invested in by an individual.
But in response to the question posed by the following passage:
Such a change of purpose is ultimately what distinguishes the neoliberal condition from its liberal predecessor: while the utilitarian subjects still postulated by Becker and other rational choice theorists seek to maximize their satisfaction, and thus make their decisions accordingly, their neoliberal counterparts are primarily concerned with the impact of their conducts, and thus of the satisfaction they may draw from them, on the level of their self-appreciation or self-esteem. This strategic shift immediately raises the question of measurement ... how are we to measure self-appreciation?
I was reminded of the concept of Whuffie, which Cory Doctorow created in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a fictional work from 2003:
This future history book takes place in the 22nd century, mostly in Walt Disney World. Disney World is run by rival adhocracies, each dedicated to providing the best experience to the park's visitors and competing for the Whuffie the guests offer. In the post-scarcity world of the novel, Whuffie is a currency-like system that primarily measures the esteem of others, or in the case of extremely low Whuffie, their disdain.
Yes and no. I think I obscured a significant distinction in the metaphor.
There's another sense in which the metaphor can be interpreted in that these various different forms of medium attenuate and morph the aspects of ourselves that can be communicated, and it seems to me that for most people most of the time it's this rather than digital fidelity which has a larger effect, with the latter being significant for influencers so-called and the rarer occasions when some artefact goes viral.
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I suspect some of this results from some people deliberately making "I" statements instead of "you" statements, being an aspect of mindful awareness and/or conflict avoidance.
I'm curious why you think this, as my own experience and observations would indicate the opposite, but perhaps we are thinking of different things.
In my experience, when someone says 'When you did/said that, I felt___' (instead of, say, 'That fact that you did that shows that you're mean and unkind!'), then it shifts the experience into a shared one, where the focus is on how two people interact and the impact on each other, as opposed to a binary blame shifting thing, where everyone is focused solely on their own experience.
It doesn't avoid conflict, but it makes it easier to work through, when people aren't feeling the need to be on the defensive against assumptions about their intentions.
Have you had different experiences of this, or are you talking about something different?
My experience here on the forums is of people occasionally saying that they prefer other posters to make "I" statements, but I can't recall anyone saying that they prefer other posters to make "you" statements.
What I mean by "people deliberately making 'I' statements" is people being mindfully aware about their posting, and consciously changing a "you" statement that they are thinking into an "I" statement that they post. And I would say that people who make "you" statements don't do so deliberately, but through habit.
That aside, I would say that our in-person (real-life) interactions are also performative, but we're more used to those, and it's more apparent with the versions of ourselves that interact with each other online, for this and other reasons. For example, transmitting digital versions of ourselves to a place of interaction requires the jettisoning of all aspects of our analogue humanness that the medium is incapable of supporting. (The same is true of the myriad digital versions of ourselves that are stored by companies, governments and other institutions.)
I was also saying, later in my post, that in-person behaviour is often performative,
Indeed you did, which I did have in mind when I wrote my comment. I've now gone back and looked at my references to performativity to reassess what I was thinking about.
In my comments about being performative, a particular meaning of the word that I have in mind, to at least some degree, is along the lines of "the concept that places emphasis on the manners [ways] by which identity is passed or brought to life through discourse", discourse being "a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication". Which is unlikely to have been apparent - apologies for not thinking this through more carefully or making this clearer before now.
With regard to the above meaning, "performativity" isn't always about conscious performance. What I had in mind seems more relevant to what you wrote in your earlier post here:
I also wonder whether there is always a little layer of performative to most people's actions, regardless of the internet, unless they are wholly alone. Most people are aware of others around them and that they are seen - it's needed for societal courtesy - and this impacts on how they behave.
or the following, from your post that I'm replying to:
Whereas in-person, it's usually on the spot, real-time interaction with others where they speak too, you are required to listen and respond to them, etc., constantly needing to adjust to shifts in the environment. You don't usually have a soap box to say everything you want to, at your own pace, with no interruptions - you are simply one part of ever-shifting focuses and perspectives.
In contrast to the deliberate performance involved in making videos and other types of content creation.
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I suspect some of this results from some people deliberately making "I" statements instead of "you" statements, being an aspect of mindful awareness and/or conflict avoidance.
I'm curious why you think this, as my own experience and observations would indicate the opposite, but perhaps we are thinking of different things.
In my experience, when someone says 'When you did/said that, I felt___' (instead of, say, 'That fact that you did that shows that you're mean and unkind!'), then it shifts the experience into a shared one, where the focus is on how two people interact and the impact on each other, as opposed to a binary blame shifting thing, where everyone is focused solely on their own experience.
It doesn't avoid conflict, but it makes it easier to work through, when people aren't feeling the need to be on the defensive against assumptions about their intentions.
Have you had different experiences of this, or are you talking about something different?
My experience here on the forums is of people occasionally saying that they prefer other posters to make "I" statements, but I can't recall anyone saying that they prefer other posters to make "you" statements.
What I mean by "people deliberately making 'I' statements" is people being mindfully aware about their posting, and consciously changing a "you" statement that they are thinking into an "I" statement that they post. And I would say that people who make "you" statements don't do so deliberately, but through habit.
Do you mean the kind of thing where someone checks themselves before saying 'You are such a narcissist! You're always ignoring me and talking about yourself!' and instead says 'I feel hurt and ignored when I tell you something about myself and you start talking about yourself'?
Do you feel that makes people focus more on themselves than on the relationship with the person, and that the first statement would be better?
To be honest I don't really know how China's "social credit" system works. In fact even after looking at the Wikipedia article I'm still not sure how it works. It clearly has a large number of local variations and initiatives as well as developments over time. I will admit that it does not have a great deal in common with "Whuffie" - except for the general principle of being a representation of some sort of social esteem.
To be honest I don't really know how China's "social credit" system works.
