Swimming with Invisible Leviatians
02 \\ Curations for September 2023
Welcome to the latest!!
N.S. Lyons, The Change Merchants, The Upheaval (Substack newsletter)
What is this about?
Lyons refers to Machiavelli’s analogies of statesmen as either Foxes, who are wily, adventuresome, cunning, and force-avoidant, or Lions, who are strong, direct, cautious, and change-averse. He observes that these analogies can also map onto our contemporary social classes of elites/Virtuals and populists/Physicals, where the former tend to be knowledge workers and global nomads and the latter tend to be industrial/service workers and local homebodies (with room for great variation, of course).
Currently, the Foxes/Virtuals are ascendent and increasing (by virtue of herding everyone into continuous education), meaning that many of us are highly educated, urbanized, and digitally formed toward data and abstraction. This leads to the key point of Lyons’ article, which is that Virtuals make a living and a life through the manipulation of symbols, whether visual or narrative. Virtuals take existing information and transform it into something else.
Indeed, there is no living in twenty-first century globalism without this manipulation. It necessitates capitalizing on, or causing, change. And so, change becomes vital to the very foundation of social and economic stability, which means it must always be happening (at ever-accelerating speeds). (This is what Hartmut Rosa means by “dynamic stabilization.”)
As per Sacasas and our ongoing explorations, we know that Narratives can exist within the Database, but they become subject to disintegration. A single, coherent, enduring narrative becomes anathema in this context, because if it stays the same, it cannot be recombined or manipulated into “newness” that can be sold, traded, or otherwise commodified.
We are globally enmeshed with the Merchants of Change.
What can we learn?
We consistently and continually shape following generation’s imaginations toward knowledge work, assuming that the ability to manipulate information is the highest or best skill to have. Whether we consider this notion of digital manipulation seductive, useful, or inescapable, the fact remains that these changes arrived so quickly and with such totalizing impact that we’re only now beginning to realize that our imaginations for the “good life” have grown rather impoverished. We cast off long-standing Narratives offered through religion, literature, or social tradition (not without some merit), and find ourselves constantly picking up random pieces that remain, wondering how they fit together.
Of course, we’ve always had prophets and Cassandras crying out in the wilderness, but we are half-hearted and selfish creatures consumed by our comforts. And the Merchants of Change do a pretty good job of keeping us comfortable.
What does it mean for us?
This sounds awfully gloomy, but I don’t mean it to be. If we’re going to make any effective (ahem) changes in our individual lives, let alone at the societal level, it’s vital that we understand the general contours of our social imaginaries. Social imaginaries are those values, institutions, laws, and symbols that shape what we find acceptable, possible, or unthinkable. They are the “water” in which we swim.
These imaginaries literally shape us toward certain desires and choices, and live within the subterranean caves of our being. Without shining a spotlight on these invisible leviathans, we will always be at the mercy of such change merchants as are willing and able to “shape the narrative” whenever they wish. And we will always wonder if we could have resisted. If we could have chosen otherwise.
I am becoming ever more convinced that it’s the stories we tell (the ones rooted in time, place, and eternal truths) that are our best means of resistance against such forces as acceleration, consumption, and change for its own sake.
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The World’s #1 Sleep Expert: The 6 Sleep Hacks You Need!, The Diary of a CEO (video)
The title is click-baity, the conversation is 🔥🔥🔥.
What is this about?
Dr. Matthew Walker studies and writes about sleep as an essential biological, psychological, and social good. He is emphatic that the sleep is a non-negotiable foundation of our health, productivity, and wellbeing. But he points out that, in our modern capitalist society, the implicit message we get about sleep is that it’s completely useless. This has caused what he calls a “lack of sleep epidemic” that detrimentally impacts individual and social health. In this two-hour interview, Walker discusses the biology and psychology of how we sleep (or don’t), how sleep affects driving, mental health or deterioration, appetite and weight management, and so on, offering insights for what we might be able to do about it.
What can we learn?
Listening to Walker reminds me of Jonathan Crary’s book (encountered before), which explores the consequences of a non-stop, constantly expanding marketplace on our social, political, and relational lives experienced through the technological erosion of the boundaries of sleep. Both Walker and Crary observe that in our contemporary environment of social and technological acceleration, if you’re sleeping, you’re neither producing nor consuming. The story embedded within our current social imaginary shapes our imaginations to consider that our only value in contemporary society is as a constant consumer or producer of stuff.
My mother tells the story of how, when I was three years old, I told her I wasn’t going to take naps anymore. Apparently, she continued to leave me in my room to entertain myself at “nap time,” which she took advantage of, even if I didn’t. I struggle with sleeping well to this day. Falling asleep, staying asleep, getting good sleep: the bed is a battlefield for me. But more than that, I struggle with rest, with slowing down to reflect, create, and even take care of my body. As someone who has dealt with chronic ill health most of my life, I hate conceding limits to what my body can do. It’s hard for me to accept that sometimes what I most need is to stop, that slowing my roll might carry me further down the road than pressing the accelerator to the floor.
What does it mean for us?
So if sleep is such an all-encompassing good, why are doing such a good job of attempting to banish it from our lives? For one, there’s a sense, implied by the 24/7 news cycle, that we’re missing out on Very Important Things if we’re not constantly updating the feed. For another, we’ve come to accept (on a subconscious level) that reality really consists in what can be digitized and shared online.
The limitlessness of virtual technologies leads us to ignore what our bodies tells us, and indeed, even what the rhythms of the natural world model for us. We’ve lost touch with ways of listening and responding to sensory evidence that isn’t “measured” or parsed into bytes.
Honestly, I’m first in line to admit that this is a major struggle for me, this “conscious uncoupling” from modernity and acceleration in ways that acknowledge my limits and need for rest. But this seems like a very real, concrete practice of resistance that we can cultivate in our daily lives.
Considering these two pieces together, I realize just how all-encompassing our social imaginaries are for how we conceive of ourselves as individuals. If we find our natural, necessary need for sleep a weakness, or if we consider ourselves “unproductive” because we need rest, then…
We get swallowed whole by these invisible leviathans of productivity, consumption, and change because change. And we know we’re being swallowed, yet it feels like we’ve passed the event horizon and can no longer break free.
But I think we can. And I think it matters that we try. I’d love to hear how you’re finding ways to rest, resist, and tell a different story.
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise—together.
Shalom,
R21.5 Resources
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