Against the Robots

In ancient Greece, men knew and recognized themselves in the eyes of their family, their loved ones, their community. Women reserved for themselves the mirror, which was associated with beauty, femininity, and seduction. Reflection was everywhere. "There is no place that does not see you," Rilke summarized. Can one exist without being concerned with one's reflection? Can one be self-aware without knowing oneself? Can one be self-aware without being recognized? One can have an image of oneself, but it can be very far removed from one's true self. Thus, a man must not see himself in the mirror for fear of being absorbed by his image. This image manages to make us forget that we are there. If we think what we see, if it resonates within us, we also dream it. Our image escapes us as soon as we see it. Thus, a woman adjusts herself in the mirror, while a man might lose himself in it, drown in it. Dreams, the twin of memory, conceal time and numb it. What did we see, and when? Sight and imagination interpenetrate and cannot be separated. For the Greeks, seeing and self-knowledge were one. Seeing, self-knowledge… but not too much, for if humankind is a marvel, in the sense of an incident, a fascinating fracture within life, as the chorus in Antigone says, it also harbors its own terror; it exterminates and tortures itself, and it is indeed the only “animal” in this respect.

Authority represents this limit, this invisible boundary, this peaceful force that prevents man from ceasing to be human, for there is no greater sin for the ancient Greek than to succumb to savagery, to yearn for it, to allow himself to be guided and led by it, to develop a taste for it. amartia would soon become sin, continuing to be understood as fault, error, failing. Knowing oneself, but not too well, constitutes the mask of identity in ancient Greece. One must know oneself, engage with oneself, define oneself, and "individuate" oneself in order to exist; but what does it mean to exist? If not to discern, adjust, and harmonize one's nature with one's upbringing. In our time, which judges the past with the eyes of the present, it has become almost forbidden to speak of the link that binds us to ancient man, to call oneself an heir. To adjust nature and culture, to balance the scales between what we are, what we are becoming, and what we were. Why the past? Because we are a concentrated essence, and we are less than the sum of our parts, since we are and always will be indebted to the history that precedes us. This equation is omitted or minimized these days, which amounts to the same thing. The mechanisms specific to our era absolve humankind of its memory; after all, doesn't it have technology, an immeasurable and unsurpassed memory? What need does it have for a memory of its own? If the urge to remember arises, all it takes is a search engine. Practical, easy, simple, quick; memory and its multiple ramifications cannot compete for a single second, not to mention that our memory is never certain of remembering, or even of what it remembers! I am speaking here of the memory we construct for ourselves, the one that is given to us and filtered through the sieve of our nature, and which accumulates throughout our lives. If I am not armed with my own memory, but only with the memories of others, generously or self-servingly offered on the internet, what meaning can my life have? A borrowed meaning in every sense of the word. Meaning arises from the interpenetration of nature and culture, and from the actions to which we condition it. The two constantly size each other up and coax each other, giving themselves to one another only to better reproach each other for their respective existence. The negation of nature by technology grants modern projects, for the first time in human history, power and authority. This is what all totalitarian regimes have relentlessly sought.