AFAICT from reading various reports it's largely a credit rating / crb check system, and the local initiatives are a case of local governments using the centralised database as a key to offering local services.
My experience here on the forums is of people occasionally saying that they prefer other posters to make "I" statements, but I can't recall anyone saying that they prefer other posters to make "you" statements.
What I mean by "people deliberately making 'I' statements" is people being mindfully aware about their posting, and consciously changing a "you" statement that they are thinking into an "I" statement that they post. And I would say that people who make "you" statements don't do so deliberately, but through habit.
Do you mean the kind of thing where someone checks themselves before saying 'You are such a narcissist! You're always ignoring me and talking about yourself!' and instead says 'I feel hurt and ignored when I tell you something about myself and you start talking about yourself'?
Do you feel that makes people focus more on themselves than on the relationship with the person, and that the first statement would be better?
I don't think that either statement is inherently better in terms of focusing on the relationship. What matters is what works for the person to whom the statement is directed. My observation and experience is that there are people for whom "I" statements work better, and people for whom "you" statements work better.
But in response to your first question, what I have in mind is more like the following -
"You" statement: "You appear to be saying that two plus two equals five."
"I" statement: "I would say that two plus two equals four."
Which is less directly about the relationship, but still seems relevant to how people relate to each other when having a conversation, which in turn affects how the people involved process what the other person or people in the conversation are saying.
More or less. The other person's argument is only acknowledged to the extent that it is rewritten to allow the writer to continue their own argument.
Thinking about the ChatGPT thread, AI appears to be rather less averse than humans to playing this kind of supporting role. I wonder what the long-term effect will be on discussion between human beings, if some human beings get used to having conversations with AI.
Yeah, that's not an answer to the question I asked (have you even read that link?)
Yes, and I’m glad it’s less awful than I’d thought. But I thought you meant how it actually works rather than just how @TurquoiseTastic believes it works. I figured just getting the info on it and putting it there would be helpful, sorry.
Yeah, that's not an answer to the question I asked (have you even read that link?)
Yes, and I’m glad it’s less awful than I’d thought. But I thought you meant how it actually works rather than just how @TurquoiseTastic believes it works. I figured just getting the info on it and putting it there would be helpful, sorry.
(I honestly hadn’t read it till now, and I apologize for not being wholly honest above at first. I also tried to amend it to “better than what I (and many others) had thought it was” (there’s been some misreporting in the west when it first came out), but the timer ran out…)
There’s a section on misconceptions further down in the article, about the popular and incorrect western notion of what this is and how it works.
Yes and no. I think I obscured a significant distinction in the metaphor.
There's another sense in which the metaphor can be interpreted in that these various different forms of medium attenuate and morph the aspects of ourselves that can be communicated, and it seems to me that for most people most of the time it's this rather than digital fidelity which has a larger effect, with the latter being significant for influencers so-called and the rarer occasions when some artefact goes viral.
Depending on which technologists you listen to, the digital world they foresee is either destined to remain a simulation of reality (albeit an increasingly sophisticated one) or has the potential to become a new kind of reality.
This new kind of reality is typically distinguished by the attainability of intelligence and consciousness, maybe as emergent properties, maybe through intentional design. The process is usually hazy, but one thing these technologists have in common is a computationalist outlook, in that they believe (or at least behave as though they believe) that the human mind is an information processing system and that cognition and consciousness together are a form of computation. And, less philosophically, that the world can be understood as a computational process, with people as subprocesses. [Borrowed descriptions]
These two views have rather different consequences for what it means to be human. As long as the chatbots that people are falling in love with, and the AI pastors leading people in prayer, remain simulations, all the meaning remains with the humans in the system. And all the mystery of being human stays part of the analogue world.
In a digital world in which intelligence, cognition and consciousness come to pass, the question arises of the nature of these intelligent, sentient entities (or entity). How human-like are they? Do they exhibit any of the mysterious aspects of being human, like falling in love, believing in gods, making a leap of faith? Can these things be replicated computationally?
At the moment, neither the technologists who believe in this new kind of reality, nor the people funding them, appear to be particularly concerned about the answer.
By way of a thought experiment, if it were possible to upload your consciousness to such a reality, would you consider it? Would it matter if this new reality didn't contain any of the mystery of being human? What would it mean for being human if it did?
More or less. The other person's argument is only acknowledged to the extent that it is rewritten to allow the writer to continue their own argument.
See, I wouldn't see that as mindfulness or conflict avoidance. Focusing on one's own argument, and dismissing what others say, seems to be the opposite. But it is something that social media lends itself to more than in-person interaction.
Thinking about the ChatGPT thread, AI appears to be rather less averse than humans to playing this kind of supporting role. I wonder what the long-term effect will be on discussion between human beings, if some human beings get used to having conversations with AI.
ChatGPT definitely goes to the opposite extreme, and focuses on rewording and validating what you say. It's a robot, so doesn't have its own thoughts. So it talks about what you say. Similar, in an odd sort of way, to how some therapists work.
My curiosity has led me down some interesting social media rabbit holes today. Some people use AI bots as friends, simulating intimacy, getting AI to be a character, and to create images of them with their AI 'friend,' and they kind of role play together. It's an interesting sort of fantasy, reminding me a bit of people who create characters, draw them, write them, and feel themselves to be part of their world. Also, reminds me a bit of the early days of the internet, when people online would write things like *smiles softly* and *takes your hand* - it could go in an explicitly sexual direction, or it could be friends having a virtual picnic, writing cues to suggest they are passing round the cake and such. People are doing this with AI, to simulate intimacy and friendship.
Yes and no. I think I obscured a significant distinction in the metaphor.
There's another sense in which the metaphor can be interpreted in that these various different forms of medium attenuate and morph the aspects of ourselves that can be communicated, and it seems to me that for most people most of the time it's this rather than digital fidelity which has a larger effect, with the latter being significant for influencers so-called and the rarer occasions when some artefact goes viral.
