Chapter 1: Seven Sins
“Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny?Look at the people I killed. An obese man,a disgusting man who could barely standup... who if you saw him on the street,you'd point so your friends could mock himalong with you. Who if you saw him whileyou were eating, you wouldn't be able tofinish your meal. After him I picked thelawyer. And, you both must have beensecretly thanking me for that one. Thiswas a man who dedicated his life to makingmoney by lying with every breath he couldmuster... to keeping rapists and murdererson the streets...A woman... so ugly on the inside that shecouldn't bare to go on living if shecouldn't be beautiful on the outside. Adrug dealer... a drug dealing pederast, actually.And, don't forget the disease spreadingwhore. Only in a world this shitty couldyou even try to say these were innocentpeople and keep a straight face.That's the point. You see a deadly sin onalmost every street corner, and in everyhome, literally. And we tolerate it.Because it's common, it seems trivial, andwe tolerate, all day long, morning, noonand night. Not anymore. I'm setting theexample, and it's going to be puzzled overand studied and followed, from now on.”
-Kevin Spacey as John Doe, “Seven”
There is no doubt that future historians will catalogue the period spanning the late 20th and early 21st century as a considerably dynamic point in human development. As with any era of technological change and readjustment, our age of the information technology and globalization has led civilization to previously unavailable opportunities, but also brought a looming shadow of societal problems and economical inequities. However, what makes this “information age” unique from the technological revolutions of decades past is that what is under consideration is a human innovation which does not merely bring about structural changes in a particular area, but in all endeavors. That is to say, the agricultural and industrial revolutions hinged on inventions of a specific purpose, for example, the assembly line for factory production, the cotton gin for farm production, and so on. As a result, they were restricted, in effect, to having a direct effect on only a particular stratum of society or occupation. Not so with the two symbols of recent times: the computer and the global economy. In short, what is so remarkable about them is that they are so characteristically ubiquitous in their nature. Rather than simply changing particular levels of civilization and causing subsequent, indirect effects, the human being and its society in this age finds itself being fundamentally changed on a basic level in every way.
Needless to say, such drastic fluidity, combined with the raw power of ease of access to information makes this moment in history a pivotal one. There exists the potential for both unimaginable advancement and the downward slide into a world run amok. To the former, it exists almost as an obvious point. The ability for individuals around the world to communicate and share ideas and information as a collaborative unit alone has proved to be enormously helpful in expanding a common culture and adding to the knowledge of all. On the other hand, the latter seems hard, at immediate assessment, to identify. The suggestion of where to begin exists in an analysis of the significant social changes that are bred by characteristics implicit to modern technology and economic trends. Once those are isolated and discussed, they can be applied to the individual who inhabits these alterations in their environment. To my mind, there are three such points to be made.
First is the enormous increase in the basic attribute of speed. Everything has become faster as a result of the ability of previously disparate portions of society to communicate with one another and coordinate their actions. Economics, too, seems to have paralleled this speed of communication as transactions continue their widespread migration from concrete banks and tellers to an instantaneous, electronic format. And, no doubt, the improvement of transportation itself has boomed in recent years. Consequently, the problem of “physical distance” has all but completely disappeared into the background.
Second is the rise of “disposability” as the norm, which, arguably, is the progeny of increasing speed. Objects have become more mass-produced and cheaper in their production. Much of this reason belongs to the outsourcing of multinational corporations (as per economic sense and the state of the global economy) to foreign countries where labor laws are weaker and employment is cheaper to obtain. But beyond this, I attribute the huge abundance of production created by the global economy (production, which, shoddy and cheap in nature, breaks down quickly) leading to a mentality of “we can always purchase another one,” creating, ultimately, to a culture of disposability, in which most if not all objects are assumed to be replaceable. Third, and finally, is the growth of mass market culture. It is interesting to comment on the fact that firms are notoriously good at adapting to the conditions of the market (and the culture) in order to maximize sales. It is appropriate then, that the modern business model is to copy the consumer’s link to the larger community available through the internet, using all the trappings of modern marketing, logos, viral selling, and the like to breed what can only be called a mass market culture. In other words, to develop a market in which a companies standardized products are sold en masse to a community, via marketing to create a demand which would have otherwise not existed. In essence, the company has taken the consumer out of the equation by implanting a need through an advertising of its own devising and selling a product to it. One recalls the aggressive use of marketing by the De Beers diamond company in Japan to promote their product as essential to marriage. In the end, the centuries old tradition of exchanging tea sets while tying the knot has eventually faded, replaced by a corporate mass market strategy.
