So many excellent thought provoking ideas here and so much of life we could apply it to, but most importantly, leading with love from the heart is what will shift everything. When we are all doing that, the world will change. It must. That’s the way nature works.
Amen. The other day I read a "pro-tech" author who cited Grace Hopper: "The most dangerous phrase in the English language is 'we have always done it this way. "
In fact the worship of novelty is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of science, and "we have always done it this way" is the PRECISE DEFINITION OF SCIENCE. Traditions are formed from thousands of painful experiments, with negative feedback gradually focusing toward the optimal solution. That's the scientific method.
Reversing a well-formed tradition is BLASPHEMING the thousands of lives that were devoted to finding the solution.
That is such a good point! And I think experimenting can be good, as long as it is done with a cool head and with respect, and from the right place. We are creative by nature but it's possible to be creative without being a madman.
VERY queer concept of science you sure have 🙂 Your definition is actually that of cultural tradition: the habits & mores & ways of doing things generations developed through painful experience of trial & error. [Doesn't mean they can't be improved, just such attempts merit extreme caution.] So we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and can focus on stuff aplenty yet to be learned/known.
Hence Chesterton's fence. Hence Newton standing on the shoulders of Giants. Hence the motto of conservative mindset: whatever works 😉
Make an observation --> Ask a question --> Form a hypothesis (testable explanation) --> Make a prediction based on hypothesis --> Test the prediction (gather & analyse data). Then iterate w/o end in sight: use the outcomes to make new hypotheses & predictions.
↑↑ Describes the scientific method. Science is the intellectual & practical activity exploring the universe in all its multifaceted glory, over the scale of entire spacetime, from viewpoint angles no one can count—employing the above method. Science is also the systematically organized & structured body of knowledge this activity produces. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to do with worship of any kind. Novelty pops up as a natural result.
Of course it’s NOT The $cience™ we talk about here 🤭
The mythic history of institutional science is well hidden, in the way that the mind ingeniously hides in backstory as predicate that frames its results to self-reinforce.
The myth of rational control - set over and apart form the life it predictively defines, is a house of cards that has to seek covers story by which to evade disclosure to false foundations or lack of substance in what are taken as such.
Technologism splits to 'what works' and leaves scientism to peddle the myth or story by which to feed and control its captive revenue stream.
Research is expert in finding a need for further research.
The giants (Newton was very active in self-seeking that readily denied his sources as well as stealing credit from rivals). Politics was and is the context in which human beings think, live and work - in its broader sense of recognition, support, funding, status or rank, possession and control.
A scientist to be honest must do his utmost to prove his conjecture or theory wrong.
As in Pollack's Forth Phase of Water (an excellent book for both content and the exposition of the process of its discoveries and implications).
So where is the control experiment to prove the 'cytopathic' effect is in fact an 'infection' by a 'virus' and not the result of starving (withholding foetal bovine serum) and poisoning (adding antibiotics to) an in virto 'cell culture' - WITHOUT the adding of the indeterminate soup assumed to contain 'viruses'.
"Experts Say" is become the mainstream sales pitch of the $cience™.
But within institutional science is the politics of power. Enders did not claim to have proved measles virus. His finding left many questions open. But after receiving a Nobel for unrelated work, his word took on a different status, and self-interest aligned to 'opportunism' given authority. This pattern is normal as the tension between institutional authority or establishment, and the freedom to question, explore and call anomaly out.
The messengers of truth's revealing are denied or killed by the 'tenant landlords' who take their own authority by possessing the means to enforce it.
The anti-psychic predicate of what science as technologism is thus 'whatever works' to serve identity complex founded on such a predicate.
It was not wrong to undo a split sense of vitalism from mechanism, but it is wrong to assume mechanism 'dead' matter in motion, as a result of dead thinking.
There IS no actual capacity to separate from the life you would study, but there is our capacity to create models of some facets to run as a short cut to trial and error, but then as a short-circuit to direct inspiration (which remains a vital part of the scientific 'discovery'). A autistic mindset cannot or will not feel its way. Selfism, in the sense of assuming or wishing autonomy, works a denial or downplaying of the field of relation to seem to predict and control our own image or model of reality - and migrate there!
What you give worth-ship to, you share and strengthen by sharing. This is cultural value, and can be assigned to false with-ness or mistaken or misguided perception-responses.
The accumulated 'body of knowledge' is as full of fraud and fallacy as the Banking system is full of toxic debt. But its collapse is its lack of true foundation - IT CANNOT REALLY WORK! - but seeming to work can be stretched out at great cost of sacrifice of living to prop up the dead. Technologism resorts to 'applied psychology' of the breakdown of the human mind to remake it as a tool of the system.
