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Ontotechnology: From Being to Interface

Before you even leave home, an artificial intelligence has already selected the news you’ll see, suggested an “efficient” route to your destination, categorized your emotional state based on your heart rate, and—without consulting you—prioritized certain data over others.

Meanwhile, your future choices are being shaped by predictive models. This isn’t science fiction. It’s ontotechnology.

Ontotechnology is a concept that describes how technical systems rewrite the basic conditions of what it means to exist, feel, decide, and relate. It marks the moment when technology ceases to be merely instrumental and becomes architectonic, structuring the very possibilities of reality.

From Tool to Existential Environment

Traditionally, tools extended human capabilities: a hammer amplified strength, a telescope sharpened vision, a book preserved memory. Ontotechnology presents a different scenario: systems that don’t just extend our faculties but replace, anticipate, and reorganize them according to their own logic.

Take streaming platforms like Netflix. It doesn’t just offer content; it produces specific subjectivities. Its algorithm “recommends” films, but it also generates a viewer whose capacity for choice has been outsourced to a system that predicts desires, minimizes uncertainty, and turns leisure time into efficient consumption. The user no longer chooses what to watch; they inhabit an ecosystem that has already processed, filtered, and preselected their experience.

When Google finishes our searches before we’ve typed them, it alters our relationship with curiosity, the unexpected, and the formulation of thought itself. When Spotify creates automated playlists based on our “mood,” it produces a form of self-relation where emotions become interpretable data.

The Underlying Grammar

Ontotechnology configures the possibilities of experience before we’re even aware we’re experiencing something. AI systems are both assistants and architects of existential contexts.

Consider dating apps. Tinder facilitates romantic encounters, and in doing so, it shapes a particular form of desire and recognition. The logic of swiping transforms love into a binary selection process based on images. The algorithm learns from our patterns and begins preselecting profiles, creating feedback loops that progressively narrow what we consider desirable. The result? It produces amorous subjectivities—individuals who learn to desire within algorithmic parameters.

Autocorrect fixes spelling errors, but it also standardizes expression, erases regionalisms, and homogenizes language. Each suggestion acts as a micro-intervention in thought. GPS systems guide routes while reconfiguring our relationship with space, eliminating the possibility of getting lost as a form of discovery.

Outsourced Memory, Attention, and Judgment

Ontotechnology is defined by the externalization of functions once considered inherently human: remembering, choosing, valuing, imagining.

Photography once required conscious decisions—what moment to capture, from what angle, for what purpose. Smartphones have automated much of this: auto-adjusting light, focus, and filters that “enhance” images according to algorithmic standards. Google Photos organizes our memories automatically, creates themed albums, and suggests which moments to share. Personal memory becomes a service managed by AI.

When we outsource memory to automated systems, we alter our relationship with the past, with temporality, with the narrative construction of identity. Classification algorithms prioritize certain events (celebrations, trips, “happy” moments) and minimize others (routine, reflection, solitude). Automated memory produces an edited version of life.

The Quantified Self

Self-tracking devices—activity bands, meditation apps, sleep monitors—introduce a new form of technological externalization. They redefine health, productivity, and balance.

Apps like Headspace, which guide meditation, mold introspection into quantifiable metrics, goals, and progress. Spirituality adopts the language of self-optimization. Sleep trackers turn rest into a task to improve, generating anxiety over achieving “good sleep.”

Experiences once lived qualitatively—well-being, calm, satisfaction—are now rendered as data for algorithms to analyze. The result is a form of self-relation where the unquantifiable becomes irrelevant or pathological.

Thought in Outsourced Hands

Generative AI systems produce texts, ideas, and arguments. For the first time in history, machines convincingly simulate processes we considered exclusively human: creativity, argumentation, critical synthesis.

Beyond generating text, AI systems now participate in decisions once requiring human judgment—determining loan approvals, hiring, or medical prioritization. These systems automate processes based on criteria that are often incomprehensible, even to their developers.

This is the “black box” problem: the system delivers answers, but its decision-making process can’t always be traced. Technical teams may not know which exact variables influenced an outcome, complicating audits, bias correction, and accountability.

When an algorithm decides parole eligibility based on data, it isn’t just calculating risk—it’s imposing a concrete idea of justice, a particular way of defining which variables matter in determining a person’s fate.

The Algorithmic Production of Sociality

Social media platforms epitomize ontotechnology in action. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter determine what becomes visible, what generates engagement, what goes viral.

Facebook’s feed shows what its algorithm decides will maximize your time on the platform. TikTok doesn’t present videos you’re interested in; it serves content engineered to trigger specific neurological responses that prolong usage.

Social media doesn’t mediate sociality; it manufactures it according to optimization parameters that prioritize engagement over interaction quality, polarization over dialogue, and quick emotional reactions over slow reflection.

Algorithmic Morality

AI systems that moderate content, detect hate speech, or define acceptable interactions impose an automated morality. They enforce rules set by corporations, programmers, or legal structures. What’s deemed “correct” becomes just another adjustable parameter.

People adapt their behavior to system-permitted boundaries, not through reflection but by learning to operate within algorithmic limits.

Polarization as a Product

Echo chambers and political polarization on social media are byproducts of systems designed to maximize attention. Content that sparks outrage, surprise, or confirmation bias keeps users engaged longer.

Algorithms learn that divisive content generates more interaction than balanced perspectives. The result is the systematic amplification of extreme positions and the erasure of nuance. Political polarization can’t be understood without acknowledging how algorithmic systems have reshaped the informational ecology shaping opinions.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT devices extend ontotechnological logic into domestic space. Virtual assistants like Alexa or Google Home, smart thermostats, connected fridges, and automated lighting transform our relationship with lived environments.

A “smart” home observes, records, and anticipates. It learns behavioral patterns, schedules, temperature preferences, and consumption habits. It promises efficiency and comfort but also produces an environment that knows its inhabitant better than they know themselves.

The fridge that suggests groceries based on habits, the thermostat that adjusts to routines, or the security system distinguishing “normal” from “suspicious” movements collectively create a home where daily life is organized by personal data—as if the house itself becomes an extension of our digital footprint.

Biometrics and Somatization

Facial recognition, fingerprints, heart rate, and voice are read by systems requiring no human mediation to classify or decide.

This automated reading affects daily life. Access to services, rights, or mobility may depend on what the system registers—or excludes—when scanning our bodies. A body that operates as an interface.

Health and wellness devices don’t just measure us; they dictate how we should live. Recommending steps, sleep hours, or diets proposes an ideal body model based on data—but these standards prioritize efficiency and commercial interests over personal choice.

The Educating Intelligence

Platforms like Khan Academy or AI tutoring systems replace not just teachers but pedagogy as a dialogic experience. Educational ontotechnology promises knowledge democratization, but its “personalization” leads to standardization.

Algorithms prioritizing efficiency streamline learning into pre-filtered, digestible content. Students no longer grapple with complexity; they receive prepackaged information. Learning becomes a process driven by quick rewards.

The Continuous Present

Ontotechnology generates a temporality defined by permanent immediacy. Notifications, real-time data, and endless updates produce an expanded present where the past grows inert and the future is algorithmically forecasted.

We no longer project the future; we predict it. Time becomes a manageable variable, erasing the possibility of the unexpected, the disruptive event that transforms.

