The Paradox of Control

But in Rosa’s view, this “creeping reorganization” has, in the 21st century, “become newly radicalized, not least as a result of the technological possibilities unleashed by digitization and by the demands for optimization and growth produced by financial market capitalism and unbridled competition.” 

Consider, by way of example, something as prosaic as an encounter with another person. Such an encounter will be resonant only when we offer ourselves to the encounter in such a way that we can be affected or moved by the other person and when we, in turn, can respond in kind to this call. As Illich might say, it is a willingness to be surprised by... See more

What Rosa calls resonance is a way of relating to the world such that we are open to being affected by it, can respond to its “call,” and then both transform and be transformed by it—adaptive transformation as opposed to mere appropriation. “The basic mode of vibrant human existence,” Rosa explains, “consists not in exerting control over things but... See more

In other words, the more we seek to control the world, the more it will fail to speak to us, and, consequently the more alienated and dissatisfied we will feel. I might even put it this way: Rosa aims to show that how we set about to find meaning, purpose, or happiness more or less guarantees that we will never find any of them. The rest of the boo... See more

**Note:** This seems true, but is it a bad thing? Alternative would be stasis“What generates this will to escalation,” he explains, “is not the promise of improvement in our quality of life, but the unbridled threat that we will lose what we have already attained.” “The game of escalation,” Rosa argues, “is perpetuated not by a lust for more, but b... See more

Rosa argues, as we’ve seen, that whatever is wholly within our control we experience as inert and mute. As a result, the farther we extend the imperative to control the world, the more the world will fail to resonate, the more it falls silent, leaving us alienated from it, and to the degree that we come to know ourselves through our relation to a r... See more

“It’s convenience, and the way convenience is currently created by tech companies and accepted by most of us,” Horgan argued, “that is key to why we’ve ended up living in a world we all chose, but that nobody seems to want.”

Perhaps the most valuable part of the book, in my view, commences at this point in the argument when Rosa describes the alternative of relating to the world as a point of aggression to be mastered, managed, and controlled. This alternative mode of relation Rosa calls resonance.

From here, Rosa lays out what he identifies as the four dimensions of controllability:making the world visible, knowable, expanding our knowledge of itmaking the world physically reachable or accessiblemaking the world manageablemaking the world useful