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.
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.
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.
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
Dogma is rigidity--it's anti life.
Looking forward to listening to this conversation between my two friends and fellow truth warriors 🙌
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.
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!
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.
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.
I’m sending this around today: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/07/november-7-as-victims-of-communism-day-2022/
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 ...