Existential Obsolescence

Ontotechnological time is also time that expires. Software versions, product cycles, viral trends—everything decays rapidly. This technical rhythm imposes itself on bodies and lives. The fear of obsolescence reshapes self-understanding, fueling constant anxiety about staying relevant. Obsolescence no longer just applies to objects; it consumes ways of living.

Resisting the Algorithmic Capture

Ontotechnology—the fusion between being and the devices organizing our experience—extends its calculative logic to every corner of life. Yet, something persists beyond parameterization: pains without clinical cause, bonds defying utility, words misaligned with intended meaning. These aren’t system anomalies but reminders of the unquantifiable.

Yuk Hui argues that modern technology has been impoverished by a uniform, global logic, stripped of historical and cultural richness. Against this homogenization, he proposes a “diversification of technics”—a reappropriation that embeds devices in diverse lifeworlds rooted in varied knowledges and cosmologies. Inhabiting technology differently means making space for what no algorithm can anticipate or absorb: the irreducible, the incalculable, the singular.

Günther Anders warned early on that technology would outpace human comprehension, creating a “desynchronization between man and his world.” This gap is temporal and existential. As environments become machine-legible, human interiority risks irrelevance.

The goal isn’t to reject technology but to safeguard what can’t be rendered as data—what remains unproductive, erratic, untamed. There, in that functionless zone, lingers a world not yet captured. Presence without utility.

Ontotechnology isn’t an inevitable destiny, nor is it a neutral tool. It’s the ontological territory we now inhabit. Denial is naivety; uncritical acceptance, surrender.

We need a new pedagogy of being, an ontotechnical literacy—to read the codes that read us, to write within systems rewriting us, to inhabit architectures without becoming interchangeable parts.

Because if we don’t understand ontotechnology, we’ll remain its passive executables. But if we confront it lucidly, we might reclaim our capacity to exist beyond performance, profiling, and prediction.

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. SACRIFICE & CONFORMITY
How the Educational System Sacrificed the Future for Conformity

While the world reinvents itself every six months, our classrooms remain trapped in the 19th century, molding ghosts for jobs that no longer exist and citizens for democracies that don’t function. An entire generation of adults has decided to sacrifice their children’s potential on the altar of institutional conformity.

Never before has so much information been so accessible: free courses from MIT and Harvard just a click away, specialized YouTube tutorials that surpass the quality of many university lectures, global communities of practice where a teenager can learn from the world’s top experts. And yet, we continue forcing young people to sit in classrooms where unmotivated teachers repeat content that any smartphone can deliver in seconds.

The question no educational leader wants to face: What is school for if everything it teaches is better explained on the internet?

The Betrayed Generation

Today’s youth are not “distracted digital natives,” as painted by adults who fail to understand their reality. They are survivors of a failed social experiment. They’ve grown up watching their parents—armed with university degrees and impeccable résumés—struggle for precarious jobs or take refuge in work they hate. They’ve seen the promise of “study hard and succeed” crumble before their eyes.

When a teacher lectures them on the importance of creativity from a standardized classroom, when they’re preached critical thinking while being forbidden to question the system, when they’re promised preparation for the future using methods from the distant past—they recognize the lie.

Homeschooling: When the Elite Saves Itself

Faced with the collapse of education, affluent families have found their golden escape: homeschooling. But let’s analyze this “solution” without romanticizing it.

Homeschooling, as practiced today, is a class privilege. It requires at least one parent to dedicate full-time to education, access to diversified learning resources, and the ability to afford specialized tutors. It’s the educational equivalent of gated communities: a bubble of privilege that allows those who can pay to escape the problem without solving it.

Even more troubling, many homeschooling communities operate under tribal logic, reproducing the same biases and limitations of the traditional system—just with less diversity and more self-indulgence. A child educated exclusively within their parents’ ideological bubble is no better prepared for the real world than one subjected to mass standardization.

But the cruelest part? While elites design personalized exits for their children, the public system deteriorates further, abandoning millions of young people whose only options are conformity or dropping out.

The Silent Revolution No One Sees

While parents and educators debate methodologies and curricula, a silent revolution is underway. Young people are educating themselves outside the formal system. They learn graphic design on YouTube, coding on interactive platforms, business by creating content on TikTok, and social skills by navigating digital ecosystems.

This “wild” education has obvious flaws: lack of structure, absence of solid theoretical foundations, risk of biased information. But it has something the formal system lost decades ago: immediate relevance and practical application.

• A teenager who learns to code because they want to build an app has motivation no mandatory math class can replicate.

• A girl who starts a history YouTube channel because she’s fascinated by the topic develops communication, research, and management skills far beyond anything she’d learn in a traditional classroom.

Instead of recognizing and integrating this energy, the educational system sees it as competition to eliminate. Phones are banned like drugs, personal projects are punished as “distractions,” and natural curiosity is treated as a disciplinary issue.

Neurodivergence

The explosion of ADHD, anxiety, and other neurodivergent diagnoses in classrooms is the clearest sign that our educational model is designed for a brain type that may never have existed en masse—and certainly doesn’t match today’s neurological realities.

Asking a teenager to sit still and silent for hours, processing information linearly, is like asking a fish to fly. The fish isn’t sick—the environment is radically inadequate.

We’d rather drug our youth than question a system that systematically violates them.

Fragmented Knowledge in an Interconnected World

In the real world, solving any problem requires integrating multiple disciplines, not separating them into subjects. Building a sustainable business demands ecology, consumer psychology, finance, technology, communication, and ethics. Yet in school, these fields are taught as if they exist in parallel universes.

This fragmentation serves the industrial logic of creating interchangeable specialists. But in a knowledge economy where innovation arises from interdisciplinary intersections, we’re training experts to be obsolete before graduation.

Artificial Intelligence

The rise of AI has exposed the intellectual poverty of our educational system. When ChatGPT writes more coherent essays than most college graduates, solves complex math problems in seconds, and generates functional code from simple prompts—what value does rote memorization have?

But instead of seizing this chance to redefine education for the 21st century, institutions have responded with panic and prohibition. Universities develop AI detectors to “protect academic integrity,” as if the problem were the tool rather than the irrelevance of tasks it can automate.

AI should catalyze an educational revolution emphasizing creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and complex problem-solving. Instead, we’re using it to entrench obsolete paradigms deeper.

The Violence of the Classroom

There’s a subtle violence in traditional schooling that’s rarely named:

• Forcing developing bodies into hours of immobility.

• Imposing uniform learning paces on diverse minds.

• Measuring human intelligence with metrics designed for machines.

But the greatest violence is the destruction of natural curiosity. Children arrive at school with endless questions about the world. After years of “close your book and copy from the board,” those questions die. In their place remains a domesticated ability to follow instructions and reproduce “correct” answers.

This violence serves a system that needs obedient workers more than critical thinkers, predictable consumers more than empowered citizens.

The Forgotten Body

We ignore the bodily needs of learning. Decades of research show movement is crucial for cognitive development, circadian rhythms affect attention, and posture influences mood and focus. Yet we still design windowless classrooms, schedules that defy adolescent biology, immobility-enforcing furniture, and bans on free play.

This denial stems from a Cartesian view that privileges the mind and dismisses the body as distraction. But modern neuroscience has demolished this separation: we learn with our whole body. Denying this sabotages education at its core.

Teachers: Victims and Accomplices

Teachers occupy the system’s most paradoxical position: they’re both its primary victims and its most visible enforcers.

