the air we breathe: reflections on humanizing of technologies (part one)

8/13/2019 The Air We Breathe: Reflections on Humanizing of Technologies (Part One)

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The Air We Breathe: Reflections on the Humanizing of Technologies

(Part I)

People always ask the fishes, 'What does the water feel like to you?' and the fishes are

always happy to oblige. Like feathers are to other feathers, they say. Like powder

touching ash. We smile and nod. When the fishes tell us these things, we begin tounderstand. We begin to think we know what the water feels like to the fishes. They are

curious things, fish are, and thus they ask, 'Why? Why do you want to know what the

water feels like to the fishes?' And we are never quite sure. The fishes press further. 'Doyou breathe air?' they ask. The answer is yes. Well then, they say, 'What does the air feel

like to you?' And we do not know.

Dave Eggers

Hidden in Plain Sight: Problems in Questioning Technologies

There are many feelings we have about the technologies that surround us,those with which--and through which--we now interact daily and

multifariously with the world and others: frustration, consolation, anxiety,excitement, exhaustion, relief, release, puzzlement, fear and hope. The

feelings cut across the whole range of human experience and they are part ofa long and still cascading history moving at great speed in many directions

toward unknown futures. All of these feelings may help us intuit andpartially describe the presence of this technology in our lives, but they do

not give us a perspective on it, an ability to see it clearly and to raise

questions about it.It is true that at several points in the recent past, quantum leaps in

technologies have seemed to bring something about them into a momentary

focus, if mostly for the attentive historian; a story could be told andmomentous changes in the world traced in outline up to our own time. For

example, we could say that the invention of the book (11th century) and laterthe printing press (15th century) revolutionized the store of language and

knowledge in a way unimagined since the invention of the alphabet (See

Illich, Abrams). It also allowed the formulation of the modern concept of the

(individual) self (Gillespie). In addition, we could recognize, shortlythereafter (in the 16th century) that the humble mechanism of the watch

heralded an age of mechanics and that it, along with the new optics of themicroscope and telescope (17th century) created a radically new view of the

universe and the human place in it (Gillespie on Descartes). Then again, we

could say with some certainty that industrialism and mass production in the

new nation states reshaped earthly and human landscapes definitively. These


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technologies, re-fueled by newer petroleum-based ones, then spawned a

global colonialism that fed off the subjection of the colonized (at home andabroad) and created patterns of violent, rapacious behaviour toward others

and the earth itself. This continues and continues to escalate through our

own era of globalization. Finally, we ourselves are just past the cusp ofanother such quantum leap mediated by digital technologies. Within the last

twenty years, these technologies have accomplished a most thoroughintegration of human consciousness itself into a new virtual space which is

traced and charted by algorithms of interest and desire. Already it is clearthat the most intimately human forms of self-expression ( art, work,

sexuality, health, education and memory etc.,) have themselves bcome

thoroughly digitized and therefore placed within a technologizedconsciousness. Time and space have been redefined and refashioned, or at

least apparently so.

Yet all of these statements can only vaguely hint at the reality we haveexperienced. In large part this is because what is brought into brief focus ineach of these historical instances, through the very novelty of the new

technology, is just as quickly absorbed into normative human action and

social practice. When it is integrated into that practice, it is humanized, as itwere. In this way, it becomes harder and harder to imagine or recall a human

before to any of these technological leaps; after the leaps, we seem to

ourselves to be simply human again. The result of this ever-acceleratingadaptability of human beings is that the time or space for a question to be

raised about each new leap closes almost before it opens. The novelty itself

quicklybecomes water and air, integrated seamlessly into everyday life,one more action hidden among many others and consciousness, accepting it

as part of the human self, ceases to marvel or even reflect on it.To be sure there have always been negative reactions at these new

historical points of integration--millennialism, religious wars, the anti-

machine fervor of the Luddites and others promoting a recovery of craft

and of the natural, yet these moments and movements rarely yieldedprofound or consequential questioning about what had been accomplished

by the integration of the new technology. Their desire to hold on to the old

ways, the human before, was quickly overwhelmed by the eagerness withwhich the new became the common environment of the human. Human

beings seem to be deeply charmed and then seduced by the ingenuity of their

own technologies. In this sense, resistance to technological transformationseems futile. We are so unquestioningly open to these transformations, so

enticed by the possibilities of yet another transformation of our reality thatwe assimilate it readily and allow it to become almost immediately native to


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our (new) reality and self-consciousness. Once the novelty of the technology

passes through the veil of this human intimacy, it ceases to be other in anysignificant way. In this sense, the norm of human self-development seems to

be established: what can be done, will be done--and has already been

done; any idea of self-limitation becomes moot.Within this history of the co-evolution between the human and the

technological, there have been a very few notable exceptions to the processof uncritical integration. (We will leave aside the earlier notables--Socrates,

Jesus, the Buddha--and focus on those in modern times). In the latenineteenth and early twentieth century, one group of thinkers created a space

for such critical reflection at the height of industrialism and colonialism:

Blake, Thoreau, Ruskin, Tolstoy and, above all, Gandhi. Each one of theseengaged thinkers began to raise fundamental questions about the relation

between the technological and the human. Indeed, they began to try to

evaluatethat relationship. This was possible only because each of them hadfirst undertaken to stand willfully outside the social consensus and practicecreated by the technological and to abstain from participating in many of the

forms of its current integration within human society. These experiments

with self-limitation were brief but very fruitful. Primarily because by theirabstention, they made visible aseamwhere the connection between the two

realities--the human and the technologicalcould be seen and questioned.