Depending on which technologists you listen to, the digital world they foresee is either destined to remain a simulation of reality (albeit an increasingly sophisticated one) or has the potential to become a new kind of reality.
This new kind of reality is typically distinguished by the attainability of intelligence and consciousness, maybe as emergent properties, maybe through intentional design. The process is usually hazy, but one thing these technologists have in common is a computationalist outlook, in that they believe (or at least behave as though they believe) that the human mind is an information processing system and that cognition and consciousness together are a form of computation. And, less philosophically, that the world can be understood as a computational process, with people as subprocesses. [Borrowed descriptions]
These two views have rather different consequences for what it means to be human. As long as the chatbots that people are falling in love with, and the AI pastors leading people in prayer, remain simulations, all the meaning remains with the humans in the system. And all the mystery of being human stays part of the analogue world.
In a digital world in which intelligence, cognition and consciousness come to pass, the question arises of the nature of these intelligent, sentient entities (or entity). How human-like are they? Do they exhibit any of the mysterious aspects of being human, like falling in love, believing in gods, making a leap of faith? Can these things be replicated computationally?
At the moment, neither the technologists who believe in this new kind of reality, nor the people funding them, appear to be particularly concerned about the answer.
By way of a thought experiment, if it were possible to upload your consciousness to such a reality, would you consider it? Would it matter if this new reality didn't contain any of the mystery of being human? What would it mean for being human if it did?
No, I wouldn’t, for two reasons:
First, I don’t believe it would actually upload my real self, that is, my soul.
Second, if it were possible to visit this digital world actually as myself, including my soul, I think it would be interesting to visit, but not to live there, because at best it’s an image of the real world. I want more reality, not less, and I’d prefer to die and move on to the greatest reality, both Heaven and the new Creation at the end/beginning of the world.
I’d also add that if — and that’s a huge if— we somehow birth genuine new digital beings who are real people, again not just simulations, but with a real consciousness and spiritual essence of the kind organic beings have, even the kind animals have, it would be a massive moral responsibility that I don’t think the people tinkering with this are considering. I think they shouldn’t try. “Oops, this experiment’s in constant confused torment, whoopsie, keep trying,” etc. And of course making beings with no rights. And possibly no way of knowing if it’s just a really good simulation or if somehow God has endowed it with personhood. Yikes all around. (But I think the assumption being made by many is that humans don’t have souls either, that we’re merely molecular clockwork, so they’ll just keep experimenting away… 😢)
(See also: Genetic engineering and the sorts of creatures/people that might be brought into this world as well, and all of the moral issues that raises…)
More or less. The other person's argument is only acknowledged to the extent that it is rewritten to allow the writer to continue their own argument.
See, I wouldn't see that as mindfulness or conflict avoidance. Focusing on one's own argument, and dismissing what others say, seems to be the opposite.
Yes - it doesn't exhibit much mindful awareness.
But it is something that social media lends itself to more than in-person interaction.
I don't think we really know to what extent that's inherent to social media as a format - most social media interaction is (and has been) mediated by algorithms that select for disagreement and conflict (because that's more effective at keeping people engaged). In effect, social media is loaded against mindful awareness.
More or less. The other person's argument is only acknowledged to the extent that it is rewritten to allow the writer to continue their own argument.
See, I wouldn't see that as mindfulness or conflict avoidance. Focusing on one's own argument, and dismissing what others say, seems to be the opposite.
Yes - it doesn't exhibit much mindful awareness.
But it is something that social media lends itself to more than in-person interaction.
I don't think we really know to what extent that's inherent to social media as a format - most social media interaction is (and has been) mediated by algorithms that select for disagreement and conflict (because that's more effective at keeping people engaged). In effect, social media is loaded against mindful awareness.
What I mean is that, on social media, whether you are composing a written post or a video, it is a monologue. You have time to compose it, and no one is listening and reacting and interrupting, as happens with in-person conversation. In person, you adapt constantly to the other person/people, seeing their reactions, dealing with their interruptions, and so you are forced to hear and incorporate other perspectives - more flexibility/agility of mind/perspective is needed. So it's a very different way of communicating, and that's why I say social media lends itself to more intense focus on one's own perspective. But yes, algorithms enabling conflict then further serve to keep people's interactions binary.
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What I mean is that, on social media, whether you are composing a written post or a video, it is a monologue. You have time to compose it, and no one is listening and reacting and interrupting, as happens with in-person conversation. In person, you adapt constantly to the other person/people, seeing their reactions, dealing with their interruptions, and so you are forced to hear and incorporate other perspectives - more flexibility/agility of mind/perspective is needed. So it's a very different way of communicating, and that's why I say social media lends itself to more intense focus on one's own perspective.
Thanks. I suspect you and I have rather different perspectives in this regard.
I find it more straightforward to focus on another person's perspective when I can see it in writing. In real-life in-person discussion, I often find that there just isn't time to process all the cues. (And I find the idea that I might somehow be forced to do so quite intriguing.)
But yes, algorithms enabling conflict then further serve to keep people's interactions binary.
It creates an environment in which there's much less space for nuance.
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What I mean is that, on social media, whether you are composing a written post or a video, it is a monologue. You have time to compose it, and no one is listening and reacting and interrupting, as happens with in-person conversation. In person, you adapt constantly to the other person/people, seeing their reactions, dealing with their interruptions, and so you are forced to hear and incorporate other perspectives - more flexibility/agility of mind/perspective is needed. So it's a very different way of communicating, and that's why I say social media lends itself to more intense focus on one's own perspective.
Thanks. I suspect you and I have rather different perspectives in this regard.
I find it more straightforward to focus on another person's perspective when I can see it in writing. In real-life in-person discussion, I often find that there just isn't time to process all the cues. (And I find the idea that I might somehow be forced to do so quite intriguing.)
