Although the problem of alienation has always plagued man in various ways, where alienation names the condition of being disconnected from what is essential to one’s being, I believe the 21st-century has radically transformed the phenomenon of alienation. Specifically, modern technology in the form of personal devices, from phones to computers to headsets, and social media—both of which, to be sure, have benefitted us immensely in easing work, connecting us with each other, facilitating communication, storing information, etc.—creates a universal framework under which alienation manifests itself as an objective condition. This distinctive technological alienation of the self from itself, others, and the world I call “idiocy.”
The ancient Greeks believed that man was by nature social, that is, a political animal. As such, to be cut off from the social sphere, to be aloof, to keep to one’s own, to be a private citizen—such a person was an ἰδιώτης, an “idiot,” for one was concerned solely with what was one’s own (ἴδιος). And insofar as our age is a technological age, it paradoxically comes about that the greater our connectivity becomes, the greater our privacy grows proportionally: the diminution of distance, the convenience of contactless contact, the fragmentation and proliferation of tastes and interests, the mediation of self-presentation, and the blocking-out of the non-immediate all contribute to a contemporary alienation that is best summarized as “idiotic.” The negative connotations are impossible to dissociate from the term, and a full reclamation is undesirable; in fact, this is necessary since, just like alienation, the phenomenon is inherently privative: to be idiotic is to be deprived of and cut off from the world at large and even, to an extent, oneself.
The self is prone to self-estrangement when it is involved with technology, particularly on social media. At first glance, this seems untrue, because if anything, social media encourages users to present themselves how they see fit, in accordance with their sense of individuality. Deciding what to post, for example, requires reflexivity: I consult myself, consider what is most appropriate, then choose whether to 
post or not. Thus, social media brings me closer to myself. However, this argument presupposes that such attentiveness is always good, when it is also the case that the more attentive to myself that I become, the less myself I am capable of being. In truth, I alienate myself through the curation of my content. Social media promotes the compartmentalization of the self; it is not uncommon for someone to have a public account, which is open to all followers regardless of intimacy, and a private account, whose audience is much smaller and which gets to see another, typically truer side of the poster. While the idea of the private account would presumably counter the idea of self-alienation, in fact it proves it, for its very existence points to a self-differentiation. It is not just that certain people are cut off, but the user themselves is cut off from themselves, so that, Januslike, they lead a double life, suffering a split consciousness.
The more control I exert over myself in how I present myself, the farther I drift from myself; it is as if, in splitting myself, in having to manage these separate lives of mine, I have already admitted my loss of control, if only implicitly. Whereas it appears we are hiding certain facets of our lives from others, keeping them out of the spotlight, highlighting only those facets we deem appropriate, it is more accurate to say that we compel ourselves to hide ourselves from ourselves. Again, the self-reflexivity of this idea only seems contradictory: the withholding of parts of ourselves, often the most delicate and deeply held, does involve a recourse to the self in the end, yet it also promotes such a heightened self-consciousness that, like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, we are forced at every moment to justify our choices or fall into paralysis and indecision. It gets to the point where “we’ll contrive to be born somehow from an idea” (130), because “we feel a sort of loathing for real ‘living life,’” where living is nothing but “service” (129) for our image, and nothing in its own right.
Rather than life being pictured, we picture life to ourselves. The intensity of self-absorption is nothing more than the externalization of the self by itself, because we see ourselves through the eyes of others, whether we imagine a particular person or an anonymous viewer; either way, we estrange ourselves through our self-preoccupation. Accordingly, following Marx, we might say that by laboring on the self and commodifying it, we objectify ourselves into an image which, being external, is no longer really ours; it is “sold” as a product, as it were, on the cybersphere of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., from which it derives its value in terms of validation. We are no longer a source of our own value. Consequently, our own, private, inward life becomes privatized; the “self” takes on an other self of its own, and we succumb to idiocy.
The clearest example of idiocy that technology fosters is visible out in public, where privacy now reigns. Society is become idiotic. Tocqueville, in the second and fourth chapters of volume II of Democracy of America, and Marx, in “On the Jewish Question,” both identified and cautioned against an early form of this idiocy in liberal democracy, in the form of individualism. Each faulted liberalism with solidifying the idea of the self-sufficient, independent being, the citizen who was defined not as part of the community but as apart from the community, and whose particular tastes, beliefs, and interests set him on a path of his own, parallel to or divergent from the likes of his fellow men. As a result, people are encouraged to withdraw from the public into the domestic sphere or into their idiosyncratic affairs, unconcerned with anybody else. It is a process of atomization and monadization—in short, the creation of windowless, self-impelled units.
21st-century technology exacerbates this to a profound extent: It is not just the case that the spheres of life are abstractly distinguished, rather it is entirely appropriate to state that we live in our own worlds. This is a common sense observation, to be sure, as each of us lives in our own world inasmuch as we see the same world through our own eyes, etc. However, the privatization of the world under technology is of an altogether radical character: Phenomenologically, my world seems no longer to be merely a slice of the unitary, indivisible, intersubjective world, but through the mediation of devices, my world is constituted subjectively in toto. Three examples will illustrate this: (1) Earphones, (2) streams, and (3) virtual reality (VR).
The mention of walking down any street is sufficient enough to introduce this. Each of us walks to the town center, class, or for leisure while we listen to music or podcasts or talk to someone on the phone. In this case, the world becomes the background of our engagement, but nothing in itself; it fades back, out, away from view, only the immediacy of our destination—say, the library—being my intention, if it is seen at all. Nature, conversation, gravel underfoot are all bracketed out and silenced beneath the blare of tones. One is prone to accidents, either walking through a crowd or crossing the street, if one is not sufficiently peripherally aware. Existence is characterized here by its marked obliviousness. In public, amidst others, I am private, absorbed in my own echo chamber. On my way to class, only I, for all intents and purposes, who am immersed in my tunes, exist. I am an idiot. 
Live broadcasting services, like YouTube and Twitch, have popularized the simultaneity of experience; no longer is consciousness itself a stream, but rather it is something to be streamed to others in the process of its actualization, albeit vicariously. A decade ago, it struck one as odd, perhaps deranged, to see a person walking down the street, holding a phone or camera in front of themselves an arm’s length away, seemingly talking to themselves. Now, however, as it has become mainstream, this is “what one does”; it is, to be sure, still exceptional, but by no means unconventional. I and several thousand others worldwide may be watching and listening to a complete stranger living out their lives, all the while feeling a strong, albeit illusory, sense of connectedness to them. I have a window into their life; I am a part of their life. Except that I am not. For the live streamer, their audience of ten thousand watchers who “tune in” regularly are more “real” to them in that moment than are the very enfleshed people who walk beside them on the street, who are more distant in that instant than those who are hundreds and thousands of miles away. The streamer who streams to me, and I who consume the stream—we are idiotic. - Lastly, the rise, spread, and promise of virtual reality threatens the real possibility of solipsism, the consummation of idiocy in which the individual becomes a world unto themselves, self-sufficient, not needing anything external; the concrete gives way to the abstract, i.e., the virtual, which is Nothing and Nowhere. At this point, particular products, e.g., VRChat and the Oculus Rift, are
marketed as individual commodities, which is fitting enough. Virtual space, like all other space, is unitary and indivisible, but it is this feature which makes it liable to complete privatization, that is, when this phenomenological privatization is commercially privatized. My choice to enter a fantasy realm particularly fitted to myself is sold as something to me myself, as a private consumer. The world, which is become my world, is something to be consumed, integrated into me. Hence, the world is subjectivized, nothing but a projection of myself within which other people—if there are other people—are permitted to exist. Nozick’s experience machine, Huxley’s soma—these formerly virtual ideas are now actualized as virtual. Like Aristotle’s self-contemplating god, we can retreat into our rooms, turn off the lights, tuck ourselves away, and reside within an artificial world, taking leave of all that is around us, all that is real, in favor of the most unreal reality. This is the most idiotic thing one can do.