As a result, fundamental and troubling questions were raised and sometimesheard. These questions had an oddness about them and were very difficult to

answer: what does water feel like to the fishes?; what does air feel like to

the humans?This position of the self-limiting outsider, the abstainer, (and thus the

radical) is important in many senses, of course, but for present purposes it isimportant because it suggests a point of leverage. That is to say, it opens a

possibility of thinking critically about technology by identifying its seam

with the human. We will try to explore the questions raised in this first

modern seam, questions about the possibility of human self-limitation andabout the effect of technologies on the human, as we proceed. These

questions still constitute an important starting point for any contemporary

attempt to reflect on technology, they give us a focus on something that isoften hidden for us. Before that, however, it is necessary to push a little

further with the problem of reflecting on technology and clarify the nature

of the technological as a human phenomenon itself. This will lead toidentifying a second seam and strand of reflections.


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We have been trying to identify the unique difficulty of reflecting on

the technological in modern times: it is never simply something that standsover against the human being, objectified and separate. Rather, it has always

already been conceived by and integrated into the human being who would

reflect upon it. Thus it has always already shaped and become part of theconsciousness that wishes to reflect upon it. In this sense, it is as invisible as

water to the fish or air to people, that is to say it is hidden in plain sight.We shape our tools, said Marshall McLuhan,and then our tools shape us.

In this process, human beings show themselves to be continuously andprofoundly adaptive to the new forms of being, doing and thinking that

emerge through their connection with these tools/technologies. Indeed we

might say, more properly, that we are self-adaptive: for we transformourselves as we integrate these new forms and make them forms of our

being-in-the-world.Yet it is the second part of this process that is quickly

hidden by the new normal of a transformed human practice.Another way of picturing this is to say that the technological as such

creates an essential blind-spot in consciousness, and erases itself from view

for that consciousness. This is one of the primary reasons for the

longstanding illusion that technologies are merely instrumental, merelytools outside of us. This illusion--which is really the lie that consciousness

repeats about itself to itself--is persistent and continues to shape and distort

thinking about technologies. It is a denial of the fact that the technological inits visible outward forms is alsoanchored firmly within consciousness,

shaping its view of it and therefore obscuring its effects upon us. This denial

is as fundamental perhaps as the denial of mortality is to everyday humanconsciousness (see Varki and Brower).

When we try to loosen the effects of this denial (and let go of the viewof technologies as mere instruments), then the technological may begin to

come into view not only or simply as a human creation or product-- a tool--

but rather as act ofself-creation, or at least, a self-creating

extension/expression of the human being. As such, and working in a truesynergy with the human (so that both human and technological exceed their

original forms and scope) the technological becomes essential to the human

and essentially humanized(thus, an axiom of human consciousness). In thissense, too, it is always rooted within us long before we try to objectify and

question it. Here again, then, the problem of questioning technology

reappears, now not only as a cognitive problem but as a problem of the will.How can one question that on which one depends, that through which one

engages with the world?How can one question the air with which onebreathes?


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This second (volitional) element of the problem will always be

intertwined with the first (cognitive) problem as we have just suggested, inthe sense that only an act of will (an act of self-limitation) can hope to make

the technological visible again as a question for consciousness.A stark

analogy for this might be the illuminating experience of sobriety for theaddict. Yet if technology is understood as aself-creation, as humanized and

in essential synergy with the human, what kind of questioning about it mightbe valid and from what point of view or horizon in the human might it arise

in the first place? It cannot be naive questioning about this tool or that andabout whether it is good or bad, surely. If we view technologies as

humanized expressions, as extensions of the human being in synergy with

them, then the questions about technology could only be fundamentalquestions, questions about human destiny and its direction(s) of unfolding

through and together with and through its technologies. We can no longer

pretend to raise questions as if the human choice(s) vis--vis technology arestill to be made. The choices have already been made. We can only asktruthfully about the destiny of that choice and of the human beings who have

made it and are borne along by it.1

It was Martin Heidegger who (at another seam created between thetwo world wars) first clearly articulated this synergistic relationship between

technology and human consciousness/will. Technology was a mode of

revealing, Heidegger argued, and in effect, the comprehensive horizon ofmodern consciousness itself (Technology, 13). In this sense, too, he

argued, technological consciousness became the destiny of the human

being who was shaped by it, shaping the human relationship to the worldand others, (Technology, 26). This total claim on consciousness as its

horizon hid the coming-to-be of this mode of consciousness (erasing itshistorical tracks) and thus created a blind spot toward other possible modes

of revealing by assuming that technological consciousness was definitive,

consciousness as such, Heidegger argued. Still, and in the same breath,

Heidegger portrayed this mode of consciousness as as a kind danger to thehuman and a forgetfulness, a forgetfulness about the essential (ontological)

features of the self and the world.2

1Here we need to acknowledge the insight inspiring Heideggers view of technology: Perhaps the much

discussed question of whether technology makes man its slave or whether man will be able to master

technology is already a superficial question, because no one remembers to ask what kind of man is alone

capable of carrying out the mastery of technology.The philosophies of technology pretend as if technology

and man were simply two masses and two things on hand. The Question Concerning Technology, 72 Forgetfulness is a metaphor from Heideggers earlier work, Being and Time. The essence of

technology as a destining of revealing, is the danger.The rule of Enframing threatens man with the


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In speaking about this forgetfulness and of being itself, then,

Heidegger continued to imagine the possibility of the unveiling of aprimary world (of being) not visible to technological consciousness as such.

By doing so, of course, Heidegger raised the hope of a before and even of a

possible return tosome non-technological consciousness. Yet he indicatesthis hope very vaguely and tentatively through metaphors about thinking as

dwelling or building and through the imaginative vision of poetry. In thisway, Heidegger creates a kind of second seam against which to think about

the relationship between the human and the technological. This must becalled an imaginative and speculative seam, in that it posits an original

encounter between the human being and being as such, an encounter which

is not mediated by technology or technological consciousness and, inretrospect, allows us to identify that features of that technological

consciousness.

