Kierkegaard and Social Media

By

Sandeep Gupta

The present age is an age of advertisement, or an age of publicity: nothing happens, but there is instant publicity about it.

These words, reverberating with contemporary echoes, were penned by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 165 years ago, in 1846.

 What about today?

“What’s On Your Mind” is expected to be typed into a text box and splashed across your universe facing wall. The most philosophical of one’s thoughts need to be crammed into a maximum of 140 characters. In such a world, where the instant trumps depth of thought, and the wisdom of crowds seem to be the favoured buzzword, those bearded sages of old would most probably shake their heads in unified disillusion. Sartre may have worried at the ascendency of nothingness over being, Schopenhauer may have sensed the tilting of the scales more in favour of representation with the relinquishment of will. Descartes may have sworn by the name we have given to our editorial ‘Blogito Ergo Sum’ and Nietzsche may have had his own blog ‘Thus Tweeted Zarathustra’.

However, when we talk of Social Media and discuss the importance of the same in the world of rebellion and activism, the most disgruntled soothsayer would probably have been Søren Kierkegaard.   

Apart from contributing heavily to the corpus of Christian ethics, much of the work of this ephemeral thinker, who passed away at the young age of 42, dealt with the issues of living as a ‘single individual’ and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. Obviously, this individualistic approach to life can itself be difficult in the day of the synchronised electronic herd.

However, the major problem of Kierkegaard was with the new media of the mid nineteenth century that was growing fast and sharing ideas as never before – which is now called the traditional press.

Newspapers and magazines filled the market, and people assembled in the numerous coffee houses that sprang up to give voice to their brimming opinions. According to the Danish philosopher, these opinions were already moulded and coloured by print.

What pissed the thinker off was the universal growth of opinions of each and everyone without visible commitment, the proliferation of intellectual tourists in every sphere without the pains and experiences necessary to foray deep into the level of accomplishment.

According to him, this creation of the public sphere through the spread of the press and coffee houses, with the ideas and opinions led to a gamut of risk free, third party commentary, unreal individuals who are never united, yet stick together as a combined whole, a corpus, who form weak ideas. Without the involvement in the actual action, it became a society spending their hours on reflection. By reflection, Kierkegaard meant a mirror in which one derives one’s individuality by imitating others.

According to him, this was destined to become a realm of idle talk where spectators merely pass the word along. The public sphere promoted ubiquitous commentators who deliberately detached themselves from the local practices out of which specific practices grew, forming a world where everyone had a opinion and comments on public matters without the necessity of first-hand experience or responsibility. According to him, the press and coffee houses led to public demoralisation, by building up lazy ideas and opinions while rarely providing the urge to act on them, often resulting in people so overwhelmed with views that any forthcoming action was postponed indefinitely.

 For Kierkegaard, one of the essential ingredients of useful speech was the capability to remain silent. And nineteenth century press and coffee house gatherings diluted the distinction between remaining silent and speaking. Quick spiritual and intellectual fixes offered by the media was the real target of his critique, which took away the risk associated with deep and authentic commitments which was the root of meaningful endeavour. Instead of dealing with fomenting armchair public opinion about every possible issue, it was more of trail and error, the failures of certain courses of real action, triumphs studded with lesson-filled disappointments which were the building blocks of wisdom.

And what would he have made of the Web 2.0? Is not the Social Media a hybrid of press and coffeehouse on super-steroids? Where anyone can join interest groups to discuss topics endlessly from the comfort of one’s couch or cubicle? Where the yellow journalism Kierkegaard was so critical of reaches new levels of accomplishment with anyone posting anything and sometimes the authentic press mooching off such unverified posts?

“It is frightful that someone ... can set any error into circulation with no thought of responsibility and with the aid of dreadful disproportioned means of communication,” he observed in Journals and Papers. One cannot help but feel a chilled shiver down one’s spine on reading the words written one and a half century back. Additionally, ubiquity of the Net and Social Media, the easy access and the countless cycles of pseudo-social consciousness and hollow discussions make us wonder whether what Kierkegaard’s own FaceBook or Twitter acconts would have looked like.

Information abounds and choices are aplenty on the Net now. The social responsibility causes, environmental issues, and even underground rebel groups are easily available and can be joined at the click of a mouse. However, the philosopher would have had a different spin on the Web. The very ease of making commitments for him would lead to the breakdown of the ethical sphere into the connected herd known as the public.

