The Atrophy of Discretion: A Plea for Human Agency

Talk by Professor Hartmut Rosa, University of Jena.

Have you ever noticed that our mode of interaction with the world is changing rapidly and fundamentally? It is changing in ways we hardly notice. Whether it is about cooking, driving a car, playing with Lego brics, writing or grading an exam paper, casting a political decision, refereeing a football match, or watching the stars: Up to very recently, being a human agent meant finding oneself in a situation which requires discretion, judgment, a good eye and various forms of sensitivity based on experience.

But in our contemporary world, more and more of these activities no longer call for action of this sort, but require the mere execution of rules, algorithms, forms or instructions based on sophisticated technology. In this way, we are no longer agents placed within situations which trigger our emotions and thus call for action. Instead, we find ourselves placed vis-à-vis precisely defined constellations which require the execution of rules or instructions while making emotions irrelevant or even dysfunctional.

Hence, the ‘organic’ link between action and emotion is severed. Most of our actions are no longer expressive of who we are: We stand opposed to the world and to our own activities instead of being embedded in them. This has the most serious consequences for the way we live and feel about the world. The lecture seeks to explore how this shift in the mode of action might explain the rise of burnout and feelings of utter loneliness, but also the rise of political rage and right-wing populism. It will also investigate the driving motors of the shift and explore ways of counterbalancing it.