In each of these phenomena, the following traits are observed: The derealization of the immediate and real, the exclusion of the world, the mediation of living, the inattentiveness of the individual, the abstraction of experience, the centralization of the knowing subject who is elevated to divine spectatorship (the contemplative life!), and the toleration of others. Idiocy, therefore, refers to the contemporary living-out of life in which, to varying degrees, the aforesaid formal qualities disclose themselves. Technology, functioning as an objective reality, that is, as something which, transcending individual devices, comes to structure experience itself, mediates life to such an extent that this mediation, which is always a mediating-for…, is taken to be essential for the subjective.
In other words, technological life is subjective life; all is related through the subjective, to the point of appearing to be a product thereof. The world exists for me, by means of my device, meaning that it is my world in which others can live. But a life that is mine alone is idiotic. Such an existence cannot be anything but alienated. One is estranged from oneself, from others, and from the world. The joy I take in expressing myself, exploring the world, or being with others is mediated through a veil of artificiality and distance. I am far from myself when I am absorbed in myself; I am closed off from the world when I enclose it into a frame or a virtual sphere; I am most apart from others when I am nearest to them. When life is reduced accordingly, then “It is [but] a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth, 5.5, ll. 25-7).
Source cited:
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage Books, 1994.
known as “natural philosophy.” Various branches, like chemistry and biology, were codified and given the systematic rigor by which we know them today, while influential ideas like Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and Hermann von Helmholtz’s formulas on the conservation of energy drastically revised our conception of the Universe. But the success of science was not just theoretical, for it was also applied to everyday life, leading to the invention of lightbulbs, cars, and cameras. Then, in 1905, Weber lived through the overturning of the Newtonian, or classical, paradigm of physics, which had been in place for two centuries since the 18
Roughly until the 19
For Weber, this was a drawback in pursuing science, but he realized something more important—that the investigations and experiments that a scientist carries out are not deadening, emotionless, or stultifying. The image of a sanitized researcher working in a white coat who is surrounded by equipment and charts and figures contains a few kernels of truth, but it by no means representative; what this stereotype of the scientist conceals, is the humanity of science, the fact that “science” is not some monolith but actually a collection of scientists, that is, people, real people, whom an inward drive compels onward in the search for—well, many things: truth, power, success, progress, 
impossible without intuition. Many of Einstein’s insights, for example, came from vivid thought experiments and revelatory flashes, things that could not be found in the laboratory or at the research table. This is why I think that Weber would not fear the growth of A.I. in science: I think that if he were alive today, then he would argue that a program or algorithm could never do the work that a human scientist does because it is not about computations or simple strings of processing; rather, science is driven, as we have said, by the force or passion within us that cannot be reduced to a binary code, the force that gives rise to seemingly outlandish theories and the madness to test them, to think outside the box. Science, like the humanities, cannot be automated—the calculations can be calculated, obviously, as is being done right now, 
The humanness of science, however, also has a negative tendency, one which is not reserved just for Weber’s time: The tendency for the scientist to become, in Weber’s words, a 
The problem that Weber was addressing was not that scientists were being asked such questions, nor that they were answering them; instead, it seems to have been the fact that the questions were being asked 
chronological terms—the scientist’s is the exact opposite, having an objective and progressive basis for judgment. It is tempting to describe scientific advancements as “linear” because they move forward, but any look at the history of science will immediately disprove such a straightforward interpretation; therefore, I think Weber would agree more with “progressive,” since even a “wrong turn,” so to speak, like Newtonian physics when viewed in retrospect, is never entirely discarded or made obsolete. Hence, Newton is just as important today as he was between 1700 and 1900 because, in being overridden (at the subatomic level, that is), he provided the necessary grounding for future developments. Having said this, Weber asked an incisive question: What, then, is the point of science, if it seemingly never ends and if, viewed from outside, it consists only of theories that happen to be truer than the previous ones, only to be discarded 
Weber was quick to qualify this statement, as while it is true that we understand the world better scientifically, this “we” does not actually mean “all of us.” As we have noted, science became highly specialized over a century ago, and it has only become more complex over time. Consequently, it is more accurate to say that science has provided us the 
Overall, this scientific intelligibility led Weber to assert one of his most well-known theses: “[O]ne can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is 
Martin Heidegger, a 20
despite pronouncing the end of enchantment, engaged in the very practices whose deaths he announced, like occultism. In my opinion, I don’t find this a compelling dismantling of Weber’s position, though. Just because there were still lots of people not just in Weber’s time, but also our own, who were fascinated by magic, cults, and spiritualism, does not change the substance of what Weber was saying; I believe the diagnosis of disenchantment is a bit more nuanced, insofar as the respectability and authority of science is generally accepted worldwide, in comparison to which everything else is unscientific. The point is not that science has outright eradicated alternative forms of knowledge; rather, it has (mostly) successfully invalidated, or at least challenged the foothold of, them. Outliers, of course, exist; Shintoists in Japan or Natives in North America certainly retain their enchantment. I do not think Weber was naïve enough to not consider this, and not to think that science had simply wiped out its competition. 
Furthermore, Josephson-Smith characterizes the rise of new forms of enchantment as either “ironic” or “paradoxical,” directly disproving Weber’s point; however, again, I think Josephson-Smith is off the mark, for Weber himself predicted this very phenomenon (115d), 
Leaving aside the legitimacy of disenchantment, we arrive at another of Weber’s key propositions. He cited the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, who believed that in the modern world, meaning was unattainable. An interesting distinction is brought up between being “satiated with” life versus being “tired of” life, the former belonging to pre-modern life and the latter to modernity. According to Weber, Tolstoy found death meaningless due to science, and by extension, life, too. It is difficult to tell whether Weber discussed Tolstoy because he agreed with him and felt similarly or whether he merely brought him up as an example of such a view. His wording does not seem to betray any partiality, so I’m not sure if Weber himself thought that science rendered death and life meaningless. What exactly it means for death to have meaning or not, remains unclear to me; nor does the logical leap from death’s being meaningless to life becoming meaningless seem to me entirely justified. Whatever the case, Weber’s reference to Tolstoy was meant to problematize science’s role in everyday life.
In the absence of school, work, and other obligations, and in the presence of our devices, which for the time being our only ways of access to our friends and family and the “outside world,” what better way to spend one’s newly acquired leisure time than to lie on one’s bed and entertain oneself by scrolling through one’s TikTok feed and watching the latest trends as they play out on the “For You” page? Whether or not this is better classified as “using” or “wasting” one’s time, for many it is their only way of staying sane; love it or hate it, TikTok serves as a community in these times, an outlet where people can interact with others and express themselves, get a laugh, or maybe make new friends. During times of crisis, we look for comfort in humor and other people. And when you pair this with the fact that everyone is locked in one place, with nothing better to do, you get a recipe for immense productivity and creativity, everyone looking to outdo each other in their jokes and skits. As a result, we witness dozens of trends on TikTok, some funny and original, others not so much, but all of them united by one thing: time. That is, while the content might differ dramatically, it is the form, or character, of trends that remains universal, namely that they all last for a brief period of time before “dying out,” or becoming unfunny and overused, then abandoned. In this post, inspired by a TikTok live stream, I want to explore what a trend is, what role TikTok plays in trends, and what makes trends problematic. 
example, we might now ask, “What is the difference between a trend, a fashion, and a fad?” Some will answer that a fashion is more historical, a fad more crazed, and a trend more lasting. Right away, though, we come up against the conflict of the lay and the educated: often, our attempts to classify, that is, to be scientific, are opposed to the way we experience things 
In order to be a crowd, the members of the group must give up their sense of personhood and have a common purpose. Hence, numbers do not matter; a crowd can be three people or it can be 50, just as long as it believes the same thing. Our idea of mob/herd mentality, or of a “hivemind,” originates from Le Bon’s work, in which he writes that the group assumes a collective mind, one that speaks for everyone involved. The collective mind is like the Leviathan in the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ political theory, the monarch who, by representing all individuals, thereby takes away their freedom. Since it is a “collective,” this mob mentality is greater than the sum of its parts, making it an entity of its own. No longer do the members make their own decisions; the mind makes it for them, and they obey it. It is as if each member dissolves into the collective. 