Combined in a variety of patterns and sequences, these three points reveal the ultimate negative impacts that modern technological and economic trends have had upon the individual and culture as a whole. Thus a picture emerges of humanity standing on the brink of considerable material comforts and opportunity, but social malaise and stagnation.
Gluttony: The Cheapening of Consumption
Growing speed and disposability mean that the use of a particular product is not only common, but fleeting as well. The individual, naturally, attributes less and less value to the experience utilizing or “consuming” that object. The use of the product becomes reduced to a meaningless, everyday task or event. Even worse, the desires produced in the individual by a mass market culture means that one consumes more and more, but cares less and less of the what exactly he or she is consuming. The act of consumption is so cheapened in the modern era. Of course, the most apparent evidence of this is in the actual existence of classic gluttony itself. In a word, obesity. After all, in terms of food, when the individual consumes quickly, cares little about what is being consumed, and is pushed to consume more, morbid obesity is almost a given. It’s no surprise then, that so many suffer from a certain plumpness at such a young age, developing diabetes, heart disease, and the like later in their lives. Such is the preponderance of gluttony in society. We have come to care little for the act of consumption of all kinds of products and in doing so, have demoted that activity to meaninglessness. And, as has once been said, depreciation of experience is the greatest crime.
Greed: The Cheapening of Possession
In very much the same vein, the value of possessing an object or a product has also declined dramatically. After all, what is the ultimate, long range worth of something which can be easily broken and easily replaced? Effectively, the only thing special about any of these possessions is the sole fact that it is the one that is being used at that particular time. This applies to immaterial things as much as concrete products. Occupations, which used to consist of a life’s work to an institution are now regarded as easily alterable, easily changeable. While, of course, this may not be a bad thing (one recalls the constant Generation X complaint of being betrayed by their employers), there is a certain sense of the value of that work, indeed the very value of possession, that is lost in this conversion.
Pride: The Primacy of “Social Inertia”
In general, one finds that throughout history, an edited version of Newton’s First Law of motion is appropriate in determining the behavior of groups of people. That is, a society in motion will stay in motion unless acted on an external force. By “motion,” of course, one implies that the society’s trends, norms, and actions tend to stay in place and maintain their course. This forms the concept that a community of individuals have a kind of “social inertia” which is the capability for that society to resist changes in its behaviors. A more tenuous but no the less arguable position is that this inertia is inversely proportional to the degree to which a community is intellectually active and willing to question its own assumptions. To give a more concrete example, the kind of social order described in Huxley’s Brave New World has nearly infinite inertia, in which all its members exist in a kind of drugged stupor. On the other hand, a community of philosophers and the like of a Grecian conception has very low inertia. To this end, the society we inhabit today is nearing points of greater and greater inertia as media and mass marketing culture insulates us from events that would shatter our belief system. After all, corporations must sell products, in which case the customer is always right. This includes fulfilling the need to believe and have confirmed certain assumptions about the way in which the world works. (One considers the great deal of ignorance concerning worker exploitation in third world countries by clothing companies.) We think less, and so our society is more stable, at the expense of growth and innovation. Consider modern film, too, which very rarely deals with situations where morality is ambiguous and where evil must always defeated.
Rage: The Growth of Careless Action
A celebrated case of psychological study goes as follows. A child is sat down and shown a video of an adult violently using a hammer to attack an inflatable clown doll. When placed into the same situation and given a hammer, the child’s first reaction in a countless number of trials was to imitate the movie. It reflects to a large the degree the fact that what is communicated to us has a large influence on the way we act. But since how a message is communicated has some power over the ultimate meaning, the form in which communication occurs therefore affects the way we act as well. Perhaps then, one could postulate that the speed of communication and the rise of disposability create a context which prompts careless action in the same way it has set the stage for careless consumption and possession. We care less about the things they do and their consequences on others. After all, we reason to ourselves, everything is so temporary and fast, why waste time caring about what is done?
