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- Beyond the horizon provided by mass media, there are forgotten sources of wonder: there lies that consolation for modernity. And what do I mean by wonder? The wound of silence. Of not having words or symbols for the mystery of being here. Of being thrown back onto our consciousness, like a rock thrown back to shore by ocean waves.
- The broad shift from manual labor to cognitive labor means the factory foreman has to be moved into our brains. Surveillance is no longer external, it is internal, we monitor ourselves. The anxiety we feel at checking our work is the anxiety of the salivating dog who does not know why he drools or feels hungry. We feel our bosses our watching us. We worry we have not produced. But we don’t really know why we care.
- God has been replaced by technology. The inner-voice we hear is no longer divine: it is the electronically mediated voice of the world wide web. We have replaced the inner-monologue with our own chatter. We have replaced revelation with ir-relevation.
- Something very dark has happened to the soul: it thirsts for information that does not concern it. If Nietzsche was horrified by the 19th-century daily newspaper, he would be horrified by the streaming news feed: constant information, disseminated without discretion. We are addicted not to overload, but the numbness it induces.
- “The individual (no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it) does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of…
