21 December 2012

Seneca on becoming mere appendages

Idem evenit magnorum dominis patrimoniorum: accessiones illorum et appendices sunt. Epistulae ad Lucilium LXXXVII

"The same happens to the owners of great estates: they are their accessories and appendages."

In the Modern Age this would be called inversion of subject and object. Cf. Marx on the fetishism of reified value through which we supposed human subjects become mere appendages of its movement as capital.

Are we today becoming the appendages and accessories to the bit-string torrents incessantly coursing through the ever more pervasive and invasive cyberworld?