EXCERPT -- The Worker, Alone!

Toys of the Mind

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© May 29, 2015

Workers come to venerate ideals, beliefs, policies, customs, norms and hierarchical relationships without reflection. 

“It is the way it has always been, so it must be right.” These come to be accepted as “truths,” to which the majority subscribe, when they are simply “toys of the mind.”  

They are not real.  They are fabrications.  But when the unreal is treated as real it becomes real in its consequences.

What is appealing about “toys of the mind” is that we can talk into our machines and listen to them talk back to us, or delete what appears on our mobiles with a sense of being in control.  

Moreover, our mobiles (iPhones, smartphones, etc.) act as an intuitive entity that listens to us, and while giving us this sense of power appears to understand us, and to know us.  

We contrive to believe this is true, and even a safe understanding, a privileged relationship tantamount to intimacy, when it is clear that is the most intrusive device ever invented by man.  

That said as denial is nearly as natural to us as breathing, we choose to see our operating systems as a manifestation of our consciousness.  

We have retreated into the surreal and yet surprised when our lives more resemble a science fiction tabloid.  

The great irony is that our creation, this unnatural hybrid of memory boards and short circuits assembled from the dissecting room of our electronic slaughterhouse has become more human than its human creator.  And yet, quite remarkably, we don’t seem to be concerned.