Back

So I've been thinking a lot for the last few years why our spaces are so bad at conflict, why they are so reactive and kneejerky and why they are so quick to condemn rather than to reconcile. I had really been struggling to find a good answer, only picking up little pieces of insight here and there, until I learned a bit about Byun-Chul Han's thesis in The Burnout Society. Going to ramble a bit here, so forgive me.

One of Byun-Chul Han's main concepts is that, due to the way we are embedded in modern society and our interaction with technology, we have cultivated what he calls "hyperattention" which he says is inherently shallow and broad. This is to say, we are constantly paying attention to some thing, but we tend to only engage with that thing very shallowly, as it flits across our screen and then disappears. We can think of clear examples of this like TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc... These platforms engage our attention for very short periods of time, but they engage our attention intensely. However, that engagement is shallow; it engages us with a necessarily brief and skin-deep analysis of any given thing. The skin-deep analysis ends, we feel satisfied, then it flits away so that some new skin-deep analysis can occupy our minds.

He contrasts this with "contemplative immersion." In a contemplative mode we stop and really delve into things. We are present, we think about the implications of things and work out their dynamics and question features. It is deep thought. Our society, a "Burnout Society" emphasizes hyperattention, not contemplative immersion.

I think that this is one of the key features at the root of our cultural dysfunction. As I said in the video Healthy Conflict, when people have not thought things through very deeply and when they have not engaged in healthy conflict about key topics with other people, they will tend to engage with fear and kneejerk, because they have not really become comfortable with the ideas at hand. They aren't sure if, when they are forced to defend their idea, that they will be able. They feel uncertain about possible arguments that will be presented. They feel insecure about the idea itself and thus any questioning of the idea becomes a dire threat. They have to quash discourse, because they can't foresee where it will lead.

The problem is, all of the components of our society encourage us not to develop this deep understanding, because we are constantly immersed in a hyperattentive mode. Instead of developing foundational understanding of our philosophical/political perspective, we learn little factoids, we memorize what we heard in a tweet, we remember and then reproduce talking points thought up by others and that's it. Instead of actually learning how some system of thought moves and justifies itself, we absorb a sort of recuperated aesthetic of that system of thought. Here I think we delve into something similar to Debord's realizations in Society of the Spectacle. Through the process of social structuring and through mediation by technology, ideas are iteratively hollowed out until all that remains is their aesthetic. Then the aesthetic, sterilized of its content, is delivered back to us as commodity in order to control discourse.

I think that these technologies act to turn systems of ideas into simulacrum of the original ideas, which are then shotgunned at us, creating hyper-attention instead of contemplative immersion. As a result, people have shallow conceptions which are defended by kneejerk defensiveness.

In this way, it's almost as if this technological and social process acts to colonize our minds, to atomize our thoughts and empty them of foundational content. This leaves us awash in the ideas around us with no mooring. And this unfortunate arrangement then reproduces itself by pushing us to atomize ourselves socially from others. Not only do we develop a reactive, kneejerk discursive mode, which is naturally bound to blow up over and over and over and over into toxic arguments, but we also exist within digital spaces, not real life ones, which then makes all of our interpersonal relations indurable and disposable. Instead of reconciliation, we thrive on outrage. In place of deep thought, we prioritize shutting down conversation.

This is then accordant with a society where humans are worth very little and social bonds can be discarded at a whim. We never have to be burdened with conflict, because we have the option to withdraw into tinier and tinier echo chambers where threatening ideas never penetrate. And we are encouraged to do so by hyperattentive, skin-deep analysis instead of contemplative thought.

Moreover, this mode of existence tends to generate a thousand excuses as to why it should continue. We have a low opinion of others because we are filled full of fear and insecurity. We are given a multitude of reasons as to why we have no responsibility to have a healthy discourse with others, to justify fleeing from conflict, and therefore to produce a culture of condemnation and loneliness.

The question is: how do you reverse this tendency? Obviously prefiguration has some place in this process. The struggle for me in the last few years has been figuring out how. People who have unhealthy modes of conflict tend to induce chaos and ill will where they interact. But, alternatively, you have to create a space where a healthy mode in interaction is modeled, otherwise things will just get worse. This is to say, you could choose to cultivate a little echo chamber of people who have healthy conflict, but that won't act to transform social relations more broadly. Instead, it seems like you have to create a place where people who engage in unhealthy conflict are allowed to be present and to interact, but wherein there are correctives to produce a healthier environment. The problem is, people with unhealthy conflictual modes tend to lower the discourse, using accusation, insult, and prolific strawmen. They confuse conflict with an excuse to be petty and they confuse their short temper with a justification for being upset at others.

So how do you actually cultivate that healthy interpersonality? Clearly exclusion isn't good enough, as the people who would be excluded are often the very people who need to fix these problems to begin with! We can't fix the reactive, hyperattentive dynamics of the internet we are embedded in because we don't control what websites people peruse.

Anyway, food for thought!