Now we can look at the exact role that TikTok has and how trends work there. To do this, it is important that we understand the function of TikTok. As a social media application, TikTok assumes its role as an extension of the 
However, it might seem strange to describe TikTok as a public sphere—and rightly so. Earlier, I described it as an “extension of the public sphere,” which is more accurate. In fact, TikTok is unique because it constitutes a new sphere, what we would call the 
making up a name for oneself, ridding oneself of one’s identity. At school, people know our names, know who we are; online, however, we are a blank slate, so nobody can hold us accountable. This is what makes cyberbullying prevalent: we cannot be held responsible because nobody knows who we are behind a screen. Putting this all together, one comes to a frightening thought: if the cybersphere simultaneously socializes—tells us what to value—and deindividualizes—takes away responsibility and selfhood—then to whom are we listening, and from where are we getting these so-called values? The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm called this “anonymous authority”—when we adopt values from seemingly nobody. After all, we can say that a trend on TikTok is perpetuated by individuals, and perhaps put together a chronology of who said what when, but at the end of the day, the truth is that it is not just one person to blame; on TikTok, values are truly anonymous (the word literally means “without a name”). 
A look at the algorithms should tell us… only, we cannot look at them because TikTok, run by a Chinese company, does not make its algorithm public. However, efforts have been made to understand at least a little about the algorithms, such that we know it operates according to a process called “collaborative filtering,” which makes predictions based on our past history as well as what other people like. The videos that appear on our “For You” page are therefore tricky at best. Several experiments have been conducted to show that, based on one’s liking tendencies, certain viewpoints become favored. This seems like commonsense. What makes this troublesome, however, is the blurred distinction between description and prescription: is TikTok recommending things that we really like or that we 
Polarization is something that ought to be taken seriously. Many of us, when we hear the word “polarize,” think it means “to break apart,” which is indeed one of its meanings—”to fragment.” However, psychologically, its meaning is much more important. Already, within the word, we see “polar”—think North and South Pole. The phenomenon of group polarization, therefore, refers to radicalization; it is when groups become extreme in their original views. Just as the North and South are opposite each other, never able to meet, so groups that are polarized are at opposite extremes and refuse conciliation. Polarization is a matter of pulling-apart, dividing. Consequently, we form in-groups with which we identify and out-groups which we designate as the enemy. Collaborative filtering creates filter bubbles, which polarize individuals into groups, creating an “us vs. them” mentality. Thus, we see the inevitable introduction of identity politics into TikTok.
Now, I wish to demonstrate what has just been said through an illustrative case study based on some of my own observations, in the hopes of providing insight into the collective behavior that takes place over TikTok. Specifically, I want to look at the case of sexism on TikTok. To begin, what is sexism? I shall define it as prejudice, or negative appraisal, toward members of another sex. Sexism is believing one sex is superior to another. (It should be noted that while it can affect men, sexism is primarily directed toward women.) Furthermore, one of the things which distinguishes sexism from other -isms and -phobias is its ambivalent character. Researchers contend that there are two types: 
What does this have to do with TikTok? Frankly, it is uncontroversial to state that TikTok is a place of tremendous strife with regards to sexism and prejudice in general. In reaction to the ‘50s, and reaching its heights in the ‘70s, the Women’s Liberation Movement made great strides forward in advancing women’s standing in America. When I was younger, having been raised in a small, friendly, and liberal city, I took it for granted that men and women were equal; I did not understand why people claimed women were lesser in any way. This might just be a purely subjective judgment, although maybe some will feel the same, but I feel that, moving in the direction toward liberal progress, the U.S. has become complacent, leading many, including myself, to falsely believe that we live in a post-sexist society—that is to say, as we have become more progressive, we believe we have “moved past/beyond” sexism. What this does is silence the matter, and de-problematize it. 
What leads me to say this? Well, one might argue that TikTok, for example, is perfectly democratic because, like the American Dream’s promise of making anyone rich, the TikTok Dream’s promise of making anyone famous (if only for a while) is open to everyone. Creators can be male, female, non-binary, young, old, white, black—it matters not… or does it? Despite our apparent liberalism, sexism is far from gone. Take, for instance, the following remarks that can be found in pretty much any comment section: “If a male made this, it would be funny,” “Waiting for a guy to remake this…,” “The ‘f’ in woman stands for funny,” “You’re actually funny for a female,” “What? A woman who’s funny?,” “We did it boys, we found one that’s actually funny!,” 
Is it the expression of “the people”? Is it representative of our times? I shall address this later. The fact is, each of the above cited quotations is evidence of a lingering patriarchy or—if you prefer to deny the existence thereof—male dominance. Is it really indicative of sexism, though? Isn’t it just an observation that, perhaps, 
were to comment, “Men are stronger than women,” then I would agree insofar as that is a biological, objective truth; however, to apply this level of competency to the comedic level, which, mind you, is subjective, and to declare that women are not as funny as men, is not a matter of fact but a matter of personal beliefs—though not good ones. We men are taught at a young age that we are the more “successful” sex, success being measured by our wealth, our social status, our political standing, 
language, so what could be so controversial about it? As she explained, though, how it was “unnatural”—forced—and thus overly formal—a cop might say, for instance, “The suspect is a female”—it made sense to me. It seems entirely acceptable to play this off as just being “oversensitive” or a “snowflake”—I thought so myself as she first began—but when I really thought about it, I realized what it really meant. To me, the word “female” has an objectifying character. By objectifying, I do not mean sexualizing, however; instead, what I mean is that “female,” drawing on its formality, its unnaturalness, turns women into an 
becomes “other,” in fact, 
lot of likes and followers from it? One of the sad things I have observed on TikTok is the self-degradation in which some girls engage, seemingly for this reason; they “go along” with gender roles to elicit the approval of male followers. Of course, I do not want to generalize: some do genuinely believe in such roles, but what I am concerned about is when girls do it 
group polarization and in-group favoritism. When we are in any conflict, we will usually side with our tribe. At that point, communication between the two camps is fruitless. This, in turn, leads to the in- and out-group homogeneity effects. When this happens, we see the group of which we are a part as being alike in its virtues, and the group to which we are opposed as being alike in its vices. Seen from the perspective of sex, boys might say, “All girls are the same: they’re promiscuous and stupid, whereas we boys have each other’s backs and are funny,” and girls might say, “All boys are the same: they’re cheaters and objectifying, whereas we girls are compassionate and loyal.” Do some say what they say because they have been indoctrinated by the all-encompassing monolith known as “The Boys”? 
funnier than women is not saying sexist remarks because one has social needs, but because one is sexist, plain and simple. This also makes it the hardest explanation to tackle because it is hard to change someone’s mind when it is already made up. In TikTok comments, one can read such things as “The girls are pressed now” or “All the females are silent because they can’t respond.” While these may have merit to them, they are also inherently provocative; the very post on which they are made was created to elicit these responses due to their beliefs. Both men and women are guilty here, as they often post videos which are controversial because they want to blame the other sex, resulting in conflicts which divide even more.
