There is a human-induced process of equalization at work on earth: transformation of difference into sameness.

From the point of view of the digital masters, there is the belief that it is possible to impose such dissolution of specificity on others without affecting by retroaction the master’s singularity. The idea of the Digital Voodoo is that once beings are transformed into standard bits, they are more manipulable and less recalcitrant, and that, as equalization propagates, it is however possible for the happy few to remain aloof from the dissolution of people into data (which I called “datasein” in Being and Neonness.

The ruse of the digital masters is that they can now discretise all beings into bits without appearing to physically affect their integrity. We help you generate a digital avatar of yourself, and when we manipulate the avatar, it affects you because you are connecting yourself to it every day. Spooky action at a distance.

Many people believe they are at least partly on the side of the master, that they can for the most and for what counts control the process, that they are not ultimately the victim of equalization. This might be partially true, for now, but only if one knows what counts for oneself.

The question is: can the equalization program work? Or is there a singularity feature in each being that prevents a complete discretization? Are we more than data? Can we be free in a world of increasing technological determinism?

It takes a great deal of courage to be free. One needs to be ready for the possibility of losing everything in the process of actualising one’s autonomy. Most people are not ready. We are controlled and limited in innumerable ways, partly by norms, partly by alienated beliefs, but also by our own desires or sense of responsibility. Only an immense faith can be stronger than fear and dependence.

If people new that life was like a videogame with the unlimited possibility to restart the game afresh once you die, then they would take many risks. Death would be a daily sport and after a while an untraumatic event. The fact is that many people believe they only have one life, and they hold on to it at all cost, anxious of the Game Over sentence.

The political question that answers the reductive process of equalization described above is: can we equalize freedom? Can we produce autonomy and freedom faster than we produce dependence and alienation? And for whom?

Given the current status of individualism, we might expect the happy few to conquer autonomy for themselves while capitalising on the lack of autonomy of others. This is the story of the world.

A world in which all beings would be fully free could look like the above-mentioned deadly videogame, unless there is something that limits people’s will to competitive power. For example, a gratitude for being without the need to constantly expand one’s territory, or better, the understanding of what expansion really means.

If expansion means a competitive game with winners and losers, then digital equalization rhymes with real inequality. If expansion means more participative and joyous understanding, then it might be possible to counter the expansion of digital control.

This can not mean that one should want nothing, in Stoic fashion. This rather means, perhaps in Nietzschean manner, that one should want what is. But not the amor fati of renunciation. Not what is in the sense of the phenomena that are, but what deeply is, the noumenon, the essence of the universe.

This is the motto of freedom I propose to your reflection: BECOME THE NOUMENON.

For me the noumenon is the Creal, but you are free to search for your own vision and feeling of the noumenon: that process of searching itself, if perseverant, will protect you.