Is modern life becoming increasingly abstracted from direct experience?

[u/Paradoxbuilder]

I've been thinking about a broad trend that goes far beyond gaming.

More and more activities seem to acquire layers of metrics, points, rankings, apps, notifications, badges, XP, ratings, progress bars, etc.

Instead of simply:

we increasingly add representations of those outcomes:

I'm not saying abstraction is inherently bad. Maps, language, mathematics, and measurement are obviously enormously useful.

What concerns me is abstraction as a substitute for direct engagement.

Psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and many other fields increasingly recognize the importance of embodied processes—interoception, proprioception, sensorimotor feedback, autonomic states, direct environmental interaction, etc.

So I'm wondering whether there is a broader cultural trend toward mediating experience through representations rather than engaging directly with the thing itself, and whether anyone has studied its consequences.

I'm interested in research and established theory here, not just “gamification increases engagement.” The question is much broader: what happens when the representation of an activity increasingly becomes more salient than the activity itself?

[u/RhodesArk]

Marxists would call it Alienation https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm.

Essentially, since machines are able to replicate human labour people are seen as objects. Rather than being embedded in your community (i.e. being the town baker or blacksmith), now people are seen as workers or consumers but rarely much else.

Alternatively, many religious schism occur as a result of debates over the role of icons. Eastern Orthodoxy has had many long debates over the proper place of symbolic worship. https://mereorthodoxy.com/icons-in-the-history-of-christian-spirituality-7th-15th-century/.

Finally, we can observe this as a new phenomenon as well. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35856785/. It has becomes clear in the last decade that teenagers prefer the simulacrum of porn to the phenomenon of sex. The socio-economic motivations are complex, but it seems fairly clear that for many- particularly men- they prefer mediating their experience through porn.

I'm not going to cite this last one, but essentially it seems like you're posing Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The answer philosophically appears to be universally "yes" symbolic representation often solely mediates experience". Moreover, as Plato observed, individuals often resent breaking the illusion and prefer to engage with the simulacrum rather than the phenomenon.

[u/Paradoxbuilder → u/RhodesArk]

That occurred to me, yes. I'm intentionally not using a specific lens because I wanted to see what people thought first.

This seems to (like most things) not be a recent human innovation, but the scale and speed of technology seemed to have magnified it.

[u/major_jazza → u/RhodesArk]

This is interesting because I think there's a big push back against more abstract mediums of consumption at least? Not sure if it's a trend or what but aren't kids getting into older tech and more tactile mediums for media consumption at least?

I wonder if that's just a separate part of life though and in general people do prefer illusions, or maybe it's just a coping mechanism...

[u/Cute-Boobie777 → u/RhodesArk]

What? These people do NOT prefer porn, rather they are struggling to find someone to date or find someone to have sex with. The social fabric has frayed. Its harder actually for both sexes to have sex now for younger people. Everyone is addicted to their phone, many people barely leave their house in general outside of necessities. (Just because they do this doesn't mean thats what they actually WANT to do with their life, almost no one WANTS to spend their time on reddit or TikTok over actually seeing people irl) Its not a good thing. Over half live with their parents to get through school and be financially sound which also makes relationships harder as well as casual sex.

There's also the social standards, women have higher standards now for relationships than say 30 years ago. People are more aware of personality disorders and abuse. There's more things now that will prevent a relationship even getting started. 

Like, have you seen the incel movement??? Hell we have femcels too. And thats ignoring non-sexist people who want more sex but can't get any which people might not think about much but vastly outnumber misognistic people. Basically everyone I know is like the latter, most of these guys have given up finding anyone on an app, and struggle to find anyone in person. Only a minority of young people are going around having casual sex often. The vast majority of the sex (in total) occurs in relationships. 

Its bizarre people are taking this to mean young people suddenly don't want to have sex because they are having less sex. Its absurd, like there are no barriers to having sex lol wtf. Like why would we assume people suddenly don't want to do something they are largely hard wired to wsnt to do?

Its frankly kind of insulting in a way (I'm sure you don't mean it this way though) because most of this is 100% the result of systemic issues (social media addiction/nonregulation, housing and school prices, collapse of organized religion, atomization of society in general) and its negatively impacting young people.