Thumb Chaos

"Thumb Chaos" - Ricardo Almeida*

The academic authors of the "Gutemberg's parentheses" theory (Sauerberg) and the effects of its "closure" (Thomas Pettitt), claimed that the digital age would destroy the "book" as the categorical source of knowledge in contemporary society.

They got right the emergence of the Internet and social media as the dominant instruments of communication and information. But they were wrong to say that we would be returning to orality, achieving a greater democratization of knowledge.

Post-modern society is increasingly "talking with its fingertips", but, at the same time, is losing the ability to converse. And this is not the viralization of a type of shyness, but the growing inability to get together, to look each other in the eye, or even to talk on the phone. This is most evident among younger people.

The problems are even greater when society delegates to Google and artificial intelligence the role of repositories of individual and collective memory, without at least recovering the songster, the storyteller, the reciter of poems by heart, laws and social rules, which have ensured the oral transmission of traditions for centuries.?

The elder and the library, the two great pillars of wisdom and knowledge on which human civilization was built, are abandoned, relegated to contempt, treated as old or outdated.

The Internet has made knowledge widely and falsely accessible, leaving it dispersed and submerged in virtual layers of images and videos, which distract and make it difficult to identify and reach legitimate sources. The result is the "surf-perficial" search for information in digital navigation channels, causing a significant dumbing down of people, including the older generations, making room for sublogical manipulations, such as the resurgence of "theories" like the "flat Earth".

But the destruction does not only affect the pillars of society and the achievements that humanized us, such as conversation, personal meetings (replaced by avatars), reading, "delay", idleness, abstraction, memory, the "a-ha moment", dharma, transcendence and so many other virtues. And it is not just a question of longevity, which has been proven to depend on "eye-to-eye friendship", as shown by the studies on centenarians conducted by the canadian reseacher Susan Pinker. The ongoing devastation affects the very physical existence of individuals.

The incessant and fast typing with the fingertips provokes electric impulses of anxiety and depression, with touches on a smooth and nonspecific surface, without relief or texture.??

The study of mudhras, defined by the millennial wisdom of yoga as "the positions of the fingers and hands that can condition the physical, emotional, and energetic body," would already be enough to demonstrate that typing, especially with the thumbs (which represent the fire/agni element), produces an aggressive agitation and an overwhelming of the mind and emotions. A mechanic reminiscent of the incessant winding of a ball of wool, blistering and melting perceptions and feelings. The impact on the psyche undermines the individual's confidence and capabilities.

This daily practice is aggravated by the social media environment, where the frank currency of communicative exchange or recognition comes in the form of likes, represented by "thumbs up" and "thumbs down", provoking anxiety on different levels. The consequences are so severe and addictive that YouTube has stopped counting dislikes.

The cases of suicide and self-mutilation in young people reach staggering numbers, transcend countries, social and economic classes, and there is no other competing factor to explain so many disorders, comparable to the dominance of the "thumb of speech" and the immediatist communication of digital networks.

But there is still hope for overcoming these harmful instruments by controlling their presence in daily and collective life.

Recovering reading, contact with nature, conversation, eye-to-eye, contemplation, spirituality, art, transcendence, and so many other subjectivities of individual and collective dimension, can inspire antagonistic or mitigating attitudes, allowing a detoxification that preserves the main historical achievements that still make us human.

Facing all this new reality and the threat of the effective closing of the "Age of the Book", it seems increasingly imperative to seek ways to defend the species against the advance of the diffuse servitude imposed by the "Digital Era", especially harmful practices, such as the "thumbled orality" and the invisible tentacles that the "artificial intelligences" throw over all of us.

*Ricardo Almeida?is a Law Professor, Rio de Janeiro Municipal Attorney, Lawyer, and founder of the MUNICIPOLIS INSTITUTE.

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