Relationships And Mediums: Habits, Historical Knowledge, and Self-Creation

This is the second section of my current essay project 'Relationships and Mediums'. In the first section I tried to explain how there was a qualitative divide in my relationships. With certain interactions I and other people are warm, open, and most importantly empathic. And in other instances people are distant, cold, and seem to be operating with nothing other than labels or ideas about who I am. In other words, sometimes my relationships are governed by genuine engagement with another mind, and sometimes they are mitigated by nothing but economically defined roles.

In order to understand this divide I am turning to the issue of mediums. Because above all else this is an issue of how minds are interacting with one another. And for me mind is nothing but what mind does. And the only way a mind can do something is through a certain medium. Therefore I can only make sense of this issue of relationships if I make sense of the mediums through which minds are working.

The goal of this whole thing is to create a historically augmented and pedagogically useful theory of mind. I think that theory of mind suffers from its ahistorical perspective. And I hope to use historical data to supplement these ahistorical accounts so as to arrive at a better picture of what minds are like in this precise moment in history. This is a line of thought I initiated in my essay 'The Genealogy Of The Modern Mind'. And this is my attempt to pick up that line of thought, albeit in a loose way.

So in any case, this is the section in which I try to understand that divide in my relationships by analyzing the major mediums through which the mind works. I chose three mediums to focus on: architecture and urban design, language itself, and economic systems. I think that these three things constitute our major mediums for choice and action. So by analyzing them I am hoping to analyze the relationships that take place within them.

This writing was hard for me, and so is a little sloppy and confused and all over the place. But that is what I was trying to do.

II. Of Mediums: Inclinations And Habits In Relationships

As I said above, I now want to focus on the question of mediums so as to move closer to creating a historically informed theory of mind. I am convinced that if we want to understand minds we need to think of them as concrete historical realities, and not as some abstract unchanging entity. This means that we need to think of minds as things that do things. We need to take seriously the idea that ‘mind is only what mind does’. So what do minds do? And how do they do it? Well the answer to the first question is less important. But I’ll say that minds have relationships with other minds, with themselves, and with things around them. Minds relate. How do they do it is the more important question. They always do it through certain mediums. And here I am defining a medium in the most general sense as a means to doing something. By this definition everything is a medium, from our five senses to the technology we use to augment them, from our economic system to the design of our cities. All of these things are mediums that our minds work through. Further, we are not dealing merely with single mediums, but with mediums that are stacked upon one another. The senses being at the foundation, and the economic system and other ones being stacked on top. And I think that a closer look at this issue of mediums will make it clear how to construct a historically informed theory of mind.

So what is it about mediums that we need to understand in order to understand our minds? For this question I would like to briefly discuss Nicholas Carr’s work in The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. In that book Mr. Carr is trying to answer some questions about how the internet is effecting our behavior, our thoughts, and our brains. He has two foundational perspectives, the first is Marshal McLuhan’s work on media, the second being the recent advances in the field of neuroplasticity.

McLuhan is famous for coining the phrase ‘the medium is the message’, by which he meant that the form in which something is presented matters more than the content itself. This means that when studying media and communication we need to pay more attention to the way in which something is communicated and less to the actual content of what is communicated. This is the good old question of content versus form. Take poetry and aesthetic expression for example. Is it possible to communicate the same content in a different form? Or are content and form inseparably linked? I believe the latter to be the case. It isn’t enough, or even possible, to explain to somebody what a poem or a song communicates. This is because the content and the form are so intimately linked. I hear stories of musicians or poets what their work means. And in that case the best response is something like ‘if I could explain it to you I wouldn’t have to express it through music/poetry’. Hayden White also believes content and form to be intimately linked. I would really like to take a look at his book The Content Of The Form, but I haven’t been able to get to it yet. But in any case, the point is this: content and form, medium and message, are inseparably linked. And while we often focus strictly on content, people like McLuhan and White believe we would benefit from some focus on the medium or the form.

Carr uses McLuhan’s work on mediums as a starting point to discuss the way that the internet as a medium poses unique problems. If the medium is the message, then what is the message of the internet as a medium? Carr, however, takes this notion a step further by introducing the notion of an ‘intellectual ethic’. He claims that every medium contains an implicit ‘intellectual ethic’: “Every intellectual technology, to put it another way, embodies an intellectual ethic, a set of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work: (45). The users and even creators of a medium might not even be aware of the intellectual ethic of a medium: “The intellectual ethic of a technology is rarely recognized by its inventors. They are usually so intent on solving a particular problem or untangling some thorny scientific problem that they don’t see the broader implication of their work. The users of the technology are also usually oblivious to its ethic” (45). This is an important observation. We should pay particular attention to the way Carr describes an intellectual ethic as a set of assumptions about how the mind should work. This means that mediums are not simply a passive means that are completely under our control, but that they, on the contrary, directly shape what it is that we do and what it is that we are. Or, as Carr puts it, the medium appears “so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master” (4). The medium as the message, therefore, means that we are actively transformed by the mediums that we use to navigate the world. Our minds change as a result of exposure to different mediums. This is where Carr’s concern with neuroplasticity comes into play.