It is one thing for existing and committed activists, who are risking their lives on a daily basis in opposition to the regime, to embrace Facebook and Twitter and use them for their goals. Kierkegaard would have agreed that their commitment was authentic. However, it is a completely different matter for individuals with passing or no interest in the issue to come out clicking all cylinders to save the world. This is exactly the kind of shallow commitment the Dane detested. Millions of FB posts and tweets flew through the cyberspace when thousands of Egyptians risked bullets on the streets of Cairo, complete with smileys and the ‘Walk like an Egyptian’ quips. Yet, many believed that they had played a role in the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Søren Kierkegaard  predicted this phenomenon when he wrote, “some political virtuoso might ... write some manifesto ... and bring it about that the audience believed that it had actually rebelled.” However, in reality, no one has really toppled an authoritarian  government by cracking jokes about the guillotine in their drawing rooms.

Today, the iRevolutionaries tend to stay on their sofas till their iPad batteries run out. It does not really matter whether the causes they fight for are dedicated or real, as long as they are easy to find on FB or Google. It is through the number of friends and the types of causes that one supports that online social status is built on. No wonder psychologists have now discovered a high positive correlation between social networking and narcissism.

In words of Kierkegaard, the current age can be summed up as one with a growing tendency to be enthusiastic for a moment only to decline back into indolence, something everyone who has been invited to a cause on Facebook can identify with.

Sandeep Gupta is the protagonist of The Best Seller by Arunabha Sengupta

A struggling author, he makes his living as, among others, a ghost blogger, a tai chi teacher, an undercover reporter and a stand in consultant 

Kierkegaard and Social Media

By

Sandeep Gupta

The present age is an age of advertisement, or an age of publicity: nothing happens, but there is instant publicity about it.

These words, reverberating with contemporary echoes, were penned by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 165 years ago, in 1846.

 What about today?

“What’s On Your Mind” is expected to be typed into a text box and splashed across your universe facing wall. The most philosophical of one’s thoughts need to be crammed into a maximum of 140 characters. In such a world, where the instant trumps depth of thought, and the wisdom of crowds seem to be the favoured buzzword, those bearded sages of old would most probably shake their heads in unified disillusion. Sartre may have worried at the ascendency of nothingness over being, Schopenhauer may have sensed the tilting of the scales more in favour of representation with the relinquishment of will. Descartes may have sworn by the name we have given to our editorial ‘Blogito Ergo Sum’ and Nietzsche may have had his own blog ‘Thus Tweeted Zarathustra’.

However, when we talk of Social Media and discuss the importance of the same in the world of rebellion and activism, the most disgruntled soothsayer would probably have been Søren Kierkegaard.   

Apart from contributing heavily to the corpus of Christian ethics, much of the work of this ephemeral thinker, who passed away at the young age of 42, dealt with the issues of living as a ‘single individual’ and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. Obviously, this individualistic approach to life can itself be difficult in the day of the synchronised electronic herd.

However, the major problem of Kierkegaard was with the new media of the mid nineteenth century that was growing fast and sharing ideas as never before – which is now called the traditional press.

Newspapers and magazines filled the market, and people assembled in the numerous coffee houses that sprang up to give voice to their brimming opinions. According to the Danish philosopher, these opinions were already moulded and coloured by print.

What pissed the thinker off was the universal growth of opinions of each and everyone without visible commitment, the proliferation of intellectual tourists in every sphere without the pains and experiences necessary to foray deep into the level of accomplishment.

According to him, this creation of the public sphere through the spread of the press and coffee houses, with the ideas and opinions led to a gamut of risk free, third party commentary, unreal individuals who are never united, yet stick together as a combined whole, a corpus, who form weak ideas. Without the involvement in the actual action, it became a society spending their hours on reflection. By reflection, Kierkegaard meant a mirror in which one derives one’s individuality by imitating others.

According to him, this was destined to become a realm of idle talk where spectators merely pass the word along. The public sphere promoted ubiquitous commentators who deliberately detached themselves from the local practices out of which specific practices grew, forming a world where everyone had a opinion and comments on public matters without the necessity of first-hand experience or responsibility. According to him, the press and coffee houses led to public demoralisation, by building up lazy ideas and opinions while rarely providing the urge to act on them, often resulting in people so overwhelmed with views that any forthcoming action was postponed indefinitely.

