Human Interaction is Being Deformed - "Hiding Behind the Screen" by Roger Scruton

Stephen Alexander Beach 

Scruton's begins by pointing out something which should be obvious about technology, but is often not -- and it is that technology changes the way human beings interact with one another, and with nature itself. For example, when commodities become much easier to acquire in human life we tend to value them less than when our ancestors had to devote much effort and time to getting them (how many people appreciate the fact the have running water in their house?). In the context of this article, the commodity which has been multiplied is human communication. What happens when it becomes incredibly easy for humans to communicate with one another via the internet and technology?

"The rapidity of modern communications does not merely accelerate the process whereby relationships are formed and severed; it inevitably changes how those relationships are conducted and understood." And so what will the consequences be for the person who chooses to live this new way of digital life on their own mind and relationships? What is the meaning of friendship that does not require sacrifice and personal cost to interact with that person? Digital interactions, like with Facebook, are a type of quasi-interaction, one that is parasitical to real interaction between humans. It is similar to them, and induces similar feelings, but is not the same. 

Friendship and Control

The first section, entitled "Friendship and Control," explores what might be missing from friendship that is embodied with people in real physical presence to one another. Traditionally, to be a friend to someone in need meant a type of action and affection, a going out of one's home or routine to go and be with that person in need, maybe on the side of the road with a broken down car, or whatever it may be. And yet, here, we have friend being redefined to be something digital. Something that doesn't require any leaving of one's home, but just a virtual message being sent. 

And without that in person presence, we also begin to lose out on all of the communication that takes place through a person's body and face and physical presence that cannot be replicated online. "The other's face is a mirror in which they see their own. Precisely because attention is fixed on the other there is an opportunity for self-knowledge and self-discovery...". The bond was formed by paying attention to the other person, not mediated through a screen. 

And so why would one ever prefer to have a screen mediating this interaction of friendship? Well the screen can provide a level of control of an interaction with another person that is not there in real life. The screen is a barrier in which I can protect my comfort and space and very safely enter into a digital space, while the other person does the very same. Thus, the individual is the arbiter of what he will tolerate. And so, with a click, he can end the interaction altogether. "There grows between us a reduced-risk encounter, in which each is aware that the other is fundamentally withheld, sovereign within his impregnable cyber-castle." 

In another way, this cyber interaction objectifies one's friend in that it turns them into a "thing" to be accessed and clicked on, in the similar category to all the other things one clicks on for entertainment on the same platform. "Friendship with him, and relationships generally, belong in the category of amusements and distractions, a commodity that may be chosen, or not, depending on the rival goods. This contributes to a radical demotion of the personal relationship." 

Some make the argument that social media helps those who are shy to come out of their shell. But at the same time an argument can be made that the digital interaction is a fake substitute which feeds into the person's shyness and prevents from from growing as a person. "By removing the real risks from interpersonal encounters, the Facebook experience might encourage a kind of narcissism, a self-regarding posture in the midst of what should have been other-regarding friendship. In effect, there may be nothing more than the display of self, the others listed on the website counting for nothing in themselves." 

Freedom Requires Context

But what happens when the digital interfaces not only become a mode of interaction, but become the end and goal in themselves. "This next stage is evident in the 'avatar' phenomenon, in which people create virtual characters in virtual worlds as proxies for themselves, so enabling their controllers to live in complete self-complacency behind the screen, exposed to no danger and yet enjoying a kind of substitute affection through the adventures of their cyber-ego." There are now platforms which offer a type of complete digital life which seek to mimic the emotions and experiences of real life. In these digital worlds they can be heroes and impressive men and woman, things which are much more difficult to pursue in real life. Essentially this is a type of alienation of the self in that we are putting aside real life for a lesser quasi version of life. 

But what is happiness? Here Scruton is going to dive into Hegelian philosophy briefly. He takes from Hegel the idea of happiness as a seeking for fulfillment through our free actions and an awareness of our own worth in pursuing our ends. (later in this section he identifies it as "Entausserung, the realization of the self through responsible relations with others.") The problem, though, is that this does not mean seeking and acting purely as an individual, but within a larger community which recognizes and affirms us. Here we are fully human when we face adversity to these goals and yet overcome them, and when we begin to know ourselves more deeply in the process. "Freedom is not reducible to the unhindered choices that even an animal might enjoy; nor is self-consciousness simply a matter of the pleasurable immersion in immediate experiences, like the rat pressing endlessly on the pleasure switch." 

In having a community of persons into which to enter and frame my problems and pursuits as a individual do I then gain a perspective on it and its worth. In so many words, man cannot be fully human without being part of a community of others. Problems can arise, and he goes to Marx' concept of "realization" and "alienation" for this, when in place of authentic community which realizes our being, we instead are drawn to a false substitute, a substitute which turns us into something other than a fully realized human. Here we are alienated. "...the hidden enslavement that comes when out ventures outwards are not towards subjects but towards objects. ... [an] alienation of self in the system of things." This is what Marx called "fetishism", and is where we transfer the authentic meaning of our lives onto perverted addiction and love for something lesser, like commodities. "The consumer in a capitalist society, according to Marx, transfers his life into the commodities that bewitch him, and so loses that life - becoming a slave to commodities precisely through seeing the market in goods rather than the free interactions of people; as the place where his desires are brokered and fulfilled." 

