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Social Media and the Existential Task of Existence

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Social Media and the Existential Task of Existence SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE EXISTENTIAL TASK OF EXISTENCE A Report of a Senior Study By Branden Hunt Philosophy Maryville College Fall, 2013 Date Approved _______________, by ______________________________ Faculty Supervisor Date Approved _______________, by ______________________________ Division Chair ABSTRACT Modern technology continues to barrel ahead at breakneck speeds engulfing our lives in ever greater degrees. It is little wonder that the question of what technology holds in store for us is increasing in its significance. Focusing on one particular dimension of technology that has proved especially volatile and ubiquitous this thesis endeavors to ask what is going on at the meeting of social media and humanity. In an effort to ascertain a more critical ground from which to ask such a question, this project begins with a survey of two thinkers who devoted much due attention to the matter of human being: Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. Both carved great and diverse inroads into the strangely proximal yet so often unasked question: what is it to be human? By drawing on and synthesizing significant aspects of their expositions, necessary pre-questions are asked to prepare the lingering question: what is going on with human being in a socially mediated world? The relatively brief conclusions given in response are an exercise in answering that question, revealing a fundamental altercation brought about in the mediation of human being through social media. That transformation is found to take place in technological enframent of human communication. iii Table of Contents Chapter I The Task of Existence 4 Chapter II On Being and Human Being 25 Chapter III Social Media and the Task of Human Being 81 Bibliography 123 iv AN INTRODUCTION It is difficult to decide where to begin this introduction. I suppose this is due in part to the fact that it is equally difficult to name any part of this essay as the most important. That said, how about I begin with a brief overview of the construct of what you are about to incur. On a grand scheme this paper is divided threefold. Division one makes a short incursion into Soren Kierkegaard’s thought, arranged primarily around his first two of three stages on life’s way: the Aesthetic and Ethical. Along the way we stop and dwell on, in particular length, anxiety and social ethics. Coincidentally, anxiety and social ethics proves to be worthy of special attention in the second division also. That division makes an inquiry into the thought of Martin Heidegger, which is demarcated by three subdivisions, each concerning itself primarily with a single text, Being and Time, An Introduction to Metaphysics, and The Question Concerning Technology respectively. Finally, as one might expect, division three is a synthesis of the findings of the first two divisions. That said there are some remarks about the deeper structure of this senior study that I believe will aid the reader. Many works are written in a linear fashion. This one is not. The first two divisions are not synthesized with one another to a great degree. Instead the synthesizing is saved, for the much greater part, until the third division. Some may say this detracts from the effort, and maybe it does. Certainly if this were a full-length book I would integrate divisions one and two more thoroughly, but it is not, and I do not 1 mostly for practicality’s sake. To more thoroughly draw out the connections between division one and two as I go along would significantly lengthen this thesis. So instead of a linear approach I opt for a triangular tactic. Sections one and two stand relatively independent of each other, but three is critically built upon both. Let me now speak of division three. It brings together a number of diverse thinkers, including Jurgen Habermas, J.R.R. Tolkein, Franklin Gamwell, and Devaun Davis, not to mention Heidegger and Kierkegaard. That said, the method hints at what the writing itself is trying to get at, which is freedom. As human being we go about continually setting up divergent ways of being in the world. Still, it seems in our modern times there are some signs that such creativity is being endangered. Technology, specifically social media, is treated by way of the insights gained through division one and two. One should read chapter three then as developing a deeper meaning in, not behind, this isn’t Freudian or Marxist criticism here, social media. This development finds technology placing humanity in a frame of reference to the world, what shall be called enframent. Furthermore, a potential way by which this human ecological disaster can be averted is in a cursory manner sketched out. Some particularly astute reader may notice the ethical-religious stage of Kierkegaard’s existence is not addressed, at least not explicitly. The religious stage is indeed central, and no matter how humanistic the currents of modern existentialism may be, they must be dealt with. If space and time permitted, such an inquiry would be carried out. But in light of the limits of this study, this endeavor will serve as an initial but valuable excavation for such a larger enterprise. For now this paper finishes with a beginning. A beginning that would when carried through reinstate Kierkegaard’s “alone 2 before god” in the task of existence: “to venture wholly to become oneself, an individual human being, this specific individual human being,… alone in this prodigious strenuousness and this prodigious responsibility.”1 1Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, trans. by Edna H. Hong and Howard V. Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) 5. 3 CHAPTER I THE TASK OF EXISTENCE You can live an entire lifetime without ever doing more than tossing in your sleep, or, perhaps if you are somewhat ambitious, you may even sit up in bed and fluff your pillow. It is more often than not the dark night of the spirit. So it seems fitting to begin an investigation into the human way of being in this nocturnal world. Our present culture has certain fascination, to no small degree, with violence and death, and more precisely with living. Consider the likes of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead movie series. In movies such as these there exist at least two levels. There is the world which exists for the critical-minded person – this world is often explored after having watched the movie – and it often offers up a critique of some social situation, such as segregation, race relations, technology, morals, consumerism, etc. On the other hand, there is with such horror/thriller movies the more immediate level, which enthralls the viewer. This is the level which delivers the adrenaline rush. In this level there is one predominant question which resides over the viewer; how shall the character or characters survive? In this what we see is an extraordinarily fictitious construct in which all that matters is physically living, but in life rarely is our presiding concern merely survival. Instead we find ourselves concerned, perhaps brooding, over something else entirely, and perhaps that itself is no small part of the enjoyment many derive from these thriller movies: a dampening down of that reliable protuberance. Now what is this 4 protuberance that we often find so tempting to quiet? That is the guiding question that we seek to explore in this pursuant chapter, and it has been exposited upon extensively by Soren Kierkegaard the famous 19th century Danish existentialist. We begin with Kierkegaard’s aesthete as seen in Either/Or, particularly the idealized aesthete. By this term, “aesthete,” we do not mean, precisely, an art critic. What is, at the moment, being dealt with here is not the aesthete in the traditional sense of the word, as professor Louis Mackey points out. Rather, what is being dealt with is the aesthete in the sense of its Greek root aesthesis, which means sense reception.2 Beginning with this notion of sense reception we will mark the trail of Kierkegaard’s aestheticism. Simply and broadly it is marked out by immediacy. The idea of a trail is a double-edged parallel for the aesthetic way of being. Just as when walking a marked out path one is fascinated by the immediate surroundings and looking expectantly for the next trail mark, likewise the aesthete is caught up in his/her surroundings entirely. At first hand what I am describing is a Don Giovanni of sorts, as in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. In fact that is Kierkegaard’s analogy of the ideal aesthete in Either/Or.3 This Don Giovanni fellow, Mackey clarifies for us, is an ideal aesthete rather than an actual aesthete for he most probably does not exist.4 Of course why would I discuss a fictive man, and why exactly is he pure fiction anyways? Because fiction is so often art and, more to the point, fiction is so often art as poiesis. Poiesis, by the way, is important; remember it. It is the root from which we 2Louis Mackey, "Some Versions of the Aesthete: Kierkegaard's Either/Or," Rice UniversityStudies, 50, no. 1 (1964): 39. doi:1911/62870. 3Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Vol. I, trans. Edna Hong, and Howard Hong (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983), 45-134. 4Mackey, "Some Versions of the Aesthete," 40-41. 5 derive the word “poetry.” Toward the climax of this essay poiesis will become critically related to a disclosure of the essence of technology, which is critical to the ultimate aims of this study. Now, poiesis is a Greek word that Heidegger defines as: to bring forth here.5 By this bringing forth here Heidegger intends to intimate the meaning bring forth into the open or to bring out of concealment; that is to reveal.6 Maintaining this concept of poiesis and particularly the concept of art as poiesis, it should be readily apparent why it is of use to discuss a fictive man like Don Giovanni; Don Giovanni gets to the essence of the aesthetic way of being.
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