Alienation in the
Advanced Industrial Societies
Pedro de La Rocque
Our present level of
technological development places us
before what Marx named the abolition of labour and Marcuse the pacification of
existence - instant predicted by both authors from which on the human
need, whether material ou assistance-wise, will be fulfilled by the automated
technological aparatus. However, the social structure employed in the
development of civilization towards that objective resists the subversion
necessary for the implantation of the ethically subsequent Social Assistance State - phenomenon that occurs because of
those who enjoy the privileges of their position and function amidst the other
notched wheels of the amalgam of men and their duties. The States, except in
cases of popular interference, tend to acquire plutocratic traces which lead to
the kleptocracies of our time.
The 20th century produced a vast bibliography on the
sociopolitical
world organization after the advent of the atom bomb. In the works
of Marcuse, Orwell and Huxley, the nuclear
threat exerces coercive power upon
the population while the latter goes on doing its jobs without questioning the
process by which things happen. The aforementioned writers watched the birth of
the cataclysmal threat and proceeded from there with their respective theories.
Today, the risk of our self-annihilation at any moment
persists and increases, but it is no longer a novelty. It has become something
like dark, crawling smoke covering our feet for very long now, one with which
we have already learned how to convive, ignoring it to a certain point or even
completely. Its coercive function, nonetheless, is still vital for the
maintenance of the system as it is and, nowadays, is primarily employed by the
midia. Newspapers, magazines, television and other non-interactive means threat
continuously by exposing us to crimes of barbaric nature committed by those in
marginality against legitimate citizens - who, helpless and unarmed, depend on
the Police. There is stimulation, then, of self-preservation aspects of man
that make us all carry on, productive and calm, pretending not to see matters
that threaten us directly because we do not consider ourselves capable of
protecting ourselves.
The friction between the proletariat and the bourgeosie as
depicted by Marx is gradually attenuated by the technological progress. The
labouring man of the
age when "The German Ideology" and "The
Communist Manifesto" lived indeed in unacceptable and revolting
conditions. Today, the poor man tends to docility, easily put quiet by the
satisfaction of his basic needs and some sporadic consumist appetite. By taking
into consideration that advanced industrial societies organize their members
and means predicting the specific manners of utilizing man and nature, it comes
to attention that the current system molds the citizen to such an intimate
level that it determines individual needs and aspirations. Thus, there is no
rebellion in sight. At most, there are revindications of the syndicalist type
which are solved in a short time span. The workers themselves do not want the
systemto change, they only require some improvements - for they share the same
alienated ideal of common good of the nation from whose advances every one of
its children would benefit.
Aldous Huxley, in his "Brave New World", described
a dystopia of hordes, preconditioned since conception, kept in mental stasis by
a mechanism that makes sure every human instinctive appetite is fulfilled. The
norm is nihilistic hedonism and men, in a reality free from pain, poverty and
crime, never awake from their consensual attachment to pleasure for the sake of
pleasure. Different from the captiveand frightened culture, the face smashed
under the boot described by Orwell, Huxley fears afrivolous future - everyone
numb amidst orgies and commodities, swallowing soma pills upon the first sign
of anguish. Without anguish, there are no questions. Without questions, there
is no change. Life, deprived of sense, finds meaning in infantile jouissance.
In the suffering Oceania of "1984", as it probably was in
Eastasia and Eurasia, sexuality was treated, apparently,
in the opposite manner compared to that of the Fordist world: acceptable only
as a reproductive, tasteless act; girls incentivized to join the Anti-Sex
League; grieving weekly fornication under inspection of the telescreen.
However, both systems share as goal the impossibilization of romantic love and
of the development of solid bonds between two persons. They differ, indeed, in
efficiency: while the Big Brother and his minions cast lovers enamored lovers
from the bed to the floor, Huxley''s society conditions itself to promiscuity in
order to prevent solid bonds to form - since childhood, all are trained in
sexual games as a preparation for a life of promiscuity. In a series of letters
exchanged between Huxley and Orwell, both agree on the following: the
oppressive regime would come first to, then, give place to the happy and
alienated man. It seems to me a transition very similar to that of the
ideological faith of Catholicism morphing into the age of empyrical age, in
which man, stripped of value of his own, fills with hedonism the new void that
appeared where before was the fear of a supposedly punitive creator.
Accordingly to his article "The Coming Technological
Singularity", professor and scientist Vernor Vinge elaborates an analogy:
"animals may adapt to problems and make inventions, but not faster than
natural selection, by which the world is its own simulation". He then
states that we, humans, developed the ability to internalize the world and,
based on hypothetical thought, we solve problems much faster than natural
selection would. Now, constructing the means for the execution of such
simulations in even greater speeds, we are entering a regime as radically
different from our human past as we, men, are from inferior animals - inferior
regarding the issues herein focused.
William Gibson, the writer responsible for the advent of the
concept of "cyberspace", exercing the plain usufruct of his notable
awareness, oberseved that humankind is more comfortable with a previous version
of itself, thus projecting on itself ideald implanted by society as a whole,
its circumstances, and specially by the midia. For comprovation, it is enough
simply to watch no more than ten minutes of television for the aware expectator
to realize that the great majority of video-advertisements display locations in
idyllic spaces, cute suburban houses and white fences, frankly incoherent with
the urban reality of more than half of our species.
We are advancing in a geometric progression, developing more
andmore of the technology required for provide solution for most of our needs
in a life of plenty, free from disease and misery as we know them.
Nevertheless, if we do not take wise advantage of that happy moment of our
evolution, if we insist on holding back the reorganization and adaptation
natural to social evolution, the imminence of Vinge''s singularity may become
our ruin.
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