As Heidegger put it, idle talk is 
Psychologically, this resembles something known as “pluralistic ignorance.” A social psychologist writes, “[W]e often misperceive what is normative, particularly when others are too afraid or embarrassed to publicly present their true thoughts, feelings, and behaviors” (Kassin, 
However, we must not forget that there are people out there who, through their courage, and despite their minority status, 
Evidently, words like “simp,” derived from “simpleton,” and “incel,” derived from “involuntary celibate,” are overused and, as such, have lost their true meanings. Just as Le Bon explained, meaning and truth do not matter to crowds; as long as a word acquires some kind of normative significance, it can hold influence over people and their actions. As soon as a guy speaks out against mistreatment by girls, like if he had been cheated on by an ex-girlfriend, he is labeled an “incel” because that word, through careless use, somehow acquired the wide-ranging meaning of “anything remotely anti-feminist.” Yet the word 
and Time
and why we do the things we do. We learn, for example, about what enables a crowd to prosper, as well as the complex, nuanced reasons behind why we side with groups. In turn, this raises ethical questions. Is this a problem? Should we say the things we do? How do we fix it? and so on. I guess I should offer a disclaimer (more of a debrief, seeing as it is coming at the end) by saying that, for the most part, I enjoy TikTok and derive a lot of enjoyment from it. Some of the trends I criticized in this post, for example, are actually among my favorites. It is good to be able to compartmentalize, to enjoy something on the one hand and to be able to step back and criticize it on the other. Life is a pendulum swinging between humor and seriousness (where does irony lie?). It is important that we stop and think before we post or comment, but equally important that we not take jokes too seriously (what’s the line, though?). In the end, it is most important that we make the best of our time in quarantine, whether that means getting a laugh out of a TikTok, spending time with family, going outside, 
So recently, in 2019, Minecraft has undergone a revival. It has re-emerged, as it were, from hiding, and is now back in the limelight, having finally beaten out Fortnite, once again establishing itself as the king of online video games. Upon first hearing of this, I ignored it, considering my Minecraft days as “long gone”; but after coercion from my friends, I decided to get back on to see what I was missing, as well as for memory’s sake, to return to one of the games that formed me. When I created my first new world, I was taken aback by the newness of it all, namely in the change in textures that had just been added, and I was opposed to it, just as many were, for who really likes change at first? But then, gradually, I warmed up to it. Besides some other new features, the game was largely the same, and to most people, that was a good thing—not so much to me, though. See, whereas most Minecraft players came running back to Minecraft with open arms and a warm sentiment of reconciliation, I came back to it hesitantly, reluctantly, as if coming back to someone I have not seen for a while, about whom I was not sure how to feel, having been away so long, like an awkward reunion where neither one of us was certain we wanted to be there. Whereas most Minecraft players never tired of the game in its 
infinite possibilities, picking themselves up after every setback, I could never seem to fight successfully against the inevitable ennui that would set in during my gameplay sessions, the despair of restarting, the frustration of dying. But the 2019 revival of Minecraft, I believed, would hopefully change that. After my friends convinced me to join their server with them, I logged on with promise, with hope, that maybe, just maybe, I could find happiness in this virtual block world, and never tire of it. I am happy to announce that this dream is not yet dead—that is to say, it is a work-in-progress. This post will be my brief meditations upon how Minecraft, and video games in general, has conditioned an entire generation, reinforced my feelings of absurdity, become a source of meaning for many, and also made me appreciate life. 
risk losing most, if not all, of your progress, forcing you to go through it all over again. There were points when I was watching the video where I would just lean back and ask myself, “Why’s he getting so mad at the game… why do 
important. After all, if the character as whom we are playing falls off a cliff, it is not we who feel the impact, but the avatar. For sports, it is not so easy, which is why this blog is not about sports. In video games, we identify with our characters, we form attachments to them, we feel “at home” in the game, as if, in exploring the open world, we ourselves were doing it. Injecting ourselves into the game, we associate with the character, 
Hundreds of swear words, screams, and chair throws later, Markiplier finished “Getting Over It” (but never seemed to “get over it”), then decided to try out the game that served as its inspiration: “Sexy Hiking.” Just like its offshoot game, “Sexy Hiking” enraged Markiplier, and he found himself screaming just as much, whereupon he relates, “If I was just flailing against madness here, I wouldn’t be too upset about it…. If I was just subjecting myself to impossible bullshit, I wouldn’t care. It’s because I care so much that [I try].”
is that Markiplier says “if.” That means the game 
Today, I was watching CaptainSparklez do a parkour course in Minecraft. Over and over, he would jump from bamboo stalk to bamboo stalk, sometimes progressing an obstacle or two, sometimes doing worse, ending up farther back. One has to ask: In this situation, who is madder—he for doing the same thing over and over, or I for watching him do the same thing over and over? Inside both of our minds, there is that sliver of hope, that little part of us that keeps thinking, “This next one will be it.” Even though he is the one who is immediately doing the course, and I am only watching vicariously, we still have this same thought process. Gnawing at us constantly is the voice of 
is sheer possibility. Nothing is at stake but success itself, and this is purely abstract. In other words, navigating a parkour course will not cost us our lives our livelihoods; instead, it frustrates us, and frustration is different from ordinary anger in that it is anger over 
Perhaps, living in a Camusian time of rampant Absurdism, this is why so many flee to video games—because unlike our own ostensibly meaningless Universe, video game universes provide their own meaning? So far, this seems like a plausible case, yet a major problem presents itself: Alright, so video games are appealing because they give us meaning, but that in itself is an unsubstantiated claim; that is, if video games can give us what life cannot, then 
Having touched upon video games in general, I will now turn my focus to Minecraft specifically. Why does everyone love Minecraft? Because it gives them freedom, creativity, happiness. As children, the only thing that got us through the school day was the excitement we got from thinking about what we would do when we got back onto our world in Minecraft. It was a little break from school. In fact, it was a little corner we had carved out for ourselves in our lives. We speak of the public sphere and private sphere, but sometimes we need something to escape from both of them. And Minecraft was that escape. Whenever we were stressed from school, or whenever it was raining outside, we would play Minecraft. This was turning away from the public sphere. At the same time, whenever we were bored, or whenever we were having problems at home, we would play Minecraft. This was turning away from the private sphere. If ever there was a problem in the outside world, then we retreat to the inside world, the private world. But 
often, we found that this was not sufficient, either. 
