The paradoxes of the information age make the mind swim. The more we connect, the more we are divided. The faster the network speed, the shorter our attention span becomes. Community requires ritual and narrative. We need a philosopher to sort it all out: Byung-Chul Han, author of such penetrating meditations on digital society as “The Burnout Society” and “The Disappearance of Rituals.”
What we need most are temporal structures that stabilize life
Han looks to culture for the recovery of a sense of stability amid the onslaught of accelerated digital time
- The only way in which we can revitalize community is through ritual forms
- Today, culture is held together solely by instrumental and economic relations
- Everything that binds and connects is disappearing
- There are hardly any shared values or symbols, no common narratives that unite people
- We need a very different temporal politics
Tim Gorichanaz:
The dichotomous binary thinking encoded in digital communication is displacing our cultural capacity for contextual narrative, reflection, and empathy
- We tear down potential heroes who would weave moral fiber into society through emulation before we can even stand them up
- While the philosopher Han looks to art to recover a culture of cohesion, Gorichanz sees some promise in “slow technology”
The digital revolution has shaken up our understanding of narrative, but there are new technologies that could help us recontextualize
Are.na
- Ritual
- Narrative
- Context
- Temporal stability
- Everything missing from the connected isolation of digital disconnectivity is the antidote to its corrosion of community
