Mark Doty Artificial

As we progress in technological advancements, we become more heavily reliant on technology and lose our sense of nature. In today’s modern, tech-savvy society, the internet assists us with most of our informational demands/needs. Social media presence isn’t an accurate portrayal of who people really are. People can make themselves appear however they please as they can selectively choose what to display for the public. Because of this, one may have a preconceived image of a person based off of their social media that can be completely different from who the person truly is in real life. This concept ties to Walker Percy’s idea of the symbolic complex. With having images of Paris or the Grand Canyon only a click away as a Google
We spend so much time on social media that we begin to see the world through the screen of our phones rather than the lens of our own eyes. People experience the entire thrill through a fractured prism of preconceived notions, constructed by digital imagery, second hand experiences, and other’s opinions. I see technology as efficient but it makes us lazy and less intelligent.
In his essay, “Artificial,” Mark Doty states that in this society, one’s natural state has become obsolete. He believes that new forms of technology (such as music streaming, digital beauty, the ability to replicate texts and songs) are more detrimental than good. He believes that these technologies have our perceptions of the world skewed and we see things as “artificial” hence the title of the essay. Is technology setting us back and if so, how could we
He makes an argument about how having a pre perceived idea about something can create a “symbolic complex” in one’s mind, which inevitably causes them to lose the true meaning behind it. The symbolic complex is caused by outside sources influencing opinions. When people succumb to the symbolic complex, they no longer have the ability to make decisions for themselves. Percy argues that in order to understand something, one must have their own experience of it. John Berger’s essay, “Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible” completes Percy’s idea of the “symbolic complex”. In his essay, Berger focuses on the apparent versus the existent. He argues that we have lost our sense of “necessity”. To recover from the symbolic complex, people should stay away from the apparent (what is given from tour guides, advertisements, pictures and videos on social media), which gives a false sense of what they want to experience. By avoiding the apparent, people will have their own true experiences and see existing things more clearly. A good example of the symbolic complex is Yelp. Yelp is an app that people go to to read up on reviews on places. However, by reading about other people’s experiences at a specific restaurant, it warps people’s views and gives them expectations on a similar experience to others although their experience at the restaurant may be completely different.