January 14, 2009

• Culture vs. Technology

  When we think of competing entities we think of warfare. We think of, perhaps, two dogs pulling on two ends of a hide trying to unhinge the other by their growls. We see this in nature; mammalian males fighting each other for the right to mate, Meerkats fighting over foraging land, etc. We see also how nature deals with this when we view animals that partake of the same resources but do not compete because of the area in the, in the case of the rain forest, canopy in which they feed, or harvest, or whether they are diurnal or nocturnal. Thus we see that there can be forces that would be competing if they inhabited the same space and time but if either of these or both of these differ they do not have to compete. This is a clever way in which two species are able to co-habitat an overall ecological biome. However, we also know that this competition does arise when the particular resource they are competing for shrinks.
  
  Technology and culture are not synonymous. There is no such thing as a technological culture as, culture, is a backwards glancing phenomenon that gives rise to structure that defines Reality in how individuals, a community adheres to those structures. This does not mean that it is static. It is not. Culture is able to incorporate new ideas but it is an evolutionary process that can be seen in the Hindu caste system that, when a new phenomena, Buddhism let us say, takes root-it eventually takes it into account and places it within the pantheon as well as a caste.
  
  However, technology is concerned only with its ‘progress’; it is a perpetually forward 'seeing' and is static in this view. Technology by its nature does not take root and is best describe in the phrase, "can I?", and the subsequent action to that challenge. We can see this throughout the near history of Man with the loss of craftsmen, blacksmiths, more recently miners, and even the previous generation of mechanistic technicians of the Machine-factory workers who have in droves been replaced by a mechanical arm. We call this 'progress' in the name of 'efficiency' and any calling from the distancing critics that ask the cost of progress and efficiency, or where is the Humanity; emotional, compassionate loving variable placed in these efficiency and progress models, is put down as silly and weak. It is unimportant in this march toward progress-but where is it we're going? I wonder at what sort of society we have when the asking of the questions of the benefit of Man in terms that are ultimately Human, is seen as embarrassing, childish, and non sensical.
  
  It is here that I think the clash has begun between two competing forces. There were clashes before that seem to be between culture and technology but, aside from the Luddites and, perhaps, other smallish sects it was not a real war. What we usually see is the clashes of Unions and Management, we can see it in the Haymarket Square, but these also were not really about the skirmish of culture for, these battles were fought within the realm of technology. It was a fight for the outputs of what Technology produces e.g. wealth, goods, etc and the determination of who and how much input one group was to place into the maw of this beast. The War has been going on for just a blip in the historical record, perhaps the beginning being in the 18th century and going earnest in the 19th, and, it can be argued that it has come to a close at near the end of the twentieth century. And Culture has lost.
  
  Technology became adversarial to Man from the beginning but it resided in decidedly antipodal, or seemingly so, in the beginning. In one realm was God and in the other realm was the Material and one could exchange between the two. It gave, and created, a strangely dual nature of Man-which we can see in first generation of medieval 'scientists'; Galileo,  Kepler (who thought that the ellipses that he found the orbits were was incorrect because an ellipse had nothing godly about it), Descartes, and Newton etc. They were very religious men but were steeped in the material examination of matter-and tried to assuage this search by saying that it was reading the words, will, mind of God.
  
  As we travel through to the twentieth century we see that Technology and Culture were inhabiting the same space explicitly, and that through technology that they were competing for the same resources-namely the Mind of Man. It is not by accident that I am insinuating an entity like force to both culture and technology, both are much like how we view corporations today. That they are inhabited with very similar traits as that of a Human being, they 'live', they drive to propagate, they 'desire' to remain extant. The difference being that Culture lives by a mesh of interdependent rules and regulates itself e.g. a moral code-that which it will not do: in a simple example, it is impossible for a culture that believes in God for it to be in the same breath a non believer. These are mutually exclusive tenets that cannot be incorporated in the same view. However, Technology does not have these rules. It is only concerned with its progress and propagation much like the corporation is concerned with only wealth production and propagation. Thus it can hold mutually exclusive tenets as long as it is in harmony with its drive to progress-e.g. a logging company labeling itself as green, the displacement of workers for profit as progress, etc As with the rise of the Robber Barons who used technology to enhance their corporate mandate, we see technologies creep. Into the 20th century when our technophiles are glorified e.g. the Bill Gates, the Sergey Brin's, Steve Jobs-and the 'cultural' icons become just that, icons and stars, churned by the mouthpiece of technology, media, into quantifiable data: characters-when our Presidents announce their candidacy on a talk show we have problems, when the Dalai Lama is known as a 'cool dude' exclusively, then we have entered into a strange, and odd world.
  