Most entered the profession with ideals of social transformation. Instead, the system turns them into bureaucrats, smothering what originally motivated them. They must follow rigid curricula, prep students for standardized tests, fill endless forms, and justify every class minute to supervisors who’ve never taught.

Meanwhile, they’re burdened with responsibilities far beyond education: psychologists, social workers, family mediators, and security guards—all for unlivable wages and dwindling social respect.

The Disoriented Family

Families aren’t spared this crisis. Today’s parents were educated for a world that no longer exists, with codes that no longer work. Many sense something’s wrong, see their children suffering in a system that doesn’t understand or motivate them—but don’t know what to do.

Social pressure is immense. Questioning the system risks their children’s academic future. It’s safer to adapt: hire private tutors, medicate nonconforming kids, and hope things work out.

This forced complicity props up the system. As long as parents prioritize grades over learning, conformity over creativity, and degrees over real skills—change remains impossible.

The Diploma Economy

The current system has turned education into an economy of hollow credentials. Degrees have inflated into minimum requirements for jobs that don’t need them, sparking an educational arms race where everyone must study more to get the same result.

Credential inflation has devastating effects: mass student debt, delayed workforce entry, and a class of “overeducated, underemployed” graduates who feel cheated. Worse, it systematically excludes those who can’t afford higher education, deepening social inequality.

Employers keep demanding degrees because filtering by credentials is easier than assessing real skills. It’s a silent collusion between schools needing students and companies wanting simple hiring criteria—both at the expense of youth and society.

Technology as Cosmetics

Classroom tech integration has been one of the most spectacular failures of recent decades. We’ve spent fortunes on smartboards, tablets, and educational platforms that mostly just digitize obsolete methods.

Using a tablet for the same repetitive exercises once done on paper isn’t innovation—it’s expensive cosmetics. Having internet access in class only to google irrelevant answers isn’t leveraging technology—it’s sophisticated waste.

Real integration would require completely rethinking what, how, and why we teach. It would demand teachers who see digital tools as amplifiers, not threats, and learning experiences that harness interactivity, personalization, and global connectivity.

Instead, we took the easy path: buying expensive gadgets to do the same old thing—just with more screens.

The Chinese Example

While the West endlessly debates reforms that never come, China has launched a radical transformation.

Since 2022, China’s Education Ministry has mandated “education for life” as compulsory: weekly practical classes where students learn domestic skills (cleaning, cooking, pet care, gardening) alongside advanced tech like 3D printing and laser cutting.

In Anji County kindergartens, children build their own kitchens with simple materials and prepare meals, developing motor skills, responsibility, and a direct connection to what they consume.

China has deployed adaptive AI learning systems that personalize pacing, correct work in real time, and guide students toward areas needing reinforcement. Here, AI isn’t a gimmick—it’s a companion fostering autonomy and freeing teachers for creative, relational roles.

Memorizing Mount Everest’s height is meaningless if you don’t know a family’s daily water consumption or how diet impacts health. In an age of instant information, value lies in application, questioning, and real-world transformation.

Inertia as the Main Enemy

The biggest obstacle to educational transformation isn’t lack of knowledge or resources—it’s systemic inertia. Institutions have lost the capacity for self-criticism and renewal.

This inertia is fed by:

• Bureaucracies prioritizing institutional survival over education.

• Teacher unions mistaking labor advocacy for resistance to change.

• Parents clinging to the familiar, however dysfunctional.

• Politicians fearing electoral fallout from deep reform.

We’ve internalized that formal education is intrinsically valuable, regardless of outcomes.

To question the system is seen as attacking education itself—when it might be the most authentic way to defend it.

Necessary Transformations

Change requires more than methodological tweaks or tech updates. We must reimagine what it means to educate in the 21st century:

• Situated Learning: Engage students in real community challenges, not abstract problems.

• Authentic Assessment: Replace standardized tests with project portfolios, peer evaluation, and metacognitive reflection—documenting growth, not ranking students.

• Biological Rhythms: Adapt school schedules to adolescent development, incorporate regular movement, and design spaces respecting the body’s role in learning.

• Interdisciplinary Integration: Organize curricula around big questions requiring multiple perspectives.

• Smart Technology: Use AI to personalize learning and free teachers for human-centered education.

The Historic Moment

We’re at a unique crossroads. Climate change, technological revolution, economic instability, and social polarization have created an unprecedented opportunity for transformation.

This isn’t the time for gradual reforms or half-measures. It’s time for an educational revolution that centers youth and their potential—not institutional survival.

This revolution won’t come from above. Ministries, universities, and bureaucracies are too invested in the status quo. It will come from below:

• Families daring to question.

• Teachers choosing innovation over safety.

• Youth demanding relevance.

• Communities building alternatives.

Every parent prioritizing real learning over grades is a revolutionary. Every teacher personalizing instruction despite regulations is an insurgent. Every young person rejecting irrelevant education is a freedom fighter.

The educational revolution isn’t a future event—it’s a present choice. Every day we delay, more young people lose precious years to systems that limit and violate them.

Conscious Double Standards

The most visible form of double standards is the kind practiced with full awareness. In this case, the person knows perfectly well that they are applying different criteria based on convenience but justifies it through the following mechanisms:

• Exceptionalism: “My case is different; it has special circumstances.”

• Relativization: “What I’m doing isn’t as bad as what others do.”

• Compensation: “In other aspects, I’m morally impeccable, so I can allow myself this exception.”

• Redefinition: “I’m not doing exactly what I criticize—there are nuances.”

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called this “bad faith” in his work Being and Nothingness. Bad faith involves voluntary self-deception, a hiding of uncomfortable truths from oneself.

“The man who engages in bad faith hides an unpleasant truth or presents a pleasant falsehood as truth. Bad faith is thus the use of freedom to evade freedom itself.”

In politics, conscious double standards are a sustained pattern in public decision-making. Governments and leaders promote values like transparency, self-determination, and human rights but frequently act contrary to these principles when they conflict with their interests. Recent history and reports from international organizations show how it’s common to restrict information under claims of “national security” or adopt selective moral stances toward crises depending on the country involved.

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu developed the concept of “symbolic violence” to explain how dominant classes make their particular interests appear as universal values, establishing a double standard where certain groups can violate norms with impunity while others must strictly comply.

At an individual level, double standards frequently manifest in everyday life. Consider those who publicly condemn certain addictions while vehemently defending alcohol consumption, ignoring studies showing that this legal substance can cause harm comparable to—or even greater than—some illicit drugs.

This demonstrates how moral judgments are influenced by social and historical constructs rather than objective harm assessments.

The Convenience Calculus

What characterizes this form of double standards is calculation. People who practice it consciously perform a cost-benefit analysis: it’s easier to point fingers than to correct oneself, more comfortable to accuse than to take responsibility, and more advantageous to judge than to be judged. Conscious double standards rely on a logic of self or group protection.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the first to argue that dominant moral systems are not disinterested expressions of universal truths but instruments of power.

“Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena—more precisely, a misinterpretation.” —Nietzsche

The pretense of moral universality always hides particular interests, explaining why those who proclaim absolute principles often apply them selectively.

People don’t ignore their inconsistency—they perceive it but minimize, disguise, or justify it through narratives that preserve their positive self-image.

When a person holds two conflicting beliefs or thoughts, psychology calls this cognitive dissonance. To alleviate this discomfort, they may modify one idea, adjust both, or introduce a new one to restore a sense of coherence.

Unconscious Double Standards

Unconscious double standards are a way of evaluating the world that has been internalized without question, transmitted through family, culture, religion, media, and other social institutions.

Selective Blindness

For example, someone may feel outraged by the oppression women face in other cultures but fail to recognize the problematic beauty standards imposed on women in their own environment. They may reject explicit racism yet unconsciously reproduce microaggressions based on the belief that certain people “don’t fit” or “aren’t ready” for certain spaces.

These normalized prejudices stem from cultural roots. Another example is criticizing the sexual conduct restrictions of certain religious traditions while ignoring how one’s own tradition imposes equally rigid standards of beauty, success, or behavior. The difference is that one’s own cultural framework is perceived as “neutral” or “natural,” while others’ are seen as “impositions” or “restrictions.”

The most dangerous aspect of unconscious double standards is precisely that they are seen as neutral or innocent. Practitioners believe they’re applying universal, fair criteria when they’re actually perpetuating inequalities.

Market Environmentalism

Some movements advocate for a more sustainable and communal life but end up consuming products from corporations that contradict their initial ideals. From “eco-friendly” shoes made under questionable labor conditions to “alternative” music festivals sponsored by energy drink or tech brands, we witness the constant co-optation of idealism by the very market forces being criticized.

The organic food movement began as a critique of industrial food systems. Yet, the industry has selectively adopted “natural” or “eco-friendly” labels without changing production methods. Thousands of consumers pay premium prices for products offering an illusion of ethical coherence without questioning the contradictions of the system they seemingly reject.

This double standard can be conscious (“I know I’m not perfectly consistent, but it’s better than nothing”) or unconscious (“I’m doing the right thing by buying sustainable-labeled products”). Either way, it highlights the difficulty of upholding ethical principles in an economic system that absorbs and neutralizes criticism by turning it into new market niches.

Digital Activism and Personal Branding

We see influencers promoting social justice messages while monetizing their platforms through sponsorships from companies with questionable labor or environmental practices. Authenticity becomes a commercial asset.

This activism becomes personal branding, a form of distinction that may or may not align with coherent practices. Outrage turns into spectacle: noble causes are shared while aggression thrives in comment sections, empathy is demanded for certain groups while those who think differently are dehumanized.

The result is a society of moral appearances, where seeming virtuous matters more than being consistent, and accumulating moral capital outweighs transforming unjust structures.

Unconscious Double Standards in Everyday Behavior

• Digital Privacy vs. Social Media Exhibitionism: Many criticize tech companies for data collection while voluntarily sharing intimate aspects of their lives online. This contradiction goes unnoticed because certain digital exposure is normalized as “social,” while other forms are labeled invasive.

• Anti-Capitalist Criticism vs. Consumerism: People critique capitalism, economic inequality, and labor exploitation while compulsively buying luxury goods, cutting-edge tech made under poor labor conditions, or services from monopolistic corporations.

• Cultural Appropriation: Diversity and respect for traditions are promoted, yet elements of other cultures are adopted without understanding their meaning, often trivializing or profiting from them. This unconscious double standard values others’ cultures only when useful or appealing.

• Age Discrimination in Workplaces: Self-proclaimed progressives who advocate anti-discrimination policies may unconsciously bias against older workers in tech or younger professionals in leadership roles.

• Mental Health Stigma: While mental health awareness grows, negative judgments persist toward behaviors stemming from disorders (e.g., calling people with depression “weak” or “uncommitted” for missing responsibilities).

• Selective Free Speech: Freedom of expression is passionately defended when it benefits one’s views but questioned when it enables opposing voices. Restrictions on aligned opinions are seen as “censorship,” while limits on opposing views are framed as “fighting misinformation.”

• Education Demands vs. Labor Precarity: Parents and educators push youth into debt for degrees while normalizing a job market that offers precarious contracts to graduates. Individuals are blamed for their success, but systemic barriers to mobility are ignored.

When Morality Becomes Identity

One reason double standards persist is that they’re tied to identity. Changing a moral belief means revising one’s self-image—admitting we may have been unjust, arrogant, or misinformed for years. Not everyone is willing to face that uncomfortable mirror.

Moral positions are also upheld by emotional ties to ideological communities. Criticizing one’s own group feels like betrayal, while pointing out rivals’ flaws confirms moral superiority.

This dynamic explains why people easily spot double standards in opponents but remain blind to similar patterns in their own camp. Confirmation bias absorbs information that reinforces preexisting beliefs while dismissing challenges to them.

The “I’m One of the Good Ones” Narrative

For many, it’s psychologically easier to cling to a simple narrative: “I’m one of the good guys.”

This self-complacent narrative blocks the self-critique needed to identify and correct contradictions. If we already see ourselves as morally superior, why examine our blind spots?

No one is entirely free of double standards. Cognitive limits, implicit biases, and unconscious motivations guarantee that everyone displays moral inconsistencies at some point.

The first step toward greater ethical coherence is abandoning the illusion of moral perfection. Accepting that everyone practices some degree of double standards opens space for self-reflection.

Strategies to Reduce Double Standards

• Role Reversal: Ask how you’d judge a situation if roles were reversed.

• Seek Counterarguments: Expose yourself to perspectives that challenge your moral convictions.

• Cultivate Epistemic Humility: Acknowledge the limits of your knowledge and the possibility of being wrong.

• Apply the Principle of Charity: Interpret others’ positions in their best possible light, not as strawmen.

• Question Moral Reflexes: Critically examine automatic judgments and trace their origins.

There is no moral progress without recognizing contradictions, and no ethics without constant self-critique.

Eliminating double standards may be unattainable, but we can cultivate individual and social conditions to identify, question, and gradually reduce them

Hunger for Meaning

An essay on the symbolic void in modern eating and the need to reclaim the cultural and philosophical significance of what we consume. Beyond calories and promises of well-being, we have reduced food to its physical dimension: disease, aesthetics, performance. The bodily, invariably.

These angles, though necessary, have overshadowed an equally relevant dimension: what we bring to our mouths and how we inhabit the world.

The production and preparation of food shape the cultural fabric of societies. In every grain, in every cooking technique, lies a millennia-old story tied to the land and its roots. The Maya didn’t just cultivate corn; they revered it as the origin of life itself, weaving it into their creation myths where gods molded humans from corn dough. Their agricultural calendar dictated planting and harvest times, aligning earthly cycles with celestial movements.

Where culinary traditions yield to industrialization, critical thinking weakens. A diet detached from natural cycles, from contact with the earth, from rituals and time, alters the very structure of our consciousness.

Food carries narratives. Its industrialization transforms meanings. Throughout history, cosmogonies and cultural expressions have emerged, strengthening identity and social bonds.

The loss of these practices has given rise to other forms of resistance. The work songs of cotton and sugarcane plantations in the Americas birthed blues and son. Music became a response to the suffering of bodies forced to abandon their lands to serve imposed monocultures. From the pain of sugarcane came Puerto Rican bomba; from Colombian coffee, bambuco; from Japanese rice fields, ceremonial songs that set the rhythm of planting.

Fast food becomes a method of understanding. We digest information like food: hastily, rootlessly, effortlessly. Reflective and analytical thought requires pause, patience, absorption—like a slow-simmered broth or natural fermentation. When our food loses its temporality, our gaze on the world grows impatient and shallow.