And so the point becomes, how can we mature in a fully human context and community, where our freedom is fulfilled in responsibility and long term goals, when we retreat into the digital world, one which incentivizes the exact opposite. "Anything that interferes with that process, by undermining the growth of interpersonal relations, by confiscating responsibility, or by preventing or discouraging an individual from making long-term rational choices and adopting a concrete vision of his own fulfillment, is an evil. It may be an unavoidable evil; but it is an evil all the same, and one that we should strive to abolish if we can." 

Television and the Trend Toward Self-Alienation
Scruton then brings the essay back from Hegelian philosophy to talking about television. He mentions that for more decades than the internet, the television has been operating on humans in a similar manner. It is is a type of "fetish," meaning something to which we give our lives to in addiction that is perverse and inauthentic. Television shows provide another vicarious experience through which to build friendships which are only one sided, to experience life's emotions, but vicariously through the characters while you sit on your couch. "The television has, for a vast number of our fellow human beings, destroyed family meals, home cooking, hobbies, homework, study, and family games. It has rendered many people largely inarticulate, and deprived them of the simple ways of making direct conversational contact with their fellows." 

An example of this, Scruton mentions, are the kids who he sees showing up for college their freshman year at his university. He can tell those which grew up in homes with lots of TV and those that did not. "Those of the first kind tend to be reticent, inarticulate, given to aggression when under stress, unable to tell a story or express a view, and seriously hampered when it comes to taking responsibility for a task, an activity, or a relationship. Those of the second kind are the ones who step forward with ideas, who go out to their fellows, who radiate the kind of freedom and adventurousness that makes learning a pleasure and risk a challenge." 

[Some have made the comparison between TV as a kind of inverse tabernacle from Catholicism. It takes the place of precedence in our homes over the hearth and serves as the source of focus, information, and entertainment which informs those who live there.] "...it flickers in the background, reassuring those who have bestowed their life on it that their life goes on." This would be an example of the modern fetish, it is something that we transfer authentic life onto and become addicted to a less fully human experience. 

Likewise, public spaces have become less fully human in that at any time people can retreat mentally into their devices, takes their conscious presence out of the public sphere of interaction. [People today can easily see this all around us, whether it's the family sitting together at a restaurant all on their phones not saying anything to each other, to people walking in public totally immersed in their music, phone, or digital world. When this happens there is less of an impetus to seek fulfillment by interacting with those around us in physical space because we can find "more interesting" things in our digital spaces. 

All of these technologies can be used to further the soft totalitarianism of addiction and driving the capitalist machine by appealing to people's bases desires and addicting them to consuming some product to meet their addiction, or they can be used for good if virtue is introduced into the equation, a good which enhances authentic human experience, not parasitizes it. "To work toward this critical approach means getting clear about the virtues of direct rather than vicarious relations." 

Humane Dissent From Technocracy

Scruton, here, expresses through the language of Hegel and Marx an older distinction regarding freedom (which has been around in Catholicism forever), and that is the paradox between the body and the soul. When we indulge the body in "freedom" for its passions and desires, then our soul/mind becomes enslaved to these addictions, and we lose that higher fully human freedom of being able to integrate into a human community. And so in order to avoid alienation we must deny the body so that the mind can have freedom to move out towards its highest self. "The avatar can therefore be seen as merely the latest point in a process of alienation whereby people learn to 'put their lives outside of themselves,' to make their lives into playthings over which they retain complete, though in some way deeply specious, control. (They control physically what controls them psychologically.)" 

The Necessary Risks of Life Off the Screen 

On the screen many of life's risks become mitigated, seemingly, given that we can hide behind our avatars and are in full control of the existence of our avatars in digital spaces. If we want to remove them from a situation in an instant, we can do that. We can find means of stimulation that allow us to stay in the safety of our home, and seemingly with the power turn off the screen if we want. This is exacerbated by the risk-adverse movement in many Western countries that is running rampant. [Just hear one word ... COVID]. "Children are not, on the whole, encouraged to risk themselves in physical ways; and it is not surprising if they are reluctant, in consequence, to risk themselves in emotional ways either." 

In so many words, fear of risk in the social-human realm is a fear of emotional pain and accountability. These skills have to be developed in the back and forth of the dance that is real-life human encounters. "In human relations, risk avoidance means the avoidance of accountability, the refusal to stand judged in another's eyes, the refusal to come face to face with another person, to give oneself in whatever measure to him or her, and so to run the risk of rejection." These skills are certainly needed if one is to navigate the dance that is marriage and sexuality. Rather, the addicted person may try to bring the experience of pornography into a relationship, to which he/she will try to treat the other person as a fantastical experience to be consumed, not as a person to be mutually loved. 

Scruton concludes the essay by saying: 

"Perhaps we can survive in a world of virtual relations; but it is not a world into which children can easily enter, except as intruders. Avatars may reproduce on the screen; but they will not fill the world with real human children. And the cyber-parents of these avatar-children, deprived of all that makes people grow as moral beings - of risk, embarrassment, suffering, and love - will shrink to mere points of view, on a world in which they do not really occur." 

In so many words, this is not real life and it cannot ever be real life.