Maelstrom Escape Strategies III:

Survive, Escape, Avoid

Maelstrom Escape Strategies Part Three: Survive, Escape Avoid.

In the first three parts, we set the stage for these concluding two parts. We showed how Marshall McLuhan went, in his work, from the opinion that technology was too complex to hope to comprehend and control, to the sure knowledge that “there is absolutely no inevitability as long as we’re willing to contemplate the situation.”

It is past time to move from theoretical to actual solutions because a theoretical life-preserver will not save you from drowning.

Maelstrom Escape Strategies was originally produced as research for Eternal. And now we are open sourcing it for you.

MAELSTROM ESC/APE STRATEGIES

The following is a blend of ideas, concepts, what ifs, and also things known and proven based on experience. Just which is which is up to you to decide, and will depend on your level of engagement. Much rests on whether you take these words from my head and yours and make something of them in your life, in the world.

in our rush to reach

we forget to face

the consequences

of scale and pace

HOPE IS AN UPWARD SPIRAL

A technological maelstrom is anything you can get away with.

Today, we are in a maelstrom of our own making and as we descend ever further, we are in desperate need of our own strategies if we are to make our escape. If we wish to turn things around.

We need three things:

First, to SURVIVE.

When you find yourself in a life- (or identity-) threatening situation, things can get ugly. But like Poe’s sailor, we need to try to collect ourselves and pay attention to what’s going on – take stock, take inventory, take charge -- is there something, anything we can seize to interrupt the horror of the moment, to grab hold of, to get our heads above water and catch our breath, find some respite?

Second, to ESCAPE.

Once we’ve gotten a bit of a handle on the situation, and have found at least a holding pattern to rest in, we need to see if there are ways to get out of our predicament, out of the strongest influence of our technological vortex. Only then can we think about maybe not jumping quite so enthusiastically head-first into another one.

Third, to AVOID.

Now that we understand how technologies operate as shaping forces, and that the untended consequences (unintended or otherwise) can easily become out of hand, maybe we should consider improving our approach.

This divides into two categories: consumer and producer.

Producer:

‘We can think things out before we put them out.’ Remember ‘Don’t be evil?’ Google adding that prominently into their company structure was a ray of hope. Removing it extinguished that ray.

At this stage in the technology game, any ignorance of the existential power of technologies to fundamentally alter who we are individually and collectively amounts to no less than willful ignorance. (Often times it amounts to much more, perhaps even what future us will judge as criminal.)

We know better. We must do better.

Fortunately, we have all sorts of tools at our disposal to consider these kinds of effects of our innovations before we unleash them, and if we’re ever to get ahead of the cycle, we need to start putting people first.

Consumer:

It would be nice to just blame it all on the people who develop technologies. But while they should know better, so should we. (speaking of willful ignorance.)

The sailor in Poe’s story is responsible for his condition. Everyone knew the maelstrom was there. Essentially, it was his pursuit of profit that led him into the maelstrom of his own volition and while he escaped, his brothers did not.

Sure, it’s just a story. But is it that different from our situation? I dare you to be honest enough with yourself to consider it carefully.

SURVIVE, ESCAPE

“Survival cannot be trusted to natural response or natural instinct because the brainstem is not provided with any means of responding to manmade environments.”

(‘Man as Media,’ 1977)

So much of our survival rests on each other. Our own habits are most invisible to ourselves. Our friends and family are our best anti-environment because they can spot the change that we can’t, and they should have our best interests at heart.

 Support each other. Cultivate. Nurture. Heal.

KNOW HOPE

If despair is a downward spiral dragging us down, hope is an upward spiral to lift us up.

“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”

(‘The Medium is the Massage’, 1967)

We engineered ourselves into this mess, and we can likely engineer ourselves out of it.

Human ingenuity can go either way.

‘The Medium is the Massage’ is a well-known book. Lesser-known, or paid attention to, is the subtitle: ‘an inventory of effects.’

Much of an environment’s invisibility is due to its complexity. It’s very hard to imagine all parts of an environment. It’s complex. It’s dynamic, shifting, relational.

Our own bodies are a good example or a complex and dynamic environment at work. We necessarily partition our awareness. At any given moment our bodies are engaged in an incredible amount of activity. Our hearts pumping blood through, our lungs taking in, processing, exhaling. All other organs performing their operations. Your hair, your fingernails, are actually growing right now and you are making that happen. But you necessarily are not paying attention to the vast majority of that because you simply can’t.