Carr turns to the new science of neuroplasticity to show that mediums have an effect on human behavior. While for much of the twentieth century it was accepted that the brain was relatively static, recent findings show that the brain is far more plastic than people had suspected. Carr first draws on neuroscienctific evidence to make the general claim about the plasticity of the brain. He then turns to the more specific issue of how specific mediums effect the brain. He takes the book and the internet as his major concerns. He explains how the brains of literate individuals differ from the brains of illiterate individuals, and what parts of the brain are involved in reading books. He claims that the book as a medium encourages patient, concentrated, linear thought. To go from one page to another for a long time involves following and focusing on that narrative. As a result, the brain engaging with a book becomes better at focusing, on following linear trains of thought, and so on. The brain using the internet, on the other hand, is inclined to be distracted. He explains how with the internet we are always open to new pages, new hyperlinks, new tabs, and how, as a result, the part of our brain involved in judgement and decision making is engaged. While reading a book our decisions are relatively limited. We can put the book down and do something else, or we can keep reading. But with the internet we have the possibility of opening a new tab at any moment. And the activation of the part of the brain responsible for judgement is all it takes for us to be far more distractible on the internet. In any case, Carr is able to show that the internet and books both contain a unique intellectual ethic, and that they both effect the brain in different ways.

Carr makes a convincing case by extrapolating on McLuhan’s claim that the medium is the message. He shows that mediums are never just passive tools, but have a very active part in shaping our behavior, and in particular, our habits. The issue of habit has been increasingly important to me over the last number of months. And I think that Carr in many ways is getting at the issue of habits without making it explicit. When we talk about the medium being the message, or about the inclinations of a medium, what we are really talking about is the way that certain mediums instill certain unconscious habits in us. Using the internet, for example, I habitually jump from tab to tab, opening up different things and doing nothing useful. The medium encourages me to have certain habits. And this changes my brain. Habits show up in my brain probably.

Carr’s work leaves us with several lessons with regards to the importance of mediums. First, a medium is never a passive tool, but always possess a certain inclination, they always implicitly encourage us to behave in certain ways. Second, these mediums effect our brains in very real ways, produce noticeable effects in our behaviour and in our brains. Third, that we are best to think about mediums in terms of the habits they instill in us. Now that I have established these things about mediums in general, I would like to extrapolate it and reconnect it all to my discussion of minds and relationships.

So the first questions that I want to ask in order to reconnect the idea with mediums is this: What precisely is and is not a ‘medium’? If a medium is defined as ‘an agency or means of doing something’, then aren’t most things mediums? Does this mean that things like buildings, things like urban planning, things like economic systems, and even language itself, are mediums? If this is the case, and these things are ‘mediums’, then do all of these things contain something like the intellectual ethic and inclinations that Carr describes? If so, then what are the inclinations of these mediums? And how do we need to take them into account?

Well, I will just say right away that I think the answer to many of those questions is a yes: we do need to think of urban design, languages, and economic systems as ‘mediums’. And this means that we need to consider these mediums in the way that Carr describes: not as passive tools, but as things that instill certain habits in us and actively incline us towards certain types of thinking and behavior. We need to recognize, as McLuhan said, that mediums “alter ‘patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance’” (Carr, 3). Our lives, our experiences, our minds, and our relationships are being shaped on an unconscious level by mediums that are so fundamental to our existence that we don’t even recognize them as mediums. This is where I’m getting into a little bit of trouble. I have not read enough about urban design, economic systems, or language in order to understand this stuff. But I’ll try.

So is it possible to consider architecture and urban design to be a medium? And if so, what are the inclinations of this medium that we need to be aware of? Well I think that the answer to the first question is a definite yes. Human beings always interact with buildings, and buildings are always a way that we get certain things done. Buildings are almost always a means to something, and they are therefore a medium of sorts. But does this means that buildings induce certain habits in us? That, as a medium, they incline us to act in certain ways? Indeed, Walter Benjamin made this precise claim about buildings and architecture. He claims that many of our artistic mediums are historically contingent, they come and go. But that architecture has remained a consistent medium for human beings, because “the human need for shelter is permanent.” Benjamin therefore claims that architecture's “effect ought to be recognized in any attempt to account for the relationship of the masses to the work of art” (40). Understanding how the masses relate to architecture, however, is not a simple task. Benjamin believes that architecture is received in at least two ways: “by use and by perception. Or, better: tactilely and optically.” Further, that our tactile reception of architecture comes about through habit and largely determines our optical perception: “Tactile reception comes about not so much by way of attention as by way of habit. The latter largely determines even the optical reception of architecture, which spontaneously takes the form of casual noticing, rather than attentive observation” (40). I have a hard time understanding Benjamin. But clearly he regards architecture as a medium that is both artistic, and one that most people engage with. Further, he seems to think that the way people interact with architecture subtlety introduces habits into their lives. This would imply that architecture is indeed a medium as defined by Carr: a means to doing something that contains an implicit message, a secret suggestion, an inclination.

David Harvey further corroborates this idea that architecture and urban planning constitute an important medium for human choice. In The Condition Of Postmodernity he has a chapter called ‘Postmodernism in the city’. In it he discusses the change from modernity to postmodernity in terms of architecture, city planning, and urban design. He says that the switch from modernity to postmodernity in these field is characterized by the rejection of attempts to rationally organize space so as to regulate social and economic conditions. “Whereas the modernists see space as something to be shaped for social purposes and therefore always subservient to the construct of a social project, the postmodernists see space as something independent and autonomous, to be shaped according to aesthetic aims and principles which have nothing necessarily to do with any overarching social objective, save, perhaps, the achievement of timeless and ‘disinterested’ beauty as an objective in itself” (66). Clearly there is something important at stake in urban design and the management of space. “How a city looks and how its spaces are organized,” Harvey claims, “forms a material base upon which a range of possible sensations and social practices can be thought about, evaluated, and achieved” (66-67, my italics). I have emphasized the words ‘material base’ because I am trying to draw attention to the way in which the material world has the ability to govern our unconscious thoughts and habits, and is therefore a medium in the way Carr describes. And it seems that governments are aware that cities work on this level of unconscious patterns of behavior. This is why governments strive for “the rationalization of spatial patterns and of circulation systems so as to promote equality (at least of opportunity), social welfare, and economic growth” (69).