 For Kierkegaard, one of the essential ingredients of useful speech was the capability to remain silent. And nineteenth century press and coffee house gatherings diluted the distinction between remaining silent and speaking. Quick spiritual and intellectual fixes offered by the media was the real target of his critique, which took away the risk associated with deep and authentic commitments which was the root of meaningful endeavour. Instead of dealing with fomenting armchair public opinion about every possible issue, it was more of trail and error, the failures of certain courses of real action, triumphs studded with lesson-filled disappointments which were the building blocks of wisdom.

And what would he have made of the Web 2.0? Is not the Social Media a hybrid of press and coffeehouse on super-steroids? Where anyone can join interest groups to discuss topics endlessly from the comfort of one’s couch or cubicle? Where the yellow journalism Kierkegaard was so critical of reaches new levels of accomplishment with anyone posting anything and sometimes the authentic press mooching off such unverified posts?

“It is frightful that someone ... can set any error into circulation with no thought of responsibility and with the aid of dreadful disproportioned means of communication,” he observed in Journals and Papers. One cannot help but feel a chilled shiver down one’s spine on reading the words written one and a half century back. Additionally, ubiquity of the Net and Social Media, the easy access and the countless cycles of pseudo-social consciousness and hollow discussions make us wonder whether what Kierkegaard’s own FaceBook or Twitter acconts would have looked like.

Information abounds and choices are aplenty on the Net now. The social responsibility causes, environmental issues, and even underground rebel groups are easily available and can be joined at the click of a mouse. However, the philosopher would have had a different spin on the Web. The very ease of making commitments for him would lead to the breakdown of the ethical sphere into the connected herd known as the public.

It is one thing for existing and committed activists, who are risking their lives on a daily basis in opposition to the regime, to embrace Facebook and Twitter and use them for their goals. Kierkegaard would have agreed that their commitment was authentic. However, it is a completely different matter for individuals with passing or no interest in the issue to come out clicking all cylinders to save the world. This is exactly the kind of shallow commitment the Dane detested. Millions of FB posts and tweets flew through the cyberspace when thousands of Egyptians risked bullets on the streets of Cairo, complete with smileys and the ‘Walk like an Egyptian’ quips. Yet, many believed that they had played a role in the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Søren Kierkegaard  predicted this phenomenon when he wrote, “some political virtuoso might ... write some manifesto ... and bring it about that the audience believed that it had actually rebelled.” However, in reality, no one has really toppled an authoritarian  government by cracking jokes about the guillotine in their drawing rooms.

Today, the iRevolutionaries tend to stay on their sofas till their iPad batteries run out. It does not really matter whether the causes they fight for are dedicated or real, as long as they are easy to find on FB or Google. It is through the number of friends and the types of causes that one supports that online social status is built on. No wonder psychologists have now discovered a high positive correlation between social networking and narcissism.

In words of Kierkegaard, the current age can be summed up as one with a growing tendency to be enthusiastic for a moment only to decline back into indolence, something everyone who has been invited to a cause on Facebook can identify with.

Sandeep Gupta is the protagonist of The Best Seller by Arunabha Sengupta

A struggling author, he makes his living as, among others, a ghost blogger, a tai chi teacher, an undercover reporter and a stand in consultant 

Philosophy of Comic Strips

Wittgenstein's Mirror

Philosophy of Comic Strips

Sandeep Gupta

Standing on Via della Conciliazone, I was looking at the long, winding queues at the entrance of Basilica di San Pietro. The prolonged wait on the threshold of the divine kick-started a phase of pseudo philosophical contemplation of the kind that visits us so often when time lies heavy and immovable on our hands. I asked myself whether growing line thwarting men at the doorstep of God could be a modern day symbol for the serpentine forms of the Biblical devil, and soon was current day abstractions merged sufficiently with Theology and Philosophy to make me wonder whether the panels of the Sistine Chapel were the first examples of modern comic strips.