The cruel paradox of our time: regions with extraordinary natural wealth suffer the worst forms of malnutrition. In Brazil, while the Amazon rainforest harbors thousands of nutritious wild fruits, its slum dwellers eat imported ultra-processed cookies. In Mexico, birthplace of corn with thousands of native varieties, children breakfast on sugary cereals made from GMO corn. Indonesian communities, surrounded by abundant oceans, buy canned tuna produced thousands of miles away.

Traditional cooking, even in scarcity, preserved ecological knowledge now in retreat. As childhood flavors vanish, so too do the emotional and sensory references that shaped our way of being in the world.

Preparing food with local ingredients was a way to teach ecology, medicine, astronomy, and ethics. When industry takes over, when cooking becomes an outsourced task, we surrender judgment. We no longer decide what we eat; we don’t even know what’s in it.

In societies where local markets and culinary ceremonies fade, mental deterioration spreads from the individual to the collective. What’s lost goes beyond taste: the logic that sustained forms of organization, economy, and memory collapses.

In tropical countries with fertile land, natural food becomes a privilege. An organic banana costs more than a pack of industrial cookies. Pineapples grown without chemicals are inaccessible to local families while exported to other markets. Meanwhile, in other nations, regulations enforce higher quality standards. Finland bans additives that flood Latin American products; Japan sets strict pesticide limits deemed acceptable elsewhere.

In Mexico, where nixtamal was the foundation of tortillas and culture, ultra-processed cereals now dominate. The disappearance of native corn varieties erases agricultural knowledge and local economies. This displacement stems from policies favoring monocultures and a narrative glorifying modernity at the expense of tradition.

Monocultures have redrawn the world’s geography for foreign interests. In Honduras, the United Fruit Company turned diverse ecosystems into vast banana plantations, creating economic dependence that birthed the term “banana republic.” In Indonesia, rainforests become oil palm plantations to feed Western processed food demand. These monocultures obliterate biodiversity, harvest songs, traditional medicine, and seasonal festivals.

As Laura Esquivel wrote:
“Many were weaned too soon, and so they spend their lives searching for something that truly nourishes them.”

This pattern repeats globally. In Korea, street tteokbokki succumbs to foreign franchises; in India, homemade dal yields to instant noodles; in Italy, cucina povera—wise in its use of humble ingredients—becomes pre-cooked pasta.

Nancy Turner, a Canadian ethnobotanist, documented that Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest used over 500 plant species for food, health, and culture. This orally inherited knowledge now risks extinction due to imported diets and abandoned practices.

In resource-rich countries, supermarkets stock shelves with packaged products whose ingredients grow just miles away. Raw materials travel thousands of miles, are industrially transformed, and return unrecognizable, with labels where additives outnumber real food. What grows nearby becomes inaccessible, repackaged as “premium.”

When eating becomes a solitary, automatic act, bonds of mutual care weaken. A society that abandons its stoves relinquishes the question of how it wants to live. It consumes indiscriminately: food, ideas, news, bodies.

This poverty transcends the mental to the economic. Traditional subsistence economies prove more resilient to environmental crises than monocultures.

Subjected to imported goods and patented seeds, communities lose decision-making freedom. A colonialism rooted in food dependency emerges, starting in the stomach and ending in the mind.

Health regulations operate with double standards: strict in developed nations, lax in biodiverse countries. What Europe rejects finds markets in Latin America or Africa. Communities producing the world’s finest coffees or cocoas consume the worst: sugary drinks, refined flours, hydrogenated oils. Palates trained for generations to discern natural subtleties are bombarded with artificial enhancers that dull sensitivity.

Nutrition must not divorce culture, nor health autonomy, nor food consciousness. What we eat shapes our understanding and limits what we can conceive. A society’s diet isn’t just ingredients; it’s historical decisions, power balances, and shared values.

Slow Food has documented over 5,000 traditional products on the brink of extinction, each carrying ecological wisdom. In times demanding critical thought, the first step isn’t reading another article—it’s returning to the fire, replanting, rediscovering what truly feeds the soul.

 

BREAKING DOGMAS

The world is full of certainties we accept automatically. From childhood, we learn that certain emotions must be expressed in specific ways, that some ideas represent “absolute truth,” or that the teachings of our early years must remain unchallenged.

This blind adherence to unexamined ideas—this rigid loyalty to beliefs we refuse to question—gives rise to what we know as dogmatism.

Though we often associate dogma primarily with religion, its influence extends to other realms of thought: political ideologies, educational systems, scientific methods, and even our personal relationships.

We recognize dogma when an idea becomes so sacred that questioning it is seen as offensive or treasonous.

Dogmatism transforms opinions, theories, or beliefs into absolute truths that admit no debate. It’s like building walls around our ideas, shielding them from scrutiny or criticism. These mental fortresses provide security—but they also trap us inside.

The Skeptical Gaze

Even in ancient Greece, skeptics noticed humanity’s tendency to cling to unprovable certainties. The Pyrrhonists called these believers “dogmatists.”

When Sextus Empiricus, the foremost exponent of this school, examined the doctrines of his time, he documented an almost inevitable inclination to seek certainty—even when we lack full confidence in it.

In the 20th century, philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine challenged, in his essay Two Dogmas of Empiricism, the supposed distinction between analytic truths (certain by definition or logic) and synthetic truths (dependent on experience). He showed that this division blurs upon closer examination of how language and knowledge actually function.

This argument casts doubt on the untouchable foundations of science. Even in the scientific realm, dogmatism can emerge when certain basic assumptions are defended as unquestionable truths, sidelining the critical attitude and constant scrutiny that should characterize all knowledge-seeking.

Our knowledge is organized as a system of interconnected beliefs that barely graze experience at its outer edges. When reality contradicts part of this system, we have multiple options for adjustment—and often, we choose to preserve the most deeply rooted core beliefs, modifying only peripheral ones.

Scientific dogmatism, for example, tends to shield theoretical cores by creating increasingly complex auxiliary hypotheses to explain anomalies. Research programs can become “degenerative” when they spiral into this kind of dogmatic self-preservation.

The Social Dogma

In medieval religion, dogma functioned as both social glue and a defense of established power. Christian creeds dictated, with absolute authority, what believers must accept. Any attempt to rethink these truths could be deemed heresy—with tragic consequences in many cases.

This stance ensured communities remained united under a single, official version of faith. Dogma thus offered a “guarantee of the heart”—the comforting certainty of sharing immutable truths with others.

When everyone believes the same unshakable certainties, we experience a sense of belonging and shared purpose. This is why societies have historically developed systems to transmit and protect their core dogmas.

Religions—and by extension, other dogmatic systems—foster mechanical solidarity, a unity based on uniformity of thought. This communal bond creates stability but also resistance to change and hostility toward those who challenge established truths.

The Anthropology of Certainty

Humans need stable interpretations to make sense of life’s chaos. We crave patterns, explanations, and predictions to order our world.

Traditional societies develop elaborate classification systems separating the “pure” from the “impure,” the “ordered” from the “chaotic.” Often reinforced by taboos and rituals, these systems reduce anxiety in the face of ambiguity. From this perspective, dogmatism can be seen as a defense against the anguish of uncertainty.

Modern Dogmas

In today’s society, dogmas persist in forms we often fail to recognize.

One example is the meritocracy dogma—the belief that personal success depends solely on individual effort. When taken as gospel, this idea ignores social structures that privilege some and limit others. Those who don’t “succeed” are blamed for “not trying hard enough,” while the systemic advantages of the privileged remain invisible.