Minecraft is famous for its simplicity, its unassuming and modest nature, the fact that it promises so much by giving so little. You spawn in a world made up of cubes, encounter animals and evil monsters that need to be defeated, and along the way you meet villagers, all while trying to fend for yourself, surviving through farming, mining, and building, and other minor activities. It’s not as though it were some high-quality game with the greatest graphics in the world. People actually make fun of the game for being so simple, questioning how something so childish and cubelike could possibly be so entertaining. And yet it is somehow. Players talk of the calming, soothing, tranquil nature of the game. When you explore the infinite world, passing through the diverse biomes, seeing massive natural generations like forests and mountains and ravines, watching breathtaking sunsets, you cannot help but feel peaceful. It is just you, alone, traveling, with nowhere to go, filled with an insatiable wanderlust, and the whole world is there for you to see. Both Minecraft and real life are free roam worlds; the only difference is 
that the former has no borders. Consequently, in Minecraft, one feels freer than in real life because there is nothing that cannot be overcome (except Bedrock). There are no borders, imagined or geographical, in Minecraft, as separate nations today. The only obstacles to the gamer are mountains and oceans and ravines, all of which can be surpassed, by tunneling or sailing or building over. Although this is a dumb analogy, could we mine our way through city borders in real life? No. As a result, Minecraft is about being free in the most absolute sense. One is not constrained by anything. The whole world is manipulable to our whims. If there is a mountain we do not like, if it blocks our view, or if it is simply inconvenient, then we can get rid of it. The world is customizable, able to be adapted to our liking. And this idea of freedom leads to the next aspect of Minecraft, which is its appeal to the individual’s creativity, expressible through such freedom. 
and other amenities. No one needs a degree in engineering or interior design or architecture—one can do what their heart desires. Playing with friends, we can cooperatively build things and admire each other’s work. After a stressful day, it reassures one to know one can come home and build, just build. If you get a large project going, and if you throw yourself into it, you will find yourself wholly absorbed in it, and nothing else will receive your attention, because everything in you is committed to finishing this project of yours, this vision, this dream. Once you finish, you stand back and gaze upon your work, satisfied, accomplished, proud—this, this monument, it came from 
rhythm, and the digging, rather than being a chore, became a routine, a comforting practice. Even better, though, is when the music kicks in. As jschlatt mentions in his “Tribute to Minecraft,” the one constant in Minecraft is its soundtrack. Throughout the years, the classic works of C418 have aged well, and both early and new players of the game can appreciate the simplicity and beauty of the songs, which can invoke anything from naïve bliss to melancholic nostalgia, enhancing the gaming experience, really embedding the player in the game, grounding them in it, carrying them away in their absorption. Putting it all together, one can imagine the idyllic pleasure of exploring the vast world with a dog as one’s companion, the beneficiary of a sunset that puts the world to sleep, as the gentle music sets in, and one builds oneself a house that they will come to call home, feeling rooted, secure, strangely comforted in spite of the isolation, because it is as though the game itself were there beside you—and that is where carefree happiness comes from.
is dying; more specifically, dying in lava with good items. I cannot count how many times I have been mining, with diamonds in my inventory, when I broke the block on which I was standing or to which I was moving, and fell into lava, helpless to do anything about it, just bobbing up and down, looking around in vain for a way out, for some non-existent guardian angel to come and save me, watching with dejection as my hearts went down, and my happiness along with them. Then seeing all my hard-earned items bursting from me before landing in the lava, burnt into oblivion, never to be seen again, all my hours of work literally going up into flames in a single instant. That is when I exit out and close the game, never to open it again for a day, when my grudge finally subsides. Really, if anything, this insight says more about me psychologically than it does about the game.
I can do all that again no problem, it’ll just take some more time.” I, on the other hand, like a Marxist laborer, see myself in my works; so when I die in the game, it is as though a little part of myself has died, and I feel as though my life in-game is in vain. No longer do I feel like doing all that work all over again. Sure, there are other diamonds out there to be found; and sure, that stack of iron ore is replaceable—but I mined them by my own hand, they fell into my inventory, they have a story in which I played a part. Perhaps I am just a sentimentalist, but I take my deaths very seriously in Minecraft. A single mistake, and everything is lost. It really reminds you of the impermanence of life. Other players, though, are like Buddhists, able to command non-attachment. Is there a right way to play? I would argue “No.” I will say that the first type of player definitely has more fun, because they are able to move past their mistakes, whereas I dwell on my failures, preventing me from moving forward. 
Recently, I have been working on this. In one of my worlds, I died in lava, losing a stack of iron and two of coal. I was very upset, as I usually am, and considered quitting, when, hovering over the Title screen” button, I decided I would change my ways, at which I restrained and hit “Esc,” taking me back to the game, with a fresh start. Having done this, I felt, to some degree, 
world, with each new life, you are literally reborn, you are given another chance at life, you can try out something new, in no way predestined to repeat what you had done in the previous life. And it is not as though, when you die, you have to create a new world, unless you are in hardcore; you are reborn in the 
So there’s no problem anymore, right? I’ve finally come to peace with myself and Minecraft? Well, not quite. See, even after respawning from my tragedy in the lava, and after reacquiring the iron and coal I had lost, there dawned on me a saddening dissatisfaction, a feeling of—dare I say it—
for fun. Minecraft is a bigger sandbox than the real world. But just like with the American Dream, I am skeptical of the Minecraft Dream. This cynicism of mine may or may not be due to the fact that I myself have not yet defeated the Ender Dragon in survival… To reiterate, much of my feelings toward Minecraft can be explained psychologically, and this particular instance may be a manifestation of a deep-seated jealousy, 
Whatever the case may be, I always end up getting bored with Minecraft. I got a few diamonds—now what? I built a house—now what? I built a fully-automated mob farm—now what? Each time, I feel as though everything has been done, as though I have nothing left. After all, for what purpose is a house other than living in it? But in Minecraft, you cannot live an ordinary life as you do in the real world; you do not wake up and lounge around the house, because in Minecraft, it is impossible to stay still; there is no point in “enjoying one’s house,” for there is 
make me enjoy the game. But it does not. Part of human nature is that we convince ourselves that we 
recurrence of the same as Nietzsche saw it—as a thought experiment, a way of determining whether one is capable of affirming life. Minecraft does not teach us to affirm life, because there, it does not matter, given that we are “light,” in the sense of having no burdens upon us, no consequences for our actions; life is the only thing that can teach us to affirm itself, because we only have one shot at it, and ultimately, our experience is grounded herein, and Minecraft would not be possible were it not for the life-world, the 
In the end, I am thankful for Minecraft, as thankful as any other player, for just like them, I owe who I am to it. Playing Minecraft has been an integral part of my life. I can still remember my first day of playing it on my friend’s account, unaware of how impactful it would be, unaware of the fact that, one day, in spite of how much fun I had playing it, it would 
Minecraft back in the early 2010s with my friends, I am also sure that those days are gone, belonging entirely to the past. Maybe it is not the Eden we remember from before the Fall; maybe we are just victims of memory. I miss Minecraft, to be sure, but letting go of it has been an important part of my maturation. Whether you find meaning in video games or in real life—stick with it as much as you can. Better meaning from video games than meaninglessness at all. Better to be mad at video games than mad in the way Sisyphus is, embracing the Absurd. One must imagine Steve happy. 
nothing we propose can stand on its own. There is no basis for meaning, no absolute foundation therefor, because “God is dead.” This valuelessness comes from a lack of “aim,” “unity,” and “being,” as Nietzsche writes. We know that the Universe has no end goal, no teleology, nothing toward which it moves; it is all random and arbitrary, lacking design and purpose. No matter how much we may try, we can also find no unity whatsoever, because any attempt to do so falls apart. Labels like “modernity” can no longer account for us; there is no way to impose an order on the chaos and irregularity that is life. Lastly, this world is constantly changing before our eyes, never staying still, always being mixed up and rearranged and broken down then built up again. The second law of thermodynamics: the Universe is becoming increasingly disorderly. Nothing remains over time, not even ourselves. All is temporary, all is fleeting; no substantiality supports the world. Each of these three things we “project… into the world,” yet today we have “
anew in a meaningful, end-oriented way that progresses logically and sequentially, never changing radically or unexpectedly, staying faithful to us as the players. Now, VR is more appealing than real life. We would rather live in our computer-generated worlds, we say, unhindered by any stresses, than in the real world outside our computers, forced to carry the weight of responsibilities, stuck interacting with real people, people who are resistant to us, who cannot be controlled by us, who have to be encountered and treated in a certain way, while in our alternative worlds we can change how people respond to us. But we thereby deprive ourselves of real-world skills. “Real-world skills?” they say. “Who needs those when you have a simulation?” Indeed—who needs them when we can interact online without having to see people face-to-face? The future is now! Don’t be old-fashioned and talk to people in person—just add them online and video chat! 