So, it is clear that cities constitute an important medium for choice. They are designed in ways that are supposed to maximize equality. They are purposefully created so as to allow people access to certain things and not to other things. But is it fair to say that they instill habits in people? And that they meet the definition of a medium in that sense? The answer seems to be yes. And I think that Harvey’s use of Pierre Bourdieu’s work is telling. He draws on Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’, which refers to the totality of learned habits and dispositions that individuals acquire in a given society. In the realm of habitus “we each of us possess powers of regulated improvisation, shaped by experience, which allow us ‘an endless capacity to engender products – thoughts, perception, expressions, actions – whose limits are set by the historically situated conditions’ of their production” (345, my italics). I emphasize the idea of experience and the idea of history for a few reason. By emphasizing experience I want to communicate that habits are not essential, they are learned from the mediums that we have around us, and for Harvey, the design of cities is an important medium for our choices. And I emphasize the issue of history because I want to hint at the final section of this essay. If these are historically contingent habits, then history will be an important place to look when we are thinking about change. But all that I really need you to take away from these last few paragraphs is that buildings and cities are mediums in the sense that they are a means by which we accomplish, and more importantly, that they implicitly incline us to behave in certain ways. So I think it is fair to say that architecture and cities meet Carr’s definition of a medium. But what about language?

So is it possible to consider language itself a medium? Language is so intimately linked to our experiences that we might not always think about it. But to me it seems like language is clearly one of our fundamental mediums. Every choice and most actions we make are mitigated by it. We often have to say something in order to actualize a choice, and you have to use linguistic categories to even conceptualize a choice. Language is perhaps the most fundamental institution. So, it seems pretty obvious to me that language must be considered a medium. The next question, then, is What is the inclination of language as a medium? What is the message of language as a medium?

Well, I think that language inclines us towards valuation and judgement. I don’t think it is possible to talk about something without implicitly evaluating that thing. Is it possible to label something without embedding some kind of value judgement in that label. Can you think of a value-free word? I wonder if I can. I’m not sure. But for the most part I would say that language inclines us towards judging something one way or another.

To really make this analysis more complete I would have to say what the most common words are in our daily language, and what kind of value judgement is implicit in that language. But I don’t feel like taking those pains right now. So I’ll just say that at some point I’ll have to look more closely at this question of language and how it inclines us towards judgement. That would really be helpful in creating a historical theory of mind. But right now I just want to finish up this section on mediums so I can move on to the issues of history and other stuff. But suffice it to say that I think language is a crucial medium for choice, and that it the language we use inclines us towards judging things in certain ways. Just a quick example: can you think of any word that can be used to describe a woman who has a lot of sex that has a positive connotation? It is tough to think of one. Slut, whore, promiscuous, etc., are the words that we usually have to describe a woman like that. But all of those words don’t simply describe the phenomenon, they also implicitly judge it. I think the same is probably true of much language: it is embedded with valuation. And a last point, I will just say that language also inclines us towards generalization, towards the violence of language that Zizek describes.

Now I’d like to ask if economic systems can also be considered mediums. This question as to whether economic system in itself constitutes a medium is a question I have less to say about. Mainly because it seems pretty obvious to me that if something like a city or language can be considered a medium, then the economic system is also a medium. In fact, it seems as though the economic system might be the most crucial of all mediums. In the past six months or more I have become more and more concerned with economic analysis. This is largely thanks to Collingwood, David Harvey, Zizek, and of course, Marx. Harvey pushed me to think seriously about Marxism, and so I picked up my copy of The German Ideology and found it engaging. Zizek then pushed me further to think about Marxism. I am still very confused by Zizek. But the one thing I’d like to note is Zizek’s claims that if we are to address social issues then we must address the economic system above all else. He says that “one can reduce all political, juridical, cultural content to the ‘economic base’, ‘deciphering’ it as its ‘expression’ – all except class struggle, which is the political in the economic itself” (IDOLC, 293). I don’t understand the end of that sentence, with the idea of excepting class struggle. But it is clear that the economic system, for Zizek, is the fundamental medium in which all other mediums are embedded.

It seems as though Zizek thinks that economics is the fundamental medium. Indeed, this is the fundamental tenant of Marx and of historical materialism: we are in the main determined and constituted by the material conditions in which we live. What people are, Marx argues, “coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production” (German Ideology, 7). The economic system is how we gain access to our basic material needs; it provides us with food, shelter, relationships, etc.. Everything is mediated through this basic care of the physical body. Furthermore, the economic system in many ways creates who we are, “that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances” (Ibid., 29). This means that the economic system, too, fits Carr’s definition of a medium in that it actively creates habits of behavior in us. The economic system as a medium inclines us to do certain things, it makes us into something.

So what is the inclination of our economic system as a medium? Well that is a super difficult question, and I don’t really know how to answer it. I am inclined to resort to some kind of platitude about greed and capitalism and blah blah blah. But it would make sense that the economic system inclines us to greed, towards consumption, towards conceptual interactions with other people.

