CHARDON, Ohio -- Define a human. A simple request, a difficult task. Humans are accepted to be living beings that think, ambulate, feel, attend, organize, establish a social order, have a religious sense, socialize, create tools, remember, understand, create art, reproduce, verbalize and are self-aware. These are human tools of evolution. With these tools, we have created the concept of freedom.
Define “The Borg.” The TV series Star Trek depicts The Borg as an alien life form driven to assimilate other life forms, possessing a hive mentality, seeking to acquire the “biological and technological distinctiveness” of those whom they colonize.
The Borg also thinks, ambulates, attends, organizes, establishes a social order, creates tools, remembers, reproduces, evolves, verbalizes and is self-aware. These are The Borg’s weapons of assimilation. The concept of freedom is unknown to The Borg.
Their collective mind, the Borg Queen, does not tolerate any free or creative expression. This cybernetic species sends out probes and drones, not to transmit freedom, not to respect “The Prime Directive,” but to establish conformity and uniformity by assimilation.
Are we assimilating into The Borg? Because evolution never rests and because there are social, political, digital and corporate market forces that are dramatically rewriting the definition of “human,” humans may already be transitioning to The Borg.
Sheldon Firem is a retired school psychologist in Geauga County.
What are the forces that are assimilating humans into The Borg and limiting our freedom? The corporate manipulation of marketplace choices, ubiquitous computers, the lure of ads and the relatively new worldview philosophy of consumerism.
1. Corporations increasingly control the choices individuals make. Consumer choice is no longer the default setting. Legislation, policies, apps, data analytics, biometric surveillance, closed-circuit surveillance, artificial intelligence, worms, trackers, viruses, spam, algorithms and corporate modes of communication manipulate our choices by limiting available alternatives. Humans are often not even aware that alternatives exist. The frightening modern mutation is that consumption has been married to technology. The message of these corporate drones and probes? “Consume.” Ergo, “Fulfillment Centers.” Our new national holidays are Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Amazon Prime Day. Our old traditional holidays are memorialized with credit cards. “President’s Day” is a pretense for profit.
2. The computer, and its handmaiden, the cellphone, has linked all human minds together within an irresistible force field of consumerism and conformity that proffers an apparent plethora of enticing objects and services. In reality, they simplify our hitherto complex and diverse culture into a unidimensional consumer culture. Our cellphone has become our cell, our beehive 2.0.
3. Millions of ubiquitous political ads, corporate ads and websites have convinced humans that it is better to share all of their private personal, financial, political, religious and economic information in exchange for the opportunity to download, consume or purchase something. Humans are relinquishing their privacy and confidentiality for a rewards card, personal freedom for free shipping.
4. Consumption substitutes for and is accepted widely as the goal and repository of human happiness. Direct human connectivity and the human search for the elusive meaning of life are no longer primary sources of happiness. Resistance to the need to consume may be futile because humans have already willingly accepted that consumption is the purpose of life. Consumption is our existential “fix,” our new American lifestyle.
The human concepts of freedom and privacy have been given over to The Borg’s will.
Are we becoming The Borg? Assimilation has begun.
Corporate and political market-place manipulations, computer conformity, ubiquitous ads, and the worldview that consumerism is our new faith are the probes and drones of The Borg.
The Borg is an alien, evolutionary life form at war with the concept of human freedom. We are being assimilated into a uniform, conforming, global hive wherein we workers exist to support the corporate-digital queen. The Borg Queen’s gift to us is sweet consumerism.
Sheldon Firem is a retired school psychologist and former history teacher living in Chardon, Ohio.
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