Other modern dogmas include:

• The belief in infinite economic growth as the sole indicator of progress.

• The idea that technology will solve all our problems.

• The conviction that consumption is the primary path to personal fulfillment.

These narratives function as secular credos, rarely questioned in mainstream discourse.

Another pervasive dogma is happiness as an individual responsibility. This belief insists that everyone must “work on themselves” to achieve happiness, regardless of external circumstances. Promoted by the self-help industry and certain psychological approaches, it reframes social discontent as a personal attitude problem. The inability to be happy is treated as a moral failure—not a symptom of structural issues.

Epistemological Dogmatism

A school of thought called epistemological dogmatism argues that if something seems self-evident and there’s no reason to doubt it, we’re entitled to believe it. The intent is to justify basic beliefs without requiring proof—but this leads to the dogmatism paradox: How can we dismiss evidence that contradicts what we already hold as certain?

A possible solution lies in fallibilism, developed by Charles S. Peirce. From this view, we can maintain our beliefs as long as they remain uncontradicted—but we must be willing to revise them if new data emerges. Thus, knowledge rests on reasonable confidence paired with a constant readiness to correct errors.

We naturally lean toward confirmation bias: giving more weight to information that aligns with our existing beliefs. Cognitive psychology has studied this phenomenon, revealing how dogmatism is rooted in our very way of thinking.

Paralysis and Violence

Culturally, dogmatism leads to stagnation and impoverishment. Societies governed by rigid structures often suppress innovation, punish dissent, and cling to outdated practices. The history of science abounds with cases where valuable discoveries were delayed for decades due to blind adherence to dominant ideas.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman analyzed how modern dogmas of racial and social purity culminated in the Holocaust—and how projects framed as “rational” can become machines of extermination when backed by absolute certainties. The persecution of heretics during the Inquisition, ideological purges in totalitarian regimes, and the persistent denial of scientific evidence all illustrate the destructive power of closed thinking.

Information Bubbles and Polarization

Digital technologies have intensified dogmatic tendencies. Recommendation algorithms connect us mainly with content that confirms our preexisting views, creating echo chambers where divergent perspectives rarely penetrate.

Nuance, doubt, and compromise attract less attention than bold assertions and demonization of opponents. This dynamic fuels social fragmentation, splitting us into increasingly isolated and hostile ideological tribes.

Dogmatism as a Mechanism of Power

Michel Foucault examined how dogmatic discourses on sexuality, madness, or criminality have historically operated as tools of control over bodies and minds. So-called “unquestionable truths” about acceptable behavior shape reality. Claims like “this is human nature” or “this is how the economy works” present social constructs—often serving specific interests—as inevitable.

Dogmatism is never politically innocent. Absolute certainties tend to benefit certain groups, even when framed as universal truths. This is why many emancipatory struggles begin by dismantling these supposed “self-evident” justifications for the status quo.

“The problem with the world is that fools are so sure of themselves, while the wise are full of doubt.” —Bertrand Russell

 

THE NEW MASCULINITY

In recent decades, we have witnessed a transformation in how masculinity is understood and lived. What once seemed an unquestionable concept is now a terrain of scrutiny and reinvention. This metamorphosis aligns with the social, economic, and cultural shifts that have destabilized the foundations of traditional gender identities.

For centuries, a dominant notion associated masculinity with traits like physical strength, authority, economic provision, emotional control, and detachment from caregiving roles. From an early age, boys were socialized to assume the roles of providers, leaders, protectors, and even combatants. This vision was reinforced by custom, myths, religions, economic systems, and educational institutions.

Where does this cross-cultural consistency come from? Some evolutionary biologists point to hormonal and physical differences that predispose (though not determine) certain behavioral tendencies. Ancient selective pressures may have favored specific traits in environments of scarcity and danger, though others argue these patterns reflect similar mechanisms of domination reproduced across diverse contexts.

Despite this apparent universality, research has shown how masculinity varies considerably across historical and cultural settings. While common patterns exist—such as linking masculinity to competition or self-control—there are also communities where caregiving, cooperation, and emotional expression are integral to male identity. This proves that masculinity, like any gender identity, is malleable and contingent.

The traditional model functioned for millennia but began to fracture in the 20th century. Feminist movements challenged male privileges and dismantled the presumed “naturalness” of roles framed as biologically inevitable.

World Wars forced reorganizations of labor and domestic life. Industrialization and later the service economy diminished the social value of physical strength. Democracy eroded rigid hierarchies. The sexual revolution decoupled sexuality from reproduction. Women’s access to historically male spaces and struggles for expanded reproductive rights have compelled a reevaluation of what is expected of men today.

As traditional markers of success and fulfillment fade, many men experience a liminal state: no longer part of the old order but not yet situated in the new.

While women rightly celebrate their liberation from predetermined roles as an expansion of possibilities, many men experience the same liberation as a disorienting void. On one hand, they’re freed from imposed constraints; on the other, they lose a naturalized sense of purpose.

This loss of reference breeds a silent anxiety that, lacking socially acceptable outlets, may manifest in destructive behaviors or nostalgic retreat. It’s no coincidence that male suicide rates in industrialized societies are three to four times higher than women’s, while substance abuse and behavioral disorders show markedly male prevalence.

Men today are freer but less emotionally equipped to handle that freedom, exhausted by the constant labor of constructing an identity without clear or socially validated models.

Nostalgia for lost certainties fuels reactionary movements promising to restore a mythical order where “men were men.” These groups often thrive in precarious contexts, where the promise of gender superiority compensates for other deprivations. Many men feel they’ve lost a place that once offered them certainty, status, and recognition. In this vacuum, some turn to rhetoric pledging to restore an older order—where hierarchies were clear and rules went unquestioned.

This need for belonging also explains the rise of traditional and virtual male communities (from sports clubs to online forums), which serve as spaces where masculinity can be performed without constant scrutiny. The problem arises when these refuges become enclaves of resentment rather than sites of positive transformation.

The Asymmetry of Gender-Exclusive Spaces

The contradictions of our era are evident in gendered spaces. While initiatives like The Wing or Hera Hub are celebrated as necessary for female empowerment, analogous male spaces like The Bohemian Grove face harsh criticism as bastions of privilege.

Female-exclusive ventures are hailed as innovative, while any male counterpart would be swiftly labeled discriminatory. This double standard, though understandable as corrective logic, fuels resentment among men who don’t perceive themselves as privileged or oppressive—particularly working-class youth facing their own forms of economic and social marginalization.

This evaluative asymmetry isn’t arbitrary or ahistorical. Yet one might ask whether transformative justice requires such temporary disparities or if they risk reinforcing the very categories they aim to overcome. After decades of observation, some now question whether we’re creating a new set of restrictive stereotypes—only now applied to men.

Institutional programs like Canada’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Fund or female-targeted engineering scholarships are legitimate attempts to redress historical imbalances. Data showing women receive just 2.3% of global venture capital or hold only 28% of corporate leadership roles fully justify these interventions.

Yet these efforts coexist with less visible realities: men account for 93% of workplace fatalities, have significantly higher school dropout rates, and face 63% harsher sentences than women for the same crimes. The growing crisis in male education—where women now far outpace men in university graduation rates across most Western nations—rarely inspires compensatory programs.