I realise I might seem to be having a go at you. I see a lot of value in what you wrote - but framed in a way that runs everything backwards.
Glory is in the felt quality of Behold I make all things new!
But your novel pops up as a resource to plunder, to suck dry and set in a glorious body of knowledge? Huh?
Science as a 'body of knowledge' worshipped as authority becomes self-boosting against correction. Of course this is unworkable, hence the denial of awareness as the groupthink by which to no longer be accountable to an underclass of slave-minds who can do all the science they want in the narratively framed focus provided and funded.
Science as legitimate and honest enquiry is integral to our capacity to question and recognise answer in kind.
And WHO told you you were naked? (Assigned to the Lord), is the movement of awareness to the questioning of a masking reality, or what we might now call masking beliefs, assumptions of mutually reinforcing definitions.
We use tools or become tooled by them. This calls for conscious discernment and discrimination, or else an identity asleep in such assumptions supports the tooling of living beings to programmed outcomes of unconscious bias - set in inner conflicts that are socially masked out.
Fantastic. The anecdote from the movie about the engineer being the first victim of the trap he just constructed is akin to us building our own digital cage today. Thank you as always for poignant essay.
Every libertarian and objectivist, capitalist and so on ever:
"Property rights are the sacred fundamental right of all other rights and freedoms, and how /I/ exploitmy land is nobody's business but mine!"
Which they then immediately start to hem and haw and caveat when someone says: "Cool, then you can't object when I build my paper mill upstream from your mansion, famrland and grazing areas, and pump out the sludge right into the river - it's my plant, it's my land and the river passes through my land!"
Of course, in reality, people with those egotistical value-sets never live where they shit, since they do not care about other humans.
Good technology gives us tools to solve problems - like in your aqueduct example, the opposite is also true: getting rid of human waste in a useful and safe manner turns it into a resource. This was done by - among many others- saxons and teutons by a sort of reverse aqueducts: shit troughs leading from the village to a communal midden away from any water source.
Technology which removes human agency is a problem.
Technology will rob us of our humanity unless (as you said) we lead with Love. We may think differently but can Love the same. Thank you for this wonderfully written article - your Light shines bright . . .
Nov 21, 2022·edited Nov 21, 2022Liked by Tessa Lena
Nature can and did mean technology in the sense of the technology of the sacred. Shamans are technologists. The spirits of nature reveal technologies we can't approach with our synthetic focus. Where is technology in the modern sense not destructive? I mean, flush toilets are not destructive and like that. But complex technologies do not exist without them being about making money, lots of it. And that brings with it corruption, lies, abandonment of sane focus. I'm sure you can find an exception or two to what I'm saying, but as long as this world is structured around making fortunes, the end result is manipulation. One talks about the panopticon as an image for the surveillance state, but the panopticon can just as well be seen as a metaphor for those making billions by looking in every direction for whatever they can control
So much of what you say resonates with me...I think we would be the best of friends. Thank you for your valuable and honest writing. It's all logical stuff but why the masses don't understand what life is all about I don't know.
It's a good article that gets one thinking about a profound, meaningful topic, like economic systems, governmental structure, religion, love, hate, evil, how to just make things work better. This article got me thinking about a dozen or so such topics! Without resolution of course, there's never that. I finally concluded in my 60's, grudgingly, the battle isn't winnable. Human beings are too flawed, in too many ways. Even most good ones are too trusting and obedient, thus empowering evil. If enough people saw things like Tessa, we'd be fine, more than fine. Such people are not numerous enough to comprise the critical mass needed to form a good society. There's only one thing that works, albeit poorly, but at least it has been known to work better than anything else. Which is, a mostly benevolent dogma/power structure. Christianity for all its flaws was the best influence on civilization ever - mostly it pushed things in the right directions. I don't see a resurgence, and all its replacements are destructive. So here we are. Personally I think all religions are probably total BS, but most people are authoritarian followers and need direction outside themselves. They are not remotely capable of being well-intentioned critical thinkers. To think they ever will be is naive. I mean, look around.
Thank you John!! I think people have everything in them (in us), potential for good and bad, for courage and cowardice. It depends on our choices!! And true, lots of people choose the path of the least resistance, but I think that's only until the pressure compels them to remember their hearts. Life works wisely this way, and the arch sometimes is very long, so we only see segments of it.
