Excellent interview! In "Dune," sci-fi writer Frank Herbert predicted a Great Revolt of humans rising up and destroying computerized technology. While it was far-fetched in 1965, it makes a lot more sense today.
Let me restate this after deleting my last comment: What does the term "develop" entail? A Subject/Object relationship perhaps. Who has the agency? Who/what is the object? Brilliant point.
Feb 12, 2023·edited Feb 12, 2023Liked by Tessa Lena
Hey Tessa, I hope you and those close to you are doing well and you are finding ways to enjoy life despite all the technocratic insanity.
I was reading a book called "Bright Green Lies" yesterday and came across something that made me think of you and your usage of the word "machine" in your writing, here is the quote:
"We are long out of time to break through our cultural denial about this fact: No technology is neutral. “An industrial society,” writes social critic Kirkpatrick Sale, “has its own inevitable logic, simply because its needs and values are determined by its technology…. [T]he artifacts are not something added on, like a coat of paint or a caboose; they are basic, central, the revelation of its heart and mind.” Industrial technics produce speed, efficiency, ease, uniformity, fungibility, and centralization. The word for that is “machine.” Having declared the cosmos lifeless, industrial humans are now transforming the biosphere into the technosphere, a dead world of our own artifacts that life as a whole may not survive. “To maximize energy, speed, or automation,” writes Mumford, “without reference to the complex conditions that sustain organic life, have become ends in themselves.” Mumford named this drive and its social processes the “megamachine.” Sale calls it “the industrial regime.” Its existence as a system is barely acknowledged, despite its near total domination of both human affairs and the planet. As Sale points out, “The industrial regime hardly cares which cadres run the state as long as they understand the kind of duties expected of them. It is remarkably protean in that way, for it can accommodate itself to almost any national system—Marxist Russia, capitalist Japan, China under a vicious dictator, Singapore under a benevolent one, messy and riven India, tidy and cohesive Norway, Jewish Israel, Moslem Egypt—and in return asks only that its priorities dominate, its markets rule, its values penetrate, and its interests be defended.”
Thinking about history, societal or technological, in terms of progress is one of the major problems (probably deriving partly from our own mortality and partly from those religions who use a linear model of creation-destruction) since history isn't a progression of events but a state: flux or change.
Ask yourself this: what is different today compared to ancient Rome?
Plastics, modern medicine, electricity, and engines instead of muscle power, wind and water. That's it.
We delude ourselves looking at the marvels of machinery and the technological terrors we've created, and think ourselves unique and further along an imaginary and arbitrary scale of progression ending in pure fantasy about the perfect society just beyond the horizon, or just beyond everyone converting to the one true faith, or the completion of the next five-year plan.
I don't necessarily agree with Paul, that we should live in a nostalgic view of the world, as much as I love Ruskin. Technology and development, defined by how we do things, is more important than living in a static/nostalgic world. In other words, humans are creative--of necessity--it's how we are defined. It's why we do this or that, that matters. I'm skeptical of nostalgic ideas of some kind of false stasis. Nostalgia is as dangerous as wanton capitalism, IMHO.
I didn't get a feeling that Paul promoted a static world. I think it's more about being acutely aware of the price. For example, we benefit from trains but most people don't want to live right next to the tracks, or have new tracks build right next to their house. Who gets to be thrown under the bus then in the name of progress? Etc.
Agreed. It's always contextual and always at different scales. I react to sensibilities that romanticize the world as an "image" (not Paul, he is definitely more sophisticated, I know) because this presumes the world can remain frozen in time. Managing change/adaptation in a heathy way is our challenge, as humans. The crisis of humanity, that we are living though right now, makes this clear. Your posts touch on this again and again, which is why I appreciate your site. Thanks again for the hope! (Isn't hope the prime motivator in nature?)
klaus schwab... take out... edited... I cant take out ...
Tessa so you can feel better, me, myself I dont have anyone to talk to, and to make a 'hit', I think bill gates is a better top40.
But I understand your 'curve' of thought, but society has an education problem and it's going to take a long time to be better, while things going worst. I've said this cause Im alone, so Im desperate by the day.
Dear John, sending you hugs. Our human family will probably take a very long time to get better in a massive way but each of us can take a lot faster... and you are never, never really alone!!! We have a lot of help in the mysterious realm. Prayer is a very real thing!!! And it doesn't have to be this religion or that religion, just sincere and from the heart!
