Ramble On...

Returning to last night's topic of language as the elevator from react to interact - so far as Homo Sapiens is concerned, at least - I offer this thought. One of the key life skills that most of us fortunate to have been born and raised pre-internet, is basic human interaction, unmediated by pretty much anything external that really impacted on it in any real, material sense. We grew up learning how to 'read' people, in groups and as individuals. Now, as I said yesterday, much of human interaction and response is essentially feral: we have certain, survival-based instincts that are simply intrinsic to our animal selves, which makes perfect sense, given our origins and the environment we operate within.

The intellectual level of human interaction sits atop this animalistic stratum, and mediates its instinctive-ness, tempering the excesses of the monkey-self  with an introspection afforded only to the linguistically endowed. The affordance of abstraction that language gives us allows us to operate on a much higher level than other species: through language, we can at least begin to share our common humanity in a way denied to the non-linguistic by virtue of the lack of any ability to share experience. A lack of of such an externalised abstraction limits one to the moment, despite whatever memories one holds in one's head. Which brings me to social media. So many people these days live their lives entirely vicariously through these media alone.

Even out with friends, some people think it normal to interact with others - in the same building or even in the same room! - via their 'media'. This fact alone should be considered disturbing: if you are unable to communicate with people face-to-face within the same physical space, then you need to reconsider your life-choices  most seriously, as that level of alienation from one's fellow humans is deeply unnatural and frankly unhealthy. As a species, we have largely exceeded the expectations of our relatively meagre physical capabilities, due to not only our intellect, but how we apply it. Unfortunately, it seems that the baser instincts of simply wanting to 'signal' and react, rather than think and communicate are now being baked into society by the enormously wealthy, whose pernicious influence is growing as exponentially as their wealth.

We are approaching - for a significant proportion of the people in the global North, anyway - a return to a pre-linguistic state, by virtue of what purports to be a medium of 'communication'. 'I think [and speak], therefore I am', is rapidly being supplanted by the very trap of reactivity of our pre-linguistic ancestors: we are becoming antisocial via 'socials'. Having said all that, the early humans had a very long species-span, as species go: we've only been around for ten minutes by comparison, and already our intellect has precipitated the death spiral of the planet's climate and pretty much scuppered any prospects of us being anywhere near as successful as they were. It's a conundrum...