Our Diminishing Value

“That we have a different, much diminished sense of human presence now; that what might be called the specific gravity of things––objects, events––is lessened in proportion to the expansion of our field of awareness.”
Sven Birkerts
Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age

There was long an expectation that as worker productivity increased, wages would increase. After all, if I can do the work of two, then I should earn twice as much. Or at least make more for my increased output.

Sadly, it doesn’t work that way, does it? As we do more we receive no more. In fact, as work gets easier it’s value is diminished. Where a skilled short order cook once stood now stands a burger production machine, taking frozen, preformed patties at one end of the conveyer belt and depositing tasty finished food at the other. It’s operator is diminished.

As Birkerts points out in Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age, we’re increasingly removed from the world, just as we no longer touch our vinyl LPs, our relationship to streamed music is diminished. We rely on Google Maps and never experience the space, not even as represented on a paper map.

As it now all just happens, its of very little value. As we experience more and more in this attenuated manner, we value the experience less. Should we be surprised that we ourselves are now also valued less? Producing nothing real, we are really just the controllers of nothing of substance. We feel.

Increasing the “specific gravity” of experience, feeling its true weight, is a start in returning to reason. The feeling of loss is not mere nostalgia, it is a yearning for real purpose.

“Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages.”
Wallace Stevens
Metaphors of a Magnifico