A truly equitable approach would require acknowledging gender-specific vulnerabilities on both sides. Gender justice cannot be a zero-sum game where one group’s progress necessitates another’s decline.

The Body and Mental Health

A frequently overlooked aspect is men’s relationship with their bodies. Pressure to embody unattainable physical ideals has grown exponentially, evidenced by rising rates of dysmorphia and eating disorders among young men. The media’s inundation of “perfect” male bodies fosters a new alienation.

Trained to see their bodies as instruments of production or performance, many men become disconnected from their lived physical experience. This disaffection harms both their well-being and their capacity for meaningful intimacy.

Another neglected dimension is masculinity’s link to mental health. Emotional repression, isolation, reluctance to seek help, and fear of appearing weak stem from traditional affective conditioning. The consequences include chronic psychological distress, substance abuse, and self-inflicted violence. Without emotional literacy, any social transformation will remain incomplete.

Fatherhood as a Frontier

Parenthood now emerges as one of the most promising arenas for reinventing masculinity. Whereas fatherhood was historically limited to economic provision and normative authority, new family structures enable more participatory, affectionate, and caregiving forms of fathering.

This engaged fatherhood yields tangible benefits: children with higher self-esteem and better social skills, and men more satisfied with richer, more diverse social bonds. The experience of caregiving transforms not only children’s lives but the men themselves.

Yet workplace structures, cultural expectations, and family policies still hinder this shift. Asymmetrical parental leave (significantly shorter for fathers) or the persistent wage gap that makes it “economically rational” for mothers to reduce work hours exemplify how social systems reinforce traditional roles—even when both men and women seek to transcend them.

Beyond Binary Battles

This is not a war between men and women but a collective effort to redefine humanity beyond restrictive binaries. It’s about legitimizing diverse ways of being a man—including those that defy norms.

 

The Fascination with Collapse

The end is no longer announced by apocalyptic trumpets but revealed through scientific reports, rising global temperature graphs, deforestation maps, and matrices of interconnected crises. Collapse has transcended its status as a future threat to become the emotional climate of the present—a lens through which we interpret current events and sketch future possibilities.

The narrative of collapse seems to tell us that we will witness no great revolutionary transformations, nor a future that improves upon current conditions. Only the gradual crumbling of the systems that sustain industrial civilization—and with it, a strange attraction to this terminal image, as if contemplating it produced a liberating effect.

Why this fascination with the end? What are the implications of viewing collapse as the most plausible—or perhaps even desirable—horizon, as opposed to social transformation?

Utopian imagination has weakened. Collapsology emerges as a substitute for utopian thinking. Instead of projecting alternative societies or possible worlds, we devote ourselves to calculating variables of disintegration, points of no return, irreversible ecological thresholds.

If the 20th century was marked by grand emancipatory narratives, the 21st seems defined by tales of exhaustion, limits, and finitude.

Collapsology’s work proposes a pedagogy for developing emotional resilience in the face of what it deems inevitable. The contemporary subject does not prepare to radically transform the material conditions of existence but to survive their deterioration.

Collapsology has evolved as a school of thought. Early texts emphasized the scientific evidence of imminent collapse: physical limits to growth, energy crises, climate disruption, mass species extinction. Later theorizations incorporated psychological, communal, and existential dimensions.

Contemplating the great collapse provides a kind of existential relief. In a context defined by perpetual acceleration, fragmented experience, productive overexertion, and informational saturation, the image of total collapse offers a purification through chaos.

The imagined end acts as a simplifying force. It promises to reduce overwhelming reality to an elemental, primal situation. This fantasy of returning to basics exerts a powerful allure in hypercomplex societies where individuals constantly experience their powerlessness against abstract, uncontrollable systems.

The expectation of collapse incorporates a dimension of cosmic justice. The system that has exploited natural resources, vulnerable populations, and subjectivities for centuries seems to “deserve” its end. If organized political transformation seems unviable, collapse appears as an impartial judge delivering a verdict under the weight of accumulated systemic contradictions. This inverted hope becomes a peculiar refuge for critical thought when other paths of social change seem closed.

Yet, fascination with collapse can easily become a form of passivity disguised as analytical clarity. Contemplating apocalyptic scenarios may induce paralysis, much like the ideology of indefinite progress once did. The real danger lies in the premature collapse of collective will for transformation.

The certainty of disaster can function as a self-fulfilling prophecy precisely because it eliminates the uncertainty necessary for action. If we are absolutely certain everything will collapse, why strive to prevent it?

Unlike the sudden catastrophes imagined by ancient apocalyptic traditions, collapsological collapse is gradual, distributed, often imperceptible in immediate daily experience. What was once conceived as a spectacular event is now understood as an accumulative process—an “apocalypse without an apocalypse.”

Indicators of systemic exhaustion proliferate: water scarcity in expanding regions, rising mental health disorders, progressive degradation of agricultural land, institutional fatigue in established democracies, growing political polarization, social atomization… None of these alone constitutes a definitive rupture, but together they form a landscape of persistent deterioration. Modern collapse resembles less a bomb detonation than the silent advance of a chronic disease.

We inhabit a collapsing world without experiencing it as such at every moment. We cognitively adapt to deterioration, normalizing what would have been alarming decades ago. Collapse forms a constant atmosphere rather than a singular event. Like a “hyperobject,” it is too spatially and temporally distributed to be fully grasped through immediate experience.

Thus, consciousness inhabits a suspended time—a prolonged present that never fully crumbles nor offers clear possibilities for renewal. This temporal suspension corrodes modern grand narratives based on progress, without providing a new organization of historical time.

The Commercialization of Collapse

Collapsology has undergone cultural commodification. The end of the world has become a mass-media product. Apocalyptic documentaries, dystopian literature, post-collapse video games, YouTube survival channels, social media accounts meticulously tracking every new catastrophic symptom, TV series, films… The attention economy has incorporated civilizational fear as a profitable engine.

Digital algorithms, designed to maximize exposure time, systematically amplify the most unsettling scenarios, feeding a constant stream of catastrophic imagery. This mass circulation of apocalyptic representations fundamentally alters our relationship with the very idea of collapse.

By transforming collapse into a cultural commodity, we neutralize it as a mobilizing force. We turn it into spectacle, vicarious experience, entertainment. While we passionately debate whether a given extreme weather event constitutes definitive proof of climate collapse, we continue participating in the daily practices that accelerate it. The spectacularization of the end creates a distance that immunizes us against its practical urgency.

This generates a kind of cognitive schizophrenia: we recognize the gravity of converging crises, yet this knowledge rarely translates into meaningful changes in our ways of life. Media representations of collapse act as a pressure valve, relieving cognitive tension without altering the material conditions that produce it.

We live in the “age of hypocrisy”: we know too much to keep acting as we do, yet we persist while obsessively circulating knowledge about the unsustainability of our practices.

Beyond Fatalism

It seems neither viable to deny the objective gravity of converging crises nor acceptable to surrender to paralyzing fatalism. Collapsology gets many diagnostic aspects right: the world shaped by industrial modernity faces a multidimensional crisis. Yet the proper response cannot be limited to melancholic contemplation of anticipated ruins or morbid fascination with catastrophe.

Reflection on collapse must account for the multiplicity of temporalities at play: the planet’s geological time, the biological time of evolution, the accelerated time of financial markets, the electoral time of democracies, the intimate time of subjective experience… Each of these temporal registers experiences collapse differently.

