From
the Greek monas is the word 'monad,' which refers
to an elementary individual substance.
In
mathematician-philosopher Gottfried Leibniz's system of metaphysics,
monads comprise the basic substances that make up the universe.
Each monad is unique and endowed with self-sufficiency (autarkeia).
As an entity its properties are a function of its perceptions
and appetites.
Sound
familiar?
At
this current stage of human evolution, those monads are us,
or, at the very least, what we are becoming. Based on a preponderance
of personal and reported observations, if we are not quite
there yet (monadville), that’s where we would like to
be – self-ensconced in our self-friendly, solipsistic
one-size-fits-all bubbles. In an essay on Henry Miller's Tropic
of Cancer, George Orwell accuses the writer of taking
no interest in the external world, of surrendering to a state
of mind popularized by the Bible where a whole and fully intact
person, Jonah, finds himself “inside the whale.”
"The
whale’s belly is simply a womb big enough for an
adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that
exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself
and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest
indifference . . . A storm that would sink all the battleships
in the world would hardly reach you as an echo . . . short
of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of
irresponsibility . . . He {Miller} has performed the essential
Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining
passive, accepting."
In
the post-modern era we don’t require myth or metaphor
to find our way to this “species of quietism.”
The superannuated whale has been superseded by the Big Byte
-- an event that rivals the Big Bang – and its endlessly
expanding universe of computer generated alternative worlds
whose seduction and comforts are such that, once bit (byte),
there’s no turning back or turning a deaf ear to the
siren call.
On
our watch, the beaten down path of least resistance has been
enabled by sophisticated satellite communication technology,
state-of-the art fibre optics and now AI, whose ever-expanding
bandwidth can accommodate the whole of humanity. In short,
we are becoming a species of monads, preferring to interact
electronically (virtually) rather than in the flesh.
According
to chat-room testimonials, the iEverything phylum now accords
equal respect and affection to both virtual and real friends.
Among the young, upward of 50% prefer virtual
sex to the messy physical encounter. We now
live not in a SciFi but a Wifi world where someone whom you
have never met, whose location is unknown, whose entire profile
might be entirely fabricated, can cause you to hate or love
yourself and to do things you would otherwise never do in
real life. Yes, writes James Morrison (1943-1971), “strange
days have found us.”
In
the Steven Soderbergh film Kimi,
the protagonist, Angela, played by Zoë Kravitz, is so
wedded to the click-friendly path of cyber convenience, the
outstanding challenge in her life is to wean herself off a
fully digitalized, monadalized life and meet and relate to
other human beings in the flesh.
A
mere twenty five years ago, getting together with others,
non-digitally, would have been a daily and totally natural,
unselfconscious occurrence. Back then, all our relationships
(work, social, sexual) presumed meeting person-to-person.
Today, that is no longer the case, and marks a point of departure
with game-changing consequences, the surface of which we are
only beginning to scratch.
For
most of human history, man was nomadic, living in tribes,
following the seasons and food sources wherever they led.
Very early in the game he discovered that belonging to a group
with other like-minded persons of varying talents and proficiencies
conferred a range of benefits and options not available to
the individual. When the forests shrunk and our primal predecessors
took to the savannahs, they understood that a band of hunters
was decisively more effective than any indvididual in leveling
large game.
Yet
despite a disposition that dates back to our animal inheritance,
it now seems, thanks to click-culture, that we are effortlessly
able to overrule the primordial urge to physically bond with
others and form groups, which is nothing less than astonishing.
As we settle into the 21st century, more and more of us prefer
to live
alone and are able to refuse the bio-directive
that urges us to bond with others in the flesh. In 1960, 13
percent of adults lived alone: today that figure is 28 percent.
Does this mean that Jean-Paul Sartre got it right when he
declared in no uncertain terms (from his play No Exit),
“Hell is other people.” Of course in his day,
there was no choice in respect to intimate person-to-person
exchange and collaboration. Today, thanks to the on-going
revolution in communication technology, we no longer have
to physically interact with other ‘hell-raising’
people like ourselves.
Sigmund
Freud proposed that all human endeavour can be reduced to
the pleasure principle, described as the “tendency for
individual behaviour to be directed toward immediate satisfaction
of instinctual drives and immediate relief from pain or discomfort.”
There isn’t one of us, masochists notwithstanding, who
wouldn’t rather engage in pleasurable activities and
pursuits than their opposite, which suggests that much of
our behaviour is pre-determined, that our choices aren’t
really choices, but alibis reason employs to indulge human
nature. Joseph Conrad, the author of the magnificent Nostromo,
writes: “. . . the use of reason is to justify the obscure
desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices
and follies.”
