EPIPHANTOM

Centralization of Social Networks, Capitalism, and Spirituality

Check out this excerpt from an article in The New Inquiry which confronts the issue of centralization of power in social media:

A decentralized network is flat; no single node on the network is able to control and dominate all the others, and every node is independent and can publish whatever information it likes. But this apparent diversity is sustained at another level by centralization: invisible protocols that govern the transmission of data within the network and which every node is required to implement in an identical way. The network is our unified God that lets us all believe that we are different.

My question regarding all this is: in what ways do social networks create the conditions for instances of personal subjectification/individuation of identity that support the capitalist system?

I have long held that taste, as a means of discernment and as it functions in the modern era is a tool of the capitalist system to sustain a vested interest in consumption – if what we consume (such as music, literature, clothing, all forms of media) is a direct extension of our identities, the continuity of ourselves over time is based on a cycle of purchasing and displaying our purchases to others. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which are basically centralized insofar as their technical operations are controlled by one group of people (in contrast with, for example, Diaspora*)), act on the assumption that people define themselves according to that which makes them different from other people. Even if their users are trying to relate to others with similar interests, this is still based on the assumption that what binds these two (or more) people together something that distinguished them from the rest of the herd – otherwise, why is the connection special?

The article from which this excerpt is pulled touches on religion and the use of God, specifically a Judaeo-Christian God, as a mechanism to transform human beings into perfect neoliberal subjects – people who identify themselves in relation to a higher Other, “offering a point of identification for the precarious worker and dignifying their situation.”

As one whose spirituality reflects a belief in a unified consciousness – something much closer to the tenets of eastern religions, specifically Buddhism and Hinduism – I am interested in the relationship between Judaeo-Christianity and capitalism - and that relationship as positioned against ideologies of unity, whether it be communism or Advaita Vedanta.

I plan on expanding this when I’m not super hungry and distracted by the music of The Clash, which is blasting in this coffee shop. This is rather unfortunate, although it is nice to be reminded of how brilliant “London Calling” is.

London is drowning and I, I live by the river…

You can find rest of the article here,

love,

Emma

And the time will come …

Life is so much better when I remember that we’re all one being. #Fuckyeahunifiedconsciousness

…but seriously, believing myself to be a distinct entity, one with significant qualitative differences from other people, just feels so wrong. Everything becomes more fun, playful, and light when I fully embody the principles of Hindu Vedanta in my thought and mannerisms. 

Just putting this here as a reminder to myself.

emma

From Aldous Huxley’s 1944 Introduction to The Bhagavad-Gita

—More than twenty-five centuries have passed since that which has been called the Perennial Philosophy was first committed to writing; and in the course of those centuries it has found expression, now partial, now complete, now in this form, now in that, again and again. In Vedanta and Hebrew prophecy, in the Tao Teh King and the Platonic dialogues, in the Gospel according to St. John and Mahayana theology, in Plotinus and the Areopagite, among the Persian Sufis and the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance — the Perennial Philosophy has spoken almost all the languages of Asia and Europe and has made use of the terminology and traditions of every one of the higher religions. But under all this confusion of tongues and myths, of local histories and particularist doctrines, there remains a Highest Common Factor, which is the Perennial Philosophy in what may be called its chemically pure state. This final purity can never, of course, be expressed by any verbal statement of the philosophy, however undogmatic that statement may be, however deliberately syncretistic. The very fact that it is set down at a certain time by a certain writer, using this or that language, automatically imposes a certain sociological and personal bias on the doctrines so formulated. It is only in the act of contemplation when words and even personality are transcended, that the pure state of the Perennial Philosophy can actually be known. The records left by those who have known it in this way make it abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist, Christian, or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially indescribable Fact.

—At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.

First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness — the world of things and animals and men and even gods — is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.
Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.

—Human beings are not born identical. There are many different temperaments and constitutions; and within each psycho-physical class one can find people at very different stages of spiritual development. Forms of worship and spiritual discipline which may be valuable for one individual maybe useless or even positively harmful for another belonging to a different class and standing, within that class, at a lower or higher level of development.

—I have tried to show that the Perennial Philosophy and its ethical corollaries constitute a Highest Common Factor, present in all the major religions of the world. To affirm this truth has never been more imperatively necessary than at the present time. There will never be enduring peace unless and until human beings come to accept a philosophy of life more adequate to the cosmic and psychological facts than the insane idolatries of nationalism and the advertising man’s apocalyptic faith in Progress towards a mechanized New Jerusalem. All the elements of this philosophy are present, as we have seen, in the traditional religions. But in existing circumstances there is not the slightest chance that any of the traditional religions will obtain universal acceptance. Europeans and Americans will see no reason for being converted to Hinduism, say, or Buddhism. And the people of Asia can hardly be expected to renounce their own traditions for the Christianity professed, often sincerely, by the imperialists who, for four hundred years and more, have been systematically attacking, exploiting, and oppressing, and are now trying to finish off the work of destruction by “educating” them. But happily there is the Highest Common Factor of all religions, the Perennial Philosophy which has always and everywhere been the metaphysical system of prophets, saints and sages. It is perfectly possible for people to remain good Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, or Moslems and yet to be united in full agreement on the basic doctrines of the Perennial Philosophy.

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I culled these from WikiQuote, but I have the full introduction (which is pretty long) in a new edition of the Bhagavad-Gita. It is marvelously poetic and thought-provoking and wacky in the mid-century fringe scholars that heralded the hippie and beat generation through intellectual and psychedelic work kind of way. The extended musings on philosophy and world peace are particularly meaningful considering that in Huxley wrote this during the last bloody, sputtering gasps of World War Two. There are some excellent passages from the introduction that are not online. I might take the pains to reproduce them here. But probably not. 

I am neither Hindu nor a scholar of world or comparative religion, but I hope to write up some little thing about why, in spite of everything, I can’t call myself an atheist. Or even agnostic. I don’t necessarily believe in this God thing, but… well, it’s pretty early in the morning for me (at least it is right now, during my two weeks of unemployment/no classes), and I want to go eat cereal and make solar tea, or go for a run, or play my ukulele, or do a million things that are not life-philosophizing, for now. 

There’s Krishna and Arjuna.  (The Bhagavad-Gita is epic- well, it is literally an epic- and fun just to read even if you ignore the theology, although that would be kind of hard to do. It’s just there! Hm.)

Come through the curtain of ignorance into the light of knowledge, Aldous! Come be in my thesis, too, while you’re at it. Come on. It will be fun!