What we call “collapse” is a complex of asymmetric processes. While some species vanish forever, others thrive in altered ecological niches. While certain social institutions disintegrate, unprecedented forms of community organization emerge. While some technological structures fail, others gain previously unimaginable centrality.

This temporal heterogeneity is crucial to overcoming a monolithic conception of collapse as a single, homogeneous event. What we experience is more accurately “patches of ruin”: zones where life continues under altered conditions, where destruction coexists with persistence, where irreversible loss does not preclude unforeseen possibilities.

Understanding this multiplicity helps avoid two opposite simplifications: reducing collapse to an instantaneous catastrophe or denying it entirely due to its gradual nature. We need “words to think what is happening to us”—words capable of capturing both the gravity of our situation and the possibilities still open within it.

Each era dreams the next as it sinks.

Collapsology serves an important function in dismantling dangerous illusions about the sustainability of our current civilizational model. But its greatest contribution may lie in helping us imagine what kind of life is worth living when the promises of industrial modernity have lost credibility—and what we might yet learn.

THE ETERNAL QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY

The boundaries of existence have been a constant throughout history. This longing is the driving force that has propelled civilizations, inspired masterpieces, and catalyzed scientific discoveries.

 

It was in ancient societies that the first attempts to conquer mortality took shape. In Egypt, mummification sought to preserve the body as the eternal dwelling of the ka and the ba. The pyramids stand as testaments to a culture that devoted immense resources to preparing for the afterlife, convinced that existence must continue beyond the physical threshold.

Qin Shi Huang, China’s unifier, sent expeditions to distant lands in search of mythical herbs and substances that might grant him eternal life—yet many of these emperors died ironically poisoned by the same mercury-laden compounds their alchemists claimed held the key to immortality. The famed Terracotta Army symbolizes an alternative form of perpetuity: if he could not live forever in flesh and blood, at least his memory and power would be immortalized in clay.

European, Arab, and Asian alchemists spent entire lives deciphering the secrets of matter, convinced that understanding nature would unlock the means to reverse aging and conquer death. Paracelsus, the 16th-century Swiss physician and alchemist, relentlessly pursued the alkahest, a universal solvent he believed could purify the human body of all disease and decay.

The world’s religions have offered various forms of transcendence: Christianity’s promise of eternal life after Judgment Day, Hinduism and Buddhism’s cycles of reincarnation, or ancestral rites that preserve memory in the collective consciousness. These spiritual constructs reveal humanity’s resistance to accepting the definitive end of individual awareness.

Literature has long grappled with this obsession—from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Mary Shelley’s The Mortal Immortal and Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Jorge Luis Borges’ The Immortal, Milan Kundera’s Immortality, and countless others.

The 20th Century: A Paradigm Shift

The 20th century brought a new approach to immortality. Advances in medicine and biology doubled life expectancy in many societies. Diseases once considered death sentences became treatable or even curable. This biomedical revolution fueled scientific optimism, framing death as a technical problem to be solved.

Ray Kurzweil, Google’s futurist and engineering director, popularized the concept of the singularity—a hypothetical point where exponential technological progress would enable indefinite life extension. The transhumanist movement, of which Kurzweil is a leading voice, envisions the fusion of human and machine as the next evolutionary step, transcending biological limits—including death.

From supplement cocktails to self-administered experimental therapies and radical tech implants, modern seekers of immortality are turning their bodies into living laboratories.

Biotech and the Business of Immortality

Biotech companies have tapped into this ancient yearning, channeling it into aging research. Firms like Google-backed Calico invest millions in studying cellular aging, hoping to reverse or significantly slow it. Senolytics, a field focused on clearing aged cells from the body, promises not just longer lives but healthier ones.

CRISPR gene-editing technology has revolutionized interventions in aging and cellular degeneration. Scientists like Harvard’s David Sinclair explore how epigenetic reprogramming might reverse aging by restoring function to senescent cells. Regenerative medicine, using stem cells to rebuild damaged tissues, points toward a future where lab-grown organ transplants could indefinitely extend the human body’s lifespan.

Parallel research into plasmapheresis—transferring young blood plasma to older individuals—examines whether youthful components can revitalize aged tissues, blending science with a vampiric twist. Studies on the gut microbiome’s link to longevity reveal how bacterial composition directly impacts lifespan and health in old age.

Companies like Alcor Life Extension Foundation offer cryopreservation—freezing bodies or brains at ultra-low temperatures after legal death, betting that future tech will enable revival. This gamble hinges on defining death as the irreversible loss of brain information, not just biological cessation. Yet it raises existential questions: Would a revived individual be the same person or merely a physical copy with similar memories?

Vitrification (turning tissues into a glass-like state to avoid ice damage) has improved cryonics’ technical feasibility, but doubts remain about preserving the neural structures housing consciousness and identity.

Digital Immortality

Alongside physical efforts, digital immortality emerges as a parallel frontier. Our digital footprints outlive our physical selves. AI projects aim to create “digital twins” that simulate the personalities, knowledge, and thought patterns of the deceased, allowing the living to “converse” with algorithmic versions of lost loved ones.

This renewed pursuit of immortality coincides with secularization. As religious promises of eternal life wane for many, science and technology position themselves as new sources of transcendental hope. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley, the epicenter of tech innovation, is also a hub for life-extension movements.

Here, we see the rise of what might be called techno-religions. Transhumanism, championed by thinkers like Nick Bostrom and Max More, has crafted its own cosmology—where the technological singularity replaces religious apocalypse, and transcending the biological body substitutes spiritual salvation.

Ethical and Existential Dilemmas

Yet the dream of immortality poses profound ethical, social, and existential questions:

• Psychology: Could a human psyche, evolutionarily adapted to finite cycles, endure an endless life?

• Society: How would family, inheritance, or careers function if generations overlapped indefinitely? Would creativity stagnate without generational turnover?

• Inequality: Life-extension tech would initially be accessible only to economic elites, creating a new stratification: the privileged “immortals” versus the mortal masses. This divide could spark unprecedented social tensions.

• Governance: How would societies govern citizens with unequal lifespans? Would term limits prevent immortal elites from monopolizing power? Would new legal frameworks regulate immortal marriage, contracts, or intellectual property?

• Ecology: Our systems assume generational turnover. Mass immortality would demand a radical rethink of resource use and habitable space. Elon Musk’s Mars colonization vision might reflect not just exploration but a need to accommodate extended lifespans.

• Evolution: Generational renewal ensures genetic diversity and adaptation. An immortal species might lose the flexibility that secured our evolutionary success.

Is Immortality Even Desirable?

Philosophers have long questioned whether eternal life would be a blessing or a curse. Bernard Williams, in The Makropulos Case, argued that immortality would inevitably lead to unbearable tedium as novel experiences dwindled. Without evolving desires or unfinished projects, existence could devolve into existential indifference.

Martha Nussbaum suggests that a good life isn’t necessarily endless but one where we fully develop our human capacities. Finitude, she posits, lends preciousness to our experiences and relationships.

The immortality quest reveals humanity’s capacity to dream beyond apparent limits—but also our struggle to accept life’s fundamental conditions. Perhaps it’s less about escaping death than about making life meaningful. From pharaonic monuments to alchemical elixirs, timeless literature to cutting-edge biotech, the impulse remains the same: to leave a mark, to transcend, to declare that our existence matters enough to endure.