Understanding the human condition might be one of the most complex theories man could ever try to explain. Arendt states that man ‘remains related to all other living organisms’. We are animals who, at some point in our evolution, birthed technological development and made scientific discoveries that let us design and create with human artifice.

Arendt voices her concern that the ‘truths of the modern scientific world’ would be so far beyond the capacity of common human understanding that it would no longer be possible to express such knowledge through speech. She mentions the risk as follows.

“…it would be as though our brain, which constitutes the physical, material condition of our thoughts, were unable to follow what we do, so that from now on we would indeed need artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking. If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is.”

I think the question is not whether the public can understand it, but rather whether the public even wants to. It seems as if the world shifted from a scientific world to a technological world where modern society no longer thirsts for knowledge, understanding, or innovation. Apps, gadgets, and artifice instigate the phenomena of procrastination and depression that create this momentum of perpetual idleness. Every second we spend distracting ourselves on social media instead of creating, every shake we give our fitness trackers instead of just doing the damn steps, every thought we ruminate on instead of only contemplating, and every moment we spend wasting away our minds, our bodies, and our souls in the artificial realm, the further we get from our human. Arendt’s description of humans at risk of being ‘helpless slaves… thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget, no matter how murderous it is’ might just be the most accurate prediction since Einstein’s fear ‘that technology will surpass our human interaction’ where ‘the world will have a generation of idiots.’

In 1958, when Arendt used the word ‘murderous’, she meant nuclear weapons, Sputnik, and inventions of the like. I imagine that using the same word to describe apps, TikTok videos, and Gemini makes this unnecessarily melodramatic. But that’s just it—murderous doesn’t fit apps. They’re abstract, they’re intangible, invisible, and for we all know in the matrix (okay, that is melodramatic). But what even is an application other than an algorithm? And what even is an algorithm other than ‘mathematical symbols’?[1] So, there we have it: “the sciences today have been forced to adopt a ‘language’ of mathematical symbols which… now contains statements that in no way can be translated back into speech.” We have just accepted these technological developments, no questions asked whether or not they benefit us as human beings of the physical world. While it might not seem as barbaric as the atomic bomb or as interstellar as Sputnik, the development of mobile applications does have murderous characteristics at a metaphysical level.

This makes me think of the average modern human and what their ‘normal’ day looks like.[2] They wake up, and the first thing they do is go on their phones. The degree to which they interact with their devices varies. I spoke with a few people who, immediately after waking up, lie in bed and go on their phones for five hours straight—one says that they would get up to get a cup of coffee only to go back in bed to use their phones and lie there until lunchtime (what time they have their lunch, I haven’t a clue). For those who have work, they use their phones for a few minutes before getting up and getting ready. Whilst they get ready, they bring their phones along with them to play some music or scroll through reels as they brush their teeth. What’s interesting is that most of the people who tell me their somewhat similar routines always add that they feel ridiculous for being on their phones all the time. It would often be accompanied by awkward laughter, and they would go on to say that “I really should stop using my phone” or something along those lines.

This goes to show that it is now the new norm to be on our phones all the time. And while there is a nagging feeling of: hold on a minute, maybe this is a bit much, the modern, technology-adept humans don’t entertain this as a thought to be considered. Is it even that important to think about it? I mean, hey, it’s just a harmless little black box. Sure. That awkward laughter is cognitive dissonance at play. That thing where we know there’s something out of place; there is that feeling that maybe we should be doing something just a little more productive than being mentally suspended. There is a subconscious recognition that we have surrendered our autonomy—a defining feature of the evolved human experience. And our refusal to change or even think about the prospect of changing creates a mental friction that only strengthens with further refusal. We trade the difficulty of human action—which Arendt defines as unpredictable, meaningful, and deeply connected to our free will—for predictable, conditioned, shallow behaviour.

Arendt further explains how the political judgement (ideas, speech, thinking, reasoning) of scientists is not to be trusted; they are naive and too enamoured by science to question the humanitarian consequences of, say, designing an atomic weapon, and the moral obligations tied to it. The creators of these big tech companies have probably imagined the world to have evolved differently. I can only assume that the purpose of their work was to increase efficiency and productivity. And don’t get me wrong, they achieved that; maps, e-mails, Amazon, and all these inventions that do allow us to do work efficiently and productively. But just like anything else in this world, it’s a double-edged sword. The issue isn’t the constant discovery and development of science. The issue is the lack of political judgement on the science, where the public sphere merely accepts what is given rather than contemplating ways to use it as tools to aid in their work. Arendt defines the importance of creation—work, as she calls it—as one of the human conditions. As I see it, creation is an awe-full thing, a beautiful damning thing. It stands to reason though that creation without ideation, without curiosity, wonder, and critical thinking, we are indeed left as thoughtless, helpless slaves to artifice. We become lazy, no longer thinking about what we are doing and why we are doing it.

This is just one of the many facets that Arendt speaks of. She goes even further with the mention of ‘the advent of automation’.

“It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the fetters of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won.”

It’s as if our autonomy is subjected to our devices. We don’t decide when we use our phones; we let the ping of our notifications decide for us. We don’t get to choose what or how much content we consume; rather, we devour all that is presented to us. It’s an automatic response that requires no cessation for thought. Before work, during work, and after work, we are instantly able to liberate ourselves ‘from the fetters of labor’ however often we want to. What we do in these moments of liberation is anything but ‘higher or more meaningful activities’—i.e. technological distractions. And if that isn’t scary enough, Arendt adds that “we are confronted with… the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them.” We no longer have—or worse, we are unaware of—the power to drive our own minds. Instead, we are unconsciously stuck in this eternal yearning for awareness that we are never going to achieve so long as we dull ourselves with these distractions.

It isn’t all doomsday, though. And while there is no definitive or conclusive answer to this seemingly inflated quandary, Arendt proposes a way out: to think. She concludes that we must think about what we are doing and contemplate its ramifications on our lives. She assures her reader that ‘such answers are given every day’; this includes our voluntary engagement in practical politics, that is, speech and reasoning guided by our critical thinking. She encourages the reappraisal of the human condition through informed opinion. This means abandoning thoughtless ‘empty truths’, thereby encouraging thought and purging ourselves of idleness.

Footnotes

1. I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than that. But for the most part algorithms are instructions which can either be math symbols, logic, or plain english… and maybe some other more computer science-y stuff. ↩︎
2. I am no scientist nor have I conducted any experiment on this. But I do speak to a handful of people at work, at uni, and at placement nearly everyday and I have noticed a familiar pattern in all these different individuals that I have interacted with. ↩︎

Love,
g.