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Page added on March 20, 2016
How the greatest technology ever developed backfired on us
Natural selection was probably the factor that led the Irish Elk to develop oversized antlers: they were a beneficial feature for the males in the sexual competition game. However, the weight of the antlers was also a burden and it has been argued that it was one of the reasons, perhaps the main one, that led to the extinction of this species, around 7,000 years ago. In the case of humans, we may consider language as an evolutionary advantageous feature, but also as something that may turn out to bring negative consequences very much like the elk’s antlers: the tsunami of lies we are continuously exposed to. Image from Wikipedia
Language is the real break of humans with everything else that walks, crawls, or flies on the earth. No other species (except bees) has a tool that can be used to exchange complex information among individuals in terms, for instance, of where food can be located and in what amounts. It is language that creates the human “ultrasociality,” it is language that allows us to get together, plan ahead, get things done. Language can be seen as a technology of communication of incredible power. But, as for all technologies, it has unexpected consequences.
We all know that the sound that we write as “deer” is associated with a specific kind of beast. With this symbol you can create sentences such as “I saw a deer near the river, let’s go hunt it!” But, when you create the symbol, in some ways you “create” a deer – a ghostly creature that has some of the characteristics of real deer. You can imagine the deer, even if there is no real deer around. And this symbol has a certain power, maybe you could make a deer appear by pronouncing its name or drawing its symbol on a cave’s wall. It is the principle that we call “sympathetic magic”, perhaps the oldest and most basic form of magic.
Creating a virtual deer is a useful thing if the correspondence with real deer is not lost. The problem with language is that this is not always the case. The deer you are talking about may not exist, it may be an illusion, a mistake, or, worse, a ruse to entrap and kill an enemy of yours. This is the origin of the concept we call “lie.” You can use language not just to collaborate with your neighbors, but to deceive them. We have evidence that our ancestors faced the problem from the earliest written records we have. In some ancient Sumerian tablets that go back to the 3rd millennium BCE (*), we find that among the “me” (the powers) that the Goddess Inanna stole from the God Enki, one is “to utter words of deception“.
All technologies have unintended consequences, all are amenable to some kinds of technological fixes. Fighting lies requires evaluating statements and who is uttering them. The simplest way to do it is to base the evaluation on trust. We all know the story of “the boy who cried wolf,” probably as ancient as homo sapiens. In its various versions, it says, “if you lie once, you won’t be believed again”. And it works; it has worked for hundreds of thousands of years and it still works. Think of your current circle of acquaintances; those people you personally know and have known for a certain time. You trust them; you know that they won’t lie to you. It is for this reason that you call them “friends,” “buddies,” “pals” and the like.
But that works as long as you maintain your relationships within a small group and we know that the size of a circle of close relations doesn’t normally go beyond some 150 persons (it is called the “Dumbar number”). Within this size, the reputation of each member is known to everyone else and liars are easily identified and contrasted (or even expelled). The problem came when people started living in large cities. Then, most people would interact with a much larger number of people than the comfortable Dumbar number. How can we tell if someone you never met before is to be trusted or not? In this situation, the only defense against swindlers is indirect clues: the way of dressing, the way of speaking, the physical aspect; but none is as effective as the trust in someone you know well.
But that was nothing in comparison to what came along with the age of the mass media. Then, you would read things, hear things, see things in the media, but you really had no clue on where these communications came from, nor you could check whether the virtual reality in front of you corresponded to the real world. As mass media expanded their reach, the people controlling them discovered that lying was easy and that they had very little to lose in lying. At the receiving end, there were people confused and unable to verify the information they received. The media could easily tell them lies that would go undiscovered, at least for a while. Think of the story of the “weapons of mass destruction” that Iraq was supposed to be developing before the invasion of 2003. In this case, the lie became obvious after that no such weapons surfaced in the invaded Iraq, but the liars had obtained what they wanted and they suffered no ill consequences from their action. It was at that time that an aide to Donald Rumsfeld is reported to have said, “now we can create our own reality.” A triumph of sympathetic magic, indeed.
Then, the Internet and the social media came and they democratized lying. Now everyone could lie to everyone else simply by sharing a message. Truth didn’t come anymore from the trust in the people who were transmitting it, but from the number of “likes” and shares a message received. Truth can’t possibly be the same as virality, but it appears to have become exactly that in the general perception: if something is shared by a lot of people, then it has to be true.
