"I do believe in the possibility of creating a new social model. The only thing is that we now have to begin afresh. The unions, the labour halls, decentralization, the federative system—are all gone. The perverse use that has been made of them has destroyed them. The matter is all the more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable. Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and omnipresent. Our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority, and social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state."

From Anarchy and Christianity, Jacques Ellul.

I've been reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini (1984) recently out of an interest to dig a bit more into UX and to better understand why people make decisions. It's a borderline classic at this point—a year older than me—but the concepts in it are fairly timeless.

Like obligation.

This is the first "weapon of influence" that Cialdini explores (he refers to it as 'reciprocation'). Obligation is the social web of indebtedness, giving and expecting an equal measure of return in some way. He notes that human society is somewhat built on this assurance. It is designed (and exploited) to shame people into keeping the balance in socially acceptable ways.

Take, for example, the mutually binding experience of helping someone move. There is an unspoken agreement that helping someone move locks you into a form of social debt, only escapable by returning the favour. Until the debt is repaid, the relationship is imbalanced—even if only subtly. The obliged might feel compelled to try and repay their gratitude in other ways: dinner, beer, a thank you gift; but the scale is only truly made right again with a favour of equal size.

These sorts of social transactions are common, even if we don't like to think of them that way. Watering a friend's plants while they're out of town, donating to a coworker's charity run, taking the cheque at a family dinner. It can even exist in things like potlucks or gift exchanges. When we give of our time or resources, there is an underlying assumption that the recipient should be willing to 'repay' if and when the opportunity presents itself.

Now, what interests me the most here is what this might say about human selflessness. This is something I like to spend my time thinking about: how and when someone acts against their self-interest for the sake of someone or something else. If we take this concept of obligation seriously, we might consider that nobody ever truly acts in a selfless way. We all give with some sort of expectation that the recipient, the community, or even the universe will pay us back in equal measure at some point in the future. Even if we want to be charitable and say that these future returns are merely an incentive to give, I still find it an interesting thought experiment to consider how people would act without them. Would wealthy people be as philanthropic without tax benefits? Would religious people engage in charity without a promise of eternal reward? Would you be willing to help a friend move if you knew that when it was your time to move, your friend would be out of town?

Maybe for some the answer would still be yes, and I like to hope that that is true. But I can't help but feel that if we lost the web of obligation, a lot of "selfless" behaviour would stop. And I wonder what the cumulative impact of that would be. Cialdini notes,

"The obligation to reciprocate a concession encourages the creation of socially desirable arrangements by ensuring that anyone seeking to start such an arrangement will not be exploited. After all, if there were no social obligation to reciprocate a concession, who would want to make the first sacrifice? To do so would be to risk giving up something and getting nothing back."

My observation is that society is becoming increasingly more self-centred. I believe this is because empathy is in decline (for a number of reasons that I'm not going to explore here) but as I read this section of Cialdini's book, I am wondering whether obligation isn't also disappearing. Or at least evolving into something else. This isn't to say that the intricate balance of equal repayment for services given is gone, but I think what has happened is that many of the things we once did for one another as community favours are increasingly becoming normalized as paid services. Dog walking, moving help, tool rental, snow shovelling, even providing for the elderly—all of these can now be purchased. An easy and instant transaction with no promise of future repayment.

This feels like a loss.

I guess what I'm concerned about is that we are falling out of habit of asking for and giving favours, of helping those around us with our extra time and skills. We're setting a new standard where asking for something that can be paid for is considered a bit of a faux pas, an inconvenience upon those who are asked. That's to say nothing of simply stepping up and helping out without being asked, just because you are able. Just because you see a need. As Cialdini put it, who wants to risk giving something up and getting nothing back in return?

The problem is that human society was built upon this sort of mutual exchange. If not selflessness, at least a fundamental trust in the community around us. If I help you, you'll be there to help me when I need it. Obligation is not a bad thing. It's not a debt to be rid of. It's a sense of moral duty and concern for the world we live in. It's a contract that binds us into living together, as a diverse group of people sharing space and resources. It's a necessary foundation for cooperation.

Something I personally think we could use a lot more of these days.

"Contemplative lingering, dwelling on things, which is a recipe for happiness, will be completely replaced by the hunt for information." (Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive)

We have entered a new sort of hunter-gatherer stage, one in which information and data are the objects of our hunt. We save information, take photos, screenshots, article clippings, etc.—with little discrimination, hoarding it all in our increasingly consumptive digital storehouses. But as Han writes here, this sort of mindless collecting is devoid of the thrill and joy that comes with skillfully hunting down your intended prey. Our constant and immediate access to information leaves us unchanged. As comedian, Pete Holmes deftly put it, "the time between knowing and not knowing is so brief that knowing feels exactly like not knowing. So life is meaningless."

There is, as I have suggested before, a value in knowing how to learn things. Our brains benefit from simply having time to reflect on a problem or challenge. It's why going for a walk to think things through or even having uninterrupted time in the shower can be so beneficial. When we reduce that lingering time, we deprive our brains of something essential to what makes us human. I also think losing that reflective space is also, in part, what is driving this mass mental health crisis.

Want a small way you can fight back against all of this? Go for a walk—and leave your phone at home.

"This new form of rule does not force us to be silent. Rather, it constantly asks us to communicate, to participate, to express our opinions, desires, wishes and preferences—even to narrate our lives."

(Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive)

Han makes note of a census attempt in Western Germany in the 1980s that was met with loud pushback, even protest. People felt the questions were too personal and boycotted it. This resulted in a pause and then revised census.

Today, however, people give over all sorts of personal information with barely a second thought. We are, in Han's view, building our own prison—a form of digital totalitarianism—one that is increasingly exploiting every area of our lives.

"There is no cooperative, networked multitude that could serve as a global protest movement and revolutionary body. Rather, the current form of production is based on the solitary, isolated, disconnect entrepreneur of the self. It used to be the case that, although enterprises competed with each other, there was solitary within each enterprise. Today, everyone is in competition with everyone else, even within a single enterprise. This universal competition may lead to an enormous increase in productivity, but it destroys solidarity and the sense of community. You cannot form a revolutionary mass our of depressive, disconnected individuals."

(Han, Capitalism and the Death Drive)

This touches on one of my favourite problems, how do we build around cooperation rather than competition and it's one I don't have a good answer for. Han addresses the way cooperation under capitalism has been commodified as well. The rise of the sharing economy, in which access rather than ownership became the model, is still based on competition. Look to the rise of all the different food delivery apps as an example. Each of them employs clever (and costly) advertising to win the consumer. Han notes that it also puts this "sharing" behind a paywall. You still need money in order to borrow from these services. Those who lack are left out.