(2019-04-19) Rao Against Waldenponding II

Venkatesh Rao: Against Waldenponding: II. Interestingly though, it is NOT our digital devices that are the untrustworthy horcruxes in this story. The true horcruxes are the objects that waldenponders believe are more deserving of your attention: the Walden ponds. See earlier 2018-10-05-RaoAgainstWaldenponding

The underlying practical questions don't worry me at all. They are legitimate and we should all be asking and answering them as best as we can, and stealing each other's answers for.

most importantly, you aren't an NPC -- non-playing/playable character -- in the battle for your own attention. You have tools ranging from ad blockers to cognitive reframes. If you're letting your attention get "hacked", it's because you're choosing to. If you think the only kind of agency you have is the agency to uncritically withdraw to save your soul, you've been pwned, but it isn't by the tech platforms

None of the practical concerns actually merits the near-religious reactionary movement against digital life that I've dubbed waldenponding.

Waldenponding is a search for meaning that is circumscribed by the what you might call the spiritual gravity field of an object or behavior held up as ineffably sacred. The associated literal pattern of religiosity is idolatry

It can take a variety of forms: the in-person conversation, the board game, the hike in the woods, the session of manual labor, the construction project, the family dinner, the paper book (Artisanal)

All are excellent things, to be valued for what they literally are. But as suggested repositories for bits of your soul, they are incredibly dangerous

Though the protagonists may, through the narrative, explore the universe in much more expansive ways, you can see where they keep bits of their souls locked down; the zone that keeps drawing them back; the idol that prevents them from wandering too far.

Each of these objects/behavior is a classic horcrux candidate because it is old enough for illegible, unplottable patterns of cultural intelligence to have formed around it

Chesterton's Fence is a test designed to be impossible to pass. It is the Kobayashi Maru of traditionalism; the only solution is to cut the Gordian knot; never mind if you can't parse this impossibly mixed meta-metaphor

Waldenponders talk of these things as tangible embodiments and reliable catalysts of ineffable states of mind. A log cabin is not just a log cabin.

Organizations can waldenpond too, and I distrust them the same way when they do.

Sometimes the soul is visibly maintained in an explicit document, like a a mission statement. Other times, it is visibly maintained in a particular "original" factory, a "classic" version of a product, or a "beloved" mascot. The opposite of such organizations is not mercenary or soulless organizations, but ones that see the continuous renewal of their sense of the sacred as part of the function of their daily operations

The illegible, rich, living reality I want to protect is the emerging wilderness of digital life, with its seemingly endless frontier and endless mysteries

The authoritarian high modernists who seek to impose legibility on the human search for meaning are in fact the waldenponders.

It is certainly fair to also argue that the big platform companies also have authoritarian high-modernist intentions

Of the two competing authoritarian high-modernist forces, the forces of tradition are vastly more powerful

The Internet today is still more threatened than it is threatening.

You want to talk about attention hacking dark patterns? Look no further than the institutions of meatspace (status quo), many of which have been hacking our attention for hundreds or even thousands of years. Schools, churches, temples, government agencies, traditional media, the music industry, and yes, board-game makers.

Technology is about constantly creating new vistas of experience

To live richly is to trust your soul to the universe at large, and the experiences it offers that we build technology to access more of.