To make sense of any environment, it helps to make a map. An inventory.

Start to gather information.

What do your senses tell you?

What are your assets?

Liabilities?

There’s a certain kind of ad you used to see on television. An ad for a drug company’s latest drug. In the ad you see a middle-aged couple. It’s a beautiful day. The sky is blue with a sprinkling of fluffy clouds. They hold hands, laughing, frolicking through a grassy field. You can sense their contentment, joy. You can almost smell the warm summer day. You smile. And you barely hear the voice in the background rattling off the list of potential side effects that might ruin your day or life if you take this drug.

What does the ratio of cost to benefit look like?

What does it do for you versus what it does to you?

What floats?

OPEN PANDORA’S BOX

In the myth, Pandora opens the box and lets out all the evils contained inside. She closes the box, but too late. But something was left in the box: hope. So open Pandora’s box and let hope out.

Hope floats.

Laughter is light, but only when we laugh with wonder and amusement. Laughing at misfortune only amplifies misfortune.

Beauty brings relief. The world is full of wonder, beauty, kindness. To be sure, it’s also full of unpleasant things. To seek and appreciate the good is not to deny the bad, it’s to offset it. To balance it. Beauty can help restore balance.

THERE’S A REASON WE HAVE SPEED LIMITS ON ROADS.

Really. Think about that for a second.

Why do we have speed limits on roads?

Why is there a maximum speed that any vehicle is able to travel, never mind mandated speed limits on roads? When operating limits are exceeded, things break down, at best, and disaster strikes, at worst.

It’s not that much of a stretch to think about our own bodies in the same fashion.

Our bodies were not built for the speed of light.

OUR BODIES WERE NOT BUILT FOR THE SPEED OF LIGHT

This pace we live at presents us with challenges and opportunities. When change happened more slowly, we had time to adjust. At our speeds today there’s no time to adjust and we suffer the consequences—but we’re also able to notice things we couldn’t or didn’t when things moved more slowly.

Going from full speed to full stop can be unpleasant, jarring, damaging. It can also be effective.

Things quickly become habitual. And so often we get the habit before we get the downside. It’s when we try to break the habit that we realize something is broken with us, and though it’s not exactly ‘too late’ at that point, it’s sure much more difficult to break.

“Prediction and control consist in avoiding this subliminal state of Narcissus trance. But the greatest aid to this is simply knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody.”

(UM, ’64)

Obviously the best way to break a habit is to not form one in the first place. To use a very crude analogy, no one smokes crack without knowing that it’s a very bad idea. They just don’t care about the consequences. Our media are extremely habit-forming. This is as true of language as it is of video games. It’s not a value judgement but a fact.

BREAKDOWN AS BREAKTHROUGH

Marshall lifted this notion of ‘breakdown as breakthrough’ from psychologist R. D. Laing.

It’s when things break down that we notice many things. We notice how dependent on them we’ve become. We notice how we feel when all is not as it should be. We notice the cascade of effects as one thing bleeds to another

MAKE A BREAKDOWN

I hesitate to share this one because my overall object is to show that we can all take actions, even small ones, to improve our individual situations. We all have circumstances which allow more or less ability to make choices.

The most effective way to ‘escape’ is to make a clean break. In the summer of 2021 I took to the road for three wonderful weeks with my wife and our two young boys. Like everyone we had been sticking close to home for quite a while and the coast seemed relatively clear, or we were sufficiently desperate, and we took the vacation we’d shelved. We packed up and drove from our place in rural southern Ontario all the way west through the plains, the mountains, to Vancouver Island.

Driving for eight or ten hours a day doesn’t let you check your phone very much.

We were very fortunate to be able to spend all that time and money to drive and camp across the country. Not everyone can do that. But we can do small things which add up.

Your dog needs a walk. You need a walk. Your phone, your watch, your devices do not need a walk. From time to time, leave these things at home and instead of checking them, check your surroundings. Let nature nurture your senses, yourself. Pay attention. Notice. Catalog. Make it your goal to see and hear things you haven’t before. You really do not need to fill every minute with a podcast.

Thank you for reading.

Check in next week for the concluding part of Maelstrom Escape Strategies.