"Nothing alienates us from ourselves and the world more disastrously than to spend our lives, now almost constantly, in the company of these deceptively intimate beings, these phantom slaves whom we bring into our living room with a hand numbed by sleep - for the alternation of sleep and wakefulness has given way to the alternation of sleep and radio - to listen to the broadcasts in which, the first fragments of the world we encounter, they talk to us, look at us, sing to us, encourage us, console us and, without relaxing or stimulating us, set the tone for a day that will not be our own. Nothing makes self-alienation more definitive than continuing the day under the aegis of these apparent friends: for afterwards, even if the opportunity arises to enter into relationship with real people, we prefer to remain in the company of our portable chums, our portable buddies, since we no longer feel them to be ersatz people but real friends."
« Rien ne nous aliène à nous-mêmes et ne nous aliène le monde plus désastreusement que de passer notre vie, désormais presque constamment, en compagnie de ces être faussement intimes, de ces esclaves fantômes que nous faisons entrer dans notre salon d’une main engourdie par le sommeil – car l’alternance du sommeil et de la veille a cédé la place à l’alternance du sommeil et de la radio – pour écouter les émissions au cours desquelles, premiers fragments du monde que nous rencontrons, ils nous parlent, nous regardent, nous chantent des chansons, nous encouragent, nous consolent et, ne nous détendant ou nous stimulant, nous donnent le la d’une journée qui ne sera pas la nôtre. Rien ne rend l’auto-aliénation plus définitive que de continuer la journée sous l’égide de ces apparents amis : car ensuite, même si l’occasion se présente d’entrer en relation avec des personnes véritables, nous préférons rester en compagnie de nos portable chums, nos copains portatifs, puisque nous ne les ressentons plus comme des ersatz d’hommes mais comme de véritables amis ».
#Anders#CritiqueOfTechnology#PhilosophyOfTechnology: "The critique of technology developed by Anders took shape as a humanist (and Marxist) Aufhebung of Heidegger’s thought, not as its pure and simple negation. The Heideggerian vision of technology as the true ontological condition of men in the modern world[37] finds an undeniable correspondence in the work of Anders. In Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, technology is perceived systematically and exclusively as a source of alienation, never appearing – like in Fourier, Marx, or Benjamin – as a possible ‘key to happiness’ for humanity.[38] Heidegger’s observation according to which ‘everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology[39] could readily have been written by his former pupil.
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Anders’s distinctive philosophy was the result of a synthesis of two formative elements: a critique of technical and industrial modernity with a romantic savour, inspired by Heidegger but remodelled by a strong ethical-political sensibility, and a Marxist critique of capitalism conceived as a system of domination and alienation. Modern civilisation did not limit itself, as in the past, to excluding the Jews; it made them the designated victims of its technology of death. This sombre reflection on modernity as a catastrophe without redemption reveals the traces left on Anders’s thought by a certain Jewish tradition and gives his theses a ‘prophetic’ character. As Gershom Scholem wrote, ‘the authors of the Apocalypse always had a pessimistic view of the world. History, in their eyes, deserved only to perish’.[58] For Anders, however, as distinct from prophets of the Apocalypse, Auschwitz and Hiroshima did not seem to announce any salvation, rather the end of messianic hope. His own apocalypse had lost any eschatological dimension. All that remained was to live ‘without hope’.[59]"