The Guardian’s Manchester Report is getting some attention. They brought a lot of people together to present solutions to the climate crisis, and a panel voted on them. You can read about it here.
You’ll see that it’s mostly gee-whiz-look-at-what-the-boffins-are-up-to stuff. We do this a lot, particularly when it comes to climate change. We are smitten by the technological quick-fix, no doubt, but in this connection it takes the edge off of the uncomfortable thought that we can’t carry on consuming like this. Maybe we can keep the long haul flights because someone, somewhere will invent a solar powered plane. Or something. It’s a dangerous thought to have, and it needs to die the death.
The Guardian didn’t invite philosophers. If they had, they might have been treated to a seminar on Heidegger’s question about technology. (Oh go on, read it if you haven’t.) He argues that we are all enmeshed in a technological way of life — our problems, activities, agendas and so on happen in a social world where everything is regarded as a standing reserve, a stockpile. (If you work in Human Resources, you’re part of the trouble.) We see our problems as technological problems, and our solutions are technological too. It’s all we can see because we’re stuck in the world we’ve thought oursleves into. He tells us that we can maybe get out again by reflection on the senses in which we are enveloped by technology, instead of further attempts to save ourselves from it with yet more of it. We can look to art, he says, and maybe build an aesthetic outlook into our way of life. We can think of the mountain as beautiful, not simply as a source of coal. There’s a sense in which this sort of thing can save us like no space mirror can.
Intriguing, but I don’t think Heideggerian reflection will grab headlines from thorium nuclear reactors. Maybe rightly so.
Well this is the core of the problem, that we are not happy with ourselves the way we are and are always looking for more things, possessions and objects, to make us complete.
We are driven by the ego and until we can let go of that, and be happy as we are in the moment, we will always end up on the brink of disaster.
The only problem now is that technology has allowed us to bring the world to the brink of disaster with us.
Well said, Roger. I just blew half an hour reading up on solar power facts. Interesting.
Roger: “Well this is the core of the problem, that we are not happy with ourselves the way we are and are always looking for more things, possessions and objects, to make us complete.”
What exactly is the evidence in favour of this statement? There is none: it is just a blanket statement, offered as fact.
I, for one, am not looking for more “things, possessions and objects” to make me complete. I will attempt to acquire these things IF I think they will make my life easier, more pleasant, of more fulfilling.
I am very weary of people making blanket statements about what “we” want or are or do, without providing a shred of evidence in support.
Civilisation has evolved to the point where the principles of aesthetics are being subsumed by and assimilated into the pervasive beast that is technology: symmetry, simplicity, functionality, convenience, and pleasure all combine to produce an integrated unity we sense as ‘beauty’. Beauty for its own sake as a superfluity - albeit culturally enriching - is being replaced by beauty as an emergent property of technology.
Art pre-dating the technological age has now become dependent on technology for its otherwise precarious survival. Paradoxically, technology in this capacity, is a preservative of past aesthetic epochs - counterintuitive to the idea of technology (which is essentially advancement), it prevents the evolution of art to its natural point of irrevocable decay, thereby maintaining a stasis of sorts. And of course, technology is used to envisage and create new forms of art.
So, we can effectively project into a utopian future purely powered by solar energy, for example, and judge it to be a work of technological art - in a world where technology and art can no longer be differentiated as discrete parts. As the mind is to the brain, so is beauty to technology.
“We can think of the mountain as beautiful, not simply as a source of coal. There’s a sense in which this sort of thing can save us like no space mirror can.”
Can the mountain not be thought of as beautiful because it is a source of coal? The beauty of the merely apprehended mountain may be enhanced by the thought of the possibilities it opens up. What else could coal be used for? Can we not think of the coal as beautiful in itself and the moutain as what emerges from that beauty? I understand that there are two separate issues here. One deals with thinking of the mountain as a means to an end, and one deals with thinking of the joy of thinking of the mountain as an end in itself.
If we take a step back and stop building space mirrors, do we stop ultilizing our potential to create things with unintended “postive” benefits? The lowly peasant may have no clue as to what a space mirror is intended to do, but he may find it the most beautiful sight imaginable.
I’m just rambling though.
I really don’t see that any of our problems can be laid at the feet of technology. Technology is a facilitator, and the problem is that we are using it to facilitate human greed.
If I, personally, buy and drive a car, the impact on the environment will be negligible. Therefore I can indulge myself and buy a car. This is one of the, ultimately selfish, reasonings behind our consumerist society. Of course, it fails to take into account that if everyone does the same as us, the effect will certainly be non-negligible. But we’re greedy enough that we *don’t care*. We talk ourselves into thinking we’re an exception.
It’s just another “tragedy of the commons” case, really.
The comments all confirm what Heidegger says and what James Garvey succinctly states as “It’s all we can see because we’re stuck in the world we’ve thought ourselves into”. We’re on an one-track road that only leads to more technology, and we’ve lost the power to think of any alternative. Technology is essentially hostile to the environment, and more technology is even more so. Will we ever be capable of reusing 100 % of all that technology produces? Nature does that, you know.
Just to put a slight technological spanner in the works - a recent estimate is that a major source of global warming are the millions of open cooking fires in that “third world” that consume local wood supplies and give off CO2. A few (ok, a lot), of cheap solar panel cookers would take out a high proportion of everyday - non technological CO2. To go back from this base point would be to not cook food at all. I am against waiting for the fuel cell car or nuclear fusion technologies,and just plowing on as usual, but there are some technologies which can be used. Moreover it is the wealthier nations who need to get their hands in their pockets here rather than cycle more and feel thats enough and see the forest as a solely an aesthetic entity - which it is, if you do not have to use it to cook your food.