Social VS Convenient Animals

-- By DanielaWeerasinghe - 11 Mar 2022

Aristotle once said that “man is by nature a social animal” and thus naturally seeks the camaraderie of others as part of his well-being. According to the Society for Neuroscience, “decades of research in the neuroscience realm has largely supported his thoughts on the matter” (Kayt Sukel, In Sync: How Humans are Hard-Wired for Social Relationships, Dana Foundation, November 13, 2019).

Not really. You're working two languages away from what he wrote in the first chapter of Politics, which is that man is an animal whose telos, whose highest purpose, is to live in a polis, a city: that man is a political animal.

My previous essay “Freedom of Thought VS Democracy” analyzed and depicted the broken link between human’s capacity to think autonomously and to contribute to a democratic society, by reason of the former’s growing deterioration. I advanced the argument that we emerged into a “machine-directed society” “thanks to” having been/being “other-directed”, i.e., in need of assurance that one is emotionally in tune with others; willing to accommodate others for their endorsement (David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd).

This paper aims to further develop this argumentation. I will critique Eben Moglen’s theory that today’s unfreedom is caused by the social pressure of perceived “convenience”, i.e., “the surrender of anxiety to the machine [i.e., the big data feudalists Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon & co]”. More precisely, I will strive to explain why human being’s natural tendency to be social trumps and precedes the natural preference for convenience and thereby represents the ultimate catalyst of today’s “economy dominated by privacy invasion subcontractors” (Eben Moglen).

But this is not my idea: it's a straw man. I haven't said that unfreedom is caused by convenience. I have not even said anything about convenience as ordinarily defined, except to say that other people report that they find destructive technologies "convenient." I said that "convenience" as a self-reported experience actually means the surrender of an anxiety to the machine. This, the software entity we built to maximize "engagement" with surveillance capitalism rewards us for doing by returning to us new and different anxieties. In this way, the anxiety-relief of "convenience" actually never relieves any anxiety, just transforming one into another.

How this is supposed to amount to arguing that convenience causes unfreedom I don't understand.

Why our social nature preprogrammed us for digital exploitation

I take as a starting point Aristotle’s assertion -corroborated by neuroscientific evidence- that we are “social animals”. We fundamentally value family, friendship, and romantic relationships. That is, we cherish and feel a need for companionship. As a natural corollary of this social human character, we crave belonging to a community and thus perpetually seek out connectivity. And digital feudalists have been exploiting our social character: unlike the society that Aristotle lived in, where meetings were organized orally or via handwritten letters and took place in person, today everything happens digitally. It used to be a privilege to meet friends on certain days and a rarity to meet people from other cities or countries. Never has mankind been afforded the opportunity and indeed luxury to connect with everyone, at all times, everywhere, and at little or no cost as in today’s digital age. It is thus of no surprise that our social inclination has let us become overstimulated by and addicted to those devices that enable perceptively fulsome connection.

Our social character used to build strong communities. In today’s internet society, however, it seems to act as a destructive force, rendering us increasingly socially depleted. We no longer dedicate time and effort to our immediate, physical community and keep swiping on tinder for a new one-night partner. After all, we “can” always find a new connection somewhere else. Smart devices have given us a false sense of belonging and have replaced our inherent urge to be connected with people, with devices. We feel satisfied with a zoom call or Whatsapp chat and long-distance relationships with family and friends are the norm.

Why understanding the ultimate driver of our digital behavior matters

This poses the question of whether this satisfaction derives from us being “social animals” or from us choosing convenience i.e., surrendering anxiety to the machine. It seems that the two questions are interlinked. On the one hand, one might consider our social character to be THE cause of feeling anxious alone and hence choosing conveniently smart devices that allow for constant, albeit manipulative, connection. It is questionable, however, whether our social nature is the reason for feeling anxious alone. Indeed, pre-digital age, the smartest minds spent a significant amount of time at home alone, by themselves. The pandemic-induced physical isolation in the past two years has augmented this anxiety and hence our smart phone usage.

On the other hand, one might say that we simply cherish companionship so much that we cannot help ourselves but use smart devices to realize our natural desire to be connected with each other. The latter positions Aristotle’s wisdom center-front and is in my opinion more persuasive. In fact, suppose that smart devices were not as convenient to use as they are today. Or indeed, imagine that using smart devices is expensive and difficult. Granted, our digital footprint may decrease in size, but it would not vanish. Put differently, we would be as inclined to choose inconvenient modes of communication (provided there are no alternatives) as today’s convenient smart devices, for we cannot help ourselves but seek out relationships.

Concluding thoughts

The bottom line of this line of thinking is the following: if it was convenience that drives our digital behavior, we could fix today’s surveillance capitalism by way of making privacy-breaching and freedom of thought-encroaching smart devices inconvenient to use. But if it was our “social animals” nature that dictates our digital behavior, then, it is much harder to find a solution, for it would be against our nature to refuse using devices that enable connections that we so seek.

Nature dictates technology's details? That cannot be proven by a sideways allusion to Aristotle or a "neuroscience" paper. Who is the "we" who could make "inconvenient" other peoples' devices? How about making "convenient" in the natural sense devices and services that do not surveil their users?

The route to improvement here is to concentrate less on the "versus," the effort to argue against an idea, and to put more clearly your own point. I am not worth arguing with on these terms.

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