And this is one thing I’d like to say that will connect all of these issues of mediums to my original questions in the first section. I was asking why some of my relationships seemed to exist based on very little other than labels. And in particular, I experience this at my job. When I have an economically defined roll, as a ‘barista’, people don’t need to worry about any of the other things that I might be. When we first meet people we ask them ‘what do you do?’, by which we typically mean, ‘what is your profession/job? how do you make your money?’. It seems to me that the economic system is in many ways does seem like the master medium that governs our behavior and our relationships.

I still don’t know how to say precisely what the inclination of capitalism is. But it seems like when the violence of language meets the violence of the economic system, then some bad things happen. We have a social system in which we can label people certain things and leave them to the violence of the economic system. Those two processes would corroborate one another. The economic system has people born into poverty, and then the language of the economic system makes it so that they are blamed for their plight. ‘They deserve to be poor because they didn’t work hard enough, didn’t take advantage of their opportunities’. It seems to me that the interaction between the three mediums I’m describing is very real. Cities and urban design play into the needs of the economic system, the language helps create the economic system and then perpetuates the economic system. It seems that the mediums contain these types of inclinations.

I’m running out of ways to talk about this stuff right now. But it should be clear, hopefully, that based on Carr’s definition of mediums as containing inclinations, cities, language, and economic systems can all be considered mediums. All of these things are a means to doing something, and they all encourage us to do those things in certain ways. Cities incline us to go certain places, to do certain types of jobs, to engage in certain types of behavior. Language encourages us to generalize and value things in certain ways. And economic systems incline us to care for our bodies in certain ways, and seems to exert disproportionate influence on the other mediums. Meaning that language, urban design, and other things, are all effected by the economic system. That the economic system is the base, or master medium, in which all other mediums work through. This makes sense in that our bodies are the main thing that allow us to do anything. So perhaps the body is the master medium, and the economic system is the way the body continues to function. So anyways, that should be enough to make it clear that our minds work through many large mediums that interact with one another, and that cities, language, and economic systems are all crucial mediums for our choices. And furthermore, that the problem I addressed in the first section has to do with the inclinations of our mediums. I believe that some of my relationships have a strictly conceptual quality because language and the economic system incline us to think of people in strictly utilitarian, and not empathic, terms.

Before I move on to try and propose some solutions to the problem of conceptual relationships, I would like to say a few more things about mediums. The questions are, How do mediums get structured in this way? If everything down to cities and language is a medium, how do we change them? What is their internal logic or structure? What sort of factors contribute to the constitution of a medium? To answer this I would like to use my friends Michel Foucault, Guy Claxton, and David Harvey.

The mediums that I am speaking of consist of things that are typically regarded as mundane or ordinary. In order to understand how cities, languages, and economic systems are mediums, I think we need to focus on basic things like time, space, movement, sleep, etc.. In other words, in order to grasp the nature of our largest mediums we have to look for the significance in the mundane.

Foucault’s Discipline & Punish is loaded with this type of observation of social mediums. Foucault claims that sometime at the beginning of the nineteenth century a new type of society came into existence, what he calls a ‘disciplinary society’. The hallmark of disciplinary society is the intense regulation of individual bodies. Foucault believes that disciplinary societies came into existence for a variety of reasons, the rise of capitalist economies being one of the most important. He describes how the most basic facets of life came under the gaze of elite groups of individuals. Doctors, psychiatrists, factory owners, legal officials, and other individuals were suddenly capable of closely observing individuals. As a result it became possible to create large bodies of knowledge about individuals, their lives, their movements, their thoughts and attitudes, and so on. And that knowledge in turn allowed people to be regulated in more intense ways. Foucault would say that the creation of that knowledge, in fact, produced those individuals by telling them what they were. In particular, Foucault claims that mundane things like sleep, language, movement, space, and time were the most closely regulated. In other words, Foucault believes that a new form of political/economic culture, and thus new people, were created through the regulation of the most basic aspects of life. And for my sake, I’ll say that a new social medium (capitalist/disciplinary society) was created through the regulation of the mundane.

Claxton also offers some insights into the significance of the mundane. In What’s The Point Of School Claxton argues that a school’s culture is determined by the way it handles very basic things. Claxton, just like Foucault, identifies space, language, and time as key factors in determining the culture of a school. It matters how we arrange our spaces, how we regulate our time, how we speak about things. Claxton, for example, says that it is harmful to speak of students as ‘bright’ or ‘dull’. He argues that those labels imply that there is something inherently smart or dumb about a certain person. And instead we should be speaking of students capacity for learning. That the word ‘learning’ needs to be the crux of school culture. Claxton says that “small changes in the classroom layout and the activities on offer cumulatively shift students’ sense of ‘what we believe and value’, and they respond accordingly,” and that “Building a learning culture is not just a matter of individual teachers in separate classrooms. Every aspect of school life is important” (149, my italics). In other words, for schools, the most important things are the most basic things: the words we use, the way we arrange our space, the actions we partake in. For Claxton, schools are the medium to education, and the medium is the message. And the medium lies in the most basic aspects of our lives.