Although the life and times of villain vanquishing superheroes have always been treated with condescension compared to the greater works of Literature, to me comics have always been somewhat more than mere childish entertainment. Asterix dazzles me with wordplay that resists the erosion of translation, with newly discovered delights on each rereading. Tintin is remarkable in the absolutely accurate drawn depictions of things as diverse as space rockets and Latin American wild life. Finally, in corporate life, I seek solace , satire and sarcasm in the cubicle with Dilbert. But social and academic conventions slot the form into the lowest strata of fringe literary outputs. The stigma has prevented me from announcing my admiration boldly, let alone attempting to pitch-fork them into the world of thought, thinkers and theology.

It was sometime later, walking through the often complicated, frustratingly French-named streets of central Brussels, that the comic book characters painted on the walls came to life and urged me to think again. In this small country which had given birth to Herge, comic strips are considered an art form. One day at the Centre Belgie de la Bande Dessignee or the Belgian Centre of Comic Strips is enough to provide all necessary evidence and argument.

Raphael's depiction of Socrates and Plato in dialogue tell us that art and philosophy are forever intertwined.  In that case, is not the comic strip an ideal vehicle of the thinker?

The drama critic of Saturday Review of Literature, John Mason Brown, had sneered in 1948 saying, “The comic books... seem to me to be not only trash but the lowest, most despicable and most harmful and unethical form of trash.” (‘The Case against the Comics’, p.31)

Perhaps this was a reaction to some gross, grotesque and gory pictures and bubbles on pulpy paper, with loud colours seeping into each other, while the greatest mayhem manufactured by mankind still played afresh in immediate memory. However, times have evolved. Today, when the colours of manufactured consent seep in to soil the more serious,socially accepted and ratified works, drowning important original wisdom under the drumbeats of propaganda, it is perhaps the lesser medium of the comic book in which truth about life and the world can occasionally sneak through unnoticed.

Let us look at one of the more philosophical words uttered about the destruction of 9/11. The sane world will always be vulnerable to madmen, because we cannot go where they go to conceive of such things. It is then only after a while that one realises with a start that these lines are in fact mouthed by Spiderman as he looks over the ruins.

A more careful scrutiny strangely reveals the immense lexicon of the graphic form of storytelling to be abundantly smeared with deep and insightful philosophy.

As Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey observed, Popeye’s “I yam what I am and that’s all that I yam” is a piece of philosophy that stands besides the Socrates concept of ‘Know thyself’. Not only is the thought scripted in a speech bubble attributed to the lovable sailor man, it is enlivened by the thousands of forms that the pipe and spinach aficionado takes in the strips. This is what makes me wonder whether comic strips are not the best way to convey the message of philosophy.

Discourses of intellectual and abstract concepts, more often than not, soon extend beyond human ability of description through the medium of words. Perhaps that is why, in stark contrast to the verbose dialogues of the classical western philosophy, eastern thoughts are often sparing in the use of words, sometimes using just one syllable as in aum and often teaching followers to avoid them, as in some of the more austere Zen schools. True, words confuse ... tie the soul into knots, make understanding difficult. Wittgenstein's perpetual struggle with language is testimony to the same. In fact, one of the more well known and verbose pinnacles of philosophical wisdom of the East, Bhagavat Gita, confuses the protagonist enough to result in a eighteen day gory warfare.

On the other hand, an ancient Chinese proverb famously says that a picture is more eloquent than ten thousand words. And when the pictures are not limited by the perimeters of stark reality, they can leverage the freedom granted by the fertile fields of fantasy. Hence, they can perhaps be the best possible tools to clarify concepts that are abstract and esoteric. It is not a surprise, therefore, that some of the best applications of the comic strip as a means to understand philosophy have been carried out in the Far East.

Taiwan's Tsai Chih-Chung started with the cartoon version of the stories of the Taoist sage Chuang Tsu. His Zhuangzi Speaks turned out to be immensely enjoyable and successful. He followed it up with picturesque retelling of the Chinese philosophies of Confucius and Lao-Tze before branching out across the disputed waters of the East China Sea to sketch the immortal Zen Speaks. Every anecdote put into pictures is accompanied by the original text and notes. The graphics are often funny and elaborate with inconsequential details providing regaling angles. Almost always, mystical philosophical concepts are broken down into eloquent and enjoyable picture anecdotes.

Whether it is because of a script that is quasi-pictographic, China has boasted some cartoonists who have been philosophers in their own rights. Feng Zikai, considered the founder of China's cartoon tradition, is also known as the Philosopher Artist. His works are supposedly touched by his roots of spiritual Buddhism, combining light hearted. relaxed artistic form with philosophical, almost religious, depth.

