Really thought provoking essay. Thanks for sharing this! Given that it’s the day before Thanksgiving, which in my family is always a “reunion of the commons” of sorts, I’d like to focus on one of your takeaways near the end:
“ The logic of enclosure seeks to lock us into a private virtual world of “bespoke realities,” thus excluding us from the common world of things that yields as well a public consciousness.”
The distinction between private and public here is key. But I also find an interrelation between the two in daily life. A person can take certain steps to keep their own psyche from being enclosed by measures such as withdrawing from all social media (check), leaving the phone on Focus for large swaths of each day and only checking in during times set aside for dealing with such things (check), insisting on ad-free media experiences by paying extra for the privilege (check), self imposing daily periods of silence for centering the self (check), etc.
But a single person cannot control the degree to which others in their sphere allow the enclosure of their psyche. The result can be that even if a single person does what they can to avoid distraction and enclosure, they lose common ground and shared experience with others who do not make those same sorts of choices. Which makes it more difficult to relate these people on common ground and shared experience.
Which is kind of a long way around to say that more and more often it can feel as though we are caught in the spaces between the enclosures of others when it comes to relationships; as if we are outside of the collective Venn circle overlap.
The only solution I see is to seek and foster the healthiest relationships we can find where there are shared values, and let that suffice as our new definition of our “commons”. They will of necessity be smaller than we might like, but they are better than getting swept away by the tides of white noise that seeks - intentionally or not - to deprive us of the intimacy required to actually experience anything that we consider to have real and lasting value.
Thanks for this! The balance of including and excluding becomes overwhelming when surrounded by surveillance and projection from all sides. Will be digesting this one for a long time.
On the topic of being listened by our phones (or more generally being profiled by our interactions), we should also consider that we may not have thought of that offline topic unless previously 'branded', perhaps unconsciously.
Are our phones listening, or are they sowing thoughts too?
Great analogy, and one that really sparks new perspectives. I've always recoiled against the tendency of Youtube to filter video suggestions and landing pages to my prior viewing habits. The same happens with Reddit. It's as though every prior decision I've made to view or read something is used to force me into a pathway of more and more detailed (and often increasingly neurotic or frenetic) takes on those prior decisions. And no wonder so many people become radicalized in some way or another along that primrose path.
What a freedom it must have been (I was alive then but took it for granted of course) to read a newspaper and to know that the act of reading that object did not meaningfully impact the next newspaper or magazine I picked up. That whatever reality was presented to me in those pages was someone's version of reality, but not one doubly filtered through an algorithm's estimation of my own atomized perspective.
Really thought provoking essay. Thanks for sharing this! Given that it’s the day before Thanksgiving, which in my family is always a “reunion of the commons” of sorts, I’d like to focus on one of your takeaways near the end:
“ The logic of enclosure seeks to lock us into a private virtual world of “bespoke realities,” thus excluding us from the common world of things that yields as well a public consciousness.”
The distinction between private and public here is key. But I also find an interrelation between the two in daily life. A person can take certain steps to keep their own psyche from being enclosed by measures such as withdrawing from all social media (check), leaving the phone on Focus for large swaths of each day and only checking in during times set aside for dealing with such things (check), insisting on ad-free media experiences by paying extra for the privilege (check), self imposing daily periods of silence for centering the self (check), etc.
But a single person cannot control the degree to which others in their sphere allow the enclosure of their psyche. The result can be that even if a single person does what they can to avoid distraction and enclosure, they lose common ground and shared experience with others who do not make those same sorts of choices. Which makes it more difficult to relate these people on common ground and shared experience.
Which is kind of a long way around to say that more and more often it can feel as though we are caught in the spaces between the enclosures of others when it comes to relationships; as if we are outside of the collective Venn circle overlap.
The only solution I see is to seek and foster the healthiest relationships we can find where there are shared values, and let that suffice as our new definition of our “commons”. They will of necessity be smaller than we might like, but they are better than getting swept away by the tides of white noise that seeks - intentionally or not - to deprive us of the intimacy required to actually experience anything that we consider to have real and lasting value.
Thanks for this! The balance of including and excluding becomes overwhelming when surrounded by surveillance and projection from all sides. Will be digesting this one for a long time.
On the topic of being listened by our phones (or more generally being profiled by our interactions), we should also consider that we may not have thought of that offline topic unless previously 'branded', perhaps unconsciously.
Are our phones listening, or are they sowing thoughts too?
Great analogy, and one that really sparks new perspectives. I've always recoiled against the tendency of Youtube to filter video suggestions and landing pages to my prior viewing habits. The same happens with Reddit. It's as though every prior decision I've made to view or read something is used to force me into a pathway of more and more detailed (and often increasingly neurotic or frenetic) takes on those prior decisions. And no wonder so many people become radicalized in some way or another along that primrose path.
What a freedom it must have been (I was alive then but took it for granted of course) to read a newspaper and to know that the act of reading that object did not meaningfully impact the next newspaper or magazine I picked up. That whatever reality was presented to me in those pages was someone's version of reality, but not one doubly filtered through an algorithm's estimation of my own atomized perspective.
Michael, coincidentally this (https://1drv.ms/b/c/D3271F70FC4BA27A/EXqiS_xwHycggNPRGgAAAAABobZk3zAWNBmDk83sstaU2g) from 2015 appeared on my screen yesterday. You will note the overlap between you and Wieseltier.