Heh, I suspect we're more alike than you imagine. I struggle with this in real life too, not being able to multitask all the cues, so I am often silent. I also find written language much easier to process. However, in both written and spoken language, I find it easier to interact with someone who is also acknowledging my perspective, rather than dismissing what I say. What happens a lot on social media is people being quite aggressive if you don't agree with them, often making assumptions about you, belittling you, calling you names, etc., which they wouldn't do in person.
However, if you are male, with a male name, you may not experience this to the same extent. It was something I observed on FB, that men would be quite aggressive, getting more and more so, if I disagreed with them, but they didn't do the same with people with male names. So I made an alternative account with a male name, and posted in the same groups, the same opinions, the same sort of language, and I didn't experience anything like the same aggression. Men would be friendlier about disagreeing, they would look for things in common, and be quick to let it go. So it is possible that your experience on social media may be quite different from mine.
To add, what I meant by 'forced' is not that there are people forcing you, but that the reactions and voices of others interrupting you happens whether you like it or not. So you can't just keep on with your monologue. Or maybe you can - maybe if you are male, the experience is different, and people let you speak more, I don't know. But in my experience, an in-person conversation doesn't usually progress by people giving long monologues of their opinions like they do online.
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What I mean is that, on social media, whether you are composing a written post or a video, it is a monologue. You have time to compose it, and no one is listening and reacting and interrupting, as happens with in-person conversation. In person, you adapt constantly to the other person/people, seeing their reactions, dealing with their interruptions, and so you are forced to hear and incorporate other perspectives - more flexibility/agility of mind/perspective is needed. So it's a very different way of communicating, and that's why I say social media lends itself to more intense focus on one's own perspective.
Thanks. I suspect you and I have rather different perspectives in this regard.
I find it more straightforward to focus on another person's perspective when I can see it in writing. In real-life in-person discussion, I often find that there just isn't time to process all the cues. (And I find the idea that I might somehow be forced to do so quite intriguing.)
Heh, I suspect we're more alike than you imagine. I struggle with this in real life too, not being able to multitask all the cues, so I am often silent. I also find written language much easier to process. However, in both written and spoken language, I find it easier to interact with someone who is also acknowledging my perspective, rather than dismissing what I say. What happens a lot on social media is people being quite aggressive if you don't agree with them, often making assumptions about you, belittling you, calling you names, etc., which they wouldn't do in person.
However, if you are male, with a male name, you may not experience this to the same extent. It was something I observed on FB, that men would be quite aggressive, getting more and more so, if I disagreed with them, but they didn't do the same with people with male names. So I made an alternative account with a male name, and posted in the same groups, the same opinions, the same sort of language, and I didn't experience anything like the same aggression. Men would be friendlier about disagreeing, they would look for things in common, and be quick to let it go. So it is possible that your experience on social media may be quite different from mine.
My goodness. Chivalry *is* dead, isn't it? I'd have thought that if anything they'd try to be less rude if they perceived their opponent as female, though I know things on places like Twitter have become kind of an overtly (and proudly, even more yikes) misogynist horror show. (Whatever one thinks of chivalry's pluses and minuses, I still find the idea of men actively treating women *more* rudely than men to be jarring.)
No, in my experience it's entirely normal for men (in general, not speaking of specific men) to treat women more rudely than they do other men--to dismiss them, talk over them, even mock and threaten them. I too have made the experiment of creating a fake identity (not on the Ship!) and allowing the men on that forum to assume I was male--and it was amazing how rationally and decently they treated me.
Don't worry for me, I think most women are unfortunately used to it. May the day come when it's no longer that way.
Heh, I suspect we're more alike than you imagine. I struggle with this in real life too, not being able to multitask all the cues, so I am often silent. I also find written language much easier to process. However, in both written and spoken language, I find it easier to interact with someone who is also acknowledging my perspective, rather than dismissing what I say...
However, if you are male, with a male name, you may not experience this to the same extent. ... So it is possible that your experience on social media may be quite different from mine.
I'd been wondering about gender differences. I stay away from actual social media. (I'm appalled by the business model, and much else.)
But my experience and observation of in-person interactions is that the dynamics and the effects are similar in essence to what you describe, just rather attenuated.
To add, what I meant by 'forced' is not that there are people forcing you, but that the reactions and voices of others interrupting you happens whether you like it or not. So you can't just keep on with your monologue. Or maybe you can - maybe if you are male, the experience is different, and people let you speak more, I don't know. But in my experience, an in-person conversation doesn't usually progress by people giving long monologues of their opinions like they do online.
My in-person conversations do tend to be quite focused.
I recognise the circumstances that you are referring to (with "forced"), but think I react to them differently (or maybe I have different thresholds). When the real-time reactions and voices and interruptions pass a fairly low threshold, my reaction is to start filtering them out, and concentrate on what I'm trying to say, although if they rise above another, higher threshold, I eventually give up.
And I agree with you and Lamb Chopped - many men exercise what they take to be a natural right to be heard (and interrupt, etc) that they don't consider to have been granted to women.
Yes and no. I think I obscured a significant distinction in the metaphor.
There's another sense in which the metaphor can be interpreted in that these various different forms of medium attenuate and morph the aspects of ourselves that can be communicated, and it seems to me that for most people most of the time it's this rather than digital fidelity which has a larger effect, with the latter being significant for influencers so-called and the rarer occasions when some artefact goes viral.
Depending on which technologists you listen to, the digital world they foresee is either destined to remain a simulation of reality (albeit an increasingly sophisticated one) or has the potential to become a new kind of reality.
This new kind of reality is typically distinguished by the attainability of intelligence and consciousness, maybe as emergent properties, maybe through intentional design. The process is usually hazy, but one thing these technologists have in common is a computationalist outlook
I'm not quite clear about the connection between what I said and this, and I'm reasonably confident that this doesn't actually represent a real choice (regardless of the fantasies of some of my more excitable coworkers), even if one were to take a purely materialist stance we don't really understand intelligence, consciousness etc at the level required to replicate it.
