Healing, not optimization, is the operative goal for social bodies
Evidence
An individual body can be healed, and it can become healthy. But it can’t necessarily be optimized; it’s not a machine, after all. I think the same holds true for the social body. Recalling Frazier’s exclamation in Walden Two that humanity is only 1 percent as productive as it could be (productive of what?), we might ask what goal manifest dismantling has to offer in place of the North Star of productivity. Beyond the vague cyclicality of what Purdy calls “going on living,” can there be teleology without a telos? — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 667
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- QUESTION: ‘Can there be teleology without a telos?’ — the open question is worth chasing through Cuomo’s answer in the next section; her resolution carries the book’s thesis.
- DEEPTHINKING: The health/optimization distinction plus the productivity question is arguably the sharpest statement of her target against the productivity North Star.