Re courage, I've concluded it's pretty much absent. The only people willing to speak the truth about the COVID scam are those like myself, self-employed and nothing to lose, or near or beyond retirement. Any 30 or 40-something medical pros or scientists vocally on our side? Can't think of one off-hand, although I think there are some females like that. Maybe they're braver, maybe they think they have more options. Bravery in combat comes to mind when thinking about courage. How many "brave" men who risk, even sacrifice their lives in societally-sanctioned ways, in the service of "leaders" who they think care about them but don't, are willing to stick their necks out and take un-sanctioned action when their loved ones are damaged by criminals or profiteers? Or will even risk their careers to take an unpopular but righteous stand? About zero. Just how much courage do people have, really? Think about it. I've had to rethink my lifelong belief in the intrinsic goodness of people, or admit to kidding myself. Maybe I'm overly cynical, I think I'm seeing the unvarnished truth.
When I was young 3% was an oft-mentioned figure to define how many people see things pretty much as they are and try to think rationally. Seems to be pretty accurate then and now. I agree, people have potential for good and bad, and it depends on choices. And the vast majority choose depending on external pressures - nearly exclusively. I hope more "remember their hearts" due to some pressure. Most pressure is negative though and that doesn't look to change. My conclusion is it's unwinnable. I don't KNOW it's unwinnable. So, we continue to hope, and thanks for all you do, which is a lot more than just hope!
Burke ties together the modern inventions in which previous episodes had culminated: telecommunications, the computer, the jet engine, plastics, rockets, television, the production line, and the atomic bomb. All of these inventions come together in the B-52 nuclear bomber. Start with the plow, you get irrigation, pottery, craftsmen, civilisation and writing, mathematics, a calendar to predict floods, empires, and a modern world where change happens so rapidly you cannot keep up. What do you do? Stop the change? Throw away all technology and live like cavemen? Decide what change will be allowed by law? Or just accept that the world is changing faster than we can keep up with? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documentary)#Series_1_(1978)
Two observations: novelty and profit. Imagination creates novelty with new or existing technology. Profit arises from the new. The new need not be better. Indeed it can be worse. However the new can be profitable. And with advertising the new can be fools gold sold as better than real gold. In my life I took the other road away from speeding up life to slowing it down and ditched the car. Easy in a sense since I live in urban San Francisco. Hard in a sense for if I travel outside the grid getting to places I wish to be is hard or costly. Like the train before it the car offered mobility options and time saving as a benefit. A civilization arose built off vectors of speed. I was born into this civilization. It required my choice to change. For large numbers of people change is one direction only-the new, the novel. I am very curious to see what happens when this high tech civilization falls apart. Will the SF Bay Area interconnected by highways fall apart as well? The ferries are not used by many people except for the commute and now after Covid the commute is replaced by high tech work form home.
I was able to give up the car since I'm not working. And although I live in a rural area, I found myself in an area with a uncommon public transit system.
When civilization falls apart, geography becomes a matter of how far people can walk on average. Supply chains contract, and the necessities of life are organized and distributed locally.
I wouldn't want to be an urban dweller during a collapse.
Shortcuts often reveal mistakes, blind spots, and all too often, harm.
Civilization has been existing off of short cuts for centuries. Eventually you pay for the short cuts, whether you admit to it or not. There will be a reckoning.
Im curious - have you read (or listened to) A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright? Personally, I believe that it is one of the most important and lucid explorations of the civilizational crisis staring us in the face. And yes, the Myth of Progress is absolutely central to the mythology of statism, which is the death cult leading us closer and closer to our own annihilation.
Paul Cudenec does a masterful job of undermining this myth throughout his body of work, notably in Forms of Freedom and The Withway. From the latter work:
“Historical humankind has been mesmerized by
the narrative of progress”, writes Scott,
echoing Ellul, and his own research shows that
the same is true of the narrative of the state.
The principal myth by which we are misled
is that, during the long history of humankind,
state control has been the norm.
The first states to emerge were “minuscule
affairs both demographically and geographically...
a mere smudge on the map of the ancient
world,” Scott writes. Far from representing the
global status quo, these states were “tiny nodes
of power surrounded by a vast landscape
inhabited by nonstate peoples”.
This remained true for thousands of years.
States were very much the exception and most of
the world’s population continued to live outside
their grasp.
“In much of the world there was no state at
all until quite recently”, he writes. “Outside their
reach were great congeries of ‘unadministered’
peoples assembled in what historians might call
tribes, chiefdoms, and bands. They inhabited
zones of no sovereignty or vanishingly weak,
nominal sovereignty”.
Our understanding of this reality has long
been skewed by the fact that only states, with
their cities, monuments and written records,
tend to leave behind evidence which can later be
discovered by archaeologists and historians.
The life-without-state which existed for long
periods over large expanses of the Earth left
“little or nothing in the way of records”, explains
Scott.