Whether it is really possible to still speak of such essentially humanfeatures after the human has been integrated into technologizedconsciousness is, of course, a question that hovers over Heideggers late

work. Yet by hinting at othermodes of revealing, he is suggesting that the

possibility of some such original consciousness can be imagined, un-veiledand even partially recovered by a concrete being. The underlying metaphor

of this project might be that of the palimpsest--namely, the act of

identifying the vague imprint of an original writing/drawing on a papyrusthat has been erased and written over by another later text. This allows

Heidegger both to stress the profound impact of technology on human

consciousness and yet still to recognize it as such against a more hiddenbackground light. It is from this imaginative project, or seam, then, that

Heideggers account of technology derives its own force and coherence.Heidegger can question technology because he has first made it visible

philosophically; his questioning attempts to identify and describe it from a

deeper within in consciousness. We will outline Heideggers position and

insights more carefully below (in Part II) but this notion of theseam aspalimpsestechoes within the work of another important thinker.

I want to suggest that there is a parallel and still more profound

project at work in the thought of Simone Weil, the young Frenchphilosopher and mystic. Weil experienced directly and viscerally the impact

of industrial technology as a result of her factory work and later her

engagement as a social activist resisting fascism in Spain and England. She

possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the

call of a more primal truth. (Technology, 28)


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spent a great deal of time in her short life, thinking and writing about this

impact of technology as oppressive especially in the social forms bothembodied in the industrial economy and the modern state. In particular, she

strove to understand how its oppressive force shaped the consciousness of

both the oppressor and the oppressed ones. In this way, she developed aprofound account of the consciousness of privilege on the one hand and, on

the other, of submission and disempowerment within the post-moderncontext.

Weil identified this consciousness, technologized through theeconomy and the state, in part, from her own experience living among those

who did not count but also by setting it against the background of classical

literature/philosophy (primarily theIliad and Plato but also theBhagavadGita) and the notions of power and karma/destiny articulated there. From the

context of the latter and through her mystical experiences, Weil was able to

see in this experience of submissive/afflicted post-modern consciousness,the vague outline of a deeper and much different consciousness, namely, onewhich echoed the classical mystical-spiritual acts of attention, self-

emptying and detachment. On the basis of that deeper consciousness, she

posited the possibility of a contemplation of the (transcendent) good as aguide to meaningful (good) action in a world of necessities, brutal force and

technologized violence. This was a very limited and fragile possibility, as

she acknowledged--since the true good, was transcendent and its appearancein the world was only possible through the de-creationof the human ego.

By this she meant an un-making of the consciousness created in the first

palce by technological seductions to exceed our limits,to try to becomegods in our own right.

Weil, like Heidegger, does not minimize the profound andthoroughgoing impact of technology on modern and post-modern

consciousness, yet from the seam that she identified in her experience of

affliction and impoverishment, she opens the slightest crack for the entry of

a very different light into consciousness. Her account of technology draws inelements of the classical paradigm (with its reflection on the human use

of/need for tools) but it sets it firmly in the post-modern context. In that

context, Weil argues, the labourer is forced to turn his body and soul intoan appendix of the tool (Roots, 295). Despite, and as a result of that, she

insists that, the consciousness which consents to physical labour is of far

greater spiritual significance than all other acts of technologizedconsciousness--whether command over men, technical planning, art,

science, philosophy and so on (Roots, 296). It is a consciousness that isintrinsically open to that very different light, the light of a transcendent


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good which is hidden within the experience of human affliction and

suffering. From this point, Weils understanding of the role of work/labourunfolds quite uniquely and contextualizes the question of technological

consciousness/human action in a much larger context, namely that of

gravity and grace. In this way, Weil rejuvenates some earlier and classicalarguments about technology as an expression of overweening human pride

(Babel) and a devils bargain that ends in self-destruction (Faust,Frankenstein). She also, identifies its social dimensions and their negative

effects on the human spirit (i.e., Platos social beast from theRepublic).There are, then, many similarities between the projects of Weil and

Heidegger and in particular, their understanding of technology. Both

appealed to classical insights on the problem of technology yet both sensedthe the modern/post-modern synergy between technologies and the human

could not be essentially undone. Especially in the work of Weil, there is an

articulation of the willfully chosen nature of this synergy and a profoundreflection on how it might become transparent, not by acts of willing but mythe much deeper askesisof de-creation, abandonment and detachment. In

that sense too, she believed that it might be ultimately dissolved but only

insofar as the ego itself was dissolved.Both Heidegger and Weil are also good guides, in that sense, to

attempting to find and formulate the questions about technology that we may

stillbe able to raise in our time. While both of them had already seenthrough the naive questioning about technology as object, they each prise

open a thin crack through which light might still fall open the synergic

relationship between human being and technologies. Both of them lived atthe end of the industrial period and in beginning of the post-modern era of

mass man.3They knew well the human being subject to consistent andconcerted propaganda, state control and social engineering in the era of mass

media and state control; yet the more subtle and pervasive digital age with

its quantum leap toward internalized censorship and surveillance and

collaborative submission was still far off. In order to approach our ownposition or really, our-selvesand our destiny, with any hope of still

questioning through the veil of technologized and technologically

3See Ortega y Gasset, Revolt of the Masses, on the concept of mass man: We do

not know what is happening to us, and this is precisely what is happening to us, not to

know what is happening to us: the man of today is beginning to be disoriented with

respect to himself, he is outside of his country, thrown into a new circumstance that islike aterra incognita. (1926)


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humanized consciousness, it behooves us to reflect more deeply first on

these two groups of pioneering thinkers. Out of that dialogue, may we beginto breath and think more deeply on our own air.

