Date:     Tue,  26 Apr 94 17:53 +0300
From: MARSHLU-AT-vms.huji.ac.il
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Subject:  solidarity




4/26/94

in reply to: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas) of 4/25.

>My main problem with technology is that if one postulates that
>its locus is some kind of "we", then it becomes a sort of
>mutation-within-ones-lifetime, a "natural" force in which ones
>own humanity is no longer one's own project at all;

Through new technology (invention), we change our environment
and are changed by it. Everything has an influence on the psyche
and nothing has a more universal influence, psychologically,
sociologically, economically, politically, etc. than physical
innovation. Since science and its polluting technological
offshoots cannot be stopped without total mind control, the only
avenue that remains is to improve the depth and scope with which
science is done so that its products will be holistic and
integrative and thus constitute a liberating and wholesome
influence upon us. This is the agenda of Project Mind.

This view of things, incidentally, presupposes that existence is
fundamentally ordered, coherent and benevolent and that human
potential is unbounded.

>On the other hand, if one wants to maintain the position
>that one's humanity is indeed to some extent one's own project,
>then one must separate oneself radically from the forces which
>govern the development of technology, thus putting into question
>the possibility  of "solidarity".

Not at all. One must, to the contrary, implicate oneself as
intensely as possible to ensure that creative vision in science
is pursued with the purity of motive and whole-hearted intensity
that spiritual work claims for itself. After all, it is vision
and not number-crunching that drives science. We must learn to
see science as the the ultimate spiritual endeavor, which it is,
since it uses the highest (vision) to penetrate the lowest,
matter. Solidarity with life on the planet implies giving the
very best of ourselves to relieve ignorance and suffering on as
universal scale as possible through radically creative,
compassionate, world transformation.

My 4,000 word essay, "Science Can Become Holistic" is available
for the asking at: marshlu-AT-vms.huji.ac.il

Blessings to all,
David S. Devor
Project Mind Foundation

 Materialism is the unconscious conviction that existence
 is substantially physical. Just as the restriction of mind
 by matter occludes mind, the restriction of matter by mind
 reveals mind. - T.Kun