Reflections on … Technology
I recently came across this sentence: “Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity with the logic of its system.” We’ve felt for some time that the technology we were creating would come for us; we just thought it would more obvious, taking the form of robots who had arrived at their own consciousness. We didn’t think it would happen so subtly, in the form of algorithms.
The truth is that this bug in our human operating systems has been around forever. The essence of Buddhism is that “suffering” is baked into our human nature, and the path to Enlightenment is to overcome suffering. In Buddhism, suffering is equated to wanting — we want something, maybe we achieve it, but then we want something else, or maybe we don’t achieve it and continue longing for it. The whole cycle is a negative closed feedback loop, in either direction.
The Stoics understood the same thing. They believed most of our problems arise from our perceptions. There are very few actual things; mostly, there are our perception of and reaction to events. I recently read a wonderful description of things versus events. It said things are like stones and events are like kisses, and that the world is made up mostly of networks of kisses, not stones. That strikes me as more true than ever. Of course, kisses aren’t the only form of events; they also take the form of insults, setbacks, and outright tragedies.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that world — or at least the West — is taking aim at technology companies like Facebook for all of the wrong reasons. We’re upset at their perceived manipulation of our minds, but we are the only ones capable of manipulating our minds. These companies merely provide a platform for us to manipulate ourselves, through the same suffering identified by the Buddhists and Stoics. We should not blame Facebook for the content of our interactions any more than we would blame the phone company for the content of our calls.
What technology is really good at is amplifying signals and finding better ways of doing the same things humans have always done. We used to be jealous of that person at school who seemed to be so cool; now we’re jealous of a whole world of seemingly cool people. Bullies used to taunt people on the playground; now they do it on twitter. The behavior hasn’t changed, only the platform and the size of the audience.
The Buddhists and Stoics understood how to deal with suffering caused by our reactions to unpleasant events. It is not a matter of eliminating those events; we are humans living among other humans and will inevitably experience unpleasant events as part of that human experience. Instead, it is fortifying ourselves by controlling our reactions to those unpleasant events as much as possible.
This is not easy, which is why both the Buddhists and Stoics engaged in daily practices designed to cultivate this state of mind, whether through meditation or through philosophical and rhetorical exercises. Importantly, though, both the Buddhists and Stoics believed that society at large should reflect this state of mind. The monks in Thailand live among their community and serve as teachers. The Stoic Marcus Aurelius became Emperor of Rome.
While meditation and other forms of these exercises are taking hold in our society today, we must bear in mind that these practices serve more than ourselves. It is not enough that we feel better; we have an obligation to make those around us better. That doesn’t happen through blame; it happens through teaching and understanding.
The ancients gave advice for how to cultivate this state of understanding. The Buddha outlined an eightfold path that included right understanding, right intent, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. The Stoic philosopher Seneca’s letters, compiled and translated in the book “Letters from a Stoic,” are an excellent instruction and owner’s manual for the mind and for our social interactions.
Seneca offers the following advice for teaching others this state of mind: “Tell them what nature has made necessary and what she has made superfluous. Tell them how simple are the laws she has laid down, and how straightforward and enjoyable life is for those who follow them and how confused and disagreeable it is for others who put more trust in popular ideas than they do in nature.” And, for those giving the advice, Seneca counsels “be as good as your word.”
Technology makes the world feel more complicated to some and more simple to others. On both fronts, those are mostly just feelings, reactions. Our interactions with each other have changed very little since the time of the Buddha and the Stoics. At most, our interactions differ in number and velocity from their interactions, which is all the more reason to study and heed their advice.
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Originally published at cpereflections.wordpress.com on January 14, 2019.
