It’s raining out there, though that’s no longer unusual. But this strange feeling I’ve been having is becoming more familiar. Standing on my porch, looking out at the world, I see that those baleful clouds have left tomorrow and moved into today. Now it’s raining in here, and that’s rather unfortunate. This foreboding I’ve had has worn away my peace of mind. Huddled in my home, hidden from the world, I measure our years and wonder what we’ve been doing with our time. About a decade ago, I launched a blog dedicated to exploring the ideas and practices of Stoicism, a school of philosophy which derives its name from the “stoa” or “porch” where its earliest adherents met to discuss matters of interest. We have lost this “interest” in the sense of an “interesse”, an “in-between” which serves as a common ground. Where once we stood on stone, we now trudge through the mud.

Inheritors of the Enlightenment, we live in dark times, for sure. The flames of faith and reason have dimmed, and what was once illuminated by public eyes now withers away in obscurity. I thought that a few Stoic principles would prove sufficient in rooting me, but we require more resilience if we are to withstand a storm. We need to stand firm where we find ourselves and not fear the scene that’s been set. From our view from the porch, we must be bold enough to ask, with authority and authenticity, “What the hell is going on in the world!?” This is the task of any citizen with political and philosophical integrity. My wanderings have led me across the breadth of literary time and space, while my wondering has thrown up as many questions as it has settled. Few answers are fixed, but even those still pending offer some insight. It seems to me that this thing we call “the Modern World” is caught up in a complicated if not toxic relationship between the phenomena of mass society, labour, and technology. My appeal is that we scrutinize this situation and, as a wise woman once proposed, think about what it is that we are doing these days.

What do I mean by mass society? This is not simply answered, for our daily lives weave through a web of differing domains, each expecting something separate from us. We are, foremost, beings thrown into a concrete existence. I am a Self, existing here and now, a conglomerate of competing and collateral emotions, aspirations, and competencies, all of which play a role in making me “Me”. This Self, however, exists in continuity with all those things which relate me to the World. I am of the World, a province of contrasting private and public, economic and political, domains. The nature and boundaries of these realms are dynamic and not always distinct, such that we often lose a sense of the activities and expectations appropriate to each. Where our world should be a kaleidoscope of cultures and enterprises, the colours of our society have bled together into a lacklustre grey-brown mess. It is this amorphous, anonymous mess that is mass society, wherein we abandon not only ourselves but our communities too. Within it, we live precariously and vicariously, never anchored around any conviction about what we are doing.

Humans are empowered by a myriad of mental and physical possibilities, but within the churn of mass society, our avenues are closed off and we find ourselves restricted to the dictates of labour. For many, this statement would not arouse any concern, but it is precisely the character of the Modern World to obfuscate the deficit. Labour, after all, is important; it is the basis for our subsistence, our jobs being our livelihoods. But if this were all there was to our existence, we would be better off foregoing all this so-called civilization and returning to our primitive origins as little more than talkative primates. No, our humanity is worth more, and our collective obsession with efficient production and consumer pleasures is a degrades our potential. Mass society cares not for persons or their cultures and is hostile to any activities that threaten its inertia. As Hannah Arendt might phrase it, mass society transforms action into behaviour, thereby estranging us from our agency. Action is free, unpredictable; emerging from a person’s choice concerning who they are and what they wish to do. Behaviour, meanwhile, is determinate, calculable; the story of what we will be written even before we were born. While action is boundless, behaviour is amenable to control, to domination. Mass society in its innate chaos craves order, which is to be attained through sophisticated systems of social regulation as embodied in and enacted through various institutions. Bureaucracy, fueled by the findings of the behavioural or social sciences, rejects free action and increasingly penetrates every nook and cranny of each domain of our lives.

The dominating tendency of a bureaucratic society is augmented by technology. Much ink has been shed in articulating the monumental changes that modern technologies have wrought, but such arguments often miss the intimate place of technology within our human existence. Of the many ways we could define our nature, our being “technological animals” is among the more pertinent. What technology is remains another matter not easily defined, but part of what it means is a mediation between us and nature, and amongst ourselves. As technology changes, so does this mediation, and our compulsion towards “innovation”, linked to our labour obsession, continuously disrupts our established relationships. What is characteristic of the Modern World is a new paradigm, an industrial lens or framework that, like the frame around a picture, excludes what is not within its view. It is as if what lies beyond the frame does not exist, and an inability to look past its limits means not only that those alternative perspectives are ignored; they are destroyed. Industrialization as a modern mode of technology has brought its benefits, but, like Plato’s mythical pharmakon, their potency can prove lethal if taken to excess. There are many examples illustrating this point, but none perhaps stands so starkly as the contemporary phenomenon of “artificial intelligence”. We have watched these past several years as society has been consumed by an A.I. frenzy, carried away by pseudo-scientific speculations about what could be. Trenches have been dug as lines in the sand, casting sides in another fruitless conflict that keeps us too preoccupied to confront the issues that truly matter. While no one is so qualified as to accurately prophesize the eventual outcome, we can rest assured that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the years ahead.

This brief piece, which merely skims across the surface of a deep issue, is liable to come across as vague and more than a little conspiratorial in its implications. If this were all a matter of conspiracy, however, it would prove much less ominous than it presents itself. The truth is that we have yet to grasp how far we have sunk into the mire. What is needed is greater engagement, both theoretical and practical, with this dynamic between mass society, labour, and technology. The intention of this piece, then, is merely to pose the question and set a prerogative for this blog series. Taking a view from my porch – that is, from the position I find myself living in – I hope to explore and elaborate on a host of philosophical theories that bear relevance to this topic and reflect upon some of their practical implications. From one horizon to the other, I will journey through this world to see what there is to be found and thereby better equip myself to deal with this present darkness. I further hope that you will be my companions on this long journey. There is much I would like to hear from you, dear reader, but I will leave you with one further question to ponder in the meantime: “How do you understand your place in all of this?”