Rather than regarding such societies as
periods of disintegration and disorder in between
the rise and fall of glorious state civilizations, we
Probably one of the scariest sentences I've yet come across in the english language is "The military people were very excited."
Stanley Kubrick, General "Buck" Turgidson, Slim Pickens (and his final lethal wet-dream to oblivion), and the entire recent history of empire and civilization come to mind.
But on a more serious note, the two issues we might reflect upon when it comes to "technology" are the issues of scale and abstraction.
When a planet-wrapping techno-industrial civilization comes to be built, whether by *predators or the megamachine termites under their control, the sheer scale of its impacts escape the very consciousness of most mortals. We become as fish in water ; bugs in amber; subatomic particles within the smashing confines of the Hadron Collider. This is the paradox of the ideology of "Better Living Through Chemistry" (or Science) that the various and sundry Dr. Strangelove's have been pushing on us for some time now. And of course it sets in motion a sort of perpetual Arms Race against the mere and given natural world. Suddenly we become obsessed with the desire to "de-bug" all the obstacles and imperfections that our newfound supremacy perceives as pesky hindrances to our techno-utopian destination. Hence the Eco-modernists, the CRISPR disciples and the by now glib conversations about human enhancement and human augmentation within the high circles of academia, the military and corporatocracy.
There is a somewhat obscure though important little book written by Holocaust survivor Ursula Franklin, (a Canadian of German origin). It was based on her series of Massey Lectures entitled "The Real World of Technology" given some time back. In it she made the critical distinction between what she called "prescriptive" technologies - those that determine how we end up doing things (and that we have no real agency or recourse to controlling) vs. "holistic" technologies - those that we invent, create, use and repair as we see fit. an example of the first would be a nuclear reactor; the second a potter's wheel.
The problem I think is that we have unwittingly permitted - through many generations - a bewildering complexity of systems within systems within systems. It's no wonder the world is being eviscerated and exsanguinated and that we don't even know who we are, where we are, what we're doing and why anymore. It's also no wonder that everything appears to be going batshit crazy right in front of us.
We have estranged ourselves from ourselves and our home.
*Predators: Tessa, I am reassured to see that you are not at all Lena-ient on the predators.
"In it she made the critical distinction between what she called "prescriptive" technologies - those that determine how we end up doing things (and that we have no real agency or recourse to controlling) vs. "holistic" technologies - those that we invent, create, use and repair as we see fit. an example of the first would be a nuclear reactor; the second a potter's wheel. "
The terms "prescriptive technologies" and "holistic technologies" have no real meaning; though they "feel" like they do. The imprecision in these terms is dangerous and leads to sloppy thinking and miscommunication while thinking you're actually saying something.
Also, the term "technology" itself implies agency. If there were no agency involved, there would not be technology. Now it is true that different individuals have different abilities and intellectual capacities, and therefore different levels of "agency".
The way I read what's really going on here is that when someone ascribes a particular technology the label "prescriptive", what they are really saying is that I don't understand it. Which means it's different for every individual and a pretty meaningless term. In the given example a potter's wheel is labeled as "holistic", but I know plenty of otherwise intelligent, functional, competent people for whom (using this sloppy terminology) a potter's wheel would be labeled "prescriptive" -- including nuclear physicists.
For me, using this labeling scheme, a nuclear reactor is actually "holistic" and I'm only prevented from building a small safe one in my garage, for home use, by government interference.
seems to me that the place where "progress" really went off the rails was where technology became digitized. we used analog technology to come up with all kinds of horrible things, but we also invented the fender guitar and the hammond organ, and two-inch tape and vinyl records.
do we really need synthesizers and drum machines? and mp3s and spotify datamining and surveillance? i say no. any technology that limits our freedom defeats the whole point we invented technology in the first place.
So many excellent thought provoking ideas here and so much of life we could apply it to, but most importantly, leading with love from the heart is what will shift everything. When we are all doing that, the world will change. It must. That’s the way nature works.
Thank you! And I agree!
Amen. The other day I read a "pro-tech" author who cited Grace Hopper: "The most dangerous phrase in the English language is 'we have always done it this way. "
In fact the worship of novelty is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of science, and "we have always done it this way" is the PRECISE DEFINITION OF SCIENCE. Traditions are formed from thousands of painful experiments, with negative feedback gradually focusing toward the optimal solution. That's the scientific method.
Reversing a well-formed tradition is BLASPHEMING the thousands of lives that were devoted to finding the solution.
That is such a good point! And I think experimenting can be good, as long as it is done with a cool head and with respect, and from the right place. We are creative by nature but it's possible to be creative without being a madman.
