A Deluge of Information Hampers our Ability to Think

Raúl Zibechi
Uruguayan sociologist, writer and journalist, editor of the Uruguayan weekly magazine Brecha

In a recent interview, Byung-Chul Han, a German philosopher born in South Korea, reports that “we are very well informed, but somehow we can’t get our bearings”. His arguments on the social consequences of the overabundance of information we suffer from had already been analyzed in his book Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy, published a year ago.

Han attributes much of the problems we suffer as a society to informatization. He says that the narcissistic ego, looking inward, “is the cause of social disintegration”, because “everything that unites and connects is disappearing”, neutralizing the possibility of considering ourselves one society. The conclusion is that there are no longer “common narratives that unite people”.

He distinguishes between truth and information, stating that the second is centrifugal and destroys social cohesion, while true life-testimonies keep it alive. “The truth illuminates the world, while information thrives on the fascination of surprise”, he says, because it generates a succession of “fleeting moments” that have the power to obscure reality, distorting instead of informing.

The German philosopher continues adding arguments, such as the fact that nowadays information does not allow the creation of a public sphere. I remember, in this regard, that, until not long ago, in certain critical situations people crowded around newsstands, commenting and sharing the news in a public space. Now, however, we no longer have common stories that could orient and give meaning to our existence. There are no longer rituals, we barely have consumption and the satisfaction of our needs, Han says categorically.

He thinks that in the future “people will receive a universal basic income and have unlimited access to video games”, as state policies now offer around the world, a new version of panem et circenses.

It could be said that this is not something new, but the result of half a century of increasingly putting information technologies at the center of our lives. The Austrian physicist Fritjof Capra completes the German philosopher when he explains: “Information is presented as the basis of thought, while, in reality, the human mind thinks with ideas, not with information” (in The Web of Life).

Capra recovers many of the concepts expressed by the American novelist Theodore Roszak in The Cult of Information. A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking, first published in 1985, which is almost four decades ago. It contains an important conclusion: “Ideas are models that integrate. They do not derive from information, but from experience”.

This explains the system’s persistent commitment to limiting the life experiences of our young people, subjecting them to a constant bombardment of information that leaves them nothing but a gigantic cloud of confusion. Consumerism, the “anthropological mutation” that Pasolini was speaking about half a century ago, is their main window onto the world, obviously apart from the network of their own IT devices.

In this world overloaded with information, there are no ideas, just as there are none in the enormous flow of data on the Internet. Because ideas have always been dangerous; they are what can give meaning to reality and lives, they are compasses for exposing oppression. Without ideas and without vital experience, humanity is shipwrecked towards the abyss. Getting intoxicated with information and blocking ideas is a great gain for the system. This is the reason why I propose to think of the use of the Internet made by the higher-ups, those who are at the top, as an immense counter-insurgency policy. On the other hand, progressive media and people use and abuse communication with the aim to offer a tale of their own presumed virtues, never to have a dialogue on equal terms with ordinary people. They reproduce the systemic subject-object relationship that they say they want to fight, placing their voters in a position of passive recipients of their speeches.

That’s why, to protect the integrity of their communities, the Mbya Guaraní tribe of many Argentinian villages regulate their Internet-connection times so that their sons and daughters are not left helpless at the mercy of an avalanche of data they cannot sort through or select. In this way they refuse to expose themselves to the disorganizing power of social networks. There are quite a few original peoples who do this, simply to defend themselves.

Also, the long silence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which stayed more than a year without issuing statements, can be understood as a refusal to enter the media circus to which few pay attention, and which even fewer understand. It is the silence of anger and of dignity. The Fifth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle (1998) already explained that silence can be a form of struggle, and that “with reason, truth and history, one can struggle and win… by remaining silent”.