Re: Superfluous people
Posted: Thu 22 Feb 2018, 18:05:55
https://thefrailestthing.com/2018/01/03 ... tarianism/
It strikes me that in what would seem a very free country being the US, we have a culture conformed to hedonism, juvenile distractions and, addictive compulsory behavior.. And a certain anti-intellectualism borne of overwork and mindless distractions like TV watching. So are we not automatons evincing lack of genuine spontaneity and being conditioned as ideal workers and consumers and content as such
Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men,” Arendt furthermore claims, “but toward a system in which men are superfluous.” She immediately adds, “Total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity.”
Superfluity, as Arendt uses the term, suggests some combination of thoughtless automatism, interchangeability, and expendability. A person is superfluous when they operate within a system in a completely predictable way and can, as a consequence, be easily replaced. Individuality is worse than meaningless in this context; it is a threat to the system and must be eradicated.
So just as the “ideal subject” of a totalitarian state is someone who has been overwhelmed by epistemic nihilism, Arendt describes the “model ‘citizen'” as the human person bereft of spontaneity: “Pavlov’s dog, the human specimen reduced to the most elementary reactions, the bundle of reactions that can always be liquidated and replaced by other bundles of reactions that behave in exactly the same way, is the model ‘citizen’ of a totalitarian state
It strikes me that in what would seem a very free country being the US, we have a culture conformed to hedonism, juvenile distractions and, addictive compulsory behavior.. And a certain anti-intellectualism borne of overwork and mindless distractions like TV watching. So are we not automatons evincing lack of genuine spontaneity and being conditioned as ideal workers and consumers and content as such