So, today, we are lied continuously, consistently, and gleefully by about everyone and just about everything. Half truths, pure inventions, distortions of reality, word games, false flags, skewed statistics, and more are the communications we face every day. The tsunami of lies that’s crashing upon us is nearly unimaginable and it has consequences, dire consequences. It is making us unable to trust anything and anyone. We are losing contact with reality, we don’t know anymore how to filter the innumerable messages we receive. Trust is a major issue in human life; not for nothing, the devil is said to be “the father of lies” (John 8:44). And, indeed, what the anthropologist Roy Rappaport called “diabolical lies” are those lies that directly tamper with the very fabric of reality. And if you lose track with reality, you are lost yourself. That that may be what’s happening to all of us.
Some of us find it easiest simply to believe in what they are told by governments and lobbies; others move into a generalized mistrust of everything; easily falling victim of opposite lies. Diabolical lies are fractal, they hide more lies inside, they are part of bigger lies. Consider an event such as the 9/11 attacks in New York; it is by now hidden behind such a layer of multiple lies of all kinds that what really happened that day is impossible to discern, and perhaps destined to remain such forever.
We often believe that technology is always useful and that new technologies will save us from the disasters befalling on us. I am starting to think that what we need is not more technology but less. And if language is a technology, it seems to me that we are having too much of it, really. We are hearing too many speeches, too many words, too much noise. Perhaps, we all need a moment of silence. Perhaps Lao Tzu saw this already long ago when he wrote in the Tao Te Ching (**)
Much speech leads inevitably to silence.
Better to hold fast to the void.
10 Comments on "How the greatest technology ever developed backfired on us"
makati1 on Sun, 20th Mar 2016 7:58 pm
Examples of liars: Hilary Clinton, Obama, The Bushes, etc.
All politicians are liars. All salesmen are liars. All economists are liars (or merely stupid). All religions are lies. Etc.
You can get a somewhat clear picture of events if you read enough sources just like you can get a better picture of an accident if you can see it thru a number of eyes. Even then, it is not what really happened as no one person can possible know other than those directly involved.
We live in the most propaganda saturated social system ever. we are lied to from birth, even by our parents as they indoctrinate us into the religion and culture they were indoctrinated with. Few are allowed to grow up and then decide their religion, if any, and their prejudices, etc. Only a few are able to break those ties and think for themselves.
Technology needs to die along with all of the other things killing mankind and the ecology. The sooner the better. Where is a super strong sun EMP when you need it?
Go Speed Racer on Sun, 20th Mar 2016 8:30 pm
Yeah. The article points out what ails us. Sort of like there is a rock in your shoe, annoying as heck. Very few are sincere and helpful in their communications. Most are psychopath liars at this juncture. The more pleasant and functional eras of society, such as 1950’s, had fewer liars, and a more altruistic behavior.
Last while the bees and the animals have their communication, so they have a method or concept of lying? Probably not.
Apneaman on Sun, 20th Mar 2016 9:02 pm
Must Watch Video – “The Veneer of Justice in a Kingdom of Crime”
“I believe it is the duty of every single American citizen to sit down and watch the following mini-documentary. In just 45 minutes, you will learn more about the state of the union and the the world around you than decades of schooling and mainstream media could ever provide. Ignorance is not bliss, and if it weren’t for the blinding levels of ignorance pervasive in modern society, we wouldn’t find ourselves in this current deplorable state — on a knife’s edge between manageable serfdom and intolerable tyranny.”
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/03/20/must-watch-video-the-veneer-of-justice-in-a-kingdom-of-crime/
peakyeast on Mon, 21st Mar 2016 12:22 am
Eradicated 7K years ago?