VERY queer concept of science you sure have 🙂 Your definition is actually that of cultural tradition: the habits & mores & ways of doing things generations developed through painful experience of trial & error. [Doesn't mean they can't be improved, just such attempts merit extreme caution.] So we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and can focus on stuff aplenty yet to be learned/known.
Hence Chesterton's fence. Hence Newton standing on the shoulders of Giants. Hence the motto of conservative mindset: whatever works 😉
Make an observation --> Ask a question --> Form a hypothesis (testable explanation) --> Make a prediction based on hypothesis --> Test the prediction (gather & analyse data). Then iterate w/o end in sight: use the outcomes to make new hypotheses & predictions.
↑↑ Describes the scientific method. Science is the intellectual & practical activity exploring the universe in all its multifaceted glory, over the scale of entire spacetime, from viewpoint angles no one can count—employing the above method. Science is also the systematically organized & structured body of knowledge this activity produces. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to do with worship of any kind. Novelty pops up as a natural result.
Of course it’s NOT The $cience™ we talk about here 🤭
The mythic history of institutional science is well hidden, in the way that the mind ingeniously hides in backstory as predicate that frames its results to self-reinforce.
The myth of rational control - set over and apart form the life it predictively defines, is a house of cards that has to seek covers story by which to evade disclosure to false foundations or lack of substance in what are taken as such.
Technologism splits to 'what works' and leaves scientism to peddle the myth or story by which to feed and control its captive revenue stream.
Research is expert in finding a need for further research.
The giants (Newton was very active in self-seeking that readily denied his sources as well as stealing credit from rivals). Politics was and is the context in which human beings think, live and work - in its broader sense of recognition, support, funding, status or rank, possession and control.
A scientist to be honest must do his utmost to prove his conjecture or theory wrong.
As in Pollack's Forth Phase of Water (an excellent book for both content and the exposition of the process of its discoveries and implications).
So where is the control experiment to prove the 'cytopathic' effect is in fact an 'infection' by a 'virus' and not the result of starving (withholding foetal bovine serum) and poisoning (adding antibiotics to) an in virto 'cell culture' - WITHOUT the adding of the indeterminate soup assumed to contain 'viruses'.
"Experts Say" is become the mainstream sales pitch of the $cience™.
But within institutional science is the politics of power. Enders did not claim to have proved measles virus. His finding left many questions open. But after receiving a Nobel for unrelated work, his word took on a different status, and self-interest aligned to 'opportunism' given authority. This pattern is normal as the tension between institutional authority or establishment, and the freedom to question, explore and call anomaly out.
The messengers of truth's revealing are denied or killed by the 'tenant landlords' who take their own authority by possessing the means to enforce it.
The anti-psychic predicate of what science as technologism is thus 'whatever works' to serve identity complex founded on such a predicate.
It was not wrong to undo a split sense of vitalism from mechanism, but it is wrong to assume mechanism 'dead' matter in motion, as a result of dead thinking.
There IS no actual capacity to separate from the life you would study, but there is our capacity to create models of some facets to run as a short cut to trial and error, but then as a short-circuit to direct inspiration (which remains a vital part of the scientific 'discovery'). A autistic mindset cannot or will not feel its way. Selfism, in the sense of assuming or wishing autonomy, works a denial or downplaying of the field of relation to seem to predict and control our own image or model of reality - and migrate there!
What you give worth-ship to, you share and strengthen by sharing. This is cultural value, and can be assigned to false with-ness or mistaken or misguided perception-responses.
The accumulated 'body of knowledge' is as full of fraud and fallacy as the Banking system is full of toxic debt. But its collapse is its lack of true foundation - IT CANNOT REALLY WORK! - but seeming to work can be stretched out at great cost of sacrifice of living to prop up the dead. Technologism resorts to 'applied psychology' of the breakdown of the human mind to remake it as a tool of the system.
I realise I might seem to be having a go at you. I see a lot of value in what you wrote - but framed in a way that runs everything backwards.
Glory is in the felt quality of Behold I make all things new!
But your novel pops up as a resource to plunder, to suck dry and set in a glorious body of knowledge? Huh?
Science as a 'body of knowledge' worshipped as authority becomes self-boosting against correction. Of course this is unworkable, hence the denial of awareness as the groupthink by which to no longer be accountable to an underclass of slave-minds who can do all the science they want in the narratively framed focus provided and funded.
Science as legitimate and honest enquiry is integral to our capacity to question and recognise answer in kind.
And WHO told you you were naked? (Assigned to the Lord), is the movement of awareness to the questioning of a masking reality, or what we might now call masking beliefs, assumptions of mutually reinforcing definitions.