Interlude on Counting the Costs: Celebrating the Tool and Human Ingenuity

Before turning to examine these critical reflections on human

technology by Gandhi, Heidegger and Weil, it will be worthwhile to listen toanother and contrary voice, the voice of human celebration in the

technological conquest. As we have said, the technological is also a human

self-expression and in that sense also always a self-transcendence ofprevious limits and boundaries; therein, it is the cause of celebration and

indeed often a moment of intense self-expression.

One of the legendary and romantic figures of the last century, Antoinede Saint-Exupery (1900-1944) was a contemporary of Gandhi and verymuch a European of his time and culture. St.-Exupery, an impoverished

French aristocrat, found his fortune as one of the early aviators and aviation

explorers through his work in North Africa and later South America. St.-Exupery discovered himself through this flying career and also became a

celebrated author often writing about on his experiences as pilot and

explorer while flying. He crashed his plane in the Sahara in 1935 butsubsequently survived while walking with a friend until he was rescued by a

Bedouin. This experience was featured prominently in a memoir, Terre des

Hommes (Wind, Sand and Stars) and also in his later childrens story,LePetit Prince, (The little Prince).

In Terre des Hommes,St.-Exupery celebrated his encounter with theprimal landscape of the Sahara, as an untouched and pure place, (un sable

infiniment vierge, 60). He pondered this experience (as a cultured and

technologized European) as an important moment of self-knowledge:

Dont we all realize that there are unknown conditions which feed into

and fertilize the life of the human being? Where does the truth of the

human being reside? (Que savons-nous, sinon quil est des conditionsinconnues qui nous fertilisent? Ou loge la verite de lhome?, 159)

This moment of looking to the simpler and more direct encounter withnature was a resonant one with many of the westerners of his generation and

it provided a vision of the seam which stitched together the newtechnologized consciousness of the European with what they imagined was a


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simpler and simply human past. It is this seam that St.-Exupery identifies

and celebrates in the opening sentences of Terre des Hommes, with its praiseof the spirit of adventure and conquest:

The earth teaches us about ourselves more than do books--precisely because it resists us. Human beings discover themselves

when they measure themselves against an obstacle. But to attain thatit is necessary to fashion a tool whether it is a plane for working wood

or a plough for working the earth. The farmer gradually digs upcertain secrets of nature, and the truth that they encounter thereby is

universal. In the same way, the airplane, the tool of modern airlines,

leads us to the ancient problems (5).4

There are several assumptions worth noting here. First, this is the earth that

teaches the human being about themselves precisely by resisting thehuman drive for conquest and thereby pushing it to transcend itself in thatdirection. Secondly, it transcends itself precisely through the invention and

use of tools/technologies which allow the human being to dig up its hidden

secrets, secrets which are the universal--human--truths. Thirdly, this is thesense in which the earth is The Earth ofHumans Terre des Hommes, the

earth belonging to the conquering spirit of the human. Earth, the

fundamental human obstacle, becomes earth the mirror of the human.Finally, the modern technologies are essentially tools like the wood plane or

the plough, for they allow the human being to dig up and encounter the same

ancient problems, the secrets of nature itself and of the human being whois fertilized by the earth.

So St. Exupery rightly celebrates the technological as tool,for itallows him to encounter nature (again) in its secret and miraculous forms by

virtue of a night flight among the stars. Yet we may well wonder about the

claim made here that the modern technologies actually do lead to the same

ancient problems, the experiences of the secrets of earth uncovered bythe plough. We may also ask whether the self-knowledge that comes from

the technological conquest of earth as obstacleis actually a light to the

human being or simply a mirror in which they may see their apparent act of

4La terre nous en apprend plus long surnous que les livres. Parce qu'elle nous rsiste. L'homme se

dcouvre quand il se mesure avec l'obstacle. Mais, pour l'atteindre, il lui faut un outil. Il lui faut un rabot,

ou une charrue. Le paysan, dans son labour, arrache peu peu quelques secrets la nature, et la vrit qu'il4dgage est universelle. De mme l'avion, l'outil des lignes ariennes, mle lhomme tous les vieux

problmes.4


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transcendence over it? Does it cast the light of self-knowledge or merely

reflect their successful ingenuity?At the same time we must recognize that many things are left out of

this celebratory portrait of human technological transcendence, for example:

the vast industrial apparatus needed to produce an airplane and its impact oncountless thousands of lives; the use of the airplane for destruction not long

after St Exuperys flight in the carpet bombing of Dresden or the nuclearbombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the normalization of the

experience of flight and the commercialization which takes form in themodern airline industry with all of its environment impacts from mining

through fuel to ozone; and finally, the technologically-charged exploitation

of the colonies that such exploration made possible with its sloweradication of diverse cultures and languages and traditions around the globe.

These were humanized technologies which turned around on their maker to

create vast swathes of dehumanizing conditions.The consequences of eachof these invisible elements of St.-Exuperys flight continue to ripple amongus and indeed increase with an exponential force that no one controls.

These, primarily ethical considerations did not emerge in the work of

St.-Exupery in fact because what was being celebrated was not self-knowledge in any previously known sense, (i.e., self-knowledge which

framed a set of ethical obligations for the human being) but rather ingenuity,

craft and power rising out of a very human desire to transcend limits. It isnot surprising then and somehow sadly appropriate that St. Exupery, like

Icarus before him, disappeared in the Mediterranean after a plane crash.

Remnants of a bracelet he wore were recovered some years later but hisdeath remains as mysterious as the miracle of flight itself.

St.-Exupery remains a cogent symbol of the celebration of the moderntechnological development and of the first successes of the synergy between

technological and the human. His voice cannot be simply dismissed for it

continues to echo among us as we reflect on our nature and its present state.