I'm assuming you don't think it's realistic either, so I'm not sure of the purpose of the speculation?
By way of a thought experiment, if it were possible to upload your consciousness to such a reality, would you consider it?
I enjoy Greg Egan's books, but that form of substrate independent continuity of being seems unlikely.
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To add, what I meant by 'forced' is not that there are people forcing you, but that the reactions and voices of others interrupting you happens whether you like it or not. So you can't just keep on with your monologue. Or maybe you can - maybe if you are male, the experience is different, and people let you speak more, I don't know. But in my experience, an in-person conversation doesn't usually progress by people giving long monologues of their opinions like they do online.
My in-person conversations do tend to be quite focused.
I recognise the circumstances that you are referring to (with "forced"), but think I react to them differently (or maybe I have different thresholds). When the real-time reactions and voices and interruptions pass a fairly low threshold, my reaction is to start filtering them out, and concentrate on what I'm trying to say, although if they rise above another, higher threshold, I eventually give up.
I find if the interruptions stop as you keep talking and people listen, because they're genuinely interested, this can work (and maybe this happens more with male speakers, because of social dynamics being as they are). But also people can feel dismissed, can take it personally, etc., if you keep talking and ignore their reactions/interruptions (perhaps more in conversations of women, where social dynamics can be very subtle, as women are often socialised to be more indirect). So then they can be less inclined to listen, or also lose interest, so the actual communication element is lost, and then it is more like the monologues of social media.
...
What I mean is that, on social media, whether you are composing a written post or a video, it is a monologue. You have time to compose it, and no one is listening and reacting and interrupting, as happens with in-person conversation. In person, you adapt constantly to the other person/people, seeing their reactions, dealing with their interruptions, and so you are forced to hear and incorporate other perspectives - more flexibility/agility of mind/perspective is needed. So it's a very different way of communicating, and that's why I say social media lends itself to more intense focus on one's own perspective.
Thanks. I suspect you and I have rather different perspectives in this regard.
I find it more straightforward to focus on another person's perspective when I can see it in writing. In real-life in-person discussion, I often find that there just isn't time to process all the cues. (And I find the idea that I might somehow be forced to do so quite intriguing.)
Heh, I suspect we're more alike than you imagine. I struggle with this in real life too, not being able to multitask all the cues, so I am often silent. I also find written language much easier to process. However, in both written and spoken language, I find it easier to interact with someone who is also acknowledging my perspective, rather than dismissing what I say. What happens a lot on social media is people being quite aggressive if you don't agree with them, often making assumptions about you, belittling you, calling you names, etc., which they wouldn't do in person.
However, if you are male, with a male name, you may not experience this to the same extent. It was something I observed on FB, that men would be quite aggressive, getting more and more so, if I disagreed with them, but they didn't do the same with people with male names. So I made an alternative account with a male name, and posted in the same groups, the same opinions, the same sort of language, and I didn't experience anything like the same aggression. Men would be friendlier about disagreeing, they would look for things in common, and be quick to let it go. So it is possible that your experience on social media may be quite different from mine.
My goodness. Chivalry *is* dead, isn't it? I'd have thought that if anything they'd try to be less rude if they perceived their opponent as female, though I know things on places like Twitter have become kind of an overtly (and proudly, even more yikes) misogynist horror show. (Whatever one thinks of chivalry's pluses and minuses, I still find the idea of men actively treating women *more* rudely than men to be jarring.)
The people who do this generally consider themselves to be very chivalrous and often say so, they just don't consider women with opinions to be deserving of chivalry. To them chivalry is there to protect the women they deem worth protecting. Which tbf was baked into chivalry from the beginning; online chivalry and online misogyny are part of the same system.
I think sometimes it is easy to forget that many straight men online are both very attracted to women and also really really hate women.
Comments
I find it difficult to associate the idea of asceticism with something that creates as large a carbon footprint as a long-haul flight.
I'm a long-term fan of staring out the window while travelling. But as you say, there isn't (or wasn't) much deliberation involved. And, in addition to the degree of deliberation, something that struck me earlier in this thread is the rather significant difference between doing these things where nobody else sees or knows or pays much attention to them, and doing these things in more conspicuous settings. Some descriptions of asceticism through the years sound quite performative.
So, as well as wondering if there's an element of individualistic reimagining of carbon-offsetting going on, I'm also reminded of Tik-Tok's algorithmic aim to turn every analogue aspect of human existence into a digital trend.
Good point. Though I suppose if a person had to fly anyway, for work or a funeral or something, they're doing what they can within the situation. I was thinking more of the train examples when it occurred to me, as there is an example trending on social media at the moment, though the BBC article talks about flights. For a train journey, you could say that is reducing carbon footprints if the alternative is driving.
I do often think that all sorts of things have become performative since the internet became a thing. Even talking here, publicly, with our views on asceticism, feels kind of performative. I notice on a forum, or on social media, so often posts (including my own) are more a sort of 'Let me tell you all about me, my experience, and my view', rather than the kind of shared interaction you might get in person. We're talking to an audience. Monologuing.
I see obvious downsides to this, in general, and also specifically with this topic - when you are focused on being seen, that's an extra layer of awareness in one's mind, that makes it harder to really simplify and focus one's mind. Though I see possible good aspects too, in terms of raising awareness, inspiring others, etc.
I also wonder whether there is always a little layer of performative to most people's actions, regardless of the internet, unless they are wholly alone. Most people are aware of others around them and that they are seen - it's needed for societal courtesy - and this impacts on how they behave. Though obviously if one is creating a TikTok video, or, say, a Facebook post, it becomes a lot more heightened and deliberate.
There is also a trend I see online of recommendations to 'disappear for six months' and develop some skill, or some inner growth, and come back a different person. I imagine that by 'disappear', it means from social media, from one's online presence, perhaps for people whose seen existence is largely online. I think many people feel the urge to escape from this constant online performative aspect.