Continuing along the way, recent popularity of the Manga does allow philosophical lives to be depicted – although sometimes severely mutilated in retelling as in the eight volume Buddha by Osamu Tezuka.

Talking about philosophies in the form of comic strips have also been carried out elsewhere. In India, Anant Pai published the immensely popular historical series Amar Chitra Katha, which did cover a lot of philosophical topics – inevitable given the inseparability of history and thought of the culture.  There have been similar stories told in Action Philosophers and the Quranic comics of Tunisia’s Ioussef Seddik. Later on, in his extraordinary Cartoon History of the Universe series, Larry Gonick covers a number of religious and philosophical chapters of history in his patented tongue in cheek style.

Most recently, Greek author Christos Papadimitriou published his ambitious Logicomix, the story of the life of Bertrand Russel. A self referencing graphic novel, it carries out several pioneering experiments and conveys the essential life story, managing to demonstrate the coupling of Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy into a convoluted ending.

However, while the story of philosophy is one side of the spectrum, to me the more fascinating facet is the way snippets of sublime philosophy are often found as nuggets of fun in the storyline of many comic books. I am not referring to the rather monumental collection of American Splendor, written by Harvey Pekar, which reaches levels of contemplation about life to rival a lot of heavyweight philosophical novelists. Wonderful as an art form it no doubt is, the child in me who regaled himself with Denis the Menace and bootstrapped himself into adolescence with Archie and his cronies demand fun in comic books even as the adult in me craves for meaning.

The combination of the two is where the true brilliance and potential of comic books are revealed. Calvin and Hobbes do not happen to have the names of two thinkers by happy chance, they emulate their philosophical namesakes on the panels of the volumes. While Calvin spouts weighty worldviews on his excursions around the yard, his stuffed tiger comes to life with the naturalist view of existence.

When on the sleigh Calvin asks his stuffed tiger whether he believes in reincarnation, a visibly jittery Hobbes urges him to drive carefully. And when he proudly shows Hobbes a butterfly he has caught, the tiger observes sadly that if people could they would put rainbows in zoos. This stirs Calvin into letting it free. Wonderful glimpses of the world of contrasting philosophy, with poignantly sketched expressions –  eloquent enough to strike a chord with the deepest thoughts while simultaneously entertaining the younger readers.

In Obelix and Company, first Obelix and then the entire Gaulish village convert into commercialism through the exercise of selling menhirs to a Roman garrisson. They compete against each other to produce the stone monoliths in their quest to become the most important man of the village. At the end of the days of delusion, Obelix tells Asterix that he wants to go back to his old life of hunting boars and having fun – because everyone is the most important man of the village and it is not fun anymore. The underlying principles of philosophy, psychology and economics are almost transcendental, but it is expressed as pure delightful humour characteristic of the lovable giant of a man.

Even the thoughts dealing with everyday existence are poignantly put forward with more than a modicum of fun.

Beetle Bailey discloses whenever the urge to work comes over me, I lie down till it goes away. Wally of Dilbert fame reveals his key to happiness – learning to enjoy what he is and not what others want him to be. When asked whether or not that makes him a sociopath, he responds that it does and he loves it about himself. And Calvin analyses the types of people grouping them between pragmatists, principled idealists and whimsical. When Hobbes asks which category Calvin himself belongs to, he replies that he pragmatically turns whims into principles.

A sizeable percentage of interchange of ideas has historically taken place through gestures and body language.  The letters and lines that stare at us from text books are limited in that they cannot imitate the dancing men of Sherlock Holmes to act out their message. This limitation can however, not only be overcome, but leveraged into an advantage through the manoeuvrability of comic strip characters.

Who could have emulated the Epicurean philosophy in more emphatic terms than Snoopy in Peanuts? When Charlie Brown ponders how dinosaurs became extinct,  the beagle looks smugly at the other side, eyes closed, ears flying in absolute earthly content and observes ‘Probably they ran out of cookies.’

Sandeep Gupta is the protagonist of The Best Seller by Arunabha Sengupta

A struggling author, he makes his living as, among others, a ghost blogger, a tai chi teacher, an undercover reporter and a stand in consultant