Both the highs arising from thetranscendence of limits and the realbenefits of technological developments (from electricity through antibiotics

to digital communication) cannot be denied, nor should they be, but they

must be set in a context which includes all of the effects and consequences ofthose developments.Humanized technologies are not simply sources of good

for the human being, they also express and amplifythe potential of an inner

darkness that is all too human. We can no longer pretend that we are simplyusing a tool when we are actually refashioning our life by producing, using

and becoming reliant upon these and their accompanying systems. Moreover,self-transcendence through technology includes new possibilities of a


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transcendence of physical, but also of ethical, limits; the night flight among

the stars and the bombing run. In neither case is it simply a tool: we are theeffect and consequence of our technologies and not we alone, but the earth

as well.

There were a few others, however, contemporaries of St. Exupery,who from the beginning saw that the classical metaphor of the tool was

flawed and inadequate to capture the reality of technology as human self-expression which they were experiencing. Gandhi was the pre-eminent of

these.

First Movement: Gandhis Questioning of the Craze of Technology.

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi was a well-known questioner of the

technological at the end of the industrial era. Gandhis experience ofindustrialized life in England and South Africa had a profound impact onhis subsequent thinking. His critical approach evolved by way of this

personal experience as an outsider and a colonial in both countries, as

well as through a series encounters with several critical dissenters in thewest. For example, it was his vowed Hindu/Jain vegetarianism which

eventually led him, through a meeting with Henry Polak in a vegetarian

restaurant in South Africa in 1904, to John Ruskins famous critique ofcapitalist economics and plea for a social economy, Unto this Last. Reading

this encomium of manual labour and advocacy for thewell-being of all set

Gandhi on a very counter-cultural path: it led him to establish his own firstrural farming community (Phoenix Farm) and also to articulate his first and

lasting vision of social justice--sarvodaya--the well-being of all, whichwas the title of his Gujarati translation of Ruskins work. Although Gandhi

came to dissagree with him on some of the ultimate questios, Ruskins

influence still resonated at the end of Gandhis life, half a century later when

in his famous testament for Nehru, the talisman, he advocated agovernment working for the well-being of the least and the last one--

antyodaya.

Shortly thereafter, in 1909, Gandhi read TolstoysLetter to a Hindoo(published in 1908), advocating non-violent resistance to British colonialism

with its central insight into power and submission (it is not the English that

have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves).This led Gandhi to read Tolstoys great Christian anarchist manifesto--The

Kingdom of God is Within You--with its critique of the nation state and callfor conscientious withdrawal from its ideology and influence. Sailing back


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to South Africa from India in 1910, no doubt with Tolstoys words still

ringing in his ears, Gandhi composed--in ten days--his own great manifesto,Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. This work contains in kernel his own

unique approach to ethical-politics and social change, along with a series of

trenchant criticisms of industrial England and its civilization of machinery(as Gandhi called it). A small pamphlet, written quickly at the end of

Gandhis 21 year struggle in South Africa, it is can easily stand as one of thegreat written texts of the twentieth century. In many ways this text expressed

the summary of his twenty-one years of learning, struggle and failures inSouth Africa and yet it also expresses his vision of the way forward. It is

written with great conviction and a clear vision. It was to set the course for

the rest of life and work when he returned to India shortly thereafter.It is worth noting first, that Gandhis thought on technology emerges

out of his core insights aboutswaraj (self-rule in both the

individual/communal sense) which Gandhis articulated so forecfully inHind Swaraj. It is no exaggeration to say that Gandhis notion ofswarajattempted to redefine traditional political thought; primarily, it shifted the

onus of political action from the reform movement or party or even the

nation on to the individual acting in an ethical and conscientious way.Thus it expressed what Gandhi believed was the path that India, as an

ancient civilization, should follow away from colonialism (Parel). In that

context, Gandhis critical account of modern civilization and its machineryexpresses, something essential about his vision and approach to nonviolence;

it is not at all an addendum. While it might be easy, then, to dismiss

Gandhis critique of the technology/machinery of modern civilization assimply eccentric and cantankerous, this would be a serious misreading of it.

In what follows we will first outline and trace Gandhis argumentsconcerning technology (or machinery as he called it) and then turn to

examine his own practice as the expression of a still deeper critique.

The argument ofHind Swarajis really about the civilizational

potential of the ancient culture of India (Parel)--as well as the threats to it,from the modern civilization of Europe and England. The deepest threat,

Gandhi insists from the outset, is not the English as such, but rather the

enticement within Indians for their modern civilization:Many problems can be solved by remembering that money is

their God. Then it follows that we keep the English in India for our

self-interest. We like their commerce, they please us by their subtlemethods, and get what they want from us. To blame them for this is to

perpetuate their power, (HS, 40 and the following.)


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Gandhi, characterizes this modern civilization as the tiger and points out

that the desire for Indian home rule based on the principles of this moderncivilization will bring only a deeper form of colonization:

In effect it means this: that we want English rule without theEnglishman. You want the tiger's nature, but not the tiger; that is to

say, you would make India English. And when it becomes English, itwill be called not Hindustan but Englistan. This is not the Swaraj that

I want.

In making this subtle and crucial distinction about the two sided relationship

between colonizer and colonized, Gandhi has taken great inspiration fromTolstoys insight about the inner submission of the colonized and laid the

foundation for his future campaigns for self-rule. He also anticipates and

inspires the much later critical thinking about decolonization (Nandy, TheIntimate Other). Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Gandhi is alreadythinking in post-modern terms at the very height of modernity (Rudolph).

When Gandhi turns his attention to a critique of the colonizers then, it

takes the form of an analysis of that modern civilization which has alreadyalso encompassed the English themselves:

It is not due to any peculiar fault of the English, but the condition isdue to modern civilization. It is a civilization only in name. Under it

the nations of Europe are becoming degraded and ruined day by day

(HS, 32).

