On Inhuman Conditions and Its Overcoming

Abstract

Modern technologies have brought about alienation, disorientation, ill-beings and malaise in human lives by gradually transforming human beings into “inhuman beings”. Bernard Stiegler’s reflections on the relationship between human beings and technologies illustrate why and how the development of modern technologies induced such “inhuman conditions”. It begins with the descriptions of alienation by machines and the loss of knowledge of work. Subsequently, it describes culture industry and the loss of knowledge of life leading to an one-dimensional society and human spiritual disorientation. Then it illustrates how the ubiquitous programmed automaton (UPA) and the tyranny “24/7 capitalism” have contributed to the reign of stupefaction and stupidity and the loss of theoretical knowledge. It shows that the inhuman conditions are frustrating consequences of “the loss of all knowledge” as well as the “devaluation of spirit”. Overcoming of inhuman conditions requires human beings to reinvent knowledge as “knowledge of work” instead of “alienated labor or pure employment”, to reinvest the time liberated by technology in the re-sublimation of the human spirit and to re-enchant the world with an improvement in spiritual ecology.