The Angel of the iPhone: Part 6, Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.

H/T to Daniel for sending me a link to Jonathan Franzen's recent Op Ed piece in the New York Times, an adaptation of the commencement speech Franzen delivered on May 21 at Kenyon College.

The essay is entitled Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. and it riffs off a contrast between Facebook "liking" and the risk of loving real people.

The article begins by suggesting that technology creates an extension of the self and that, to keep this illusion intact, it must undermine what stands opposed to the self: Love.

To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.

Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.
According to Franzen, one way technology tries to diminish love is through commodification. An example of this is the Facebook "like":
A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable.
But in the end the Facebook "like" simply creates a narcissistic loop:

Consumer technology products would never do anything this unattractive, because they aren’t people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us. Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.

And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.

Franzen then turns to contrast the narcissism of Web 2.0 "liking" with the messy work of loving actual persons:

My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love. My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.” She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard.

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie.

This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

There is much more in the essay worth engaging. And thanks once again to Daniel for the link.

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14 thoughts on “The Angel of the iPhone: Part 6, Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts.”

  1. I believe the zeitgeist of commodification is rearing its head everywhere.

    One area that interests me in particular is the invisible transformation of outcomes into targets.

    For example, if you turn the desirable outcome of raising academic achievement for school children into a target, you start to value their SAT results over their emotional well-being, their curiosity, their health, their wonder, their scepticism.

    You also start to de-value the children who mess up your targets - the gifted (topped-out market), those with learning difficulties (poor investment return), those whose behaviour challenges the system (market destabilisers), and so on...

    The great irony is that this undermines performance against the very same targets you were aiming at. Only by promoting an ethos that values emotional well-being, curiosity, health, wonder, scepticism etc do you maximise the chances of developing a truly well-educated population.

    I also appreciated the thoughts on otherness in your post, Richard.  I think it was Mark Heim who got me thinking about the necessity of otherness to love - that we can't really love someone who is exactly the same as ourselves.  That, as you say, is simply narcissism.

    Nothing hurtful to add, I'm afraid - Unlike Phillip, I'll have to take the cowardly way and just add my 'like' to this blog.  @-;¦

  2. Each human being must discover their own meaning in life.  I am reading Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning", a book I believe your school passed out to all graduates this year.  As I have aged I have become less narcissistic and more empathetic due to my love for my wife and child.  Now 33 years into my second marriage, I am only just learning what love really is.  Those "bad" times we pledged to share take real-life commitment and courage not generally found on the web.

    I cannot bring myself to join Facebook or Twitter, precisely because they seem to be all about the self.  Of course, my child and her cohort cannot fathom not being in constant contact, and even my peers inform me that I am somehow "missing out".

    I enjoy having my entire music collection on one tiny portable device, but my cell phone is hopelessly out-of-date (all it does is make phone calls), and though I read voraciously, I can't seem to commit to an e-reader.

    My greatest concern is the speed at which real life interactions are now occurring.  I am not going deaf -- people are simply no longer enunciating because everyone is speaking as fast as they drive and text.  And that is something to dislike.

  3. That last phrase really captured me: Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

    It keeps the focus on the self. How antithetical. How illuminating. Thanks, as usual.

  4. As an avid Facebooker (not to be confused with face-booger), I readily admit that there is a lot of narcissism display.  I'm sure I have even engaged in it from time to time.  However, I don't think it is inherently narcissistic and one can choose to exercise self-control in this area and take advantage of the good aspects of FB, such as keeping in contact with distant friends and relatives, discussing topics of current interest, etc.

    Twitter, on the other hand, seems to be designed to encourage narcissism, in that it assumes that people are going to be interested in frequent, brief updates on what is going on in my life.  Facebook can be used like this as well, but it goes way beyond that.  Interestingly, as I recall, not long ago the Facebook prompt for status updates switched from "what are you doing now" (or similar) to "what's on your mind?"  Perhaps this is still narcissistic, but at least it encourages people to share their hearts and minds, and not just the superficial details of their life.

