From: Eric Weiss <eweiss-AT-value.net>
Subject: Re: Totalitarianism is latent in technology
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 09:05:11 -0800


Austin Meredith says

Eric Weiss offered, as his reading of Virilio, that:
> Any system of organizing human beings that requires massive conformity
> to a relatively uniform way of life is totalitarian.

For succinctness, I propose we designate this the Kaczynski take on the
matter.

This interpretation entirely misses the point of my remarks.

It is most certainly the case that living an oppositional, anti-technological life in the midst of a technological civilization must be depressing in the extreme.  But I never suggested any such course of action.

I am merely pointing out that high technology requires accurate coordination of the activities of huge numbers of people,  that that kind of coordination enforces a deep homogenization of culture, and that any kind of civilization which enforces mass homogenization can be considered totalitarian.

I believe it is a mistake to assume that we have only two options - high technology on the one hand or dumb, brutish submission to natural hardship on the other.  Rather, we need to look at the actual costs and benefits of our current way of relating to the natural world, and to have to the courage to imagine alternatives.


Eric Weiss
Ph.D. candidate
Philosophy Cosmology and Consciousness
California Institute Integral Studies
eweiss-AT-value.net



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