Humans as objects of commerce

Humans as objects of commerce

McLuhan was, I guess, the first to express the insight that technology is an extension of the human body.

These hand-held gadgets for communication might very well represent the end of ‘understanding’ for almost all citizens by 2050. I can see it already on the Internet discussion forums where communication is becoming a stream of consciousness without coherent grammatical or thoughtful content or construction.

Rugged individualism might be an appropriate expression for all the creatures in the world, with one exception. Humans have, in the last few hundred years, moved from being rugged individuals to our present state in which we have fashioned an alien environment in which we have become chess pieces or ciphers. We have invented the Artificial Kingdom where, as Simone Weil once noted, “it is the thing that thinks and the man who is reduced to the state of the thing”.

I think that we, women and men, have become chess pieces. We have become objects to be manipulated by the market and the corporation. We spend our days like the chess piece; we have a quantified value and are placed on the board and used as desired by some one who may be a real person. The real person has still the human characteristics of creativity, spontaneity, improvisation, spontaneously reactive, discontinuous, a mosaic more than syntax or cipher. Just what we find is missing when using the telephone to contact someone out there.

In an effort to understand where we are now it might help to start back in time and move forward. In frontier days each person was very much an individual. Rugged individualism was a popular expression. Each man and woman was a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Each husband and wife was a team that together could and had to do everything that was needed.

In early America we were an agricultural economy. Most families were farm families we were all rugged individualist. The farmer was very much the jack-of-all-trades and the master of his or her domain.

As we move forward in time we see this team become a man working in a factory or office and the woman was at home raising the children and maintaining the day to day necessities for all family members. She washed, cleaned, shopped, sewed, and was still much of a rugged individual. Slowly the man became a specialized worker in a clockwork factory or office.

Moving forward in history we arrive at the present moment where not only is the man working in the factory or office but the woman joins him there also.

When we examine the factory or office workspace we find a very different occupation for the man and woman than the rugged individualism of emerging history of human evolution. We no longer are masters of our own domain but are ciphers in a clockwork that functions upon modern economic principles.

A pertinent example of this mode of commodification is how we have converted what was political economics into the modern economics. Political economy is the study of social relations. It is the study of culture. Political economy focuses upon the problem of how to regulate industrialization within the context of a healthy society, it worries about the problems of labor within a context of the laborer as an end and not a commodity—an object of commerce.

Economics, however, in its modern form, has replaced political economics. Economics has removed the pesky concern about labor as being human and has replaced labor as being a commodity—an object of commerce. Modern economics is now the study of scarcity, prices, and resource allocation. Economics has legislated that labor, as an end, is no longer a legitimate domain of knowledge for economic consideration. In doing so, over time, society has become ignorant of such concerns. Our culture has replaced concern about humans as ends with humans as means to some other end.

In the rugged individualist mode of living the individual was creative and master even though the domain of mastery was small. An individual’s personality is dramatically affected. Labor has become an abstract quantity and calculated into the commodity produced. We are the only creatures who have completely removed our self from what we were evolved to be. We are the only creatures removed from our grounding in an organic world. We came from a long ancestry of rugged individualist and now reside in the Artificial Kingdom. To what end only time will tell.

Do you feel like a cipher in our culture?

This subject interests me; particularly we live in times of commercial imperialism. Money is a key factor; everything is shaped by money. Capitalism is manifested today. Greed, rivalry, avarice, malice are some of the fully blown out vices and we all are swayed by commercialism. Money is behind everything, from God to ideology, education, civilization and the like. We humans are commoditized and we are graded based on the amount we are able to amass. Wars are waged; arms are manufactured; countries are invaded; migrations, diplomacies, dialogues all happen owing to the fact that money is a great governor. Nothing is overshadowed by money; and nothing can replace. All else is commerce. Even love, kindness, compassions all are commoditized to trade with money.

With all due respect, I have to object to a few things here.

Unfortunately, your trip through history did less to elucidate the issue addressed and more to confound what it is you think the problem is.

"Rugged individualism" is an interesting notion though; whether we find ourselves immersed in the society we live, or dependent upon fewer individuals (with fewer therefore dependent upon us), the fact remains that as social animals we are necessarily oriented away from individualism. That is not to say that individuality is non-existent, or that societies absolutely inhibit individualism. As rational animals we maintain our freedom as agents; an agency such as the human "enterprise" however gives purpose and structure to the agent's movements within society. Remember, humans are indeed necessarily social beings. Thus, it follows that there is absolutely no distinguishing the human being from the society to which he belongs. It goes without saying why this is so. (Imagine a single human individual survived on a planet by no one of his kind. The moment his life ends, his kind ends).

However, you are also correct; you highlight myriad particularities, peculiarities, and indeed, oft seeming absurdities and anomalies embedded in the matrix of the social dynamic. And I most certainly agree with those which you pointed to, particularly the way in which technology shapes the mind, personal behavior, and consequently (and necessarily) social "quality." We have certainly made commodity of everything imaginable; even so, there is no reason why good character oriented away from vice cannot put to use an otherwise ingenious system of economics. The systems are only as effective as the people participating in them are positive and productive (personally, in the virtuous sense, and certainly in the economic or industrial sense). Contrariwise, the systems are only as good as their least positively productive inhabitant.

Finally, while I fail, necessarily, to see what the problem actually is, and whatever the problem is (aside from the particulars), "rugged individualism" seems to miss the broader point; I feel as though the particulars themselves say something about our individual character development. If it is true that we are individuals comprising a society, and a society of individuals, it is much less about "individuality" as it is about social cohesion. If the problem is population; the notion that city sprawls, dense downtown areas, and rural places where population lacks are so polarized, certainly does not elucidate what it means to be a rugged individualist. Artificial Kingdoms exist in story books as representations or renditions of reality; if fictions accurately represent reality, it isn't really an Artificial Kingdom after all

Again, the problem lies in the minds of people necessarily engaged with the society to which they belong. Systems are not to blame completely. Individualism, if encouraged radically, is simply not practical at this point, unless something drastic changes or reallocates resource consumption and/or population increase, globally.

We are who we are, and we grow as we are... unless we change.

Philosophy has taught me one thing, aim as close to truth as is possible; otherwise the barriers break down and rational minds engaged confoundedly with one another, about one another, lead the whole enterprise into the abyss. Such is the state of debate in the world today, I think.

Oh, and great forum; thank you for inspiring me enough to make this my first post! As always (from here on out), take nothing personally less it be your own livelihood that is being threatened. Philosophy is just that, the perfect medium through which to disagree, to the degree that growth and positive change is encouraged.

Great discussion.

Philo

I am convinced that capitalism is a great force toward crass individualism. We think primarily of our self interest and capitalism tells us that if we take care of our self that will take care of the group.

We are indeed social animals but the general attitude of Americans is that "I have upped my income now up yours".

Morality is about interrelationships between humans and the teaching of morality in America is left to religion and to parents. Few Americans have the Critical Thinking skills and the intellectual sophistication to sacrifice our own well being for the betterment of the well being of the society. Our battle over health care is a good example.