If you're interested in the ideas of state apparatus and how we have become victims to or complicit in (depending on your perspective) these paradigms, I've written a wee piece in response to Villem Flusser's essay "The shape of things" ...
The realisation that you are so deeply entrenched within a system of code and feedback mechanisms is disturbing, perhaps primarily because Flusser only confirms what we all secretly (or not so secretly) already knew. I cannot help but find similarities between reading Flusser and finding out that something you hoped was true but secretly knew wasn't (for me, it was Santa- Christmas 1993. Older brother was feeling particularly spiteful). In the case of Flusser, I think that everyone is aware that they are part of a system, that their decisions are pre-programmed and the realities of 'free choice' are lacking. However, the totality to which Flusser makes one recognise and come to grips with the reality of the systematised, categorised, feedback monitoring world is oppressive to say the least.
Rebellion is the mechanism that one attempts to employ in order to fight the system, however Flusser seems to crush any hope of being rebellious... AT ALL, at every turn his totalitarian rhetoric vaporises any small inkling that you might be nursing regarding your ability to topple the powers that be. Everyone likes to be thought of as autonomous and unique, responsible for his or her own decisions. The freedoms that one gains at certain ages are treasured and the actions that can result from such freedom are reflected upon as exciting, risky and almost radical. The realisation that said 'exciting' 'risky' and 'radical' behaviours turn out to be expected and normative can be a rather depressing moment for the one-time-rebellious teen. To think that potentially your entire existence (and not just your seeming rebellious teenage years) could be determined by a series of formulae- probabilities, feedback mechanisms and statistics is beyond depressing... am I playing the game of life or is the game of life playing me?
It scares me to think that at some point this numbers game, the formulaic and pre-programmed nature of the world, will come to shape people, prior to statistics being shaped based upon human action. Will we renege 'choice' all together, hand our lives over to 'the man' (something that paradoxically not a man at all...) and live our lives completely according to how we 'should' (that is, by a formula, how we are predicted to live based on a set of inputs and the decisions that would typically result from such inputs). Like a self-fulfilling prophecy will we begin to behave according to the parameters that the programmers set for us- have we already started?
It's extremely worrisome either way, thinking just in terms of how pervasive programming (or the politics of choice), even seeming positive or worthwhile programming, can be. I can think of things that I've been told in my life that probably should have held true but haven't. Based on my ethnicity, demographic background, age etc. there are certain statistics (or, perhaps, phenomena) that I could have been a part of but am not. I'm a bit of a statistical anomaly and it's concerning that statistical anomalies could be erased if we become resigned to the paradigms and apparatuses that we are told we are a part of. What allows us to escape these paradigms and apparatuses is our ability to imagine something outside of the bounds that we are told we must adhere to. Like in the playground of our childhood(s), we should climb the trees that we are told we can't and play bull-rush in spite of what OSH and ACC might have recommended. If we are resigned to our fate based on formulae and live according only to what might be expected of us, I think we lose that which makes us human and not simply machines.
I like the idea of the statistical anomaly- the outlier, the annoying point on the graph that gets excluded from the general trend in order to save face, making sure the variance works out so that the data can be considered legitimate. Writing and the Arts certainly offers the statistical anomaly some 'freedom' to move, allowing for imagination and experimentation without a desire for things to be quantified as 'valuable' or 'economically viable'. Writing and the Arts allows for flux and non-linearity in a world that increasingly tries to process people as mere statistics and fit us to models of what is deemed appropriate. Stasis and conformity is so Cold War, jump on the everyday radical bandwagon and make us shape the stats not have the stats shape us...
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