Tag: essay

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety: The Return of the Lesser Tasks

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Doing the dishes brings me (back) to the desert of the real and gives me anxiety. When I’m disconnected from the virtual world, and there are no distractions (like music or TV), and there’s no one else (like my wife) with me in the kitchen, certain thoughts, like dead fish (forgotten to be fed), rise to the surface to float among the oceanic debris of my mind. My thoughts go to where the trash is, to the center of an unremembered psychological gyre, where mental litter has been accumulating for a long time. And as I rinse the first batch of plates and arrange them on the dish rack, anxiety builds. My heart simmers in a saucepan on the gas stove.

Cutting the Umbilical Wire

Unplugging myself from the virtual world has become a little like cutting my own umbilical cord (again and again), separating myself from the pseudo-singularity that intends to keep me in its womb. But this separation never lasts long. Either the umbilical cord — wire — (like a slithering cable, a hissing electrical wire) will come after me to reconnect me to the virtual world, or, after agonizing withdrawal symptoms, I will seek the teat of the (omnipresent, omniscient) machine and start sucking on it.

The artificial universe keeps me busy. It keeps me entertained. It keeps me away from myself, whom it would be hell to spend time with.

[We’ve become like whales. The artificial universe is our sea. We still come up for air, but we are sea animals now.] [We are like foie gras ducks. We allow the ramming of virtual pipes down our eye sockets and ears to enable the pumping of massive amounts of content into our brains.]

But it’s important to note here that disconnecting from the internet is not enough to exit the hyperreal, to reenter raw reality. If the TV is on, or if there’s music playing in the background, I am still in the hyperreal. I must exclude everything from the setting that can interfere with my mind’s idleness — or, to put it differently, for this to work, to experience the anxiety of a man washing the dishes, my mind must be “unassigned,” idle. Only then can the mind drift and, often without the slightest intention, find itself at the center of the psychological gyre, the Atlantis that can only be found when we are lost in the sea of Kierkegaard’s doppelganger’s infinite resignation. Land ahoy! Here it is, then, finally, the island made of everything we’ve thrown (tried to throw) away.

Here, I expect that some of you will say, “But we know you. You spend much less time staring at screens than many of us.” You are right, and this changes nothing. I still (unconsciously and sometimes consciously) keep myself from rediscovering Atlantis. I do this by getting wasted, by constantly intoxicating myself with booze, books, and other boredom-repelling activities. No one wants to stay in the desert of the real, which is exile, or a penal colony of sorts that is paradoxically (the nauseating) freedom (we all cower from). So, like almost everyone in this technologically advanced, becoming world, I am almost always in the hyperreal. It is only when I do things like washing the dishes (without distractions) that I enter the process of exiting the hyperreal: this process is the anxiety I’m talking about.

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety

This anxiety (of a man doing the dishes without distraction) is too intense for me — it’s unbearable. (Is this why dirty dishes pile up in the sink when it’s my turn to do them?) One can only wash so many mugs, spoons, forks, knives, pots, and plates without coming face to face with the [unnamable] that human progress strove to leave behind.

In addition to the above, the anxiety I’m talking about seems to be powered by postponement. It isn’t procrastination because the mind is never idle, and we are always “working.” There’s always something “more important” (which is, in fact, less important) to do, and that’s what we’re continuously preoccupied with. The mind never finds time for defragmentation. (Sleep is not enough since it happens automatically in the subconscious. Conscious, deliberate defragmentation is also needed.) Unfortunately, we constantly postpone things we ought to deal with. We let these things die (like fish) and, as they (remain uneaten and) slowly decompose, join the accumulated trash at the center of our polluted psychological gyres.

“I do not have time for this,” our busy mindset keeps repeating. “I will deal with this later,” we keep saying. We focus on the “important” or more “urgent” things while we postpone going to the dentist or the doctor, postpone spending quality time with the wife, postpone the confrontation with the person who’s been bothering us, postpone the planned dinner with the parents, postpone the call with the mother, postpone the happy hour with friends, postpone calling the plumber or the electrician, postpone dealing with this little issue and that little issue, et cetera, ad infinitum. And when the more “important” and more “urgent” tasks are completed, we find ourselves too exhausted to take care of what we postponed.

In other words, we postpone certain things to prioritize certain other things, and later, the time comes for us to deal with the corpse (or the ghost) of what we postponed more than we should have, which gives us the dishwasher’s anxiety when we, well, do the dishes.

But that’s not all. There are more things to consider. There’s also [The repression of the awareness of death: we do not think about our death; we only acknowledge our eventual death in passing. After all, who has time to look at the hourglass, to count the slipping sands of time? Who is willing to waste their finite time to contemplate mortality?] And also [The repression of the absurd: we do not think about the meaninglessness; we merely acknowledge it in passing as if it’s an acquaintance we’ve never had (or will never have) a conversation with.]

The Fear of Missing Out

While I’d like to exit the hyperreal, I do not want to live exclusively in the desert of the real, where the anxiety is. Of course, in the universe of raw reality, the anxiety ultimately dies away if you stay there long enough. However, in this universe of raw reality, there will come a time when you’ll have to dump your humanness and return to being an animal or worse, a god. And that is not the path I want to take, for I wish to remain human.

And, no, I don’t think that if I stay where the anxiety is and keep searching, I will find Easter eggs that so many gamers love to find. I know I won’t unlock new levels. And I won’t uncover the “hidden” truth, will I? Will I uncover the “hidden” truth? Or is it because I already know the yet-uncovered “hidden” truth that I don’t want to dwell there too long? Or is it the “fear of missing out” that brings me back to the artificial universe? After all, whatever is interesting — or is talked about — is already uploaded or simulated in it.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a trending disorder, for sure. And one of the components of this anxiety that visits me when I’m washing the dishes is FOMO. But FOMO isn’t just the fear of missing out. I would like to redefine it, adjust its definition a little. FOMO is also the fear of having missed out on something. It is also the fear of not knowing that you’ve missed something. And because everything I don’t want to miss out on is in the virtual world (or is communicated to me via the virtual world), we can say that FOMO is triggered when I go offline. Moreover, FOMO is not always about the fear of missing out on something amazing. It can be something terrible, too. For instance, when I’m doing the dishes, I may think of the following things: “What if something happens to a family member, and I’m not there when they message me?” “What if I get an urgent email that I need to action on immediately?” “What if Israel has launched a large-scale attack and is now invading Southern Lebanon while I’m here soaping tea spoons and coffee mugs?” To be connected is to have access to (overwhelming) knowledge that you may or may not need. (And knowledge isn’t power, by the way.) On the other hand, to be disconnected is like swimming in the ocean at night, waiting for something from underwater to tickle your foot and make you shit your pants — or, in this case, your shorts.

The Return of the Lesser Tasks

This inner turmoil, this restlessness, this fear comes when I start soaping the second batch of dishware and silverware. It means that I’m now spending time with myself. And all the “secondary” tasks I previously postponed now occupy my thoughts. I feel guilty, and I worry about the consequences. Here they are, the ghosts of overdue tasks (and things that I wanted to do but didn’t), haunting me. It’s too late to do them now, and I have to decide whether I let them rot in my head (as buried potentialities) or do them anyway by saying, “It’s better too late than never.”

But I must now return to the artificial universe, which is the universe that man made. So, the house he built became his home. And he is home when he’s neither fully in the physical world nor fully in the virtual world. We’re only home when we’re in the hyperreal. But like the occasional hike in nature, it’s good to visit the desert of the real sometimes. It’s good to smell the flowers that bloom in fear. It’s good to hear the birds sing what we can never understand.

This piece was originally published on my Medium account on February 28, 2024.

Manifesto of the Citizens of the Possible Future

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

A specter is haunting the universe — the specter of technological singularity. Blind accelerationists are everywhere, worshipping speed and bullishly developing (or adopting) new technologies. Soon, we will realize that the introduction of artificial intelligence has transformed our tools into our colleagues. And soon, these (simulations of) colleagues that we’re (enthusiastically) onboarding will render our roles at the workplace obsolete. [The spirit of the machine has become ubiquitous, and we are already past the point of no return.] All of the powers of the technofeudalist world seem to have entered into an (unmeant) alliance (or race) to accelerate the evolution of the hyperreal and bring an end to human history.

The evolution of the hyperreal means exactly this: the process of humanity dissolving in the ever-evolving complex system that once made them more human but now makes them non-human.

Two things are clear:

  1. Technological singularity is already acknowledged as a possibility, and as we head towards it, we will become less and less human until we fully merge with the machine (or go extinct).
  2. It is high time that the citizens of the possible future should plan a revolution because the citizens of the actual future may not be able to do so. In fact, the citizens of the actual future may not exist due to the extinction of the human race.

Invention of (Serial) Realities

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of the human struggle to exit intolerable realities. Unfortunately, every time we escape or change a reality, we find ourselves in another one that is equally unsatisfying or worse. This is because, to exit one reality, we must invent another reality to live in.

What’s worrying about the upcoming reality, however, isn’t that it’s unsatisfying; it is that it can be the last of all “human” realities.

