circularity of madness

New technologies – the other day I bought a new phone card – life without such gadgets as mobile phone with connection to the world wrapping weirdness seems to be barely possible even if there is the internet-connection in the office. Arriving at about 17:00 it took about 1.5 hours.

Oh yes, fortunately I did not come during peak hours …

Still, time enough to wonder how such technology initialises a momentum of a certain …, well perhaps we can speak of “circularity of madness”:

First we are mad to avail of the new junk; and having it, we are becoming mad, being busy with maintaining it … installing the upgrades and updates; adding the credit card to an account, adding the account to the social network, installing the security apps, going back to website of the bank in order to fix a bug that actually occurs only with this bank … And then being told that this card would not be accepted anyway ….

It reminds me (for good reasons I guess) of the often quoted passage from Marx’ Capital

Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.

(T.J. Dunning, l. c. [Trades Union and Strikes], pp. 35, 36; in: Marx, Karl, 1867: Capital; Volume I; in: Karl Marx/Frederick Engels. Collected Works; Volume 35; London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1996: 748, footnote 2)

In fact we can make out that all this is part and parcel of the capital circle: the need to continue, even accelerate – like a bike, falling as soon as we stop cycling … 

Add my name to it, say it is Herrmann’s circularity of madness, named after the person who first formulated it … , it may make me famous one day, having found one of the diseases of our times … (mind, not being founder …)