These two examples lend credence to David Harvey’s claims in The Condition Of Postmodernity. In that book Harvey wants to understand what it is that people loosely refer to as ‘postmodernity’. The most obvious question is, What is the relationship between the cultures that we call modernity and what we call postmodernity? Harvey argues that, above all else, the experience of (post)modernity is fundamentally connected with a certain experience of space and time (space-time). Furthermore, that the experience of space-time is closely tied to the economic system that is in place. Harvey claims that the rise of modernity is about new experiences of space and time that resulted from the growth of industry and capitalism. As industry grew in Europe people began exploring more, commerce grew, products could be shipped internationally, time became a more precious commodity, maps became more common. In short, as capitalism grew people began to experience space-time in new and profound ways. Harvey refers to this phenomenon as ‘time-space compression’, which refers to “processes that so revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time that we are forced to alter, sometimes in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to ourselves” (240). And the word compression refers to how “ the history of capitalism has been characterized by speed-up in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the world sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us” (240). Modernity as a cultural phenomena, therefore, is associated with a round of time-space compression that was brought on by the expansion of capitalism. Similarly, Harvey argues that postmodernity arose out of another round of time-space compression that was caused by a transformation in capitalism’s structure. He argues that we have changed from a Fordist-Keynesian economic model to what he calls one of ‘flexible accumulation’, meaning that the economy now “rests on flexibility with respect to labour processes, labour markets, products, and patterns of consumption” (147). Harvey drives home the point that the most minor things in our lives, like how we experience space and time, can actually have profound consequences for our personal and cultural lives. He corroborates Foucault and Claxton’s claims that culture emerges out of mundane things like basic language, space, time, movement, sleep, and so on. And all of these thinkers allow me to understand that our must essential mediums are constituted by constellations of these mundanities. Our mediums (economic systems, languages, cities, etc.) are constituted by certain organizations of space, time, movement, and so on. The mundane parts of our life have a lot of power to determine how we think, how we live our lives, and what our habits are.

I think that Carr is also aware of the importance of these mundane things, and how they create the mediums that give us our habits. He begins explicating his idea of the intellectual ethic of mediums by talking about the history of clocks and maps. He explains how each one of these intellectual tools, these ‘tools of the mind’, change the way that we think about the world, and thus change the way that we act within the world. Carr, however, has less to say about what the intellectual ethic of the map or the clock is. He is just saying that they are mediums that we use to understand ourselves in the world, and that they too have a set of assumptions, that they are a medium with a message.

Carr, however, does have plenty to say about the implications of the internet as a medium. In particular, Carr worries that the internet is making people more machine like, that by fully committing to the electronic world we are sacrificing something uniquely human. That by being constantly distracted by the internet and technology we are losing something. Namely, the power of judgement, empathy, and compassion. He claims that we are experiencing “a slow erosions of our humanness and our humanity” (220). That “the more distracted we become, the less able we are to experience the subtlest, most distinctively human forms of empathy, compassion, and other emotions.... It would not be rash to suggest that as the Net reroutes our vital paths and diminishes our capacity for contemplation, it is altering the depth of our emotions as well as our thoughts” (221). Indeed, the message of the internet is one of distraction, and I agree with Carr that this has serious consequences for our capacity for empathy and compassion. We are running the risk of destroying those traits that we think of as human or humane. “It may be that we are now entering the final stage of that [technological] entrenchment. We are welcoming the frenziedness [of technology] into our souls” (222). We do indeed need to worry about the way the modern world inclines us to eschew empathy, compassion, and emotions.

I think, however, that these issues go far beyond the internet as a medium. Because the disappearance of empathy and compassion is something that is happening in places beyond the internet. I fear that it is happening in our cities and urban design, in our language, and in our economic system. That is why I undertook this analysis of those mediums. Because I wonder if the message of those mediums is to abandon empathy for generalizations about people. I wonder if the message of our economic system is that we are essentially our jobs, and that as long as someone is economically defined we don’t need to take the time to show them any empathy or compassion. And this is the connection to the previous section on the difference between empathic and conceptual interaction, and why the question of mediums and their inclinations matters so much. People often habitually treat me as if I am simply a barista, as if I don’t need to be thought of in serious or nuanced ways. And I don’t think I can chock this up to stupidity, or laziness, or anything like that. I think I need to look at larger forces. And I think that I can understand this qualitative divide in my relationships by focusing on the mediums through which my relationships are mediated. And it seems to me that the message of our most prominent mediums, is that we ought to abandon empathy in favor of economic efficiency and personal generalization. And since I suspect that our economic system may be the most important medium, I will say that the message of capitalism might be greed, generalization, labeling, and a lack of empathy. And all of this happens on the habitual level.

I believe that I can only understand my relationships by understanding their mediums. And that is what I wanted to do in this section. I was asking, If the medium is the message, and if language, cities, and economic systems are mediums, then what is the message of those mediums? What habits are these mediums instilling in me and my fellow humans? And I fear that the mediums are giving us habits that are cold, and unemotional. We are being turned into beings that habitually label one another, habitually ignore one another, habitually scorn one another, habitually interact at the superficial level of words, habitually avoid empathy and compassion.

This was a hard section to write for me. I struggled to write about these mediums. I didn’t know how to approach them. But I made it through. And in the end I think I have addressed the question of relationships by focusing on mediums. My conclusions, however, are too vague. Carr believes that the internet, with its inclination towards distraction, is dulling our capacity for empathy. And I am similarly concluding that the economic system, our language, and our cities are also inclining use towards distraction and the dulling of empathy. It seems to be a fact of my experience and the world around me. I know there is still a lot of love and empathy out there. But there is also a lot of alienation, a lot of coldness, a lot of war, and probably not enough empathy. And I think that this must have something to do with our most prominent mediums.

