Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'?
bbc.com
bbc.com
The emotional tenor of my relationship with my phone looks — and, I'm sure — very different from the way people relate to their faiths.
Facebook, YouTube, etc don't feel like 'movements' to me, like the article's author said. At least, I don't have the passion that a 'movement' seems to imply.
For me, smartphoning is an emotional gray zone. Most of the time I feel close to nothing. I use it to blot out my worries and deal with the mundanity of my life.
Which makes it more like actual opium, IMO.
The real question is something like what are the implications of small-group level intimacy, but on a global scale. Just for starters - there are very many questions raised by this recent capability.
And I've just argued why the reason is faulty, and we shouldn't hold it as true for modern media. I'd expect a counter-argument on that, not a reminder that it exists for a reason (as if I hadn't already considered it).
>the messenger has always shaped the message, even when it was a runner man
It's a matter of degree: the degree with which TV at the time of McLuhan, and now social media shape the message, is nothing like the degree previous "messengers" did it...
I really don't want to reitarate what people a lot smarter than me have written.
It's not different this time - the media have changed, but so have the Kings. No matter how many messengers they beheaded , the problems that Kings had did not go away. No matter how many people we deplatform, the problems of modern Democracy won't go away either. To me it seems people are going through a classic crisis of misattributing the blame: Modern political systems like democracy are ill-adapted for an increasingly individualistic, globalized world, and the problem won't go away after they regulate the media. (BTW i can't think of any case where shooting the messenger/media worked in the the long term in the past)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the...
I think the real opium of people nowaday is politics, no matter what politics. People really want to protest the hell out of something. It gives meaning and purpose, it unites, but also makes them very vulnerable to manipulation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
[Edit] Note to self - check other threads before posting links?
I’d argue “hot takes” are a better form of what you describe. Or “complaining”, which is frankly easy with politics and always has been in a society with free speech.
I would argue "workplaces should be democratic" (which is a very rudimentary one-sentence synopsis of Marxism) is only an addictive idea if you consider democracy to be addictive in the same manner. And maybe it is, but then you have to ask yourself -- is an idea being so good that it becomes addictive a bad thing?
"Dopamine" make it sound sinister, but if everything which gives you enjoyment or feels meaningful is addictive, then basically everything anybody does by their own volition would be addictive.
To whit, my take is that the smartphone is the new opiate of the masses only to the extent to which it (and social media) are the newest things we like to blame for far more complex social problems.
Prediction: banning smartphones won't stop kids from being depressed, nor will regulating Facebook fix extreme nationalism.
I wonder sometimes looking around the social scene in SF if more of a abolitionist influence on society today in terms of alcohol would be healthy. Not prohibition but rather being culturally skeptical of drinking in general, especially as we are making strides to legalize marijuana, which can’t kill you and won’t make you beat up your family.
Even as dispensaries opened, the social life still revolves around bars & restaurants which often serve alcohol. The one dispensary I visit which allows consumption on premise is a sterile, retail environment. Bleh. I much preferred the dutch coffee houses.
But using an analogy require you understand the phenomenon you are comparing it to. So what does religion mean? In this article, religion is about
- "a transcendental realm" (and so is youtube)
- meeting in congregations (and so is Google meetup)
- a hierarchy with devoted spiritual advisors at the top (and so is, apparently Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg)
But without even going into what the nature of religion is, it is easy to dispel this analogy. Because even in a highly religious society you can have non-religious organizations, meetups and "transcendental realms" in the form of fiction, music, art etc. So there is clearly a difference. Unless you are going to argue that everything is religion - which you can, of course, given a vague enough definition, but which also makes the term meaningless. If everything is religion then nothing is religion.
So what's the problem?
>[Religion] is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
>Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
[0] Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx, 1843.
People sometimes anthropomorphize pets, cars, and computers by reacting to them the way we do to people, but that doesn't make them people. We religiomorphize by interacting with communities or ideas the same way we participate in religion, but that doesn't make them religions.
But even if there is a problem, I don't think it's smartphones. More likely social media, amplified by smartphone intimacy
Also, Britain talking about opium ...
I assumed this one was more recent based on the timestamp that shows on the items. Currently, I see "4 hours ago" for this item, and "5 hours ago" for the link I submitted. But maybe there's more to it than that?