Praying and meditation ain't bad, but getting out of Lisbon and Portugal in a wider range it's the better healing I could afford right now, move myself to 'insider' Spain living with a Catalonian 'shared' community is the best thing that I'll aspire, right now. Leave the city, cause in the near future will be nothing to buy, and I'm talking New York too, is where you are, isn't it?!
💜❤️🩹 me too! Even though I have family, they don't like what I'm doing or what I say. I'm alone, even though I'm surrounded by family. That's how it's always been. That's why I had to learn to enjoy me, and my alone time. It may not be your type of music, but they lyrics fit with what I'm explaining!
Love, Becka, I'm exactly in the same boat as you, cant survive economically so Im living in my parents own house, that they've afford it in the days of the Middle Class, when people had decent salary, but it's a cuckoo's nest, and theyre being fed by MSM, so they even support ukrainian nazis. It's me, my books, music and meditation, I've gone total hikikomori..
Gotta mary a austrian princess, to release me from the pumpkin.
Thank you! And unfortunately, the Bolshevik revolution was paid for in large by big time capitalists, in order to create a captive market and a new type of colony of sorts. They are all in this together, the aspiring masters, and the people pay the price!!
Slightly off topic but relevant to the tyrrany surrounding covid shots...You can save yourself and loved ones from cancer using fenbendazole. Read the case reports here. Find your cancer of interest and see how it was eradicated with cheap, OTC, safe, readily available fenbendazole
"Extended reality is really diminished reality."
BRILLIANT.
Thank you Polistra!!
Excellent interview! In "Dune," sci-fi writer Frank Herbert predicted a Great Revolt of humans rising up and destroying computerized technology. While it was far-fetched in 1965, it makes a lot more sense today.
https://dystopianliving.substack.com/p/dune-predicted-a-war-against-computers
Thank you Lex!! And it's a very interesting article, thank you for sharing!!
Dogma is rigidity--it's anti life.
Looking forward to listening to this conversation between my two friends and fellow truth warriors 🙌
Thank you dear Margaret Anna!
Let me restate this after deleting my last comment: What does the term "develop" entail? A Subject/Object relationship perhaps. Who has the agency? Who/what is the object? Brilliant point.
Thank you VJ!
I worried that my text might sound sarcastic. It isn't. Thanks for these thoughtful interviews and posts.
Hey Tessa, I hope you and those close to you are doing well and you are finding ways to enjoy life despite all the technocratic insanity.
I was reading a book called "Bright Green Lies" yesterday and came across something that made me think of you and your usage of the word "machine" in your writing, here is the quote:
"We are long out of time to break through our cultural denial about this fact: No technology is neutral. “An industrial society,” writes social critic Kirkpatrick Sale, “has its own inevitable logic, simply because its needs and values are determined by its technology…. [T]he artifacts are not something added on, like a coat of paint or a caboose; they are basic, central, the revelation of its heart and mind.” Industrial technics produce speed, efficiency, ease, uniformity, fungibility, and centralization. The word for that is “machine.” Having declared the cosmos lifeless, industrial humans are now transforming the biosphere into the technosphere, a dead world of our own artifacts that life as a whole may not survive. “To maximize energy, speed, or automation,” writes Mumford, “without reference to the complex conditions that sustain organic life, have become ends in themselves.” Mumford named this drive and its social processes the “megamachine.” Sale calls it “the industrial regime.” Its existence as a system is barely acknowledged, despite its near total domination of both human affairs and the planet. As Sale points out, “The industrial regime hardly cares which cadres run the state as long as they understand the kind of duties expected of them. It is remarkably protean in that way, for it can accommodate itself to almost any national system—Marxist Russia, capitalist Japan, China under a vicious dictator, Singapore under a benevolent one, messy and riven India, tidy and cohesive Norway, Jewish Israel, Moslem Egypt—and in return asks only that its priorities dominate, its markets rule, its values penetrate, and its interests be defended.”
If you are interested in further context on that excerpt, you can find it starting on page 40 of this PDF copy of the book https://archive.org/details/derrick-jensen-bright-green-lies-monkfish-book-publishing-company-2021
Bravo! Great listening. Thanks Tessa!
Thank you Kelly!!