In the last two sections I need to try and build on this work I’ve just done. I think that the only way out of this problem, the only way to understand our mediums and our habits, is through historical study. Similarly, I think that the only way to create informed policy is through historical study. And that the only way to reinvigorate our culture with empathy and love is through historical study. Thus, the next section will be on historical study, and the issue of human self-creation.

On The Temporal Confinement Of Choice, Or, Why There Is No Need To Worry

My friend wonders if I worry sometimes. I don't know if I worry so much. I don't feel like I do. I think a lot about things. But do I worry? I'm not sure.

I was thinking about this as I was walking and I was reminded of two different things. One is a post I wrote about a year ago, last April, on choice, time, and worrying.

It also made me think about my recent writing on the purposeful creation of habits, and how the relationship between choice and time ties into that idea.

Last April I was trying to figure out the issue of worrying. What was it all about? Why did we do it? What is going on with this worrying business? I went through some discussion about the issue of choice, its relationship to time, in that you have to 'cross that bridge when you come to it', or, in other words, that you can't make a choice until you have reached the proper moment in time in which that choice can actually be translated into action. What is choice other than the doing of something. A very mundane and interesting example is the one of ordering food in restaurants. In theory we decide what we want before the server asks for our order. We choose this one thing in our minds. But then the server comes and we end up ordering something different, we go with our other option. The choice wasn't actually enacted until we told the server what we wanted. All of the other 'deciding' was just mental prep. This commonplace example should make it clear that choice is firmly confined by time.

So then, worrying, what is this? Well I guess worrying is typically anxiety about future action, it is anxiety about choices that we will have to make in the future, or about our uncertainty of what choices we are to make, or can make. Worrying.

I ended up concluding that waiting had to be a crucial thing. Is waiting the antithesis of worrying? Well, voluntary waiting, deliberate waiting, patient and comfortable waiting, is certainly contrary to worrying. Worrying is just nervous and anxious waiting. Waiting is something we do all the time, we can't stop. So I think that since choice is so temporally confined we really need to embrace waiting as a crucial step in the decision making process. Or, as I put it back in April 2010: "Essentially, action flows from non-action. We can only make choices when the moment to choose comes. And we can only get to that moment of choice by waiting for that moment to come. So when we are up late at night worrying about what job to apply to, or where to move to, or what to do next, it is probably better to go to sleep and wait for a moment in which you are capable of taking action. Sure, you could apply for a job at 3 AM. Or you could make the moment for choice come sooner. But I bet there are many situations in which worrying is nothing but trying to force a choice that hasn't reached its proper moment in time."

I wonder how true this stuff is, or how much it makes sense. But to me it makes sense a bit. Choice and time and waiting. If we grapple with those things then worrying should appear silly and out of touch with the nature of choice and action.

So how does this relate to the deliberate creation of habits and inclinations? Well, what I was thinking has to do with the intuitive nature of choice and social action. Back to the example of ordering food in a restaurant. We do that sort of stuff intuitively. We just say things when the time comes. When we reach that moment in time to make a choice we have to rely on our intuitive behavior, we have to rely on our inclinations to actually enact the choice that we have rationally decided upon.

This is why it would be important to purposefully create habits and inclinations for ourselves. Because if we are taking charge of ourselves in that way, if we are taking charge of our habits and inclinations, then we are most likely to actually follow through on the choices we hope to make.

I'm not saying this very clearly or very elaborately right now. Mainly because I made this connection a few minutes ago as I was walking home. But I am pleased to have resurrected this idea of mine about the relationship between time and choice. And I am pleased to have roughly connected it to my much newer ideas about the purposeful creation of habits. I find this stuff to be really fascinating. This issue of choice and time, this issue of habit and inclination.

I look forward to doing a lot of thinking about the issue of habit. Zizek and Benjamin both thought of habit as a serious issue. I wonder. It is starting to feel more and more important to me, both personally and intellectually.

E.M. Cioran and Hopeful Nihilism, Non-Action and Worrying, Choice and Time: Incoherent Ideas

So, I was raised by someone who identifies with nihilism, and so it has almost always been a part of my life since I started thinking about it. I would say my relationship with nihilism is complicated. Recently, though, I have been getting into a fair amount of nihilistic philosophy. Anyways, I am currently reading a book that I wanted to write about. It is pretty exciting at this point, and I wanted to throw a few things around. Mainly connections I see between Nihilism and Eastern philosophies of identity, action, and choice.

So, first things first, the book. It is The Trouble With Being Born by E.M. Cioran. Cioran was born in Romania in 1911 and moved to Paris in 1937 and lived there until he died in 1995, so says the back of the book. I find interesting that he moved out of Romania in 37, only a few years before some bad things started happening with WWII, all of which would eventually lead to Romania being a part of the USSR. So, fortunate that he moved when he did, cause he never would have been able to have the same career in the East.

As for the writing, he writes aphoristically. All lines/sections separated by the same symbol, divided into 12 unnamed sections. I haven't read a lot of things that are presented in this fashion. John Gray's Straw Dogs is organized in a very similar way, except he has chapter names, and subheadings for each small section. Gray actually quoted Cioran a lot. So that is why I ended up getting this book, because I liked Straw Dogs a lot.

