"Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds."
During the first week of February, Marc and I read E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" a short work of science fiction from 1909 that imagines a future in which humans now live in isolation, each individual buried away in their own room. Not by force, there are no locks in Forster's techno-dystopia. But, why bother moving when everything can be brought to you by the touch of a button? Food, music, medicine, the voice and image of a friend or child half-way across the Earth. What Forster describes resembles our present much too closely for comfort, even if our detachment from nature is not so complete and perhaps can never be. Still, the droning of Forster's all-encompassing Machine echoes the droning of the voracious data centers mushrooming all over the globe. And even more, Forster is able to foresee the development of a parasitic tech-human relationship, in which technology is no longer a tool to foster connections, improve efficiency, or obtain knowledge. No, to perpetuate itself, the Machine depends on people being incapable of independent decision-making and action. It actively fosters dependencies that leave humans at the mercy of the functioning of a technology they are no longer capable of understanding, nor fixing once it begins to break down.
We collected some of our favorite quotes from the text, which speak to the malaise felt by many now, in the face of numerous efforts to convince us to outsource critical thought and sense of responsibility, which in turn lessens our capacity to make informed and meaningful decisions.
"For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere--buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. [...] There was the button that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world."
"She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures; she made the room dark and slept. Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the room light."
"Here I am. I have had the most terrible journey and greatly retarded the development of my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno, it is not worth it. My time is too precious. The sunlight almost touched me, and I have met with the rudest people. I can only stop a few minutes. Say what you want to say, and then I must return."
"I am most advanced. I don't think you irreligious, for there is no such thing as religion left. All the fear and superstition that existed once have been destroyed by the Machine."
"Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives in the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it."
"To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. [...] But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over−reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine."
This morning, I pushed open a door that was stuck to its frame. When it sprung open, a hot splash of sunlight landed on my face. Or maybe, I was the one who had suddenly landed there, wobbling and stumbling into the path of the sun.
Somehow, the heavy clouds that had just washed the city in a grey rain were already blowing off in some new direction. So many different paths now seemed to sprawl before me, twisting and winding, narrow here, broad and airy there. Bright brass lamps beckoned to the right, and to the left, woven carpets draped the coarse coral walls of the short stacked buildings; all perfumed by the scents of cumin, orange blossoms, and fried fish. And now, my own thoughts also spill and spread in disparate directions.
I have begun and left unfinished Comma Directory entries about: eels and Camus, the persistence of New York City, victimhood in the writing of Paul Bowles and Jean d'Ormesson, food in Japanese film, the depiction of gangs in Latin American and Hong Kong cinema. Instead, I have let myself go deeper into the souks—buying nothing, jumping out of the way of motorbikes, looking at cats, thinking about the improbability of a new year and of Marrakech.
Lucidity. A concept Camus explored in a few of his essays, and that in many ways echoes a kind of personal philosophy that Andrea and I have been developing. To us, lucidity means to see the world for what it is, instead of ascribing grand narratives or superstition to it as a way to console ourselves for the perceived "meaninglessness" of existence.
In The Stranger, Camus writes about a man named Meursault and describes his complete indifference to the world. Meursault is meant to be unrelatable. Someone who seems almost inhumane, and so, who would not be able to relate or empathize with us either. Through his actions and attitudes, Meursault reveals what Camus calls "the absurd," which has to do with the perceived absence of meaning in life. However, Camus also introduces symbolism to reveal that as humans, we can rebel against the absurd.
In the very first scene of the book, when Meursault finds out his mom died, his apathetic response is difficult to stomach, as it is later on, when he encounters the titular stranger. In both scenes, Meursault focuses on a light that flickers or the sun that blinds him. His fixation on light during moments in which more "important" things occur, like the death of his mother, increases the distance between Meursault and the reader.
The light and the sun to me represents two things in this book. On some level, the distance we feel between ourselves and Meursault serves as a reminder of our innate urge to care, even when the world appears to be meaningless. An urge to care that Meursault does not seem to experience.