Nozick’s thought experiment was designed to refute utilitarianism, the belief that the highest good is the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. His idea of the Pleasure Machine revolves around the idea of pleasure and its fulfillment. Hence, when Nietzsche denounces the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, he is arguing on the side of Nozick: there is more to life than pleasure. More than this, the “more” that exceeds pleasure is its opposite—pain. Pleasure alone is inhuman. The human condition is as such 
Hitherto, I have been discussing VR primarily and mentioning “simulation” concurrently, without really delving into it. Admittedly, I am no expert on the Simulation Hypothesis, but, as I understand it, the gist goes as follows: because we are capable of creating realistic simulations that model our world, it stands to reason that perhaps we ourselves are mere simulations of another civilization more advanced than we. This hypothesis is not immune to Nietzsche’s attack: the “true world,” according to the Simulation Hypothesis, is what is called “base reality.” If we create a game like “The Sims,” then we are said to be in “base reality,” because we are the ones who are controlling the players in the video game. However, it is possible that we are not actually in base reality, that we are in a simulation, similar to the Matrix. There is posited an imaginary Universe or civilization that has programmed us. We are players in somebody else’s video game. But what is this civilization? Where is this Universe outside of us? Here again we are “reach[ing]… for nothingness,” in Nietzsche’s words. We have no evidence for such a race capable of designing and playing as us for entertainment. 
Hypothesis really help us in any way or make us happy? I do not think so. I side with Nietzsche on this: the Simulation Hypothesis contributes to what Nietzsche names “the defamation of the world,” i.e., its slandering. If we entertain the Simulation Hypothesis, we are not so different from the religious thinkers who believed in a perfect, transcendent world, thereby devaluing this world; we “slander and bespatter this world.” Musk, in one interview, said “base reality” would be boring because every simulation only takes what is interesting from life and puts it together, leaving out the boring stuff since it would be uninteresting. If we accept that this world is base reality, then that would mean our lives, right now, are boring. Although we may feel this from time to time, convinced that our lives truly are boring, we cannot say that life as a whole is boring—how would we live otherwise? To claim that life is boring and that we need simulations to entertain ourselves, is again to slander the world. 
To bring this all to a close, we can summarize by advising this following: let’s just stick to common sense and life, shall we? No need for virtual realities that fulfill our fantasies or super advanced aliens that have simulated us. Sure, life is full of difficulties and complexities, but hey, we have made it this far—and 
or not, never thinking to ourselves voluntarily “I’d rather see it in VR”—clearly the world as we live in it must be true and worth living, must be livable, seeing as humans have been living in this world—and not some transcendent one—which has supported them for hundreds of thousands of years. Life is a series of interconnected relationships and perspectives, according to Nietzsche; there is no “truth-in-itself” except reality itself and its appearances, no “final reality.” So let’s stop trying to replace this world with a virtual reality or theorizing if we are in a simulation and 
In 2016, the Oculus Rift headset was released, and the popular tech entrepreneur 
new conception of reality and how we humans situate ourselves in it. If the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche were alive to experience VR and hear today’s talk of technology, then he would shake his fist disdainfully, criticizing us for succumbing to one of the oldest philosophical prejudices in the books with his fiery aphorisms, before returning, head held low in contempt, to his cave like a disappointed Zarathustra, wondering with shame how we went so wrong. The man who proclaimed the death of God, Nietzsche was highly critical of both religion and philosophy, finding in each of them an attitude of denial—denial of the Will, denial of becoming, and, worst of all, denial of 
indoctrinate the masses to escape from reality into a virtual world, one where they can create whatever they want, as they please, without fear of the consequences and stresses of everyday life. Strap this headset on, they say, and all your problems will go away! Get transported to another world, a 
Now, perhaps I am overreacting, perhaps I am making a big deal out of nothing. It is just an advertisement, in the end, just a playful attempt by a company to attract consumers with a fun slogan, pressuring them to join into the fun. By playing on the fear of missing out (FOMO), Oculus VR is inviting people to get the Oculus Go; until people purchase it, they are missing out, they are not seeing the world through the headset, which is an entirely new world. But while it is merely an advertisement, it betokens something rather sinister, a deviation: the consensually clandestine replacement of reality. That is to say, this whole advertising move conceals a dark underpinning in our society, which involves the forgetting of this world—life, reality—in place of a promised better one—in a word, 
diagnosed society, but also prescribed for it certain remedies to treat its decadence. According to Nietzsche, our fascination with VR and simulations stems from an unlikely historical source: our Christian heritage. From Christianity, we inherit a dying, albeit still-alive, belief in the transcendent, the beyond. In addition to this world in which we live and have our business, there is another world out there, an improved, perfect world where there is happiness and permanence and goodness, i.e., the opposite of this world, full of “appearance, change, contradiction, struggle.”
games like “The Sims,” where we create people we can play as and give them families, recreating not only life as we live it, but life as we 
looking for something that is not there; the transcendent world of the religions is fictitious, purely mental, a fabrication, just as the worlds in our video games are. While with VR we can go inside of them, we will never really experience them consciously, for this is the only world we have. Yet we “construe this nothingness… as truth,” and we convince ourselves that we are really playing in another world, one that is realistic and comparable to actuality, all the while belonging to ideality, to something that exists only in the mind, not out here, sensible, touchable, interactive in the truest sense. Being virtual, it does not exist concretely or fully, but abstractly and partly. To say we are “in a virtual world”—what does this mean? Can I “see” this virtual world through my own eyes, or only through a screen or headset? It appears to me to be nothing, nothingness, and yet I make it seem to exist side-by-side our world. 
modern physics, especially quantum mechanics, the world is nothing more than an illusion, it would seem: the world is reduced to appearance. It appears I’m sitting on a couch, although it is nothing solid or green in reality, but a collection of subatomic particles, practically indistinguishable from each other, conserved in their motion and energy. So science draws a line between reality as we experience it and reality as it really is. Our perceptions of things can be mistaken, as in optical illusions, and the things which we are perceiving do not even show themselves accurately, veiling their true nature; beneath all of this is another world, the “real” world of quarks, energy, and maybe even strings, which is permanent (law of conservation) and, arguably, perfect (that is, in terms of contingent habitability, cf. Anthropic Principle). Nietzsche finds irony in this considering science is supposed to study reality, when it really tries to get behind reality, just as metaphysicians and mystics do, proposing some kind of unknowable reality that is covered by the knowable one.