We use tools or become tooled by them. This calls for conscious discernment and discrimination, or else an identity asleep in such assumptions supports the tooling of living beings to programmed outcomes of unconscious bias - set in inner conflicts that are socially masked out.
Now that's a mouthful! 😂 Hegel and throngs of incomprehensible post-modern word manipulators are humbly smokin' in a dimly-lit corner 😉
There is this sanity in what you say and love and I have to admit that it has a calming effect on me. You have a gift, Tessa. Thank You!
Thank you John!!
Fantastic. The anecdote from the movie about the engineer being the first victim of the trap he just constructed is akin to us building our own digital cage today. Thank you as always for poignant essay.
Thank you!! And sadly, I think you are right!!
We all can continue to help open eyes and hearts to the truth. Then, the cage cannot contain us any longer. Sending peace and happiness along to you.
Every libertarian and objectivist, capitalist and so on ever:
"Property rights are the sacred fundamental right of all other rights and freedoms, and how /I/ exploitmy land is nobody's business but mine!"
Which they then immediately start to hem and haw and caveat when someone says: "Cool, then you can't object when I build my paper mill upstream from your mansion, famrland and grazing areas, and pump out the sludge right into the river - it's my plant, it's my land and the river passes through my land!"
Of course, in reality, people with those egotistical value-sets never live where they shit, since they do not care about other humans.
Good technology gives us tools to solve problems - like in your aqueduct example, the opposite is also true: getting rid of human waste in a useful and safe manner turns it into a resource. This was done by - among many others- saxons and teutons by a sort of reverse aqueducts: shit troughs leading from the village to a communal midden away from any water source.
Technology which removes human agency is a problem.
"Technology which removes human agency is a problem." I like that one!
Feel free to use it - it is my go-to response when technophiles endorse computer-controlled cars and other idiocy.
Technology will rob us of our humanity unless (as you said) we lead with Love. We may think differently but can Love the same. Thank you for this wonderfully written article - your Light shines bright . . .
Thank you Susan!! xoxo
Nature can and did mean technology in the sense of the technology of the sacred. Shamans are technologists. The spirits of nature reveal technologies we can't approach with our synthetic focus. Where is technology in the modern sense not destructive? I mean, flush toilets are not destructive and like that. But complex technologies do not exist without them being about making money, lots of it. And that brings with it corruption, lies, abandonment of sane focus. I'm sure you can find an exception or two to what I'm saying, but as long as this world is structured around making fortunes, the end result is manipulation. One talks about the panopticon as an image for the surveillance state, but the panopticon can just as well be seen as a metaphor for those making billions by looking in every direction for whatever they can control
I agree, Michael! And a great point about the panopticon.
We're here to fight. That's what life is, and love is what's worth fighting for. Land, love and freedom.
Yes, the externalize the costs, but they make sure it is external to their lives.
Exactly!
So much of what you say resonates with me...I think we would be the best of friends. Thank you for your valuable and honest writing. It's all logical stuff but why the masses don't understand what life is all about I don't know.
Thank you Michelle!! I think if honest thinking were in vogue, the world would be a better place... :)
It's a good article that gets one thinking about a profound, meaningful topic, like economic systems, governmental structure, religion, love, hate, evil, how to just make things work better. This article got me thinking about a dozen or so such topics! Without resolution of course, there's never that. I finally concluded in my 60's, grudgingly, the battle isn't winnable. Human beings are too flawed, in too many ways. Even most good ones are too trusting and obedient, thus empowering evil. If enough people saw things like Tessa, we'd be fine, more than fine. Such people are not numerous enough to comprise the critical mass needed to form a good society. There's only one thing that works, albeit poorly, but at least it has been known to work better than anything else. Which is, a mostly benevolent dogma/power structure. Christianity for all its flaws was the best influence on civilization ever - mostly it pushed things in the right directions. I don't see a resurgence, and all its replacements are destructive. So here we are. Personally I think all religions are probably total BS, but most people are authoritarian followers and need direction outside themselves. They are not remotely capable of being well-intentioned critical thinkers. To think they ever will be is naive. I mean, look around.
Thank you John!! I think people have everything in them (in us), potential for good and bad, for courage and cowardice. It depends on our choices!! And true, lots of people choose the path of the least resistance, but I think that's only until the pressure compels them to remember their hearts. Life works wisely this way, and the arch sometimes is very long, so we only see segments of it.