But the depiction of light also serves as another reminder, that when we feel the weight of the absurd the most, the shining light can set a path forward. The light shines on our skin and makes us see, and so it reminds us to be present. When we are present and experience the world for what it is, lucidly, we can revolt against the absurd.
This idea of lucidity and Camus' articulation of this concept was eloquently spelled out in a recent episode of Philosophize This on The Stranger, and I felt myself just nodding along in agreement.
Yesterday, we drove to Paphos to visit of the Tombs of the Kings, a major archaeological site and necropolis for the wealthy and powerful of the late BCs.
From the distance, we could see the white-washed city sprawling along the blue Mediterranean coast. Smaller than Limassol, but also hillier, I discovered Paphos as a place of contradictions.
Angular buildings from the 90s or early 2000s dot the long coastline. Here and there, there were some more contemporary structures mixed in. Elevators connect the lower part of the city, which we quickly discovered was all resorts and holiday rentals, with the old town that was constructed up on the hills.
A cross between charming and desolate, the old town managed to be a sort of lively ghost town. We stopped by a taverna that was full of people and live music, but the neighboring streets still felt hollow and empty, somehow. Freshly painted shops looked as if they were just about to open for the first time, while right next door the other buildings appeared to be crumbling. The minaret of a grey-stoned mosque nearby rose into the sky.
On the big roads, we witnessed cars fighting for space around rotundas, and it seemed suddenly like that’s where everyone was (if not in a taverna): in their cars, going somewhere.
From a first glance, it would be impossible to guess that this all lies on top of porous limestone and monumental ancient ruins.
The huge stone cut niches and temples we visited at the Tombs of the Kings were once filled with precious Hellenistic or Ptolemaic sarcophagi and treasure. Now, they house pigeons, native to this region, along with the recently arrived Asian hornets. The empty tombs house a damp and dusty darkness too, it’s an emptiness that feels dense. Uncanny in its weight.
Fig 1. Tombs cut into Paphos Limestone.
What fascinates me the most about visiting archaeological sites is how the experience deconstructs a sense of normalcy; something that can also happen with intellectual discoveries. I have experienced this first-hand in the classroom, while studying history, astronomy, or literature. But at a site, the deconstructiong of normalcy happens in a very physical way. Suddenly, I am standing at the edge of this hole in the ground, and I see doric columns below me, rising up as if holding up the rock and ground that I stand on.
To borrow a cliché, my perspective is shifted, literally. The usual rules of the game, on how to interact with a building or a space, are challenged. As much as the exposure to different narratives through books and film and conversations serves to challenge our preconceptions, there is something about movement—moving through a space and experiencing distances, heights, and depths differently—that hits home. It’s a very visceral reminder of the vastness of pretty much everything: the planet, history, culture, microbiology, outer space, which is fun to encounter on a “small” island like Cyprus.
Fig 2. Aphrodite's Beach.
Ever since I took a history class on Salsa music and dance a few years back, I’ve been noticing how the concept of “embodiment” pops up from time to time. And if I really think about it, I had already begun to think about "embodiment" after my undergraduate capstone course on Cervantes' short stories, which feature some interesting body-centered themes.
This has been significant to me because I grew up very "mind" centered. It's interesting to think very deliberatively about what it means to be "in" a body or to be a body, especially in thinking about how movement can be an act of knowledge-making or knowledge-sharing (something we usually associate exclusively with "the mind"). And what about storytelling? I also find it interesting how controlling movement can be a powerful tool in the hands of authorities, and how encouraging certain types of movements can also foster collective myths—thinking of Youth Groups in Nazi Germany or cults that have their members do physical labor or specific types of sport. And well, there is a reason that "movement" is also used to describe social, cultural, political changes like the labor or the feminist movements.
Moving around Cyprus has been very interesting (especially without owning a car). And this visit to Paphos has definitely been a highlight of my time here. It has given me a lot to think about.
We concluded our latest mini-trip, daylight fading fast, at a curving pebbly beach, which myths tell is the birthplace of Aphrodite.