This model of civilization, Gandhi argues, reduces the citizenry to passivity,removing the duties of self-realization in moral action and service in civic

action by making bodily comfort (kama) the sole object of life

(purushartha), (HS, 34). Moreover, because it removes the ethical and

religious objects of life, the mode of governance (artha)within thiscivilization becomes highly exploitative and oppressive by tapping into the

greed of the many:

Formerly men were made slaves under physical compulsion now they

are enslaved under the temptation of money and of the luxuries that

money can buy (HS, 35).

Finally, Gandhi insists, it undermines the very foundations of humanintegrity:


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This civilization is irreligion (adharma)and it has taken such a hold

on the people in Europe that those who are in it appear to be halfmadthey keep up their energy by intoxication. They can hardly be

happy in solitudeI can hardly give you an adequate conception of it.

It is eating into the vitals of the English nation. (HS, 36-7)

The attempt to colonize, as Gandhi recognizes, is in fact an attempt toconvert the whole world into a market for their goods. In this attempt,

modern civilization reveals its fundamental principle : the incessant searchfor comforts and their multiplication, and thus a material development

unrestrained by any form of self-limitation (19). Gandhi contrasts this

clearly with the principle of ancient civilization which is self-limitation andrestraint. He argues that our ancestors set a limit to our indulgences (HS,

66) and this has led to the tendency of Indian civilization to elevate the

moral being (HS, 69). Here Gandhi identifies his contrasting principle ofswarajas (duty/self-knowledge) as he understood it:

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man [sic] the

path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality areconvertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our

mind and our passions. So doing,we know ourselves, (HS, 65)

In fact what he envisages here is the profound renovation of traditional

civilization by complementing its principles with a very post-modern and

Tolstoyan call to conscientious duty in the individual. (See Nandy, on thecritical traditionalism' of Gandhiin The Intimate Enemy). It is necessary to

recognize the features of this positive vision which Gandhi proposes, if weare to appreciate his critique of the machinery civilization he opposed.

There is one other crucial feature of modern civilization which Gandhi

often states throughout the text and which for him becomes a crucial point of

distinction between the modern and the ancient, that is, its speed. Forexample, on the question of doing good and political action, Gandhi notes:

Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry,they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time.

But evil has wings. To build a house takes time. Its destruction takes

none (HS, 47)

Speed embodies much that Gandhi feels is wrong about modern civilization--the centralization of power in the hands of few; the pace of an unreflective,


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unethical life; action that is aimed only at achieving a result and thus

becomes merely a means to an end. This speed, moreover, has its symbol inthe machine (The machine produces much too fast, and brings with it an

economic system which I cannot grasp). Indeed, such speedy production by

the machine is just the opposite of Gandhis slow and daily practice ofspinning khadi and what he calledswadeshi. We will return to this contrast

below.Having identified unlimited material development (without moral

restraint) and incessant speed as principles of modern civilization, Gandhiturns to the discussion of technology or machinery because, as he argues,

machinery is the chief symbol of this civilization (HS, 106). In Chapter

XIX, he characterizes it with a series of vibrant images: as a whirlwind(wayaro), a net (sanchani jal) and a great sin. He then completes the

series with the metaphor of a snake-hole:

Machinery is like a snake-hole which may contain from one to ahundred snakes. Where there is machinery there are large cities; and

where there are large cities, there are tram-cars and railways; and

there only does one see electric light. (HS, 108)

What all of these images capture is boththe sense of unlimited material

development and the manner in which that systemically and exponentiallytransforms human life. While the whirlwind suggests the speed of this

transformation, the net suggests the systematic way that for Gandhi, it

ensnares the human and reshapes it. What looks like a scintillating progressand development to this civilization is, to Gandhi, a Pandoras box or

snakepit full of unknown and unanticipatable dangers. Not only is there nopossibility of limitation, there is no mechanism of control; the whirlwind or

whirlpool images suggest a human being carried along by forces much

greater than it can possibly control. For Gandhi, this situation has arisen out

of the imbalance within the human being itself, namely, the displacement ofduty and autonomy by the desire for comfort and the drive to achieve it. All

of this focus on speed and efficiency works contrary to very construction

of the human body which was designed to limit to mans locomotiveambition but modern man has proceeded to discover means of overriding

the limit. This rends the fabric of natural communities and neighbours and

reshapes them in the form of anonymous and centralized cities. Moreover,the speed required to make these cities function will consume greater and

greater resources and time. Thus having once arisen, modern civilizationmoves on with a life of its own and carries the human being along with it.


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Whether Gandhi knew the story of Goethe's Faust or Mary Shelley's

Frankenstein is uncertain to me, but his account is very resonant with them.InHind Swarajthen, Gandhi is identifying material comfort, prosperity

and conveniences as the benefits of modern civilization and reading in them

a series of dangers to the human being: an ever-increasing fast pace of life,work and thought, a loss of control and autonomy, and a reduction of all

values to the lowest common denominator of money. To these benefits andrisks, he is opposing theslowerand deeper values of autonomy (swaraj),

self-restraint (duty) and mutual co-operation with neighbours (swadeshi).Needless to say, at least until the first world war, this wave of modern

technology had an aura of excitement and novelty; most of his

contemporaries did not positively receive Gandhis dark portrayal of thetechnologies of modernity. Within his own country and his own movement

there were constant challenges. Although he maintained his early position in

its essentials and complemented it with a life increasingly based on therigorous practices of simplicity and alternative forms of practice, he wasoften challenged about his critique of the technology. These challenges

brought out some important nuances in his position.