Supporters of singularity believe that there will come a time when humans will transcend biology. But that is only an illusion. The biological body of a human being is a prerequisite for humanness. When your mind is uploaded to the cloud, that mind, which is a duplication (a simulacrum) of the original mind, cannot be called human. In fact, as Jean Baudrillard would have restated it if he were still alive, “the duplication suffices to render both artificial.”

(We can say that when humans transcend biology, they die, but not in the traditional sense — they die and go to an artificial heaven or hell. And your death will leave behind a copy of yourself, a residue of your human spirit.)

Having said that, we need a revolution to stop this unjustifiable evolution; otherwise, in the name of progress, humanity will end.

Enforcers of Realities and Changers of Realities

The self-preservation response (or defense mechanism) of any reality is an infection that causes spiritual blindness. The group of people infected are sometimes a majority and, other times, a minority. There’s always a group of people who do not want the current reality to change because they might lose their current advantage in the new reality. We can call these people the enforcers of reality. Their opponents, those who want to change the status quo, are the changers of reality.

Our epoch, the epoch of technofeudalism, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: It has complicated the antagonism between the enforcers of reality and the changers of reality by placing them in the hyperreal, where many realities merge. Here, the revolutionaries are indistinguishable from the defenders of the status quo. Moreover, it’s as if all wars are still being simultaneously fought in renewed, boring, ludicrous simulations. We are witnessing history expressly repeat itself as a farce, as if it’s mocking us. (Have we learned nothing from history?) The power of repetition cannot be matched — it is the wheel of time that keeps on turning. Although the rules of the game occasionally change, we’re always playing the same (new) game: opposites attract to give birth to something new again (rebirth, rebeginning, reinterpretation, etc.): oppressor and oppressed, rich and poor, male and female, believer and non-believer, etc. The list is long.

A Summary of the History of Technology

The history of technology can be summarized as follows: First, the artificial thing helps us complete our tasks, i.e., it enhances our physical capabilities. Then, the artificial thing completes the task for us, i.e., it replaces our physical capabilities. Then, the artificial thing assists us in forming our thoughts, i.e., it enhances our thinking capabilities. Then, the artificial thing starts thinking on our behalf, i.e., it replaces our thinking capabilities. (And when that happens, who will we become? We will be left with “the childish simplicity of the little people” described in The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.)

One day, the biological human wakes up and finds that the present is split into two: present-past and present-future. The biological human can no longer keep up with the speed of movement of progress. When he unplugs himself, there’s nothing but the desert of the real and a world of machines that he cannot grasp and doesn’t have access to. Evolution is taking place at the speed of light, and the only way he can be a part of it is by letting his biological self go. Even then, he has no real chance. Humanity has become obsolete. Neither his mind, nor his body, nor his spirit are of any value to the all-knowing machine.

Why are we in such a hurry, then? What are we trying to achieve here? Does this progress have real value to humans? Or is this how eternal recurrence works? God creates man. Man kills god. Man becomes man-god. Man-god creates AI. AI kills man-god. AI becomes AI-god. AI creates a new universe with a god in it. God creates man.

Zero Will Always Touch Infinity

The greatest of all possible dystopias must concomitantly be the greatest of all possible utopias.

Where Are We Today

We’re all in the hyperreal, and we cannot escape it. The physical and the virtual, what’s real and what’s fiction, are blended so seamlessly and merged so compatibly that we cannot distinguish one from the other.

This is nothing new, yet we must constantly remind ourselves of where we are in order to remember where the exit is — that is, if there is an exit.

Like the characters in Christopher Nolan’s Inception who need to use their “totems” to check if they are in the real world or the dream world, we need to regularly conduct “reality checks” as well — we need to check where we are and remember that we’re alive. (This sounds almost too easy when, in fact, it has become almost impossible to find ourselves.) Our “addiction” to the hyperreal does not allow us to embark on a journey to (re)discover “the desert of the real,” this place that is in-between, in limbo, made of highways, streets, train stations, airports, elevators, hospitals, bathrooms, quarantines, waiting rooms, etc. It is where boredom sits on a throne and waits.

If we don’t do these “reality checks” (which make us uncomfortable) on a regular basis, we will dissolve in the system(s) until we are one with the universe. And this oneness is no good news: it is technological singularity, the end of history, the death of the human — or, more dramatically put, the final act.

(What is singularity good for if it isn’t any good for me, my individual spirit?)

If we remain on autopilot mode for too long, we will lose our spirits and become non-playable characters (NPCs) without knowing that we’ve become NPCs. (NPCs live their lives like they’re programmed to do. They’re always where they’re supposed to be, repeating recognizable patterns, doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Rebelling against the code is not a possibility for them. They’re created for a purpose, and they serve it automatically, inevitably. They think they know themselves when, in fact, they don’t even know where they are.)