Re courage, I've concluded it's pretty much absent. The only people willing to speak the truth about the COVID scam are those like myself, self-employed and nothing to lose, or near or beyond retirement. Any 30 or 40-something medical pros or scientists vocally on our side? Can't think of one off-hand, although I think there are some females like that. Maybe they're braver, maybe they think they have more options. Bravery in combat comes to mind when thinking about courage. How many "brave" men who risk, even sacrifice their lives in societally-sanctioned ways, in the service of "leaders" who they think care about them but don't, are willing to stick their necks out and take un-sanctioned action when their loved ones are damaged by criminals or profiteers? Or will even risk their careers to take an unpopular but righteous stand? About zero. Just how much courage do people have, really? Think about it. I've had to rethink my lifelong belief in the intrinsic goodness of people, or admit to kidding myself. Maybe I'm overly cynical, I think I'm seeing the unvarnished truth.
When I was young 3% was an oft-mentioned figure to define how many people see things pretty much as they are and try to think rationally. Seems to be pretty accurate then and now. I agree, people have potential for good and bad, and it depends on choices. And the vast majority choose depending on external pressures - nearly exclusively. I hope more "remember their hearts" due to some pressure. Most pressure is negative though and that doesn't look to change. My conclusion is it's unwinnable. I don't KNOW it's unwinnable. So, we continue to hope, and thanks for all you do, which is a lot more than just hope!
Burke ties together the modern inventions in which previous episodes had culminated: telecommunications, the computer, the jet engine, plastics, rockets, television, the production line, and the atomic bomb. All of these inventions come together in the B-52 nuclear bomber. Start with the plow, you get irrigation, pottery, craftsmen, civilisation and writing, mathematics, a calendar to predict floods, empires, and a modern world where change happens so rapidly you cannot keep up. What do you do? Stop the change? Throw away all technology and live like cavemen? Decide what change will be allowed by law? Or just accept that the world is changing faster than we can keep up with? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documentary)#Series_1_(1978)
That was a great series. As well as The Day The Universe Changed.
Maybe the key is how to find sustainable technologies, or tech for the long term?
Two observations: novelty and profit. Imagination creates novelty with new or existing technology. Profit arises from the new. The new need not be better. Indeed it can be worse. However the new can be profitable. And with advertising the new can be fools gold sold as better than real gold. In my life I took the other road away from speeding up life to slowing it down and ditched the car. Easy in a sense since I live in urban San Francisco. Hard in a sense for if I travel outside the grid getting to places I wish to be is hard or costly. Like the train before it the car offered mobility options and time saving as a benefit. A civilization arose built off vectors of speed. I was born into this civilization. It required my choice to change. For large numbers of people change is one direction only-the new, the novel. I am very curious to see what happens when this high tech civilization falls apart. Will the SF Bay Area interconnected by highways fall apart as well? The ferries are not used by many people except for the commute and now after Covid the commute is replaced by high tech work form home.
I was able to give up the car since I'm not working. And although I live in a rural area, I found myself in an area with a uncommon public transit system.
When civilization falls apart, geography becomes a matter of how far people can walk on average. Supply chains contract, and the necessities of life are organized and distributed locally.
I wouldn't want to be an urban dweller during a collapse.
I suspect it all depends. San Francisco is compact and San Jose sprawls. Inland such as Concord or Vacaville or Sacramento may fare worse.
Shortcuts often reveal mistakes, blind spots, and all too often, harm.
Civilization has been existing off of short cuts for centuries. Eventually you pay for the short cuts, whether you admit to it or not. There will be a reckoning.
Im curious - have you read (or listened to) A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright? Personally, I believe that it is one of the most important and lucid explorations of the civilizational crisis staring us in the face. And yes, the Myth of Progress is absolutely central to the mythology of statism, which is the death cult leading us closer and closer to our own annihilation.
Paul Cudenec does a masterful job of undermining this myth throughout his body of work, notably in Forms of Freedom and The Withway. From the latter work:
“Historical humankind has been mesmerized by
the narrative of progress”, writes Scott,
echoing Ellul, and his own research shows that
the same is true of the narrative of the state.
The principal myth by which we are misled
is that, during the long history of humankind,
state control has been the norm.
The first states to emerge were “minuscule
affairs both demographically and geographically...
a mere smudge on the map of the ancient
world,” Scott writes. Far from representing the
global status quo, these states were “tiny nodes
of power surrounded by a vast landscape
inhabited by nonstate peoples”.
This remained true for thousands of years.
States were very much the exception and most of
the world’s population continued to live outside
their grasp.
“In much of the world there was no state at
all until quite recently”, he writes. “Outside their
reach were great congeries of ‘unadministered’
peoples assembled in what historians might call
tribes, chiefdoms, and bands. They inhabited
zones of no sovereignty or vanishingly weak,
nominal sovereignty”.
Our understanding of this reality has long
been skewed by the fact that only states, with
their cities, monuments and written records,
tend to leave behind evidence which can later be
discovered by archaeologists and historians.
