For Ted Kaczynski, as written in his manifesto Industrial society and its future, a surrogate activity is one that is concerned with artificial goals, as opposed to biological needs. I think this definition is a bit extreme though it touches on an incredibly important reality in the modern world. It is extreme because it would lump everything to do with creativity and spirituality under an artificial goal, even though they help and inspire human beings to live more consciously, thereby contributing to collectives that can rise above the conquer-and-dominate paradigms that have shaped our history.
But it is an incredibly important concept because it shines light on the fact that essentially all activities in the modern world, including much of what we call work, have become surrogate activities. It is rather clear with essentially all forms of entertainment that we are no longer concerned with primary needs, but what about work? Why can it be called a surrogate activity if one does it to survive within the system?
The thing is that work has become a long chain of proxies in order to get food in one's plate. One "works" by being obedient in a bureaucratic environment and being subordinate to its “values”, which affords money - another proxy - which allows one to take one’s car - another proxy - to go to shops - more proxies - to then buy food, which has likely been produced incredibly far from where one lives, such that any health issues stop being the problem of those who are involved in producing it.
The fact then that work has become so abstract and untethered from survival matters is the direct reason for why it feels so meaningless: one works by contributing to the system that one lives, not by attending to one's needs. This is a huge difference because the system itself has no need for meaning: it grows because this is what allows it to be the most powerful collective and thus the one that covers the entire globe, not because it provides something valuable to human beings. Thus at the end of the day, work has become a meaningless surrogate activity which helps the growth of the system, and which affords us more surrogate activities, in the form of 'entertainment'.
On top of that, this long chain of proxies significantly reduces the freedom for humans to live as they want. We are "free" to choose what type of entertainment we engage in, but we certainly aren't free in deciding how much we work on and on what, what our food is sprayed with, whether we can even afford a house or not, whether we can get what we want within walking distances, how culture shapes people's lives and beliefs, etc. We have choice within the things that are utterly harmless or even beneficial to the system, but not freedom to live as we want, unless one is willing to make radical choices that will be looked down by the vast majority of people.
There is nothing wrong with doing that of course, but it is worth acknowledging the very real difficulty of striving for freedom in a society that is less and less free as it becomes more and more powerful.
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2024-04-13