Date: Thu, 24 Mar 94 14:11:57 EST
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Subject: Re: Avoiding technology


David says:

> Whenever I meet someone new, the first thing I try to ask them
> is, what is your calling? What have you come into this world to
> accomplish? 

We differ here, I think.  I don't believe we come into the world 
to _accomplish_ something.  We simply exist; we _are_.  We unfold
our being.  The vision of "calling" is one possible way in which 
this unfolding takes place.  

> You used the expression "real need." If I were in your shoes,
> all things being equal (which of course they're not), I wouldn't
> make another move until I figured out what my REAL needs were
> and why. Otherwise our relationship with technology and
> everything and everyone remains a hit and miss proposition and
> life is too dear for such a strategy or rather, non-strategy.

I would not apply the word "strategy" in this context -- but you
already know that.  The problem with my needs in the context of
technology is that they are put into conflict with one another.
I have a need to live a maximally un-isolated life, to be among
a wide variety of people, ideas, ways of life.  I have a need for
communication, for giving and taking.  I also have a need to live
in relative physical safety and unbrutality.  These needs force me 
into using a number of technological inventions whose demands 
severely clash with some of my other needs: the need to minimize
my physical and mental dependence on gadgetry, the need for harmony,
the need to protect my spiritual integrity.  You are right: if I
perceived life in terms of a "calling", then these issues could 
be evaluated against this overriding goal.  But if one views life
in terms of some kind of "unfolding", then the question is how to
harmonize this process so as to do justice to all aspects of
oneself.  I am not sure to what extent the use of technology
can be reconciled with this requirement of harmony.

This is perhaps the place to try and figure out some provisional
answer to Boreas' question as to what I mean by "technology" in the
context of this conversation.  I would say that I am referring to
those examples of technology which one does not use transparently,
and whose use is in any way problematic.  I am not sure that this
"definition" is serviceable, but at least maybe it can be fixed 
cheaply.  When the use is problematic, this is usually a signal
that some mental adjustment is required, and that this adjustment
interferes with the perceived harmony of one's being.

> Control usually means violence. We cannot
> heavy-handedly control what will be discovered or used. The
> intelligence of the scientist and inventor will necessarily
> prevail over the cunning of the brute.

But "we" _are_ heavy-handedly controlling what is discovered or used.
The intelligence of the scientist is always at the service of people
who channel it to their own variously violent uses.

> If we are, as I believe, disjointed parts of one unity, one
> intelligence, the collectivity in whose name I speak is a
> potentiality rather than a "fiction." The world and its tools is
> neither a disaster nor alien. In our ignorance and reluctance to
> seriously serach for the inherent meaning of our lives we are
> simply alienated from ourselves and from a world that could
> otherwise be a utopian paradise if we invested it with the
> genius latent in each of us.

On the one hand, the world is _not_ alien, because we are _of_ 
the world; our inventions, too, are of the world.  But they also
become the instruments -- or so it seems -- of alienating
us from ourselves, our origins, our harmony with the world.
On the other hand, those very instruments become increasingly 
indispensible for maintaining meaningful engagement.  The 
"new age" thinking arises from this seeming chasm between harmony
and engagement.  What you seem to be saying is this: we must get
the locomotive out of the tunnel.  This must be our collective
goal right now, and it can only be achieved through accelerated 
thought.

OK, I think I have now arrived at a somewhat better understanding 
of your position, and of a formulation of it in terms that are
relatively uncontested between us.  Do you agree?