Picture what you think the future will be like in 50 years: Will there be flying cars, intergalactic space travel to other planets, space colonies, and smart houses that will be able to do anything you want them to, with everything perfected to function automatically, so that no one has to do any work? While this is a dream for many, it is a nightmare for author Ray Bradbury, whose science fiction book 
surrounding the technology. Specifically, the word “altar” refers to a table used for religious rites, a center for worship. For this reason, the house can be construed as a holy place, one frequented by something supernatural. When he says “the gods had gone away,” Bradbury is referring to us humans, who are considered deities to the house in a double sense: We are both the owners of the house, whom it serves, and the significant creators of the technology, such that, as their creators, we are worshiped as gods. As such, we humans take refuge in a temple, a place of importance. Later, it is explained that the house is equipped with mice that clean the house, and an intercom system is in control of every homely option, which is suggested by the fact that the house has “ten thousand attendants,” showing that the technology is overwhelmingly unnecessary; it replaces the humanness of the house due to its excessiveness. Because the humans have left, because the house remains a place of worship, the technology is deified. This swap of human-technological worship is representative of today, as Bradbury guessed, because no longer does technology serve man, but man serves technology. The image of the house surviving the blast while the humans died supplies readers with the idea of technology’s immortality and power over the natural world. Since the humans are gone from Bradbury’s world, it means everything is dependent on machinery; technology has replaced the need for humans because we grew too dependent upon them. Even though the owners are gone, the “rituals”—by which Bradbury means the everyday chores done by the house—“continued senselessly, uselessly.” Later in the story, when the house 
makes breakfast, but there is no one to eat it, it still keeps making the breakfast, showing that the sacredness imputed to humans has become obsolete. Everyday tasks have, with their relegated monotony, have lost their meaning in the human realm. But the future Bradbury imagined is not so far from reality, because today robots are replacing humans in society. In “The Big Robot Questions,” writer Patrick Lin states, “[B]ecoming overly reliant on technology for basic work … seems to cause society to be more fragile” (Lin). Nowadays, there is a device for everything, and the “basic work” of which Lin speaks consists of things like making food, washing clothing, or waking up. It is basic since it is fundamental and simple—any human can do it. However, the absence of such basic work leads to “fragil[ity],” or a state of being prone to breaking. If society is fragile, then it means it is not secure, that, at any moment, it can fall apart, like a dropped antique vase. Taken together, both Bradbury and Lin foresee a world where technology reduces humanity to mere idols, lazy, otiose. Where Lin talks about “basic work” being taken over by machines, Bradbury mentions the “ritual[s]” of machines that will become regular. Automation can be a good thing, as it eliminates effort, yet the two authors believe that an overdependence on technology will remove meaning from human life, of which a large component is work, from which we derive meaning. With work eliminated, Bradbury fears the boring longevity of technology, whereas Lin fears the weakening of society. Through these examples, it can be concluded that technology, if it is used too much, can render life a senseless worshiping of idleness. 
them across the planet, where they claim a city as their own. The dad explains to his kids why he took them there: “[P]eople got lost in a mechanical wilderness, … emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed the Earth” (180). Here, the imagery of humanity “lost in a mechanical wilderness” represents the confusion and directionless created by technology. The metaphor of technology as a “mechanical wilderness” shows that technology is a wide, pervasive, and dense network, a great big expanse of land into which it is easy to lose one’s way. When a person is “lost in the wilderness,” it means they are stuck because they do not know which way to go, how to get out, as they have no compass, no guide. “Wilderness” itself brings up connotations of danger and unpredictability, a feeling of being disoriented or out of place. Accordingly, Bradbury is saying that, when it comes to technology, humans do not have a moral compass, a device with which to navigate the dense thickets of technology, where we are left stranded. He talks about the difference between “machines” and “how to run the machines”; developing technology is dependent upon 
the machines” is to emphasize the purpose, or utility, of technology. There is also another interpretation of “how to”—namely the avoidance of improper use. In the case of technology, Bradbury is predicting that we will become blind to the proper use of technology, resulting in its going awry, malfunctioning—functioning badly, not in its desired way. Asking “how to” is also asking “how not to,” implicitly, because it distinguishes between the correct and the incorrect utilization. These views are not unfounded, for even now machines are not functioning correctly. Patrick Lin, in the same article, recounts how, in 2007, an automatic aircraft cannon failed to work properly, killing nine, injuring 14 (Lin). This incident reveals the shortcomings of technology, specifically its ability to malfunction. As a result of this malfunction, many people either lost—or came close to losing—their lives; consequently, technology, when it is not understood, when it is not under precise control, can harm us humans. Imagine if a nuke were to malfunction: Any flaw in its system would be devastating. Bradbury and Lin are noticing that technology is something not to be tampered with, a thing which can change on a whim, if we are not careful. The dad in “The Million-Year Picnic” talks about the devastation of the Earth and how wars got people killed, while Lin mentions an incident where a weapon went off and killed several people. Despite their differences, one being bigger than the other, they both express the same fear: Technology is 
dangerous. Bradbury’s vision is much more extreme than Lin’s; however, the potential is implied by Lin, who cites the increasing use of militarized technology. Both authors, then, are in agreeance that if we move too fast, if we do not look where we are going, then we will lose sight of what we are doing, with terrible consequences. In Bradbury, the machines are not used aright, and so contribute to the devastation of the Earth, and in Lin, a machine does not work, and so contributes to the death and injuring of a group of people. A common theme is the imperfection of technology, its proneness to mistakes, because they are flawed. As imperfect creators, our creations are imperfect, too.
Originally designed to connect us across long distances and to help us at home, technology has begun to extend its range to the world at large; however, its effect on the environment is less than beneficial. “The Locusts” is a story centered on the arrival of hundreds of rockets on Mars, which has been deemed safe for living. Tens of thousands of people move to the new planet to set up their homes, in the process destroying the environment with their technology. Tersely, bluntly, Bradbury narrates, “In six months a dozen small towns had been laid down upon the naked planet, filled with sizzling neon tubes and yellow electric bulbs” (78). Bradbury calls the planet “naked,” symbolizing bareness and vulnerability. To be naked is to be without cover, and so to be uncovered, meaning to be without protection. Because Mars is unprotected, it is open; however, this natural openness, this simple innocence, also means it is able to be attacked, since it is without armor. In contrast, Bradbury says that the humans’ technology consists of “sizzling neon tubes.” “Sizzling” refers to burning in a hot or excited way, as in a sizzling fire, which is dangerous because of its easily flammable tendencies. As such, a naked Mars is scorched by sizzling technology. Furthermore, the “neon tubes” create images of bright, disruptive, blinding light. Colors that disorient us are called “loud,” so it can be said that 
Bradbury is depicting technology as loud and obtrusive, and, it follows, unnatural. In short, technology is characterized as having a negative effect on the environment due to its ability to intrude upon nature. This conception of technology is similar to that of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s. In his work “The Question Concerning Technology,” written in 1954, around the time of Bradbury himself, he observes, “
state of the world, to change it completely, whereas Heidegger’s idea of technology is based on its ability not to disrupt nature, but to reinterpret it, to change its form so as to be something manipulable, exploitable. In “The Locusts,” the humans’ homes are “laid down upon” Mars, and in Heidegger, technology “sets upon” nature; yet in both cases, this idea of a verb plus the preposition “upon” means a violation, an act of invading and attacking, hostile and unfriendly. When the two sources are looked at together, they both express a common concern regarding technology’s ability to ruin the natural beauty of the world. By replacing the natural with the unnatural, by seizing nature and commandeering it, technology, the two authors assert, does the environment bad. Technology as enframing enframes the world as something to be used for our own instrumental purposes.