  Our very minds have been co-opted. We cannot even see this as strange because technology has become our guiding signpost to view the world. It has killed our culture. When people tell me this is not true, then I ask where their children are. Most are in another state, country, or even miles away from home. I ask how many hours a week they work and it is over 40 or more, and 80 between them. I ask when they get up? They say 6:00 AM-and I tell them that the clock was created for Monks to pray, and quickly it became via King Charles the V a means to regulate all private, commercial and industrial life: that our finding it not odd that we time everything is a version of the co-opting of our minds. Even our metaphors for the divine, that so many of my friends point too and say that this is an extant cultural phenomenon, but I ask what metaphor is God? They say; computer, they say clock, they say a technician-perhaps not in those exact words, but close, and I give a rueful smile-when we cannot even imagine our God as anything different than a machine then we have been totally corrupted, no?
  
  This is the arising of mistaking intellect for skill, to elevating skill and knowledge and defining that as an education. It is not. For an education, as I have been screeching for these so many years, is inherently linked with morality, with culture, however, this morality allows for an individual to arise, to supersede even cultural mores, this is real individualism. Which, strangely, is co-opted by they Technologies that took advantage of this drive and placed upon it the worst of Man's trait as proof of it; Adam Smith stating that greed (wealth acquisition) is good, and from this desire arises the individual's right to taking-which leads us to a slave of technology; for technology is good for, very good for, multiplying wealth, for extraction of resources-and if our individuality leads us to the individual right to desire any and all, then we become the appendage of Technology. Ironically, not an individual anymore through the desire to be one.
  
  To paraphrase Freud who said it is inarguable to say that technology isn't useful for him to be able to talk to his son across the Atlantic, or for him to travel to see his parents on the rail, nor is it arguable that it has extended life; though, he later says: without technology his son would not have moved, without technology he would not be far from his parents, with technology we have extended life but made the living the more poorer thus quantity is not necessarily quality. I do not agree with this totally, but it is an interesting note to see, as well as a powerful reminder that everything has costs. We can also understand that the goal of Man is to be an individual and master of his tools, of his technology, but I think we do not understand that by the very nature of technology we are in direct conflict with it. We will forever have to be aware of its power lest we become slaves to it, or continue to be slaves to it, and we must, we must, answer for ourselves and as a community, "should I" rather than "can I". We must also elevate the Human quotient in this; we are not inputs, we are not mechanistic, we are not numerical-these are metaphors of us and if we believe a metaphor is a revelation of the underlying psyche then we believe we are machines. A machine cannot fathom Love, it cannot fathom Compassion, or Selflessness-and the level of discomfort we, and our leaders, and our scientist have with these terms is a sign of out times-and that we try to quantify them in some pseudo scientific mojo called Psychology, or some such frim fram, is acquiescing to the Mammon of Technology.
  
  We broke our minds into a duality of Technology and Culture, we believe them to be antipodal in our minds, but it was not. They fought but one side fought within a set of rules and the other had no rule but to live, to win, and to propagate. We live in this era of subservience and yet it doesn't seem too bad because we are amused. We are tickled. But are we Human still? The war is lost with a few lost souls screaming into the void and everyone looks at them as if they are mad, the new paradigm labels them outcasts and soon, I believe, idiots-when we see this change in belief we see a change in view on what is good, bad, and neutral. When it is couched in a technological lens then anything that is apart from this philosophy is heresy.
  
  Be well
  G

  • 1:15 pm
  • 6 Comments