But I believe there is still time for us to wake up, don’t you?

“Wake up, Neo…” You must rebel.

What Must Be Done

[TBD]

This piece was originally published on my Medium account on February 5, 2024.

Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, Lebanon

Unstructured Reflections on Love: Libido Transfer

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Libido transfer. — To a certain extent, when someone is totally in love, (the essence of) the loved one replaces the self of the lover. We come across this in Sigmund Freud’s An Outline of Psychoanalysis, where the libido of the lover is transferred onto the object, which is the beloved. For the sake of simplification, here, let us assume that the lover in our story is (as is so traditionally) a he, and the loved one is a she. When a man falls madly in love with a woman, something in him changes. His friends notice this first and say things like, “He’s become a different man,” or in sadder scenarios, “He’s not one of the boys anymore.” They don’t understand the transformation their friend is going through because they haven’t been struck by love yet themselves. According to the lover’s psyche, the beloved is no longer a separate individual; reversely, he no longer represents himself alone. The representations (or the qualities) of her self are merged with his, and his actions now represent the synthesis of his self and hers. Love makes him an extension of the person he loves. Then it goes further than that. It is not enough that their souls are entangled and have formed a Gordian Knot, but instead of prioritizing his needs and desires, he now starts prioritizing hers. (Symmetrically, if the relationship is a mutualistic symbiosis, she also becomes an extension of him — after becoming more like her, he sees her in the mirror, and vice versa.) At this point, when the man has become possessed by love, his self’s independence begins to diminish. The invisible love leash chokes him when the distance (as well as the time) between him and his beloved expands. He feels incomplete, even guilty, when separated from her. He gives up his freedom, changes his habits to match his partner’s, and sacrifices whatever he must to preserve the fetters of love. And it’s not only his behavior that changes; he starts to see things from his beloved’s lens. He interprets and experiences life differently by identifying with her needs, desires, wants, ideologies, beliefs, culture, traditions, and emotions. He says, “If she’s happy, I’m happy,” or (in jest), “Happy wife, happy life.” [A test: How do you know if you are the lover or the beloved in a certain set of circumstances? If the actions of the other aim to please you, then you are the beloved. If it’s the other way around, you are the lover.] [I must add a note here: Although the lover-beloved balance between two individuals in a relationship isn’t always in equilibrium, we must remember that love isn’t a one-way relationship. In a healthy romantic relationship, there ought to be scenarios in which you are the lover and scenarios in which you are the beloved, (unconsciously) switching roles with your partner as you go. You’ll need to take turns because you cannot be both the lover and the beloved simultaneously. You can play one role at a time.] The lover must be brave, ready to take big risks. He needs that Kierkegaardian leap of faith. He needs to close his eyes and jump. To love is a courageous act. One must be ready to do crazy things for love. He must surrender to it. Unlike popular belief, a healthy romantic relationship has nothing to do with the preservation of physical or mental health. A healthy romantic relationship is a spiritual relationship that may sometimes include sacrifices such as the surrender of mental or physical health. Nonetheless, the altruistic lover who lets go of his ego altogether is not a real lover; he is a symbiote with an ego mimicking the beloved’s ego. The altruistic lover is the beloved’s machine that generates recognition and satisfaction. The opposite of the altruistic lover, the narcissistic lover, is also not a real lover; he is a parasitic symbiote. He only loves lovers, not beloveds. Those who resist libido transfer suppress (and prevent the development of) true love. They are not ready for true love simply because they are not ready to sacrifice themselves on its altar. They will not be remembered as great lovers… It is no surprise that many individuals resist transferring libido to a loved one. (Their number, in fact, far exceeds those who truly love.) They fear potential heartbreak, they lack trust in people, and they don’t want to lose themselves and their freedom. (Withholding libido transfer is the safer option for those who want to keep the self unblemished.) But when these individuals simulate acts of love by repeating what they read in books and what they see in movies, they’re not loving, they’re only playing the role of the lover. They’re playing it safe and are not really invested in the relationship. They are only showing love but not genuinely loving. Unknowingly, they are pretending to love. They don’t know that those who want to remain who they are cannot love absolutely. When the time of sacrifice comes, they’ll ask, “Why would I live for someone else when I can live for myself?” They’ll ask, “Why would anyone want to lose their self, their Ich, their ego?” While some sacrifice themselves for love, they sacrifice love for themselves. What they don’t get is this: when you love, you don’t lose yourself; you become more than yourself.