That Worrying Need For Illusion.

Delusion | Barusso | 2016

The compulsion for illusion is growing exponentially, generating an existential risk.

“It is rather our frenzy of communication and information that makes things disappear. Information, that is, non-things, is placed in front of things and makes them pale. We do not live in a realm of violence, but in a realm of information that poses as freedom.” — Byung-Chul Han

Those who know me are aware of the attention I dedicate to the tendency us humans have to alienate ourselves in what we do and have, something I attribute to our need to avoid the responsibility of engaging in a healthy project, with a sense of purpose that constitutes us as free beings in coexistence with others.

One of the manifestations of this deviation that we all can fall into, even repeatedly, is illusion. I refer to illusion in the first sense provided by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), as “Concept, image, or representation without true reality, suggested by the imagination or caused by the deception of the senses.”

I am truly concerned about the compulsion to delude ourselves, in its denial of reality or exculpation of our existential responsibility. We live with such a need for illusion that we later fall into the apathy derived from the resistance imposed by reality. Are we renouncing to the opportunity to learn from frustration and believe in collective effort as a possibility for transforming our reality?

This is something I observe and continue to understand in my every day living, as I help others in my work, and as I engage in dialogue with thinkers I admire, personally or through their works.

Erich Fromm is one of those wise men with whom I dialogue, and who helped me differentiate between “The Chains of Illusion” and “Man’s Search for Meaning,” that constitutive drama of our existence which represents knowing that we are thrown into the world without having chosen it, being free in the shaping of our individuality, and being aware that we have an expiration date.

I always try to remain attentive to illusion as a human need and its possible derivations, whether towards a healthy project that embraces the complexity of the task of choosing and choosing ourselves, or an unhealthy project that opts to binary options and delegates existential decisions to others.

It is a topic that fascinates me, central to my work, and easy to observe when we train our perception for it. At the same time, I recognize myself as a persistent advocate of this cause, which will never be “a lost one”.

What motivated me to write this today is that we are daily witnesses to a series of converging forces that make me think that humanity’s compulsion for illusion, far from remaining in its rightful place, is growing exponentially, generating what I consider an existential risk.

I refer to an existential risk because I believe that an excess of illusion competes with higher functions of our cultural biology, such as contemplation of facts, giving meaning, critical thinking, and recursion, among others, which allow us to observe ourselves as observers within an ecosystem that transcends us and think about who we are.

The more we exercise primal, virtual, and uncritical illusion, the weaker become our functions that are most difficult for algorithms to learn. Let us bear in mind that the loss of these cognitive and social functions may represent the first stage of our extinction as a species, the decline of that which makes us unique and irreplaceable diversity, generated to our own detriment.

“The more we exercise primal, virtual, and uncritical illusion, the weaker become our functions that are most difficult for algorithms to learn.”

What are the forces I observe converging as links in the robust chains of 21st-century illusion?

1. A world so complex and complicated that overwhelms the majority of humanity. I am not referring to the 1% that concentrates 50% of global wealth or to the clear visions of silicon and insubstantial plastic futures of Californian entrepreneurs, but to the majority of the 8 billion souls who face their lives every day, and for the most part, the need to survive. Many times, I think that the final “A” in the VUCA acronym should be replaced with the term “Anguishing.”
2. Artificial intelligence, which replaces functions of different levels of our cultural biology and, combined with the creation of the virtual realities we inhabit for many hours a day, configures a favorable terrain for distancing ourselves from the atomic density of our bodies, from the bonds with the real others (those who embrace us and resist us), and from physical space itself, which molds us as hominids. Do the “facts” we read, the images we see, and the people we interact with in networks have substantial reality? Today we already know that it should not be so, and for that, we have created the Turing test.
3. Post-truth, exponentially fueled by AI, grows as a new social consensus, as a promise of convenient truth tailored to our desires, and as a mechanism of concerted deception that exonerates us from the work of understanding what Miguel Wiñasky calls “atomic facts” (the plural is mine). Most facts exist in the atom, but culture and infotechnology allow us to conveniently deny them.
4. The postmodern conquest of the value of individuality, along with the current hypermodern escape to the ego, both to protect ourselves from others and to ascend to the tyrannical power of self-perception, configures a fertile ground for falling into intolerance towards differences. Political and business programs for diversity and inclusion get lost in “the world of a thousand things”, without addressing this underground, magmatic, and much more massive intransigence than that of the last century.
5. Cancel culture joins the above concept and, with the intention of calming the heated spirits of all possible tribes -no matter how minority they may be- turns around and falls into a totalitarianism that denies historical relativism, dilutes the unique traits of classic novels, covers the genitals of Michelangelo’s David, and suppresses the voice of us all, even in our most intimate social and work circles. Are we learning to be more respectful of others or becoming less tolerant? It is one more paradox of our present and the pendular evolution of humanity.
6. The pursuit of comfort, simplicity, and speed in living, which undermines the effort required for contemplation, self-cultivation, critical thinking, coming together for the common good, and exploring together before asking the algorithm. We have been capable of giving away all our identity signs and vital elements to the Googles of the world, in exchange for them charging us to tell us what to consume, how to entertain ourselves, how much to exercise, who we are, and who we should become. “The Game” (thanks Alessandro Baricco) promises simplicity for consuming your self-being, ¡in a freemium model!

Is it that difficult for us to take responsibility for freedom that we prefer a “happy world” where the work of being a project is seemingly resolved?

I am convinced that there are neither Leviathans nor Messiahs in the future of humanity, only the arduous endeavor to seek the common good, by cultivating the highest functions of our biological-cultural constitution and honoring our Home-Planet-Earth.

I know that we feel it is a difficult, probably utopian process, opposed to the illusory idea of a guaranteed promising outcome. But without that resistance, without that density… what are we here for, and what “thing” will we become in the era of posthumanity?

“The Game” promises simplicity in consuming your being, in a freemium model.

Quoting the great Fromm, at the end of a long series of questions about the meaning of our contradictions: “Does it make sense that we live in the midst of abundance and receive so little satisfaction in return? Does it make sense that we all know how to read and write, and have radio and television, and yet we are chronically bored? Does it make sense that…? We could continue for many more pages describing the irrationalities, fictions, and contradictions of our Western way of life. However, all these irrationalities are taken for granted, and we hardly perceive them. This is not due to a lack of critical ability: we see these same irrationalities and contradictions clearly in our opponents; we simply refuse to apply a critical and rational judgment to ourselves.”

My dear Irvin Yalom declared himself the executioner of love, the executioner of that search for unrealistically perfect love. I declare myself the executioner of illusion because what we risk is living the vertigo of a life with meaning.

But what do we do with illusion? Let’s transform it into hope.

Mariano Barusso | Buenos Aires, Argentina | May 20, 2023 | Image: Delusion, 2016 | Translated with ChatGTP, revised by María Fernanda Fourastié — All rights reserved © 2305204371016