The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
- Written by Divya Jyoti, Lecturer in Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University
Can you cook your way to stardom from a small kitchen in a tiny apartment? The answer, today, is a resounding ‘yes’. Look for a recipe, make a TikTok reel of yourself cooking, and unleash unlimited possibilities for public recognition. TikTok, as one New York Times article[1] puts it, is the “fastest way on earth to become a food star”.
Specialist consultants[2] and even degree courses[3] are now dedicated[4] to helping people become influencers on social media. Clearly such jobs have only been made possible by technological progress. But what kind of work is this? How might we understand this overwhelming desire for self-presentation? Is it of value?
Such questions point to even more fundamental ones, such as what it means to be human, what it means to be free, and whether work is a form of bondage or an essential condition of freedom.
Hannah Arendt[5], the German-American philosopher and political theorist, explored precisely such issues in her book, The Human Condition[6] (1958). Considered her magnum opus, it remains one of the key texts of the 20th century investigating the relationship humans have with each other and the world.
Mass consumption had already taken hold by the time Arendt was writing in the 1950s.
INTERFOTO/Alamy[10]
Constantly busy with ourselves, we have become incapable[11] of considered conversations and actions concerning the things we depend upon – namely, preserving the Earth and a thoughtful collective humanity. Lost in the mirrors of our smartphones, our incapacity to think only gets worse.
She refers to the Earth as “the very quintessence of the human condition”, given that “earthly nature, for all we know, may be unique in the universe in providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice”.
If Arendt were around today (she died in 1975), she would perhaps argue that TikTok stardom is pointing to what she describes in her book as the “most sterile passivity history has ever known”, lived by “thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible”.
For this problem, she offers no easy solution. She calls on us to do the most fundamental thing that makes us human: “What I propose… is very simple”, she writes. “It is nothing more than to think what we are doing.”
It is in thinking about everything that pertains to concrete human experience that we secure our own individual agency and sense of existence. It’s the case for pausing when we are just about to post yet again on social media, to not seek external validation to simply cook an omelette. Maybe if we reflected more on how technology has robbed us, we would begin to find a better way forward.
References^ New York Times article (www.nytimes.com)^ Specialist consultants (jasonfalls.com)^ degree courses (www.bbc.co.uk)^ now dedicated (iss.duke.edu)^ Hannah Arendt (plato.stanford.edu)^ The Human Condition (press.uchicago.edu)^ new series (theconversation.com)^ Sputnik (www.nasa.gov)^ Copernicus’s realisation (en.wikipedia.org)^ INTERFOTO/Alamy (www.alamy.com)^ become incapable (www.skygroup.sky)
