We are all
manipulated by social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest and
searching engines like Google. Everybody knows or can know. Much has been said
about it already and as a result these media etc. promise to better their
lives. Maybe they’ll do, or maybe they only say that they’ll do, but do we
really care about it? Perhaps we should think like Burrhus Skinner, who asked
in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity
why we should worry about being covertly
controlled and manipulated if it makes us happy. Your first reaction may be
that he is right and it is my first thought, too. However, on second thoughts,
I don’t feel at ease with the idea of being manipulated, even if I don’t know it
and even if I shall never know that it happens and shall not have the slightest
suspicion that it happens. Why?
Actually there
is nothing special about being limited by external causes and influences in
what we do. You have broken a leg and cannot walk for a long time. You have
even to stay in hospital at first. A bridge has collapsed and we must make a
detour. There is a power failure and the fridge, the Internet and a lot more
don’t work for hours. So, why shouldn’t we adapt to the manipulation by the
social media just as we must in these cases? It sounds reasonable. Life is that
way. Is it?
Take the
case of the bridge, but the same could be said about the other cases. The
bridge has been built according to the newest insights and has been well
maintained, but it has been destroyed by an earthquake. It’s a mere natural
disaster. We are sad that it happened, but it happened. But what if the bridge
would have been blown up by terrorists? Then we are not sad but angry.
Apparently there is a difference between natural limitations and human
limitations. Even more, we may find the latter objectionable, while we’ll never
use such a word for natural causes.
Once we see
this, we are close to the solution of our problem. For “objectionable” has
everything to do with objectives, so with purposes. We cannot find what nature
does objectionable. Nature doesn’t have purposes but in nature everything just
happens, and that’s it. The word “objectionable” can be applied only to human
agents, namely to what they do and to the effects of what they do. As Robert
Kane says in his book The Significance of
Free Will: “Objectionable control is exercised by purposeful agents, not
natural forces.” And, referring to Daniel Dennett, he continues: “For, while
nature may determine us, nature (‘not being an agent’) does not control us.”
(p.69). So, while both nature and the purposeful agent constraint us and limit
us in what we can do, nature has no interests in doing so and doesn’t act
intentionally. The purposeful agent, however, does have interests, like earning
money in the case of the owners of the social media. In view of these interests
the purposeful agent sets his aims and tries to manipulate and so constraint our
behaviour intentionally. By doing so this agent impedes the wills of the
persons who are his objects. That’s why we don’t simply say that the agent determines what we do but that he controls what we do. In this way he
limits our freedom, even in case we don’t know he does. But why should we
follow the will of the other? Freedom is “the power to be the ultimate source
or origin of one’s own ends or purposes rather than have that source be in
something other than you.” (id.,
p.70) In short, freedom is being yourself. That’s what you give up, if you
allow yourself being controlled by social media like Facebook, Instagram,
Tumblr, Pinterest, and searching engines like Google, and so on. But maybe you
are happy with it.
Source
Robert Kane, The
Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; pp.67-71.
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