"Another is the notion that oblivion is integral to the possibility of personal evolution. 'The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning,' Foucault writes. To do so, however, you must believe that the future can be different from the past—a belief that becomes harder to sustain when one is besieged by information, as the obsessive documentation of life makes it 'more fixed, more factual, with less ambiguity and life-giving potentiality.' Oblivion, by setting aside a space for forgetting, offers a refuge from this 'excess of memory,' and thus a standpoint from which to imagine alternative futures. Oblivion is also essential for human dignity. Because we cannot be fully known, we cannot be fully instrumentalized. Immanuel Kant urged us to treat others as ends in themselves, not merely as means.... [O]ur obscurities are precisely what endow us with a sense of value that exceeds our usefulness.... The modernist city promised anonymity, reinvention. The Internet is devoid of such pleasures. It is more like a village: a place where your identity is fixed...."
Writes Ben Tarnoff, in
"What Is Privacy For? We often want to keep some information to ourselves. But information itself may be the problem" (The New Yorker).
ADDED: Here, I made you an "Oblivion" playlist:
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12 comments:
Oblivion is a nice word.Melodic.
In the middle ages, nothing changed and nobody expected it to. Today we expect change all the time.
Information takes away our ability to think things can change in the future? I can’t think of any sense in which this is true.
AI is improving its writing skills; it says nothing with more intelligent-sounding fluff.
“What Can Be, Unburdened By What Has Been?
Abortion is restorative in the Pro-Choice religion.
Abortion! What is it good for? Oblivion.
What blather. But OK, let's parse:
"[O]blivion is restorative: we come apart in order to come back together. (Sleep is a case in point; without a nightly suspension of our rational faculties, we go nuts.)"
That's a string of non sequiturs. I don't know if 'oblivion' is defined somewhere before this statement, but in the commonly understood definition, it's the condition of being forgotten, not the act of forgetting, as in sleep. It's also not the same as anonymity, which it looks like what Foucault is getting at.
"Another is the notion that oblivion is integral to the possibility of personal evolution. 'The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning,' Foucault writes."
The main interest in life and work (I would combine those to into 'vocation.') is to survive, and beyond that, to find fulfillment. Fulfillment, that is, of one's identity and calling, not to become someone else.
"To do so, however, you must believe that the future can be different from the past—a belief that becomes harder to sustain when one is besieged by information, as the obsessive documentation of life makes it 'more fixed, more factual, with less ambiguity and life-giving potentiality.' "
Not all information is factual. The notion that 'perception is reality' is a lie; chasing down the best sources for information - that is, the underlying factual reality - while not perfect, is still the best way to understand what goes on and how it affects you and others.
"Oblivion, by setting aside a space for forgetting, offers a refuge from this 'excess of memory,' and thus a standpoint from which to imagine alternative futures. Oblivion is also essential for human dignity. Because we cannot be fully known, we cannot be fully instrumentalized. Immanuel Kant urged us to treat others as ends in themselves, not merely as means.... [O]ur obscurities are precisely what endow us with a sense of value that exceeds our usefulness.... The modernist city promised anonymity, reinvention. The Internet is devoid of such pleasures. It is more like a village: a place where your identity is fixed...."
The use of polarization (based on non-factual information) as a means to make 'those other people ' useful (=instrumentalized), and "freezing" to discredit their opposition to the approved narrative, is exactly what is happening. It's not oblivion; it's cancellation.
A black hole... whore h/t NAACP is in theory the preeminent privacy model. It's like Hotel California, where "You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave".
Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivian
Give them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion
OK then, Ben.
Why do you think they call it 'dope'?
Sleep is not oblivion. (" The condition or quality of being completely forgotten") While we are sleeping, dreaming our minds are still actively working, although on a different level/plane than when we are awake. Dreaming, working out problems, conceptualizing, inventing things, accessing ideas that are not available too the conscious (awake) mind. Those ideas are there, and sleep/dreaming brings them to the surface.
When I think of oblivion, I think of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman's western (great movie). And I think of Julie Christie, lost in her opium daze, and oblivious to the death of her (sorta) love. Oblivion is sad, very sad.
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