Living in the illusion of accomplishment
In a static world where we spend most of our time sitting in a comfortable chair, seat or armchair, whether working, telecommuting, commuting or shopping online, we seem to have forgotten what moving implies and how it relates to action.
Our fingers tapping away at a computer keyboard or the silicon of our smartphones have replaced our entire bodies. Before, to act, we had to stand up, walk, think and use our arms and hands. Today, everything is summed up in the tips of our phalanges. We can say in itself, that it is an anthropological mutation of first order. The passage from quadruped to biped took millions of years, while the passage from biped to slouching on a couch or anything that allows more or less sitting, took less than 50 years.
What is the problem raised by this transformation?
It is that we have decoupled the verb from the action, and even the verb has replaced the action. Nowadays, a post, a story, a tweet, a vlog are worth, at least, are assimilated to a concrete action.
The Internet gives us the illusion of action. This open-air outlet allows the greatest diversion: while we act cathartically, we no longer have a hold on the real world.
The virtual world is a great outlet in which crowds come to indulge all sorts of passions, and then go to sleep wisely at night.
Of course, the Internet, even if it distracts its users from real action, allows them to acquire a counter-culture that seems to have actually become the dominant culture. Minds are changing, but concrete manifestations are struggling to take shape for a significant part of its users.
For some, and perhaps a majority, the Internet is a release that allows us to endure life and finally not to try to change things. It is a necessary valve for society that allows anger to be confined to the virtual and protest to take on chimerical forms.
The Internet is the realm of words for most of us, but for others it can be a springboard to embodied action. To be able to do this, one must have always kept a foot in the real world, whether through one’s work or any other dimension of one’s life, otherwise, it is the virtual that carries us away in its depths at the risk of never being able to return.
