I had some interesting thoughts that I think are worth recording:
Every so often I have these thoughts that as if appear out of nowhere and seem organized even though I haven’t thought of them. They tend to be prophetic like or, I should say, they seem to describe the future. So far many of them often seem to be true, or at least they appear to be. As to whether they are or not who knows? I am skeptical about predictions of the future and don’t know what to make of it.
The prediction
One of these “predictions” happened in the mid 1990’s. Out of nowhere I said something to this effect:
“I am going to spend the rest of my life watching humanity be dehumanized and that this is going to be hard to watch. This dehumanization will happen slowly. Because it is slow it will not be noticed. This dehumanization will be justified by things like logic and belief and some people will even promote it almost as if was a savior. If anyone says anything about it it will be denied or ridiculed. There will be a point when the dehumanization will be noticed but, by that time, it will be too late. When the full effects of the dehumanization is apparent it will be viewed as one of the great tragedies of history.”
Where this came from I don’t know. I never thought about it. It as if came out of the blue. It seemed a little extreme, to me, and had this doom quality about it. I’ve wondered about this ever since.
The “prediction quality”
I often feel that these senses of “predictions” are not predictions but, rather, an intuitive sense of “the times” which gives a sense of “the way things are going”. This gives it a “prediction quality”. If this is the case, then it would mean that I felt an intuitive sense of dehumanization that was starting to “take hold”.
Questioning dehumanization
It was this “prediction” that made me question what dehumanization is as, at that time, I didn’t know what dehumanization is. I seemed to speak about it as if I knew what it was but, frankly, I had no idea. Even now I’m not certain what it is.
What’s interesting is that when I look back on things, I seem to think there may be truth in this “prediction”, as in the quarter century that this has happened since then I seem to see what I keep calling a dehumanization and that it seems to be growing. What’s weird, though, is that there are a couple of questions about this that I can’t answer:
- I’m still not exactly certain what dehumanization is
- I don’t know how it would be explained in the future
In other words, I keep using this word – dehumanization – and can’t explain what it is to me and I certainly don’t know what other people say about it. At best, I guess that I can say that dehumanization refers to a particular type of condition and the best I can do is try to describe it as it appears to me at this time . . .
Trying to trace what dehumanization is
My continual use of the word “dehumanization”, and not knowing what it is, means that, deep down, there is a sense of something which I keep calling “dehumanization”. I seem to think that the dehumanization I speak of is unlike anything we’ve seen before in history. It is not just a sense of “feeling alienated” which happens from time to time in history. I felt that when I speak of dehumanization I’m speaking of something totally new. The problem is that I’m not satisfied with my explanation of it so far. I wonder what this sense of dehumanization is?
I’m going to forget all I said about dehumanization and try to “follow the sense” using new words and explanations. Almost immediately I say these things:
- Its a disassociation with the “human reality”
- Its a living in an artificial non-human world
- Our ability at adaption will fool us . . . we will “adapt ourselves out of ourselves” (that is to say, we naturally adapt to varying conditions in life but instead of adapting to natural situations we will adapt ourselves to a non human world which will give the illusion that its OK . . . our adaptability will fool us)
The first two make sense but the third one is new. I then say dehumanization is all about adaption. I seem to think that this fact is critical.
Here I seem to hit a wall. It seems that I can’t fully trace the sense which I keep calling “dehumanization” satisfactorily. There is still something I can’t put my finger on about this. I say this or that about it but I’m not satisfied with it. I seem to think that the full reality of dehumanization hasn’t revealed itself yet which is why I can’t describe it. I sense “only that which seems to be impending”.
I now say that this mention of “impending” may be important and, perhaps, critical. I then say something that amazes me: dehumanization is something that is always “about to happen” but never fully happens. This is because we keep adapting.
I then say that dehumanization is not a state of mind. That is, we cannot really say “I am dehumanized”. Instead, dehumanization is a continual and chronic sense of instability in who we are. But its not a normal sense of instability. Its a unique sense of instability. But what type of instability? There are many types: economic, politically, as a person, etc. Instability means that you are expecting stability but its not there.
I then say that the problem is that we keep adapting and adapting but we are always adapting to a non-human condition. One day we will start “spinning our wheels” and the adaption will fail. This will be when dehumanization is fully realized. This will create a new type of instability that has never been seen before.
But I’m not sure. To be frank, I’m not sure what I mean by “dehumanization”. I only seem to describe traits of it. I have a feeling that what I’m seeing today is mild compared to what we will be seeing in the future. Since it hasn’t fully manifested itself it makes it hard to define clearly. Its hard to say.
To add to that, I said that the “prediction quality” was an intuitive sense of the “way things are going”. This, of course, does not mean that things will eventually go that way. Perhaps that is all it is, a sense that things are going in a specific direction. It may mean nothing more than that.
Dehumanization as a “savior”
One thing I emphasized in the “prediction” is that dehumanization will be viewed as a “savior” by some people. In this way, some people will glorify and promote dehumanization. They will promote things such as:
- “Not being yourself”
- “Being someone else”
- “Being controlled by something else”
I seemed to think that this may very well be a major cause of dehumanization in the future. Perhaps it may reflect a later stage of dehumanization? . . .
Stages of dehumanization???
There may be stages in dehumanization:
- Things control our life, such as machines and technology
- Conditions, such as living where our lives our controlled by things that control our life
- Lifestyle, caused by the two above things that become too influential in life and start to make life revolve around it
- People start to promote dehumanization as a lifestyle
This seems to suggest that people promoting dehumanization may be a result of the fact that the dehumanization has become a lifestyle too long. As a result, people start to believe it and see it as the only way to live life. This will cause them to glorify it and that it will get to the point that people will believe that dehumanization will “save” humanity. They will then promote it. As a result, humanity will end up dehumanizing itself by its own effort and not because of machines, technology, etc. as is normally supposed. In the end, this may be the worst dehumanization of all. This is part of what the “prediction” seemed to say.
Copyright by Mike Michelsen
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