As Bradbury envisioned, our age is a technological one, one where we have become indebted to machines, where our lives have become dominated by them, where we are on the verge of losing our autonomy, and where our blindness to this predicament will be rewarded only with idleness and meaninglessness. By making technology an 
Immediately after they wake up, a large percentage of people check their phones to see the latest notifications from their social media or to respond to the influx of emails they have received. Similarly, a large percentage of people stay up late doing the same thing, checking their feeds, scrolling, nothing in particular on their minds, nothing to look out for—just scrolling, as if something will magically appear. Everyday, millions of pairs of eyes flicker over their bright screens, either on Instagram, Snapchat, or iFunny looking at hundreds of memes, short, humorous images or clips shared from person to person, starting with just one viewer, then spreading exponentially, until, like the game of telephone, it evolves with every share, becoming something new, something different, yet derivative, building off of the original, but with a new touch of interpretation by whoever appropriates it.
more, so someone in the U.S. can share a meme with someone in China, and they will both get it. How cool is that—to be able to communicate cross-culturally and get a laugh out of it? Memes allow for a shared knowledge and entertainment for people of all ages and backgrounds, connecting them through a single medium. While I myself like a good meme, just as anyone else does, and while they can be hilarious, I think the popularity of memes today, despite its benefits, also brings with it deficits, problems that need, and should, be addressed. The spread of a “memetic literacy,” as I like to call it, has supplanted a much more fundamental, more necessary 
When we think of literacy, we think of reading and writing. To be literate is to be able to read and write; to be illiterate, to be able to neither read nor write. Defined this way, our generation has the highest literacy ever, according to 
the Renaissance, reading was made available for everyone, not just the learned elite, who were usually religious members. Because language was made singular, common, the 
Hirsch relates how the literate usually like to keep the illiterate illiterate by not telling them how to be literate, withholding the specific requirements for becoming so. It is subtle: There is no single, agreed-upon list of things to know in order to be literate, for the selection is just so vast. The Western Canon, for example, is but a sampling of the world’s greatest literature. So while some may call you literate for having read the whole Canon, some may not consider that criteria enough. As such, to be truly literate, to be 
On YouTube, there are famous playlists 300-videos long, lasting for several hours, full of memes. If one can sit through all of them, then one, I guess, can be called “literate” in memes. However, he will still be lacking in other memes, meaning it is hard to specify what memes one should know if one is to be literate in them. In my case, how am I to know which memes are in vogue? Moving past this, the better one can read, the better one does in other subjects. From experience, I can attest to the fact that reading a variety of texts leads to a bigger vocabulary, and thence to a larger storage of knowledge and comprehension, resulting, ultimately, in easier learning through association. Such is the outline of literacy by Hirsch. Someone who is well-rounded in their reading, who reads not just fiction but non-fiction, who looks up words they do not know so they can improve, who not only specializes but generalizes their knowledge, who associates what they do not know with what they do know—they are literate, and they are successful in reading and writing.
E. D. Hirsch writes of a study he once conducted in Richmond, Virginia at a community college. There, he interviewed students and asked them to write responses to his prompts. Eventually, he asked them to write an essay in which they compare Civil War generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, the latter of whom was himself a Virginian. Although they were in the capital of Virginia, what was once the capital of the South, the students were not able to write a response because they did not know who either of the two men was. Hirsch was flabbergasted, to say the least.
Durkheim spoke of a “collective consciousness,” a totality of implicit, pre-existent notions that exist within a society. Everyone in the given culture is under this collective consciousness, is part of it. It is collective because it is common to everyone; consciousness because everyone knows it, even without acknowledging it. Being an American, I have the idea of freedom as a part of my collective consciousness, just as over 300 million other people do. Were I to stop a stranger and ask them about freedom, I am sure they would have the same background knowledge as I, such as the 4th of July, which signifies independence for the U.S. This example illustrates an interaction in cultural literacy.
Compare this to pop singers today, whose meteoric rises soon meet an impasse, only to decline, impermanent, impertinent. With memes, the same can be said. They all explode in popularity, only to reach their apex before either fading into obscurity or being replaced by another. A meme can be overhyped. It loses its importance, and although it seems “funny” or “important” one day, it may not the next. Memes are volatile things. On a whim, they come and go. Even though some have a longer life than others, they all eventually go. The classic Vine “9+10=21” was once extremely popular, and was quoted daily in school; now, it hardly exists in our collective memory; it is a ghost, a fragment from oblivion.
Given all this, I can now address the main problem of this essay, namely the conflict between cultural literacy and “memetic literacy.” I have not spoken a lot about memes yet save in small bits, but I shall discuss them presently. For now, I wish to direct your attention to the issue at hand: The decline of cultural literacy. A teacher created a quiz full of famous, influential persons and gave it to his class to gauge their familiarity with historical, artistic, literary, and philosophical literacy. He was disappointed when one of his students compared the test to a game of Trivial Pursuit, because it prompted the question, What counts as important or trivial today? This is a vital question that everyone needs to ask themselves. Are famous leaders like Napoleon now trivial today, compared to the importance of Viners and YouTubers like Logan Paul? If both names were to be put on a test, would students cry, “Why do we have to know this Napoleon guy? Logan Paul obviously has a bigger influence today”? Is knowing who Napoleon is just trivia? Furthermore, the teacher found that his students had no knowledge of current events, specifically of their own country and its involvement in foreign affairs. 
Unlike peer culture, whose facts are prone to change and in constant flux, tests’ facts are fixed and unchanging. Whereas 1789 is always the date of the start of the French Revolution, knowing Steph Curry is the point guard for the Golden State Warriors is bound to change in years to come. Memorizing the Pythagorean Theorem is applicable, as opposed to memorizing all the names of the band members of One Direction, which is impressive, but not applicable. The biggest complaints I hear, and which Jacoby also cites, are “I could spend my time more meaningfully” and “Why should we have to memorize facts?” Both points have merit, I concede, especially the latter. 
A meme is a certain kind of gene, a strand of code that is inherited. But unlike biological genes, memes are what Dawkins calls “cultural genes” in that they do not pass from person to person, but culture to culture. It is a gene on a mass level. Think viral. A “viral video” is so called because, like a virus, it spreads exponentially in its hosts, not just through the air, but digitally. The video goes “viral” as it is passed from person to person, computer to computer. He says a meme is a form of “imitation,” by which he means that the meme is copied and then replicated. It has copies made of it, either new ones or mutations. They are reproducible and copyable—in fact, there is a meta-meme, a meme about a meme, about stealing memes: Creators will take an already existing meme and put their own twist on it, then put their name on it to claim it, 
Unlike cultural literacy, which differs transculturally, memes are universal. Any high schooler, I can guarantee, will know a meme from across the world if presented one. Memes have become the source of new allusions. This means, after all, that memes are a part of the collective consciousness briefly. Seen by millions daily, memes are a worldwide shared knowledge. But of course, memes, for how good they are, come with problems, too. What is most important in the definition of a meme, I feel, is the word “idea.” Idea can be many things—a song, a joke, a theory, an emotion, a fashion, a show, a video, and a dozen others. 
To summarize, the problem at hand is that we are seeing a decline in cultural literacy, the ability to communicate with strangers with a shared, underlying knowledge; and a rise in memetic literacy, the ability to make allusions to videos, celebrities, sports, fashion, and other popular culture. This is not to say that memes should not be used at all, no; after all, Nietzsche said, “Without music life would be a mistake.”[7]
I fear the day we no longer know of classical literacy, when we can quote Lil Pump’s “Esketit” but not Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be.” We should be able to discuss music and fashion and sports, but it should not be the priority; they are entertainment. Memes do a lot of good, but they can also do a lot of harm. They spread universal joy. They can get an idea to be seen by millions. What we need to do is ask ourselves questions. We need to consider what is trivial and important today. We need to decide what is worth studying, what ideas are worth spreading. Entertainment is essential, but spreading ideas, good ideas, is more important. We are undergoing a fundamental change in our world, and we need to be present to address it. This is a proposal to look inward instead of outward, to examine our values, to find out what we care about.
Neologikon 