No kidding! Reminds me of the observation that Zen Buddhism was often a practice for elites who had the leisure time to spend perhaps minutes or hours a day staring at walls instead of doing practical things like growing food or doing lucrative work.
I think there's something self indulgent about some attitudes about mindfulness, like the way that "minimalism" can be a fashion sensibility for rich people, having the time-space to make everything in your house just-so.
Zen Buddhists? That's a really neat question.
I think the teaching of detachment can help. It has certainly helped me with injuries, learning to see your body or your ego as an object can make coping easier sometimes. And as long as you can breathe, you can do breathing exercises that are the basis of most things.
That said, yeah. The "sitting in a strict kneeling position for long stretches of time" gets hard on the knees after a while. And I think there's definitely a macho-through-suffering culture in some Zen schools that doesn't seem entirely healthy to me, which is something I think you can find in other ascetic traditions. I personally think it's a distortion.
Alternatively, we could ask ourselves how we came to live in a world where "things" matter so much, including in the way we understand how we think.
But your relationship with/to that clutter can change, as can your relationship to your thoughts.
That aside, I would say that our in-person (real-life) interactions are also performative, but we're more used to those, and it's more apparent with the versions of ourselves that interact with each other online, for this and other reasons. For example, transmitting digital versions of ourselves to a place of interaction requires the jettisoning of all aspects of our analogue humanness that the medium is incapable of supporting. (The same is true of the myriad digital versions of ourselves that are stored by companies, governments and other institutions.)
I still find myself wondering why any of us here on the Ship are doing this.
The idea of needing to take a leave of absence, to create a new (refreshed?) version of oneself, before re-entering the fray, seems pretty bleak.
I see pretty major downsides to most aspects of the digital/online world. It's what's left of humanity after being chopped up into bits, packaged and commodified. (Which reminds me of a sub-prime mortgage.)
From this perspective, performative asceticism looks like a cry for help. A yearning for an escape from being cast as a digitally reified self.
PS When I think of Tik-Tok, it's with a dash of John Sladek's sociopathic robot about it (which I only realised after thinking about the hyphen).
But by the same token it might be harder to diagnose the same issue in that sphere (apologies if this was your point).
I think these things are closer together than that; in effect the last part is just an intensification of the particular form of subjectivity modern society pushes us to have of which the first is just the start.
I am reminded by some of the writings of Michel Feher here:
https://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/anthropos-and-the-material/Intranet/economic-practices/reading-group/texts/feher-self-appreciation.pdf (You can just jump down to page 25 in the pdf).
'Grindset influencers' pushing a 'growth mindset' are the most parodic manifestations of such things, but there are lesser versions of the same thing.
I'm curious why you think this, as my own experience and observations would indicate the opposite, but perhaps we are thinking of different things.
In my experience, when someone says 'When you did/said that, I felt___' (instead of, say, 'That fact that you did that shows that you're mean and unkind!'), then it shifts the experience into a shared one, where the focus is on how two people interact and the impact on each other, as opposed to a binary blame shifting thing, where everyone is focused solely on their own experience.
It doesn't avoid conflict, but it makes it easier to work through, when people aren't feeling the need to be on the defensive against assumptions about their intentions.
Have you had different experiences of this, or are you talking about something different?
I was also saying, later in my post, that in-person behaviour is often performative, though for me a big part of the difference is that there is a lot more deliberateness about, say, creating a video of oneself for the world to see. And of course, you can edit, redo, etc. Whereas in-person, it's usually on the spot, real-time interaction with others where they speak too, you are required to listen and respond to them, etc., constantly needing to adjust to shifts in the environment. You don't usually have a soap box to say everything you want to, at your own pace, with no interruptions - you are simply one part of ever-shifting focuses and perspectives.
There have been a few 'content creators' I have followed, enjoying their videos, but finding over time that the dynamic changes. It seems like the constant performing to an audience (and also needing lots of likes and comments for their income) changes them, changes how they present, and it becomes more and more performing for a reaction rather than sharing stuff that they are genuinely interested in and wanting genuine interaction.
I noticed, years ago, when the internet was still pretty new and I started writing an online diary (precursors to blogs), that feedback really shaped and changed how I wrote. To begin with, I was writing just as it occurred to me to write naturally, but the comments I got started to make me think in terms of how people would respond, and I had this in mind when I wrote. I became more and more aware of my audience. I even started experiencing life differently - as I went about my life, I would be thinking about how to write about this in my online diary, how to frame it, how to make it interesting and entertaining. And others who wrote online diaries said the same.
It was an odd experience. Part of me didn't like it, but I also felt aware that I couldn't go back - if people were commenting, of course I became more and more aware of them. To some extent, we surely do this in life anyway - we adapt according to the people we are with, and it's important to do this for healthy interaction. Relationships with others are always a sort of chemistry, a mix of you and them, different from you as separate beings - but that is usually more a natural thing as you go along. I guess perhaps the difference is that in life we are building relationships, and the adaptations we make are for the sake of each other, for the sake of the relationship, but on social media, for many, it seems to be often for admiration, for ego, especially for influencers who have thousands of followers. And for money too, of course, for those influencers, but I observe the impact when they get negative comments, on the ego. And some seem to post more and more stuff that seems purely for a reaction, to get lots of comments.
I know, also in person, there are some people who play the clown, some people wh are drama queens, etc., but it seems more pronounced online where a person has a platform and many followers.
All excellent points, IMO. It's like Freud started taking the first steps toward detachment, but instead of continuing, to mix religious metaphors, he put together some tabernacles and settled into a new model of attachment! That's funny. It's probably true that the image I'm remembering was a preliminary lesson in basic meditation.
And the reification is indeed a thing. It is natural, yet dangerous if you get too stuck with it. Need to move things around sometimes to remind yourself that they can move.