In 1921, at the beginning of his return to India, he responded to aquestion about the need for growth and its benefits, by developing further

the important distinction between the material and the moral. He spoke of

moral progress as the progress which is the permanent element within usand went on:

I do want growth, I do want self-determination. I do want freedom,but I want all of these things for the soul. I doubt if the steel age is an

advance upon the age of flint. I am indifferent. It is the evolution ofthe soul to which the intellect and all of our faculties have to be

devoted (Young India, Oct. 1921).5

Gandhis soul is not simply the religious notion in the traditional sense butrather his unique insight into the coalescence of the ethical, social and

political in the spiritual core of the act ofswaraj(as self-control and duty to

others). More and more he realized that true autonomy for the human being

5For this and the following quotation as well as a good account of the main texts from Gandhi on

technologies, I am indebted to Mulford Q. Sibley,In Praise of Gandhi: Technology And The Ordering Of

Human Relations published online at http://universalistfriends.org/library/in-praise-of-gandhi-technology-

and-the-ordering-of-human-relations5

5


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had to be based on a self-limiting duty to others and also to the Truth (in

the sense of the a conscientious acceptance of the ultimate realities of humanlife in the universe). Autonomy could only be preserved through such

conscientious self-reliance, orswaraj.In that sense, human development,

when it included these moral, social and spiritual dimensions, could not relyon or put its hope only in a technological future, for then it would

necessarily sacrifice true autonomy.The dominance of technology over the self-governing individual was

not simply an abstract issue. Gandhi saw that it meant a new form ofdominance of the powerful over the weak and of the nation-state with its

inevitable violence over the community of self-reliance:

What I object to is the craze for machinery...Men go on saving labour

till thousands are out of work...I want to save labour, not for a fraction

of mankind but for all...Today, machinery helps a few ride on thebacks of millions.

We should recognize here that Gandhi is proceeding on the

assumption that the technological is no mere tool but a rather a system(though he does not use that word and pictures it rather as a net, a snakepit, a

whirlwind), a system which ensnares the human being and in which control

is lost to them. Within this net of the technological, Gandhi argues, thehuman being becomes more and more dependent and less and less

autonomous. In this way, people become easy prey for a nation state with

more power and less ethical restraint as well as vast technologicalresources( the state represents violence in a concentrated and organized

form he says inHind Swaraj anticipating the much later notion of structuralviolence). For Gandhi, the only possible form of real resistance to this was to

recover self-reliance in a spiritual and ethical sense; such an act ofswaraj, as

he realized, had enormous political implications and became the effective act

of individual emancipation and empowerment. As he explained to a youngman who wanted to volunteer to help in the politics of home rule:

Emancipate your own self. Even that burden is very great. Applyeverything to yourself. Nobility of soul consists in realizing that you

are yourself India. In your emancipation is the emancipation of India.

All else is make-believe, (Parel,Hind Swaraj , lxxiv).

InHind Swarajitself, he states this with even more clarity:


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It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. It is, therefore, in the

palm of our hands. But such Swaraj has to be experienced, by eachone for himself. One drowning man will never save another.

Thispersonal and empowering act ofswaraj contrasts starkly with image ofthe drowning man caught up in the web of modern civilization.We will

return to this personal, practical and interiorized notion ofswarajbelow.

It is important to stress that lthough he recognizes the systemicdimensions of technology, Gandhi does not yet see what we called above a

synergyin which the human being is technologized and technologies are

humanized. For Gandhi, the changes to which the human being is subject arepowerful and difficult to escape but they are in principle reversible. Indeed,

swaraj as ethical practice is, for Gandhi, primarily the act of self-

emancipation from this system and the regaining of autonomy. Therefore aswe noted above his repudiation of the machine culture and the way of lifethat it brings, reflects a core value of his thought and life.

As he himself followed more and more seriously the path of

abstention from the use of technologies and social norms of a technologicalculture (by spinning and wearing his own khadi cloth, diet, working with a

hand-press, advocating manual labour for each person and a fundamental

equality in community based on simple living and self-reliant crafts), Gandhiwas led to reflect more deeply (as often happens to abstainers) about the

meaning of the technology he was not using. In a preface to the 1938 edition

ofHind Swaraj, Mahadev Desai reproduced a dialogue between Gandhi anda questioner from 1924. This dialogue shows a still more nuanced and

detailed attempt to account from his abstention from the technological andits purpose:

How can I be against technology when I know that even the

body is a most delicate piece of machinery? The spinning wheel is amachine, a little toothpick is a machine. What I object to is the craze

form machinery as such. . .The supreme consideration is man. The

machine should not tend to atrophy the limbs of man.For instance, I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the case

of the Singer's Sewing Machine. It is one of the few useful things ever

invented, and there is a romance about the device itself.""But," asked the questioner, "there would have to be a factory

for making these sewing machines, and it would have to containpower-driven machinery of ordinary type."


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"Yes," said Gandhiji, in reply. "But I am socialist enough to say

that such factories should be nationalized, State-controlled.... Thesaving of the labour of the individual should be the object, and not

human greed the motive.

Thus, for instance, I would welcome any day a machine tostraighten crooked spindles. Not that blacksmiths will cease to make

spindles; they will continue to provide spindles but when the spindlegoes wrong every spinner will have a machine to get it straight.

Therefore replace greed by love and everything will be all right.""But," said the questioner, "if you make an exception of the

Singer's Sewing Machine and your spindle, where would these

exceptions end?""Just where they cease to help the individual and encroach upon

his individuality. The machine should not be allowed to cripple the

limbs of man.""But, ideally, would you not rule out all machinery? When you

except the sewing machine, you will have to make exceptions of the

bicycle, the motor car, etc."

"No, I don't," he said, "because they do not satisfy any of theprimary wants of man; for it is not the primary need of man to traverse

distances with the rapidity of a motor car. The needle on the contrary

happens to be an essential thing in life, a primary need."But he added: "Ideally, I would rule out all machinery, even as I

would reject this very body, which is not helpful to salvation, and seek

the absolute liberation of the soul. From that point of view I wouldreject all machinery, but machines will remain because, like the body,

they are inevitable. The body itself, as I told you, is the purest piece ofmechanism; but if it is a hindrance to the highest flights of the soul, it

has to be rejected." (Hind Swaraj,1938 ed., 7-8)

This passage contains several new and critical points and so is worthoutlining in a summary fashion.