The life-without-state which existed for long
periods over large expanses of the Earth left
“little or nothing in the way of records”, explains
Scott.
Rather than regarding such societies as
periods of disintegration and disorder in between
the rise and fall of glorious state civilizations, we
might regard them as the natural condition from
which humankind has occasionally deviated.
But to do so would be to break the taboo by
which the existence of a state is presented as an
absolutely necessary pre-condition for any kind
of decent human existence.
Probably one of the scariest sentences I've yet come across in the english language is "The military people were very excited."
Stanley Kubrick, General "Buck" Turgidson, Slim Pickens (and his final lethal wet-dream to oblivion), and the entire recent history of empire and civilization come to mind.
But on a more serious note, the two issues we might reflect upon when it comes to "technology" are the issues of scale and abstraction.
When a planet-wrapping techno-industrial civilization comes to be built, whether by *predators or the megamachine termites under their control, the sheer scale of its impacts escape the very consciousness of most mortals. We become as fish in water ; bugs in amber; subatomic particles within the smashing confines of the Hadron Collider. This is the paradox of the ideology of "Better Living Through Chemistry" (or Science) that the various and sundry Dr. Strangelove's have been pushing on us for some time now. And of course it sets in motion a sort of perpetual Arms Race against the mere and given natural world. Suddenly we become obsessed with the desire to "de-bug" all the obstacles and imperfections that our newfound supremacy perceives as pesky hindrances to our techno-utopian destination. Hence the Eco-modernists, the CRISPR disciples and the by now glib conversations about human enhancement and human augmentation within the high circles of academia, the military and corporatocracy.
There is a somewhat obscure though important little book written by Holocaust survivor Ursula Franklin, (a Canadian of German origin). It was based on her series of Massey Lectures entitled "The Real World of Technology" given some time back. In it she made the critical distinction between what she called "prescriptive" technologies - those that determine how we end up doing things (and that we have no real agency or recourse to controlling) vs. "holistic" technologies - those that we invent, create, use and repair as we see fit. an example of the first would be a nuclear reactor; the second a potter's wheel.
The problem I think is that we have unwittingly permitted - through many generations - a bewildering complexity of systems within systems within systems. It's no wonder the world is being eviscerated and exsanguinated and that we don't even know who we are, where we are, what we're doing and why anymore. It's also no wonder that everything appears to be going batshit crazy right in front of us.
We have estranged ourselves from ourselves and our home.
*Predators: Tessa, I am reassured to see that you are not at all Lena-ient on the predators.
I really like that definition, "prescriptive technology." Technologies that reshape human life are indeed prescriptive. That is such a great point!
She was a wise woman, gone from us now regrettably. She reminds me somewhat of Vera Sharav actually.
But should you wish to follow the thread, here are the recordings of her Massey Lectures, Parts 1-5:
https://archive.org/details/the-real-world-of-technology
and here is the book "The Real World of Technology" available online:
http://library.lol/main/8FA76E1684610D0026422C49D7C43648
"In it she made the critical distinction between what she called "prescriptive" technologies - those that determine how we end up doing things (and that we have no real agency or recourse to controlling) vs. "holistic" technologies - those that we invent, create, use and repair as we see fit. an example of the first would be a nuclear reactor; the second a potter's wheel. "
The terms "prescriptive technologies" and "holistic technologies" have no real meaning; though they "feel" like they do. The imprecision in these terms is dangerous and leads to sloppy thinking and miscommunication while thinking you're actually saying something.
Also, the term "technology" itself implies agency. If there were no agency involved, there would not be technology. Now it is true that different individuals have different abilities and intellectual capacities, and therefore different levels of "agency".
The way I read what's really going on here is that when someone ascribes a particular technology the label "prescriptive", what they are really saying is that I don't understand it. Which means it's different for every individual and a pretty meaningless term. In the given example a potter's wheel is labeled as "holistic", but I know plenty of otherwise intelligent, functional, competent people for whom (using this sloppy terminology) a potter's wheel would be labeled "prescriptive" -- including nuclear physicists.
For me, using this labeling scheme, a nuclear reactor is actually "holistic" and I'm only prevented from building a small safe one in my garage, for home use, by government interference.
seems to me that the place where "progress" really went off the rails was where technology became digitized. we used analog technology to come up with all kinds of horrible things, but we also invented the fender guitar and the hammond organ, and two-inch tape and vinyl records.
do we really need synthesizers and drum machines? and mp3s and spotify datamining and surveillance? i say no. any technology that limits our freedom defeats the whole point we invented technology in the first place.
I appreciate synthesizers and mp3s.