So what is he saying? What is going on in this book? I am still sorta confused as to how to think about it, how to summarize or paraphrase it. But I guess the thing that interests me the most right now is the way in which he presents a hopeful nihilism. The universality of pain, the illusory nature of the self, the deterministic weight of history and chance, the need to transform yourself to attain understanding, and the ultimate futility of intellectual work, all of these things come glaring through in a way that makes me feel good. John Gray did a very similar thing for me. When you put these really central ideas to the test, things like the self, choice, knowledge, hard work, they start to shake a little; they don't hold as much water as I would have suspected.

I would like to use one quotation. Because I think this one highlights a lot of the ways that these nihilistic views can be seen as akin to Buddhist ideas, or Hindu ideas. Cioran and Gray both talk a lot about the Buddha and about other eastern philosophies.

Anyways, quotation: "X insults me. I am about to him him. Thinking it over, I refrain. Who am I? which is my real self: the self of the retort or that of the refraining? My first reaction is always energetic; the second one, flabby. What is known as 'wisdom' is ultimately only a perpetual 'thinking it over,' i.e., non-action as first impulse."

Now, I think this quotation is great. The way the self evaporates when we realize how multiplicitous and inconsistent our feelings are, how much we are capable of doubting and problematizing our own minds at every second. This last portion I italicized, non-action as first impulse. Along with the idea that the self does not exist, the idea of non-action is very important in a number of eastern religions. In Buddhism the idea of mindfulness amounts to an observant non-action, in Taoism the idea of Wu Wei means non-action and is associated with letting things take their natural course. Another Buddhist idea that I like a lot, and believe I read in John Gray: 'do nothing and your Will will be done.' This idea, non-action as the key to facilitating personal growth, or progress, or movement, or action, or whatever it is. But it means letting your inclinations manifest themselves spontaneously. I suppose sometimes you need to force yourself to go a little further, or to work a little harder. But I think the idea here is to let your unconscious mind run the show and trust that it will alert you to whatever things need to be done.

Think about worrying. Sitting around, worrying, feeling concerned that things aren't gonna happen, that you need to make them happen. I have thought about this before, when people say 'don't worry it will get taken care of.' And then there is the feeling, well, I have to make them happen. And sure, you will make them happen. But why is it that in that particular moment you are worrying about it and not simply taking care of it? Why are you thinking and not doing?

Well, this brings me to an interesting idea about the relationship between choice/action and time. Choice, and the action chosen, are always located at a specific point in time. It is impossible to make a choice unless we have arrived at that specific moment in time in which that choice can be enacted. In other words, choice is temporally confined.

I suppose a colloquial phrase communicates this in a way that I find useful: 'You'll have to cross that bridge when you come to it.' So, what does this mean and how do we relate this to non-action and worrying? First of all, again, this idea of crossing a bridge when you come to it recognizes that choices can only be made in specific moments in which those choices can be converted to action (i.e. choice and action, and thus time, are inseparable). Second, this can be seen as encouraging the idea of waiting, i.e. non-action. It tells you that you can't decide yet. It is not time to act, you have to wait until you can act, and trust that you are going to do the right thing at the time. Third, worrying, then, is an early and nervous anticipation of a bridge, so to speak. We know the moment in time in which we can take action is approaching, but the uncertain nature of that impending moment is disconcerting. It is hard to trust that we are going to get things done. Because when we think about it, it seems daunting. I dunno, this all feels very incomplete and sketchy to me. But, one thing I can say for sure, thinking about doing things is way harder than actually doing things. Worrying is harder than doing. Waiting is harder than arriving at moments of action.

Jeez, very related idea. When Cioran says that wisdom is 'non-action as first impulse' I think that is important. To have a frame of mind that doesn't worry, that is okay with uncertainty, that trusts itself to move from moment to moment knowing that it will handle whatever comes up; I think that is what this means. That we need to cultivate a frame of mind in which we don't lash out physically, but we take things as they are and we do what we will. Having plans can hinder things. Having a strategy seems deluded and unnecessary. The unfolding of moments always changes our plans. Better to rely on your ability to act on the fly. Better to just let things come and trust yourself to do what you need to do.

So let me try to wrap up somehow... I think a lot of the nihilistic stuff I have been reading lately has many parallels with Buddhism, Taoism, etc. Mainly in their emphasis on the non-existence of the self, the importance of waiting (non-action), and especially the relationship between waiting and choice, non-action and action.

Essentially, action flows from non-action. We can only make choices when the moment to choose comes. And we can only get to that moment of choice by waiting for that moment to come. So when we are up late at night worrying about what job to apply to, or where to move to, or what to do next, it is probably better to go to sleep and wait for a moment in which you are capable of taking action. Sure, you could apply for a job at 3 AM. Or you could make the moment for choice come sooner. But I bet there are many situations in which worrying is nothing but trying to force a choice that hasn't reached its proper moment in time.

So it comes back to waiting, being okay with uncertainty, and trusting that you will do the right thing when the moment comes.

One closing quotation that I read after writing all this that demonstrates the importance of waiting and choice etc.: "Time, fertile in resources, more inventive and more charitable than we think, possesses a remarkable capacity to help us out, to afford us at any hour of the day some new humiliation."

Time solves more problems than man ever will. Someone said that, too. I won't look it up now. But, time, waiting, choice, acting, all these things are wrapped up. They can't be separated.

Time and choice, acting and not acting, thinking and doing.

I like waiting. I like not reading. I like not thinking. I like not speaking. I like not writing.

They always bring me back to doing, reading, thinking, speaking, writing.

New York Insomnia

Since I have been in New York I have been up way too late. All the time.