When considering how many other larger species that were exterminated by humans – I wonder why this one isnt one of them.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/humans-definitely-killed-off-woolly-mammoths-giant-armadillo-and-sabretooth-tiger-scientists-claim-10455447.html
Yep – we were a overpopulation plague upon the earth long before “civilisation”. There just isnt much doubt about it – civilisation was just a plague booster.
theedrich on Mon, 21st Mar 2016 3:19 am
The most powerful lie factory is the TV, dominated by MSNBC, CNN and the “liberal” moguls (mostly Jewish) behind them. Hollywood amounts to a sibling of this factory, and is ruled by the same ilk. The second most powerful agency is the myth-based system called Christianity with its rhetoric about how Whitey will be compensated for his guilt-stupidity after he is in the grave. Squatting atop these two massive machines of mendacity is the political regime, excreting its fertilizer on all of the mushrooms below it. And given that money determines the entire social environment, it is the oligarchs (e.g., Georg Sörös, etc.) who determine the entire bribe-ocracy and the international death march.
The essence of the accumulated lying amounts to the fantasy that the future will be fantastic if only you White stooges keep the current demigods in power and stay on your track to genosuicide. If you make any move to avert your own extinction, you will automatically be identified as “racist” and characterized by other anathemas, as determined by those who control your subconscious.
This system of fraud and mendacity is today buried so deeply in our unconscious that we are mostly unable to recognize it. We are like fish unable to recognize water. “Liberalism” (i.e., any version of Communism) is defined as “good” (compare the blather of Pope Francis and his countless religious, irreligious and anti-religious imitators), while any utterance of White self-preservation is defined as demonic. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is Europe, a peninsula of Eurasia where the elites imprison anyone who attempts to publish revisionist history or utter politically impolitic words. As in Canada with its libel laws, the Jews make sure that this political rigidity will never be changed in the least. In Germany there is a special Constitutional Court (“Verfassungsgericht”) set up for just this purpose. The German people must die, and that is that. France is close behind, tailed by Britain. And, of course, the schools in all of these countries are programmed with the same end: White extinction.
The machine is supported by the illusion of growth and prosperity. By the time the house of cards collapses, it will be too late. The muds will have inundated the entire civilization, and the Liberal Left will be in permanent orgasm. Whites will be high on the brain-destroying narcotics whose heavily laundered money stealthily supports the politicians of both parties.
Mendacity will have won.
Anonymous on Mon, 21st Mar 2016 7:11 am
Ugo is a great thinker and communicator, but I have to say, the heavy antler thing is new to me. Natural selection, would not favor heavy over-sized antlers like that, eventually leading to extinction. Especially for something as trivial as an ornament for sexual competition. The females would have found males to reproduce with regardless of whether the males had small, medium, large antlers, or even none at all. Its like suggesting the human race would have died out long if not for men with big(er) dicks. Utter hogwash.
Its far more likely those elk were hunted to extinction-by humans. We did, are doing, a real number on the mega-fauna of the world, and we likely did a good job even w/o the aid of high-technology. Our intelligence is more than sufficient to drive species extinction, even with primitive tools. I cant agree heavy antlers played much of a role there-if any.
I know its not the main thrust of this otherwise good article, but he did open with it and it is at odds with the rest of the piece. I know he is a good physicist, but I would suggest maybe evolution is not his strong(est) suit.
Kenz300 on Mon, 21st Mar 2016 9:33 am
The top 1% want it all….. and the RepubliCON party will give it to them………..
What do RepubliCONS believe…….. depends who is paying….. follow the money……. fossil fuels….. oil, coal natural gas…, nuclear, NRA………the top 1%
Are RepubliCONS the real EVIL DOERS………..they want to end Social Security, Medicare and access to contraception…….
goat1001 on Mon, 21st Mar 2016 9:13 pm
O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’
‘Four.’
‘And if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?’
‘Four.’
joe on Tue, 22nd Mar 2016 9:01 am
I would say there were 5 lights just to get out of the room, but thats not the point. You have to believe there are 5 lights, just as Winston had to love Big Brother and believe in him as if he were a real friend.
In order to love liberty you have to believe that nothing is inviolable that you can burn the Declaration of Independence and start again.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_Command_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)#Part_II
A very risque depiction of what torture really is, decades before Zero Dark Thirty or other torture soft porn.
GregT on Tue, 22nd Mar 2016 11:35 am
RE:Must Watch Video – “The Veneer of Justice in a Kingdom of Crime
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/03/20/must-watch-video-the-veneer-of-justice-in-a-kingdom-of-crime/
Thanks Apnea.