#undinge

[mumblelard]

the one in the well or umswelt

last night was filled with nightmares i still feel but can't remember. at the end, i dreamt that i was in wooden walled basement, eating a lime, skin and all, like an apple, and through the square hatch to the floor above, i heard a chorus of plaintive voices calling me, almost wailing, and when i accepted that i was going to them, i woke up

this morning when i turned on the lights, i found that the fallie sewn lambeopard of the apocalypse that lives on my nightstand, had (been) turned to face the corner, sometime in the night

day before yesterday, when i was out rambling in the woods, i found myself deep in the vision of an entire future that i might have, a way that the pieces of my life might combine and transform into something completely different than what i live now. i try to stay out of the future, but this was nice. i saw all of the big and little details of a life. i saw myself wearing clothes that i wouldn't wear, but might, with friends i wouldn't have, but could. in the moment, by the river, it felt like epiphany, then yesterday i found myself tearing it down into little pieces of reverie and scraps of fantasy, but this morning, after a worry of nightmares, i woke up feeling like the epiphany can still be saved

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Byung-Chul Han: “I Practise Philosophy as Art”

The philosopher on how we might respond to a world of digital alienation

AR:: “Undinge” emphasises the ideas, found in many of your books, that in the place of building relationships with others – or the other – humans are increasingly mirroring themselves. Nevertheless people do live in relationships and even today remain attached to objects that they don’t want to throw away. What’s the difference between then and now, then being the time before globalisation and digitalisation?

BCH ::  I don’t know if people who spend all their time looking at smartphones still have or need objects that are close to their heart. Objects are receding into the background of our attention. The current hyperinflation of objects, which has led to their explosive proliferation, only highlights our increasing indifference towards them. They are almost stillborn.

Our obsession is no longer for objects, but for information and data. Today we produce and consume more information than objects. We actually get high on communication. Libidinal energies have been redirected from objects to nonobjects. The consequence is infomania. We are all infomaniacs now. Object fetishism is probably over. We are becoming information- and data-fetishists. Now there is even talk of datasexuals. Tapping and swiping a smartphone is almost a liturgical gesture, and it has a massive effect on our relationship to the world. Information that doesn’t interest us gets swiped away. Content we like, on the other hand, gets zoomed in, using the pincer movement of our fingers. We literally have a grip on the world. It’s entirely up to us.

That’s how the smartphone amplifies our ego. We subjugate the world to our needs with a few swipes. The world appears to us in the digital light of complete availability. Unavailability is precisely what makes the other other, and so it disappears. Robbed of its otherness, it is now merely consumable. Tinder turns the other into a sexual object. Using the smartphone, we withdraw into a narcissistic sphere, one free of the unknowns of the other. It makes the other obtainable by objectifying it. It turns a you into an it. This disappearance of the other is precisely why the smartphone makes us lonely.