Thinking about history, societal or technological, in terms of progress is one of the major problems (probably deriving partly from our own mortality and partly from those religions who use a linear model of creation-destruction) since history isn't a progression of events but a state: flux or change.
Ask yourself this: what is different today compared to ancient Rome?
Plastics, modern medicine, electricity, and engines instead of muscle power, wind and water. That's it.
We delude ourselves looking at the marvels of machinery and the technological terrors we've created, and think ourselves unique and further along an imaginary and arbitrary scale of progression ending in pure fantasy about the perfect society just beyond the horizon, or just beyond everyone converting to the one true faith, or the completion of the next five-year plan.
I don't necessarily agree with Paul, that we should live in a nostalgic view of the world, as much as I love Ruskin. Technology and development, defined by how we do things, is more important than living in a static/nostalgic world. In other words, humans are creative--of necessity--it's how we are defined. It's why we do this or that, that matters. I'm skeptical of nostalgic ideas of some kind of false stasis. Nostalgia is as dangerous as wanton capitalism, IMHO.
I didn't get a feeling that Paul promoted a static world. I think it's more about being acutely aware of the price. For example, we benefit from trains but most people don't want to live right next to the tracks, or have new tracks build right next to their house. Who gets to be thrown under the bus then in the name of progress? Etc.
Agreed. It's always contextual and always at different scales. I react to sensibilities that romanticize the world as an "image" (not Paul, he is definitely more sophisticated, I know) because this presumes the world can remain frozen in time. Managing change/adaptation in a heathy way is our challenge, as humans. The crisis of humanity, that we are living though right now, makes this clear. Your posts touch on this again and again, which is why I appreciate your site. Thanks again for the hope! (Isn't hope the prime motivator in nature?)
klaus schwab... take out... edited... I cant take out ...
Tessa so you can feel better, me, myself I dont have anyone to talk to, and to make a 'hit', I think bill gates is a better top40.
But I understand your 'curve' of thought, but society has an education problem and it's going to take a long time to be better, while things going worst. I've said this cause Im alone, so Im desperate by the day.
Dear John, sending you hugs. Our human family will probably take a very long time to get better in a massive way but each of us can take a lot faster... and you are never, never really alone!!! We have a lot of help in the mysterious realm. Prayer is a very real thing!!! And it doesn't have to be this religion or that religion, just sincere and from the heart!
"And it doesn't have to be this religion or that religion"
So true. We need a spiritual/reflexive transcendence. In other words, work our way out of our own creations, as useful as they may have been to us.
While respecting what, in our hearts, remains true.
Praying and meditation ain't bad, but getting out of Lisbon and Portugal in a wider range it's the better healing I could afford right now, move myself to 'insider' Spain living with a Catalonian 'shared' community is the best thing that I'll aspire, right now. Leave the city, cause in the near future will be nothing to buy, and I'm talking New York too, is where you are, isn't it?!
💜❤️🩹 me too! Even though I have family, they don't like what I'm doing or what I say. I'm alone, even though I'm surrounded by family. That's how it's always been. That's why I had to learn to enjoy me, and my alone time. It may not be your type of music, but they lyrics fit with what I'm explaining!
https://youtu.be/DsjIvWHNraI
Sending you hugs, too. Becka!!!
Thank you Tessa!
Love, Becka, I'm exactly in the same boat as you, cant survive economically so Im living in my parents own house, that they've afford it in the days of the Middle Class, when people had decent salary, but it's a cuckoo's nest, and theyre being fed by MSM, so they even support ukrainian nazis. It's me, my books, music and meditation, I've gone total hikikomori..
Gotta mary a austrian princess, to release me from the pumpkin.
I’m sending this around today: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/07/november-7-as-victims-of-communism-day-2022/
Thank you! And unfortunately, the Bolshevik revolution was paid for in large by big time capitalists, in order to create a captive market and a new type of colony of sorts. They are all in this together, the aspiring masters, and the people pay the price!!
I'm curious. What do you think of the work of Matthew Erhet and the Rising Tide Foundation, from Canada. Yes/No?
Slightly off topic but relevant to the tyrrany surrounding covid shots...You can save yourself and loved ones from cancer using fenbendazole. Read the case reports here. Find your cancer of interest and see how it was eradicated with cheap, OTC, safe, readily available fenbendazole
https://fenbendazole.substack.com
if anybody here is spiritually inclined ...