“Hope is where doom is” — Technology as Divinity
(with emphasis on social media as the means to collective ‘self’ realization, astrological abstractions, and alliterations)
‘Tik Tok’ the sound a clock makes. Clock—time. The God of time is Saturn. The name Saturn is from the Roman Saturnus, God of sowing and seeds, and the cycles of agriculture, symbolized with the scythe or sickle. The Greek equivalent is Cronus/Cronos/Kronos. He was the youngest son born of Gaea (Earth) from Uranus (Heaven/the sky) who eventually ended up castrating his father on the advice of his mother … thus separating Heaven and Earth, according to myth.
Saturn is the ringed planet—Lord of the Rings, cyclicality, karma. Within that, he is ruler of boundaries, borders, and limits.
If you, reader, have experienced the TikTok app, you know what it can do. The black hole of endless scroll… the all-knowing algorithm… It sucks you in, exploits the deepest depths of your brain’s chemical organization (and your soul’s vitality), and spits you back out, devoid of however much spirit you allowed it to take.
Either you get back on and it happens again, or you don’t, realizing the toll it’s taken on surely your mental, and perhaps even physical, state: it forces you still, stiff, sedentary. Saturn is hard, cold, and detached— the modern ruler of the Zodiac Capricorn, which is associated with capitol/rules/laws/structure/institutions. It is also the ancient ruler of the zodiac sign Aquarius, which rules technology, innovation, and society as a whole.
The TikTok logo is as such:
… an unmissable resemblance to the Saturn symbol.
For the sake of optimism (I am an optimist most of time) I will spare the specific visualizations of the astounding effects TikTok has had on people ever since it has been introduced into a mainstream form of social media. It is now the most popular actually, with 1.5 billion users. Its’ disease (I consider it digital Long-Covid, more on that later) has spread into other platforms aswell, the short-video format manipulating its way across the technosphere in the forms of Youtube ‘Shorts’ and Instagram ‘Reels’... there are fabulous puns for all of these names. “Shorts” you say? More like shortens your attention span. Oh, “Reels”? Yeah? How about reels you in against your will. “Tik Tok”? Don’t get me started. “Tik, tok” goes the clock, stealing your life away. Odds are, unfortunately and astonishingly high, that you (reader) have experienced what it’s like to have your attention attacked, your brain barraged, your consciousness cashed-in on by the immensely powerful effect these apps can have.
Empasis on can have. This doomful characteristic of our reality also holds the key to our liberation. Do you feel like technology has taken over the world? Do you feel the philistine weight of it creeping increasingly into different facets of your life? You’re not alone, it really has. But it will also be its own antidote. In the words of Lewis Mumford: “…by ‘it will’ I mean ‘we must’…”1 — WE are the centerpoint at which this will unfold. We hold the key and must use this stuff for its intended purpose. Really what good does a key offer in any other use but the one it was built for? Sniffing coke? Yes. That may open some metaphorical doors but it won’t open THE door. Maybe other drugs though.
Put way more plainly: We have to be extremely cautious of how we use technology, so that it does not use us. Technology, specifically social media, has some profound knowledge to offer us if we are aware enough to see it.
Social media is the apex point of both humanist and anti-humanist technology. It is both the problem and the solution. It exploits the most sacred aspect of human life: interpersonal interaction. There is nothing left to be exploited by technology. It has conquered all in our nature. This and its’ cousins eugenics and CRISPR and stuff like that. We have been rapidly hurling toward this point since the beginning of time. The exponentiality of the situation can really be seen by the progressions made in the past few centuries, markedly at the precipice of the Industrial Revolution.
Technology is to humanity as humanity is to God; it comes from nature… it is a life form in itself. That is why its next project has been to create a universe of its own. It is a folding-in of, and onto, ourselves; A mirror view; a ‘Self’-realization. The ‘selfie’ goes so much deeper than what it’s taken for at face value. Pun coincidental. The words ‘social media’ need to be unlearned, then relearned and completely reanalyzed by most as what it really is: a means for society.
To come to see technology from this perspective is achievable only from within one’s own subjectivity. They must reach it completely via their own agency, but we can obviously help each other get to this stage. Only when everyone accepts this into their own reality can it become objective reality. At that point it will no longer hold power over us. We will hold power over it by seeing it for what it really is. The ends to these means can only be determined by how we use it, then by what we produce with it.
Right now we are at a very powerful point in this series of events. Does life nowadays not feel profoundly different from the rest of our species’ history? It’s hard to see it in its gravity unless from a broader perspective, but we are living it right here. It feels like end times, because it is. But an end implies a beginning of something new: the start of the next cycle. We live in a crazy time for real, remarkably so. It’s not NBD.
Saturn and the limitations it imposes both enable and inhibit. Without limits, are we not aimless? Structure is necessary. Without it, all is vapor—null! As we enter this ‘Age of Aquarius’, we are co-creating the way these forces manifest in our lives. Technology is our future, and it’s divine: good and bad are inherent within it. So with this message I hope to remind readers of the agency we have over this tool our kind created. Let us treat it as such. Today we live amongst the densest melanges of human power, skill, intelligence that’ve been accumulating ever since the discovery of fire. Let’s try not to burn ourselves.
P.S. Please feel freer than free to comment. What do you think?
Mumford, L. (1934). Technics and civilization. Harcourt, Brace and Co.