The Economics Of Repulsion
Since everyone is competing for the same fraction of our (limited) attention, sooner or later cognitive capitalism becomes a zero-sum game. For a brain already overloaded with information to pay attention to something new, it has to neglect something else. Every speck of information, every new idea, therefore, has an inherent ephemeral quality and carries a potential of becoming worthless. — Read more from NOTES FROM DISGRACELAND and follow on Twitter
7. XI 2021
In traditional capitalism,
Sounds like OAN. That is a scary broadcast.
Sucking in the vulnerable. I am now making more frequent visits to my aging parents to “de-program” and calm them down.
I always wondered about the tight shirts and uncomfortable looking couch
Really interesting read. Thanks for sharing.
The reality of this observation is fairly simple. Watching the news provides less actual news content to the viewer than written media. Your mind must absorb images, sound, and process words. It’s overwhelming in its display of graphics, human appearances, modulating voices, videos that may or may not be relevant, and finally the underlying story which you probably will not even be able to consider after sifting through all of that. Written media on the other hand is mostly just words on paper (digital or tactile) with possibly some images thrown in. While focusing on the words requires effort, the mind is able to consider the authenticity of the author and the content’s value and validity. While reading H, we are not confronted with his appearance, voice, and any images or videos he might want to display. We are reading tone from toneless text, we are evaluating thought through written passages, we are enriched by the lack of everything but his words.
Certainly a bravely reasoned piece, but still flawed. Your notion of cognitive capitalism being a zero-sum phenomenon puts me in mind of Gresham’s Law in Economics, “Bad money drives out good.” In your systems bad ideas drive out good. While interesting, many of your assertions are really untested hypotheses that beg for some proof of their validity. Not just political systems are adaptive, so are humans. Perhaps legions aimless, lazy people never learn much and can be easily led around, but many will adapt and learn to cope positively in the new environment. The people selling the brand of junk you feel is being so easily swallowed have, in may be argued, have figured out how to feather their nests preaching misery and without conscience are profiting mightily from the stupidity of at least half the population. Frankly, your dystopian view of the world as expressed here is almost too scary to contemplate, and you didn’t even talk about the fact that too many of the victims of this transformation own and carry guns. Makes me glad I’m old and alone.
I made a similar comment on a piece posted by H this weekend. I think (hope?) we are going through an adjustment phase as a society. The people buying this “information” are addicts at this point, but most people will eventually come to the conclusion that this addiction makes them worse off either by witnessing what it does to their parents or seeing themselves increasingly isolated from friends and family who don’t want deal with the toxicity of it. Much like smoking, it’ll be common place for a while until people eventually wonder what the hell we were thinking. Really, who among the younger generations watches the news? The whole concept of watching the news will seem crazy to younger people.
Then again, maybe I’m just optimistic because I have young kids and have to be optimistic, and while I hope the world is a better place for them than it is today, humanity is nothing if not adaptable.
There is this thing called a plug. Grasp the head of the plug firmly and pull. Do not pull on the wire that terminates in the plug! Pull on the plug body. Hope that helps. Enjoy the serenity.
Maybe I’m being to down to earth to be in keeping with the spirit of the piece, but, I’m a worm. Sorry, but even the littlest wriggler understands the import of negative and positive taxis. If something is killing you, stop consuming it, and move away from that something. Simple but amazingly effective. If something is nourishing, consume it, and move towards it next time you encounter it, but, always remember everything in moderation, including moderation, or Jack will be a dull boy.
Perhaps worms have an advantage in that they view time not as a limited linear resource with a beginning and end that must be crammed with ever more busyness if one is to ever ‘finish’, but rather see time as part of an infinite cycle of turnings each in their own time. Hungry worms know they will never be able to finish their tasks because they know their tasks are unending. Like the seasons. So why bother worrying about chasing after deadlines, and such, that recede into the distance faster the faster you chase after them? The humble worm lets the ‘Season’ dictate what task is most important at the moment. Just do what you can focusing on the most important first and cast aside the rest. Your choices are limitless and most of those choices are off point. So the key is not to do more, but, learn how to ignore more. Do that and you will have the free time and mind space to read even more thought provoking screeds. How might this relate to a ‘modern’ information society consumer/worker? Take email (of course, you should do the opposite). What is your reward for getting better at answering your email? Simple, more email! If anyone happens to see how good you are at plowing through your email you soon find yourself being asked to handle their email as well. That pretty much sums up the entire digital-capitalism productivity pitch in a nutshell. You are suckered into buying the product for the ‘efficiency’ gains thinking that it will free up your time and mental resources to focus on more important things only to find the very thing you expected to see less of only swells in volume to fill your inbox’s new capacity. The way of the worm recognizes that choosing to do the few truly important tasks in an ‘inefficient’ manner crowds out the meaningless busywork that even if completed amounts to nothing.