Envy: The Life as a Power Play
When the individual has cheapened their relations to what surrounds them, life essentially dissolves into a meaningless pettiness. The significance of events or objects is purely dependent on the instrumental and arbitrary advantages against others. As life becomes valueless beyond these games, it evolves into a simple series of power plays which do not reflect any aim towards real value or sustainable constructive growth. But rather, the individual becomes selfish and unthinking; the only desire to be to obtain more of the material goods he or she is trained to want by the corporations. A collapse of a kind occurs, and pointless, fleeting manipulation of others and things becomes the central pursuit.
Sloth: The Death of Creativity
It’s not surprising that when the entertainment and media generated by mass market culture takes as its primary mode of communication a kind of one way relationship the receiver becomes more complacent and less inclined toward independent thought. The television, that staple of modern life, is a perfect example of such a relationship, in which the viewer is merely soaks in the messages of the sender. Without the exercise of having to respond to a medium, the path of least resistance is to act as a proverbial sponge, soaking up without taking the vital step of critically participating in any kind of personal response. Consequently, the media-saturated, information-overloaded era that we inhabit implicitly breeds a lack of innovation and creativity, an unwillingness to participate in an interaction with what is shown or given to you. Even everyday language and behavior, one notices, is couched in the language of modern media and pop culture references, often without any external or questioning of such usages.
Lust: The Destruction of Human Relationships
What all this adds up to, of course, is the turning of human relationships into flat, two dimensional connections with others. This inference, of course, touches upon only the microcosmic level. As discussed earlier, these effects are taking place on all areas of society simultaneously, entailing essentially that the microscopic picture of individual human relationships becoming stilted, temporary, and meaningless only reveals a tiny part of a larger, perhaps more uncomfortable macrocosmic picture of society as a whole.
That is, should the smaller relationships of society fall to the “sins” described above and reach a final, latent state of cheapened connections with others, the society itself becomes cheapened. We as a community of individuals become petty, lazy, intellectual sterile, and, perhaps worst of all, unconcerned with the fate of ourselves and others.
So, I suppose the most obvious step is this: what can be done? How can society restructure itself to adapt to the benefits of the new era while minimizing its negatives? This inquiry, perhaps simple, requires considerable analysis and discussion. But, ultimately, what results is a model of what is occurring and what our obligation is to altering its course.
-Kevin Spacey as John Doe, “Seven”
There is no doubt that future historians will catalogue the period spanning the late 20th and early 21st century as a considerably dynamic point in human development. As with any era of technological change and readjustment, our age of the information technology and globalization has led civilization to previously unavailable opportunities, but also brought a looming shadow of societal problems and economical inequities. However, what makes this “information age” unique from the technological revolutions of decades past is that what is under consideration is a human innovation which does not merely bring about structural changes in a particular area, but in all endeavors. That is to say, the agricultural and industrial revolutions hinged on inventions of a specific purpose, for example, the assembly line for factory production, the cotton gin for farm production, and so on. As a result, they were restricted, in effect, to having a direct effect on only a particular stratum of society or occupation. Not so with the two symbols of recent times: the computer and the global economy. In short, what is so remarkable about them is that they are so characteristically ubiquitous in their nature. Rather than simply changing particular levels of civilization and causing subsequent, indirect effects, the human being and its society in this age finds itself being fundamentally changed on a basic level in every way.
Needless to say, such drastic fluidity, combined with the raw power of ease of access to information makes this moment in history a pivotal one. There exists the potential for both unimaginable advancement and the downward slide into a world run amok. To the former, it exists almost as an obvious point. The ability for individuals around the world to communicate and share ideas and information as a collaborative unit alone has proved to be enormously helpful in expanding a common culture and adding to the knowledge of all. On the other hand, the latter seems hard, at immediate assessment, to identify. The suggestion of where to begin exists in an analysis of the significant social changes that are bred by characteristics implicit to modern technology and economic trends. Once those are isolated and discussed, they can be applied to the individual who inhabits these alterations in their environment. To my mind, there are three such points to be made.
