Bartleby The Scrivener Quotes

“In this way, in a sociality of accelerated circulation but low sign-value, in a game of interaction with neither questions nor responses, power and individuals have no purchase on each other, have no political relationship with each other.
This is the price to be paid for flight into the abstraction of the Virtual. But is it a loss?
It seems that it is, today, a collective choice. Perhaps we would rather be dominated by machines than by people, perhaps we prefer an impersonal, automatic domination, a domination by calculation, to domination by a human will? Not to be subject to an alien will, but to an integral calculus that absorbs us and absolves us of any personal responsibility. A minimal definition of freedom perhaps, and one which more resembles a relinquishment, a disillusioned indifference, a mental economy akin to that of machines, which are themselves also entirely irresponsible and which we are coming increasingly to resemble.
This behaviour is not exactly a choice, nor is it a rejection: there is no longer sufficient energy for that. It is a behaviour based on an uncertain negative preference.
Do you want to be free? I would prefer not to ...
Do you want to be represented? I would prefer not to ...
Do you want to be responsible for your own life? I would prefer not to ...
Do you want to be totally happy? I would prefer not to.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact