“For nowadays we take in everything in the quickest and cheapest way.” This quote from Heidegger’s Discourse on Thinking goes a long way toward defining modern civilization. Our economies, our relationships (think of the shallow efficiency of Facebook), and our ways of gathering information are all becoming broader and more shallow. We are obsessed with efficiency to a point that is damaging. Websites like Wikipedia give us knowledge in the cheapest and easiest way possible. This sort of instant knowledge has its defects, namely that we “know” things without ever having to participate in the learning process. This is the meanest sort of knowledge, because it does not require any understanding of the subject. When knowledge is so easy to obtain, people lose their ability to really think. We have become what Heidegger calls calculative thinkers. This means we are concerned with hard fact, definites, and linear thinking. This means we no longer stop to think meditatively, to reflect on what something means rather than what it is.
Heidegger’s Being and Time is a discussion of Da-sein. Our Da-sein is our essence, and is defined as the being which has its own question Being as a question. Every human is Da-sein, but with our steady loss of meditative thinking, the question of our Being consumes us less and less. This leads to what Heidegger calls a “leveling down” of the Da-sein. The leveling down of the Da-sein is a direct result of our “publicness”; as we said in class, human existence is, necessarily, a coexistence. Our “being-with-others” requires that each of “the others” be considered until they are no longer distinct individuals, but part of a singular “they”. This creates an averageness and dilutes the Da-sein. The creation of this “they” serves to divert responsibility. As Heidegger says, “Everyone is the other and no one is himself.” In practical terms, this means that if everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. The creation of “they” undermines our individual identity. By abandoning responsibility, one gives up their free will. Without free will, one loses their individual-ness. It is because of this loss of individual-ness that the Da-sein ceases to be Da-sein.
So, what do you think? Is the averaging of the Da-sein a result of our increasingly calculative thinking? Or does the leveling down of the Da-sein unrelated to our current society?
Calculative thinking and leveling down do not require each other, but calculative thinking does have some interesting consequences. Calculative thinking reduces the role of thinking in our lives by emphasizes the idea of efficiently getting to the answer by having the least amount of thinking put into the task. The more we reduce the role of thinking, the more leveled down we can become. It is not a necessary side effect of calculative thinking that we level down, since it requires not only the reduction of our awareness but also the socialization which our awareness counteracts.
ReplyDeleteI think that generally speaking that is the case.. The fact that by an increase in Calculative thinking practices, people sometimes forget how to think meditatively. Also, everybody is limited by time. Though that sounds irrelevant, more calculative thinking leads to less time to think meditatively. Because our society has definitely have seen an increase in calculative thinking, we are seeing a decline in meditative thinking. But I do not see calculative thinking as a problem because I am reaping the benefits from it, I just think that people (including me) in general need to better manage their "thinking" time.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to time: That may be true, that we spend more time thinking calculatively and have less time to think meditatively, but we also have more time in general. We live longer and everything about our lives is more efficient. Oddly, instead of spending this extra time thinking meditatively we rush to fill our schedules. It's almost as if we are actually trying to avoid thinking meditatively. (Also, your idea of 'better managing thinking time' is a very calculative thing to think.)
ReplyDeleteYou are right. Sometimes we just cannot help it but to think calculatively (if that is a word). Though, it is not always a bad thing to think that way. I think it only becomes a bad thing is when you avoid meditative thinking all together.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment. It seems odd that now, when any slice of information is a few keystrokes away, we still tend to avoid meditative thinking. I don't necessarily think that websites like Wikipedia are the cause of this though. If anything they're more of a result. It's because of our desire to think with less depth and more breadth that Wikipedia and SparkNotes have thrived - why take the time to actually read the whole book (or think through interpretations of it) when there's a tidy summary right here? And that frees up time for more shallow and efficient Facebook interactions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anna on this. It's not necessarily that we are less meditative, it's that the sources and reasons why we were meditative about certain things in the past is now instantaneously available via technology. We no longer have to ponder or strain ourselves thinking for a long time to come to answers or reason them out when we have google and wikipedia at our fingertips at all times. However, I do feel like this in a sense also increases meditative thinking to an extent, as more various topics and issues are currently and readily available such as 24/7 streaming of the news and the crises around the world. While we may not be as meditative as we were in the past, technology and our present society has shifted the concentration of the meditative state.
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