Is It Manly to Think Like a Machine?
Or Is the Industrial Age Finally Coming to an End?
The graph above shows the rise, and fall, of “rationality words” (such as data and system), alongside the resurgence of “intuition words” (such as wisdom and truth) since 1850. Has feminism brought about this collapse of rationality? Or does it mean that men themselves are voluntarily returning to the thinking of their more intuitive forefathers?
In any case, this rise and fall of rational thinking coincides with the late Industrial Age and with the advent of the Information Age. For about one-and-a-half century, people (though mostly men) have been pursuing rational careers in mechanical engineering, scientific research, computer coding, civil engineering, physics teaching jobs, or doing other tasks involving machine-like thought that require little feeling or imagination.
When I say “feeling”, I obviously don’t mean sitting in a corner crying and talking about how sensitive your skin is. With feeling, I mean a man’s rush of adrenaline he gets from killing a deer with a spear.
Unlike the hunt, ‘rational’ jobs do not require us to have a high-level consciousness. In order to be a better programmer, it is best to switch off one’s human side. When computer programmers live in the “zone”, as we call it, meaning when we aren’t being interrupted by annoying social chitchat or phone calls, we disconnect from the human world around us. We enter a world of pure logic and calculation.
When coders are in the zone, they are also trapped inside a world of artificially induced autism.
Each time we are interrupted by a colleague asking us how our weekends have been, we are abruptly pulled out of the zone. Then, we must spend an hour slowly getting back into it. This is why the best computer programmers never answer their phones and rarely speak to colleagues. They prefer working on their own. In order for web developers and coders to be successful, they cannot be very social.
Many jobs in the modern economy are like that. These jobs have enslaved our minds, made our bodies subservient to the machinery we serve. They require no ‘thinking’ in the ordinary sense, rather, they require only ‘calculation’ and data and logic. The focus on the mechanical side of the world easily overlooks the why of it all. Why are we doing this?
I know because I’ve been such a man. And from experience, I can say that being a talented computer programmer felt like being a robot. It is an extremely unpleasant feeling to have to shut out one’s social life in order to get the work done. For example, after drowning myself in code for weeks or months on end to finish a project, I would suffer noticeably diminished social skills afterward.
It turns out, being socially outgoing — “human” — requires habitual practice. Neglecting your human side harms one’s ability to be social. It harms your emotional household. The extreme isolation of rational jobs thus harms your ability to find love and belonging.
This is what makes the people we call scientists appear so cold, distant, and ruthless. They have lost their humanity. Their work suppresses their souls.
And that makes me question: is rational thought really a male trait? Is rationalism a European tradition at all? Or was rationalism rather a pathology induced by the Industrial Age, i.e., by the machinations of empires and the need for highly predictable inputs and outputs?
Most people in rational jobs haven’t exactly evolved for such jobs (yet). And that means after decades of overly focusing on such “work that deadens the mind,” both men and women have decided it’s been enough. When the economy requires so many men (and some women) to think the way autistics naturally do, we aren’t making progress, we are running backward.
People, after all, are not mechanical doings. We are human beings. I foresee an age of wisdom and imagination ahead of us, and therewith, the revival of a religious spirit. Europeans, so enslaved by machines, may finally cease being levers and gears.