First is the enormous increase in the basic attribute of speed. Everything has become faster as a result of the ability of previously disparate portions of society to communicate with one another and coordinate their actions. Economics, too, seems to have paralleled this speed of communication as transactions continue their widespread migration from concrete banks and tellers to an instantaneous, electronic format. And, no doubt, the improvement of transportation itself has boomed in recent years. Consequently, the problem of “physical distance” has all but completely disappeared into the background.
Second is the rise of “disposability” as the norm, which, arguably, is the progeny of increasing speed. Objects have become more mass-produced and cheaper in their production. Much of this reason belongs to the outsourcing of multinational corporations (as per economic sense and the state of the global economy) to foreign countries where labor laws are weaker and employment is cheaper to obtain. But beyond this, I attribute the huge abundance of production created by the global economy (production, which, shoddy and cheap in nature, breaks down quickly) leading to a mentality of “we can always purchase another one,” creating, ultimately, to a culture of disposability, in which most if not all objects are assumed to be replaceable. Third, and finally, is the growth of mass market culture. It is interesting to comment on the fact that firms are notoriously good at adapting to the conditions of the market (and the culture) in order to maximize sales. It is appropriate then, that the modern business model is to copy the consumer’s link to the larger community available through the internet, using all the trappings of modern marketing, logos, viral selling, and the like to breed what can only be called a mass market culture. In other words, to develop a market in which a companies standardized products are sold en masse to a community, via marketing to create a demand which would have otherwise not existed. In essence, the company has taken the consumer out of the equation by implanting a need through an advertising of its own devising and selling a product to it. One recalls the aggressive use of marketing by the De Beers diamond company in Japan to promote their product as essential to marriage. In the end, the centuries old tradition of exchanging tea sets while tying the knot has eventually faded, replaced by a corporate mass market strategy.
Combined in a variety of patterns and sequences, these three points reveal the ultimate negative impacts that modern technological and economic trends have had upon the individual and culture as a whole. Thus a picture emerges of humanity standing on the brink of considerable material comforts and opportunity, but social malaise and stagnation.
Gluttony: The Cheapening of Consumption
Growing speed and disposability mean that the use of a particular product is not only common, but fleeting as well. The individual, naturally, attributes less and less value to the experience utilizing or “consuming” that object. The use of the product becomes reduced to a meaningless, everyday task or event. Even worse, the desires produced in the individual by a mass market culture means that one consumes more and more, but cares less and less of the what exactly he or she is consuming. The act of consumption is so cheapened in the modern era. Of course, the most apparent evidence of this is in the actual existence of classic gluttony itself. In a word, obesity. After all, in terms of food, when the individual consumes quickly, cares little about what is being consumed, and is pushed to consume more, morbid obesity is almost a given. It’s no surprise then, that so many suffer from a certain plumpness at such a young age, developing diabetes, heart disease, and the like later in their lives. Such is the preponderance of gluttony in society. We have come to care little for the act of consumption of all kinds of products and in doing so, have demoted that activity to meaninglessness. And, as has once been said, depreciation of experience is the greatest crime.
Greed: The Cheapening of Possession
In very much the same vein, the value of possessing an object or a product has also declined dramatically. After all, what is the ultimate, long range worth of something which can be easily broken and easily replaced? Effectively, the only thing special about any of these possessions is the sole fact that it is the one that is being used at that particular time. This applies to immaterial things as much as concrete products. Occupations, which used to consist of a life’s work to an institution are now regarded as easily alterable, easily changeable. While, of course, this may not be a bad thing (one recalls the constant Generation X complaint of being betrayed by their employers), there is a certain sense of the value of that work, indeed the very value of possession, that is lost in this conversion.