It is strange. The first night I was here I was up until about 1 or 2 am. Reasonable. Not an unusual time. Maybe a little later than usual. Then the next day it was 3 am. Then the next day it was 4 am. Then the night before last I was up til 6 am and slept until 10 am. I was thinking that if i forced myself only to get 4 hours of sleep I would somehow resume a more regular/reasonable sleep schedule. Then last night I was up until 3 am and again got up at 10. So that is fine. I'll keep getting up at 10 and that's fine. This lack of sleep makes me think about two things: coffee and time.

Since I have been visiting family in New York I have been settling into a bit of a routine. Getting up at 10, showering and listening to some music, driving to Barnes & Noble, like a 20 or 30 minute drive cause everything is spread out in Putnam Valley, getting some coffee, reading the book I am reading, and then looking at more books. I have been buying lots of books. That is probably not good I shouldn't be spending money but I have a hard time controlling myself. But anyways, talking to my sister about this routine she suggested the regular cups of coffee could be keeping me awake? But that doesn't make any sense I drink a lot of coffee pretty much all the time. It shouldn't be affecting my sleep, especially because I am drinking this coffee at like 11 am or thereabouts. Definitely shouldn't make me stay up til 3-6 am.

Then it makes me think about time because I knew a girl who had a penchant for staying up extremely late. Occupying herself throughout the night with various tasks. She told me that there was always something that you could do. And it's true, as I've been finding out. I remember when I first met her I thought this was strange. Just because I am used to the typical schedule that most people run by. So for a long time I always felt like night time was a sort of down time. A time when real things weren't really done. Then I just remembered that show 'Insomniac' with Dave Attell. All kinds of people do all kinds of different things in the middle of the night. Conceptions of time and social regulation. Clocks and conceptions of time. It's like, for the bulk of my life, and to this point, I definitely just take time for granted. Meaning that the way most people think of time. That we wake up in the mornings and we work our jobs during the day and night time we go to bed so we can do it again. Ummm, I don't have very developed thoughts on this topic. But, as a quick look at the internet showed, there are plenty of books written about the history of clocks and time. I wonder at what point most people were aware of clocks and time. Or at what point peoples lives really started to be changed by the idea of time/time measurement. I am also very curious about how the invention of the light bulb changed the way people conceived of time. Cause sure, sun goes down, no electricity, days over, sorry. It would be really hard to do things by candlelight. And I'm sure candles weren't the easiest thing to come by for some people. But then the day is extended by electricity. I have read something about when street lights were first put in city streets and that's pretty interesting stuff. I also know about a book about the history of air conditioners and how they facilitated the growth of schools and stuff in the South. I think the history of things that seem to have no history is really cool. These things have been part of my experience for my whole life, so it is interesting to see how it changed things. Anyways, that is enough of that.

This insomnia business has been enjoyable. I have been getting lots of work on this paper done. And have been listening to lots of music, chatting with friends, and watch some tv shows that I have been enjoying. I mean time means practically nothing to me these days.

I will admit, however, that losing the regularity of hours and days is a little bit disconcerting. It makes me feel like I am endlessly drifting forward in a sort of void. As opposed to moving through weeks and months, Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday. January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December.

The calendar imposes a sense of order on my existence. I wonder if that heightens my sense of monotony at all. I bet it does. I've thought about this vaguely a number of times. Along with the repetition of work and education and life in society I bet it does make life seem more repetitious and less dynamic then it really is. I think this is where my big interest in dynamism comes from. The fact that it seems very easy for life to seem cyclical. I live days that have the same name but no day is ever the same. Nothing is ever the same as it was before. But it is useful to speak of them as if they were.

I wonder if life felt more dynamic before calendars. Probably not, because in order for there to be dynamism there had to be a sort of order. Dynamism comes into existence once there is a sense of order. Before that life was probably just life. You just did things with a certain sense of yourself and the days and age and time. But knowledge about time probably wasn't that elaborate for a long time. This is wild and outrageous speculation.

But anyways, I came from a world in which time was always highly ordered for me. So to have no obligations, (I have no job, no classes, nowhere to be these days), is highly unusual. When I said it makes me feel like I'm drifting in a void, I guess I mean that it makes existence feel much more constant. Sleep combined with the sun combined with the calendar does a good job of making my life feel segmented. It makes it seem like life is experienced in intervals. But no, when I sleep I'm literally just lying their breathing. I'm not really in touch with existence when I sleep. And so I guess you could say that not being able to sleep gives me an extreme awareness of how many hours my mind and body really exist for. It gives me a heightened awareness of my corporeal continuity.

Anyways, fuck sleep. I am doing lots of reading and writing and watching and thinking and shit. During the days, however, I do feel tired. BIIIIG OLD YAWNNNN right there.

I have the rest of my life to be on a schedule. I'll have a job soon. I'll be in graduate school soon enough. I'll be overloaded with obligations soon enough. I have my whole life to live by society's rules. I have my whole life to obey the all mighty clock and calendar. Right now I suppose I am just living as my body lives. Ummmm, I'm not sure what that means. I guess it means I am just living. My body regulates itself. Unfortunately society regulates me too.

So I guess that is the conflict. My body isn't obeying social standards of sleep and shit. And it feels strange because I have been indoctrinated into the culture of time pretty thoroughly. Whatevs yo. I'm just fucking around. I ain't got shit. Signing off. Perhaps I'll write another blog tonight if I can't sleep and feel the urge. Hollatchaboi.