  5. The irony isn't lost on me that yesterday I was trying add a Facebook like button to this blog.

  6. Although I agree with the sentiment expressed in that quote, I think things like Facebook can be used to express "love" as well as "like". 

    For example, someone who is having a hard time in their day-to-day life, particularly if they are feeling isolated due to struggles with those close to them, may be able to hint at their struggles online and be encouraged by a few words from a distant friend or relative.  This obviously does not relieve the obligation to deal with day-to-day struggles, but can provide some relief.

    It can also help improve relationships with the ones we love in person.  My wife likes to hear me express my love to her often (and I'm sure I don't do it often enough).  However, I think she also enjoys it when I express my love for her in public.  This can come across as self-congratulatory, or worse, inappropriate (akin to PDA), but in moderation and good taste I think it is appreciated.

  7. I'll admit that I haven't read his whole essay, though I intend to do so later. That being said, I take issue with "To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors." Although I'm sure that is going on as well, the motivation I'm most frequently conscious of is the desire to get into their "hall of mirrors", to learn about them.

  8. From the full version:

    > To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.

    > I may be overstating the case, a little bit. Very probably, you’re sick to death of hearing social media disrespected by cranky 51-year-olds. My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love.

    I think this gets at the critical question for your iPhone series: What is the telos of techne? Are techologies -- the digital computer, the printing press, the plow -- ultimately aimed at giving us each, individually, complete power over the world? And if so, what happens when the world-controllers disagree?

    Or, as the author also suggests, is technology aimed at allowing everyone to create their own solipsistic world, wherein human beings can have their needs and desires met and never have to come into conflict or even contact?

  9. I'd have to agree with Franzen and all the comments to some extent. (Including 'Nah don't like this'!) However, I think much of the objection to FB (certainly Franzen's) is over-intellectualizing.

    Yes, there is an enormous, stupefying amount of narcissism on the social media--because it exists out in the world, FB and Twitter et al or not. That existence is not the fault of these media. And the fact that there is now a technological means by which narcissism can express itself does not require me to pay attention to it, or to let it affect my use of the media. In the case of a couple of my nieces, I have simply disabled their posts from appearing on my FB pages. Discernment is still required.

    As for dark thoughts about our desire to control relationships via clicking a button, how is this genuinely different from hanging up a phone, or closing the door, or turning our back? There is a new dimension to our control, that is all.

    And about "liking" as subversive of genuine loving? I live in North Carolina, with grown offspring in New York, Virginia, and London and sisters in three different states. Seven grandkids are spread all over the globe. I had virtually no direct relationship with the grandchildren until the advent of FB. No, it will never be the cookie-baking-grandma-next-door closeness that one might treasure, but I am grateful for being in regular contact with them in just the kinds of simple, one- or two-sentence comments people make who are living under the same roof. And when they post something about which I might say something like "Oh, yeah," or "Mmmhmm"--there's the Like button!

    Overall, I believe the very real fears about this technology are our resistance to seeing a way of life changing before our eyes. If we pay attention to Genesis, we can see the same discomfort between the nomadic/hunter-gatherer way of life and the agricultural. Nothing would ever be the same, and it won't be the same now, either.

  10. Some pertinent links here: http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/05/spark-150-may-29-june-1-2011/

  11. I wrote a blog post myself just yesterday on this very topic. Not so in depth as to the psychological side of things, but more to my personal feeling on this.

    http://www.unsafechallenge.com/like

  12. Kaynaz Nasseri’s psycho-therapy practice is built on a broad range of training and knowledge that allows her to address a wide variety of issues, some of which include relationships, mood, school concerns, life transitions, and other psychology issues. Her approach to psychotherapy and psychological assessment is warmly interactive, providing support, insight and useful feedback to help one resolve difficulties and achieve one's goals.

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