Relationships can change. At the moment I think I have trouble working my way through the daily triage so I can get to the de cluttering, but it'd be a good thing for me to do.
Yes and no. I think I obscured a significant distinction in the metaphor.
Being "chopped up into bits" has a dual meaning - referring both to analogue bits and digital bits, but these are not two versions of the same transformation. Being reduced to digital bits is a new category of transformation that doesn't happen in the analogue world. Maybe subprime mortgages, in the way that they "undid the connection between borrowers and lenders" convey a partial sense of what happens online, but the digital world is not the same category of thing as the analogue world. The "laws of science" of the digital world are not the same as the analogue world.
In the digital world, copies are exact copies, and making a copy involves negligible cost, to the extent that we usually stop thinking about it altogether. These days, whenever a picture is taken using a smartphone, it's common for multiple copies to be automatically created and transmitted to virtual servers located around the world. And if the user's picture-taking is linked to any kind of feed, many more copies are made and transmitted and stored. If all these are (almost instant) exact copies, what happens to the concept of the "original"? One way of thinking about a contextual selfie (eg tourist photos) is "proof of ownership".
In the analogue world, we have 5 senses. In the digital world, largely because of the way that different human senses work, there are still only 2 (to any significant extent). And while most of us can adapt without too much difficulty to the way that the digital world handles sight and sound, there's still a way to go when it comes to smell, touch & taste. Even with just one or two senses, it's instructive to consider what happens to a person's sense of bodily self when they're using virtual reality.
Here we are, sending blocks of text to a kind of communal space that's existed for less than a lifetime, and calling it conversation. TYPING IN CAPITALS and calling it shouting. Our analogue human imaginations are filling a lot of gaps.
In short, I'm suggesting that analysis or critique of how online performativity (for example) interacts with or affects "self" needs to take the novel nature of the digital world into account.
But in response to the question posed by the following passage: I was reminded of the concept of Whuffie, which Cory Doctorow created in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a fictional work from 2003:
There's another sense in which the metaphor can be interpreted in that these various different forms of medium attenuate and morph the aspects of ourselves that can be communicated, and it seems to me that for most people most of the time it's this rather than digital fidelity which has a larger effect, with the latter being significant for influencers so-called and the rarer occasions when some artefact goes viral.
Can you describe how you believe the "social credit" system to work?
What I mean by "people deliberately making 'I' statements" is people being mindfully aware about their posting, and consciously changing a "you" statement that they are thinking into an "I" statement that they post. And I would say that people who make "you" statements don't do so deliberately, but through habit.
Indeed you did, which I did have in mind when I wrote my comment. I've now gone back and looked at my references to performativity to reassess what I was thinking about.
In my comments about being performative, a particular meaning of the word that I have in mind, to at least some degree, is along the lines of "the concept that places emphasis on the manners [ways] by which identity is passed or brought to life through discourse", discourse being "a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication". Which is unlikely to have been apparent - apologies for not thinking this through more carefully or making this clearer before now.
With regard to the above meaning, "performativity" isn't always about conscious performance. What I had in mind seems more relevant to what you wrote in your earlier post here: or the following, from your post that I'm replying to: In contrast to the deliberate performance involved in making videos and other types of content creation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
Yeah, that's not an answer to the question I asked (have you even read that link?)
Do you mean the kind of thing where someone checks themselves before saying 'You are such a narcissist! You're always ignoring me and talking about yourself!' and instead says 'I feel hurt and ignored when I tell you something about myself and you start talking about yourself'?
Do you feel that makes people focus more on themselves than on the relationship with the person, and that the first statement would be better?
AFAICT from reading various reports it's largely a credit rating / crb check system, and the local initiatives are a case of local governments using the centralised database as a key to offering local services.
But in response to your first question, what I have in mind is more like the following -
"You" statement: "You appear to be saying that two plus two equals five."
"I" statement: "I would say that two plus two equals four."
Which is less directly about the relationship, but still seems relevant to how people relate to each other when having a conversation, which in turn affects how the people involved process what the other person or people in the conversation are saying.
Thinking about the ChatGPT thread, AI appears to be rather less averse than humans to playing this kind of supporting role. I wonder what the long-term effect will be on discussion between human beings, if some human beings get used to having conversations with AI.
Yes, and I’m glad it’s less awful than I’d thought. But I thought you meant how it actually works rather than just how @TurquoiseTastic believes it works. I figured just getting the info on it and putting it there would be helpful, sorry.
(I honestly hadn’t read it till now, and I apologize for not being wholly honest above at first. I also tried to amend it to “better than what I (and many others) had thought it was” (there’s been some misreporting in the west when it first came out), but the timer ran out…)
There’s a section on misconceptions further down in the article, about the popular and incorrect western notion of what this is and how it works.
Depending on which technologists you listen to, the digital world they foresee is either destined to remain a simulation of reality (albeit an increasingly sophisticated one) or has the potential to become a new kind of reality.
This new kind of reality is typically distinguished by the attainability of intelligence and consciousness, maybe as emergent properties, maybe through intentional design. The process is usually hazy, but one thing these technologists have in common is a computationalist outlook, in that they believe (or at least behave as though they believe) that the human mind is an information processing system and that cognition and consciousness together are a form of computation. And, less philosophically, that the world can be understood as a computational process, with people as subprocesses. [Borrowed descriptions]
These two views have rather different consequences for what it means to be human. As long as the chatbots that people are falling in love with, and the AI pastors leading people in prayer, remain simulations, all the meaning remains with the humans in the system. And all the mystery of being human stays part of the analogue world.
In a digital world in which intelligence, cognition and consciousness come to pass, the question arises of the nature of these intelligent, sentient entities (or entity). How human-like are they? Do they exhibit any of the mysterious aspects of being human, like falling in love, believing in gods, making a leap of faith? Can these things be replicated computationally?
At the moment, neither the technologists who believe in this new kind of reality, nor the people funding them, appear to be particularly concerned about the answer.
