Dr. Andy Farnell on Weaponising Morality Against Technofascism and Slop
A couple of hours ago Dr. Andy Farnell wrote about the concept of morality and its role in educating the public on resisting technofascism. Some fragments:
Moral competence is the most powerful weapon in the fight against technofascism and "AI".[...]
What is work?
I think this is a good place to start if we want to study the question of "What is work?" Work is religiously connected to moral competence.
Work is not something that can be reduced to an economic statement of input and output. When great scientists, artists or social activists talk about "their work", it has nothing to do with salaried activity. There are never any jobs that are just pure fun, because the very act of focusing, taking something seriously, changes it.
There is a corollary to the maxim "Do what you enjoy and you'll never work a day" It's something like, "Never do what you love for a job, because it will become just work". There's truth in both maxims and a synthesis that reveals an even greater truth.
[...]
For our well-being, humans require agency. Care without the ability to do something about the things you care about is a kind of hell, and the only exit is a kind of moral suicide; soft quitting, defeatism, resignation and apathy. Far from being empowering, digital technology now amplifies this prison of learned-helplessness for anyone with an urge toward genuine work and care. Technology is a soft-play amusement park for the mind. It has no connection to community, doing or being. To overcome nullifying technology we need something to accompany Heidegger's Sorge, some measure of "moral competence".
[...]
Most of us are insecure. We fall for education and training rackets to continuously "prove ourselves", seek validation and collect impressive accolades. While there is such a thing as authentic education undertaken as intrinsically motivated self-development, the person who finds it is rare. There's a thriving industry that feeds on undermining people's self-confidence and selling it back to them one certificate at a time.
[...]
To study this consider Linked-In, a microcosmic petri dish. It's home to the boldly competent, but also to so many many loud idiots.
[...]
Likewise there are also very competent people who would not dream of having a Linked-In profile. Quiet competents are the ones nobody notices because they're neither boasting nor screwing things up to draw attention. Quietly competent people make up the vast majority of all people doing anything, anywhere, that actually matters.
Read the rest. It's very long, so prepare a hot brew and allocate an hour to read. It's longer than a "tweet", so social control media addicts are likely mentally unfit to read it. █