Pride: The Primacy of “Social Inertia”
In general, one finds that throughout history, an edited version of Newton’s First Law of motion is appropriate in determining the behavior of groups of people. That is, a society in motion will stay in motion unless acted on an external force. By “motion,” of course, one implies that the society’s trends, norms, and actions tend to stay in place and maintain their course. This forms the concept that a community of individuals have a kind of “social inertia” which is the capability for that society to resist changes in its behaviors. A more tenuous but no the less arguable position is that this inertia is inversely proportional to the degree to which a community is intellectually active and willing to question its own assumptions. To give a more concrete example, the kind of social order described in Huxley’s Brave New World has nearly infinite inertia, in which all its members exist in a kind of drugged stupor. On the other hand, a community of philosophers and the like of a Grecian conception has very low inertia. To this end, the society we inhabit today is nearing points of greater and greater inertia as media and mass marketing culture insulates us from events that would shatter our belief system. After all, corporations must sell products, in which case the customer is always right. This includes fulfilling the need to believe and have confirmed certain assumptions about the way in which the world works. (One considers the great deal of ignorance concerning worker exploitation in third world countries by clothing companies.) We think less, and so our society is more stable, at the expense of growth and innovation. Consider modern film, too, which very rarely deals with situations where morality is ambiguous and where evil must always defeated.
Rage: The Growth of Careless Action
A celebrated case of psychological study goes as follows. A child is sat down and shown a video of an adult violently using a hammer to attack an inflatable clown doll. When placed into the same situation and given a hammer, the child’s first reaction in a countless number of trials was to imitate the movie. It reflects to a large the degree the fact that what is communicated to us has a large influence on the way we act. But since how a message is communicated has some power over the ultimate meaning, the form in which communication occurs therefore affects the way we act as well. Perhaps then, one could postulate that the speed of communication and the rise of disposability create a context which prompts careless action in the same way it has set the stage for careless consumption and possession. We care less about the things they do and their consequences on others. After all, we reason to ourselves, everything is so temporary and fast, why waste time caring about what is done?
Envy: The Life as a Power Play
When the individual has cheapened their relations to what surrounds them, life essentially dissolves into a meaningless pettiness. The significance of events or objects is purely dependent on the instrumental and arbitrary advantages against others. As life becomes valueless beyond these games, it evolves into a simple series of power plays which do not reflect any aim towards real value or sustainable constructive growth. But rather, the individual becomes selfish and unthinking; the only desire to be to obtain more of the material goods he or she is trained to want by the corporations. A collapse of a kind occurs, and pointless, fleeting manipulation of others and things becomes the central pursuit.
Sloth: The Death of Creativity
It’s not surprising that when the entertainment and media generated by mass market culture takes as its primary mode of communication a kind of one way relationship the receiver becomes more complacent and less inclined toward independent thought. The television, that staple of modern life, is a perfect example of such a relationship, in which the viewer is merely soaks in the messages of the sender. Without the exercise of having to respond to a medium, the path of least resistance is to act as a proverbial sponge, soaking up without taking the vital step of critically participating in any kind of personal response. Consequently, the media-saturated, information-overloaded era that we inhabit implicitly breeds a lack of innovation and creativity, an unwillingness to participate in an interaction with what is shown or given to you. Even everyday language and behavior, one notices, is couched in the language of modern media and pop culture references, often without any external or questioning of such usages.
Lust: The Destruction of Human Relationships
What all this adds up to, of course, is the turning of human relationships into flat, two dimensional connections with others. This inference, of course, touches upon only the microcosmic level. As discussed earlier, these effects are taking place on all areas of society simultaneously, entailing essentially that the microscopic picture of individual human relationships becoming stilted, temporary, and meaningless only reveals a tiny part of a larger, perhaps more uncomfortable macrocosmic picture of society as a whole.
That is, should the smaller relationships of society fall to the “sins” described above and reach a final, latent state of cheapened connections with others, the society itself becomes cheapened. We as a community of individuals become petty, lazy, intellectual sterile, and, perhaps worst of all, unconcerned with the fate of ourselves and others.
So, I suppose the most obvious step is this: what can be done? How can society restructure itself to adapt to the benefits of the new era while minimizing its negatives? This inquiry, perhaps simple, requires considerable analysis and discussion. But, ultimately, what results is a model of what is occurring and what our obligation is to altering its course.
posted by Tim at 5:35 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home