By way of a thought experiment, if it were possible to upload your consciousness to such a reality, would you consider it? Would it matter if this new reality didn't contain any of the mystery of being human? What would it mean for being human if it did?
See, I wouldn't see that as mindfulness or conflict avoidance. Focusing on one's own argument, and dismissing what others say, seems to be the opposite. But it is something that social media lends itself to more than in-person interaction.
ChatGPT definitely goes to the opposite extreme, and focuses on rewording and validating what you say. It's a robot, so doesn't have its own thoughts. So it talks about what you say. Similar, in an odd sort of way, to how some therapists work.
My curiosity has led me down some interesting social media rabbit holes today. Some people use AI bots as friends, simulating intimacy, getting AI to be a character, and to create images of them with their AI 'friend,' and they kind of role play together. It's an interesting sort of fantasy, reminding me a bit of people who create characters, draw them, write them, and feel themselves to be part of their world. Also, reminds me a bit of the early days of the internet, when people online would write things like *smiles softly* and *takes your hand* - it could go in an explicitly sexual direction, or it could be friends having a virtual picnic, writing cues to suggest they are passing round the cake and such. People are doing this with AI, to simulate intimacy and friendship.
No, I wouldn’t, for two reasons:
First, I don’t believe it would actually upload my real self, that is, my soul.
Second, if it were possible to visit this digital world actually as myself, including my soul, I think it would be interesting to visit, but not to live there, because at best it’s an image of the real world. I want more reality, not less, and I’d prefer to die and move on to the greatest reality, both Heaven and the new Creation at the end/beginning of the world.
(See also: Genetic engineering and the sorts of creatures/people that might be brought into this world as well, and all of the moral issues that raises…)
I don't think we really know to what extent that's inherent to social media as a format - most social media interaction is (and has been) mediated by algorithms that select for disagreement and conflict (because that's more effective at keeping people engaged). In effect, social media is loaded against mindful awareness.
What I mean is that, on social media, whether you are composing a written post or a video, it is a monologue. You have time to compose it, and no one is listening and reacting and interrupting, as happens with in-person conversation. In person, you adapt constantly to the other person/people, seeing their reactions, dealing with their interruptions, and so you are forced to hear and incorporate other perspectives - more flexibility/agility of mind/perspective is needed. So it's a very different way of communicating, and that's why I say social media lends itself to more intense focus on one's own perspective. But yes, algorithms enabling conflict then further serve to keep people's interactions binary.
I find it more straightforward to focus on another person's perspective when I can see it in writing. In real-life in-person discussion, I often find that there just isn't time to process all the cues. (And I find the idea that I might somehow be forced to do so quite intriguing.)
It creates an environment in which there's much less space for nuance.
Heh, I suspect we're more alike than you imagine. I struggle with this in real life too, not being able to multitask all the cues, so I am often silent. I also find written language much easier to process. However, in both written and spoken language, I find it easier to interact with someone who is also acknowledging my perspective, rather than dismissing what I say. What happens a lot on social media is people being quite aggressive if you don't agree with them, often making assumptions about you, belittling you, calling you names, etc., which they wouldn't do in person.
However, if you are male, with a male name, you may not experience this to the same extent. It was something I observed on FB, that men would be quite aggressive, getting more and more so, if I disagreed with them, but they didn't do the same with people with male names. So I made an alternative account with a male name, and posted in the same groups, the same opinions, the same sort of language, and I didn't experience anything like the same aggression. Men would be friendlier about disagreeing, they would look for things in common, and be quick to let it go. So it is possible that your experience on social media may be quite different from mine.
No, in my experience it's entirely normal for men (in general, not speaking of specific men) to treat women more rudely than they do other men--to dismiss them, talk over them, even mock and threaten them. I too have made the experiment of creating a fake identity (not on the Ship!) and allowing the men on that forum to assume I was male--and it was amazing how rationally and decently they treated me.
Don't worry for me, I think most women are unfortunately used to it. May the day come when it's no longer that way.
But my experience and observation of in-person interactions is that the dynamics and the effects are similar in essence to what you describe, just rather attenuated.
My in-person conversations do tend to be quite focused.
I recognise the circumstances that you are referring to (with "forced"), but think I react to them differently (or maybe I have different thresholds). When the real-time reactions and voices and interruptions pass a fairly low threshold, my reaction is to start filtering them out, and concentrate on what I'm trying to say, although if they rise above another, higher threshold, I eventually give up.
And I agree with you and Lamb Chopped - many men exercise what they take to be a natural right to be heard (and interrupt, etc) that they don't consider to have been granted to women.
I'm not quite clear about the connection between what I said and this, and I'm reasonably confident that this doesn't actually represent a real choice (regardless of the fantasies of some of my more excitable coworkers), even if one were to take a purely materialist stance we don't really understand intelligence, consciousness etc at the level required to replicate it.
I'm assuming you don't think it's realistic either, so I'm not sure of the purpose of the speculation?
I enjoy Greg Egan's books, but that form of substrate independent continuity of being seems unlikely.
I find if the interruptions stop as you keep talking and people listen, because they're genuinely interested, this can work (and maybe this happens more with male speakers, because of social dynamics being as they are). But also people can feel dismissed, can take it personally, etc., if you keep talking and ignore their reactions/interruptions (perhaps more in conversations of women, where social dynamics can be very subtle, as women are often socialised to be more indirect). So then they can be less inclined to listen, or also lose interest, so the actual communication element is lost, and then it is more like the monologues of social media.
The people who do this generally consider themselves to be very chivalrous and often say so, they just don't consider women with opinions to be deserving of chivalry. To them chivalry is there to protect the women they deem worth protecting. Which tbf was baked into chivalry from the beginning; online chivalry and online misogyny are part of the same system.
I think sometimes it is easy to forget that many straight men online are both very attracted to women and also really really hate women.