As
per Freud’s pleasure principle, which has turned the
path of least resistance into a 24/7 super highway, man is
now able to reject his group patrimony in favour of the more
pleasurable monadic life-style. We note that ‘monadic’
and ‘monastic’ (from the Greek monachos
– living alone) share the same etymology. What this
means existentially is that our erstwhile non-negotiable being-in-the-world-with-others
now requires a major clarification. Yes, there must be the
other, but at a monadal safe remove, which, facilitated by
the Big Byte, prefigures a major reconfiguration in species
behaviour.
Conventional
bonding, facilitated by feelings that, pace Merleau-Ponty,
carry one person towards another, has become, for many, such
a stressful rite of passage that face to face interaction
cannot take place unless mediated by one of the many digital
platforms that are designed to accommodate the entire spectrum
of humanity. In this ever-increasing demographic, even the
erstwhile isolated weirdo/eccentric is able to find his way
to normalcy through highly particularized gridless communities
that cater to the sum of the world’s personality types.
In the digital universe, no one is left behind; even the "nowhere
man" will find his somewhere.
Elon
Musk predicts within the next 50 years a computer
chip will be successfully interfaced with the neo-cortex.
The first effect of this will be to facilitate monadal life.
In this brave new world, light-emitting diodes (LED, LCD screens)
will replace the conventional earth-based grid and every individual’s
personal knowledge will be equal to the sum of world knowledge;
everyone will be his own self-directing Wiki. As for life’s
essentials, their mundane production and distribution will
be left to cadres of specialized AI equipped robots and avatars.
In
light of these and promised future developments, man is now
the sight where two DNA-writ, behavioural imperatives are
doing battle, and the nomad is losing out to the monad. Modern
man, by the billions, is discovering with a couple clicks
of the mouse that monadal interaction is preferable to the
more complex and exasperating person to person encounter.
And while there is no doubting that sustained isolation and
depression are causally linked, the preferred cure is screen-to-screen,
for the simple reason that the individual finds virtual contact
more pleasurable and less stressful than direct face-to-face
contact. In our womb-like monadal bubbles we don’t have
to concern ourselves with sartorial protocols, table etiquette,
our good or not so good looks, the sound of our voices, and
even our points of view, all of which we can change as easily
as our identities. And of course being able to indulge the
Seven Deadly Sins in total anonymity is perhaps the virtual
world’s crowning achievement. Dostoyevsky’s celebrated
fear, that in a godless world “everything is permitted,”
foretells of the rise and dominion of secularism, and by extension,
monadism. No impunity clause required.
With
the advent of videoconferencing platforms like Skype and Zoom,
monadville, for many, is already the habitat of choice, where
each monad is fitted with a portal to the world. The iPhone
mini screen gives everyone equal and instant access to everything.
As for the intrepid traveler, Google maps now allow for real
time navigation through the streets and countryside of the
entire world. Who can beat that ticket-to-ride?
However,
until the transition is complete, until monadal life becomes
part of our collective ethos, there will be casualties. Among
the iGeneration, the suicide rates are as high as they have
ever been; and for males between 15-24 the rate is 4-times
that of females. More and more dysphoric men are copping out
of their gender, waiting for future developments in germ-line
editing to relieve them of the unease associated with performance.
That more and more men are only too happy to submit their
penises to the modern equivalent of the guillotine speaks
to the anxiety produced by the protocols of conventional male-female
interaction.
If
a century ago Virginia Wolfe proposed that what a woman needs
to self-actualize a “place of her own,” in the
very near future what human beings will need is a monad of
their own, and for monadal existence to be afforded the respect
and status once conferred to real relationships in the real
world.
That
monadal existence is a consequence of the pleasure principle
isn’t so much a commentary on man’s chronic inability
to deal with self-consciousness, but is rather an indictment
of human nature.
However,
from an evolutionary perspective, so long as the species --
7.8 billion strong -- continues to flourish, it shouldn’t
matter if its numerical triumph is consequent to the advantages
gained from living in closely knit communities or monadic
existence. If the latter dynamic better equips man to deal
with adversity, nature will bless that adaptation and the
species will live to see another day, another epoch.
Which
isn’t to say that there might not come a day when our
nostalgia for the way it was, when we used to dance with wolves
and holding hands made the heart race, will move us more than
what is told of us in the dry pages of the archives, that
ever-expanding spirit world inhabited by ghosts and the remains
of cultures that didn’t make the cut.
And
the beat goes on.