First of all, in it Gandhi is no longer simply positing a radical

dichotomy between the traditional and modern around the issue ofmachinery but rather attempting to see the spectrum along which all tools

or machinery are related, from the humble toothpick and the spinning-

wheel all the way up to the modern technologies like the automobile. Whatallows him to do this is the broader concept of machine as human tool

which creates a common denominator of sorts.


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Secondly, Gandhi takes the rather fateful step of reaching backward to

think of the human body itself as a delicate piece of machinery. Thisseems to provide an ultimate justification for the human being as tool-

machine-maker, and yet it is difficult not to see in this extension of the

metaphor of the machine back to the body an already quite embeddedtechnologization of consciousness/self-consciousness of which Gandhi

himself appears not to be aware. In any case, Gandhi is no longer speakingso clearly of the body as a natural norm for human beingon which to resist

the temptations of technology.Thirdly, this view leads Gandhi to praise the relatively complex

modern mechanism of the Singer Sewing Machineand the interviewer

subsequently to raise the problem of the infrastructure necessary to createthe sewing machine. This infrastructure was what Gandhi himself identified

as the system or net in which the human being becomes ensnared. Yet here

Gandhi replies to the problem of a technological infrastructure by evokingthe ideals of human control (i.e., state-owned industry, motives of labour-saving and love rather than greed etc.) and arguing that they will avail to

define and apply feasible limits on the production and use of machinery.

This is Gandhi speaking as the political activist and indeed projecting arather utopian social order based on his own hopes. Restraint in the

individual and restraint in the state are of course quite different matters,

although Gandhi hoped in his heart of hearts to align them.Such limits, fourthly, are to be determined by a two-sided criterion:

what helps the individual and will not encroach upon his individuality.

This echoes Gandhis earlier statement that with regard to tools ormachinery, the supreme consideration is man...it should not tend to atrophy

the limbs of man (and therewith the ability to be self-reliant). Yet clearlywhat will help but not encroach upon individuality will be a difficult

criterion to apply in the concrete.

Fifthly, however, when the interviewer raises the problem of the

subjectivity apparent in applying this criterion (i.e., making exceptions basedon the claim of personal need or even desire), Gandhi develops a new

argument: he will accept machines which are an essential thing and meet

the primary needs ; needlesdo meet such an essential need, a car does not.Even Gandhi seems uncomfortable with this very flexible criterion

and so finally, he returns to his own absolute spiritual ideal: in principle, he

says, machines should all be rejected--even the body--because they are nothelpful to salvation, the absolute liberation of the soul. Still, he

acknowledges, machines will remain because, like the body, they areinevitable . The ultimate conclusion seems to be that somehow we must


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learn to move among them as both helps and hindrances while maintaining

an inner integrity.At this point, we may say that the gap between the spiritual ideal of

simplicity and a practical criterion for the use of technologies has become

very broad. Gandhi seems to have become more aware of the continuitieswhich flow from the human creation and use of tools to the technologies of

modern times and also his awareness of himself and his own body haveconvinced him of the claim of this model of a delicate piece of machinery.

He would liketo set a limit to the human use of technology based on hisinner and spiritual ideals of simplicity (i.e., essential need) and the liberation

of the soul (i.e., love not greed), but he seems to realize that this will be

difficult or at least must remain a matter of conscience for each individual.From here to the socialist state which would limit the technological

infrastructure is a long distance indeed. The temptations of the technology

will be strong, he recognizes, but so will its negative consequences (toatrophy the limbs of man and be a hindrance to thehighest flights of thesoul). He hopes for and clings to the ideal of a realizable inner self-control

as well as a political way to achieve a social control of human greed and its

tendency to magnify itself in the infrastructures of technology.

Concluding Reflections on Gandhis Critique and the Practice of Printing

Gandhis reflections on machinery/technology in this theoretical form

do indeed contain anomalies and even contradictions (e.g., between seeing

the body a the purest piece of mechanism or a natural constructiondesigned to limit human locomotion or again as necessary but also a

hindrance to the flights of the soul). Having accepted the appropriateness ofthe technological/machine as human tool (extending from the intrinsic

criterion of the body itself), he turns to seek an inner criterion by which to

limit its use--though he also recognizes the difficulty in this. Indeed, he

seems to acknowledge there is no way to develop an abstract theoreticalcriterion, for this is finally a question of individual--conscientious--practice,

moving among the helps and the hindrances of the modern world and

attempting to avoid being caught in the snare of the technologicalinfrastructure. Since it is a matter of the conscientizationofswaraj (to

borrow Paolo Freires latter notion), this is a process which cannot be

hurried or simply manufactured by the politics of reform, but must arisefrom within and slowly transform practice of each of us. In the deepest sense,

Gandhi put his faith in this practice and its slow way of reform/resistance.As he wrote in 1910:


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The more I observe, the greater is the dissatisfaction with the modernlife. I see nothing good in it. Men are good but they are poor victims

making themselves miserable under the false belief that they are doing

good. I am aware that there is a fallacy underneath this. I who claim toexamine what is around me may be a deluded fool. This risk all of us

have to take. The fact is that we are all bound to do what we feel isright. And within me I feel that the modern life is not right. The

greater the conviction, the bolder my experiments.(quoted in Ahimsa, IX, 2, May-August 2013, trans. Yatish Mehta).

We may appropriately conclude our reflections on Gandhi by sketching thereality of one of these bolder experiments

We have already indicated the practice of Gandhis bolderexperiments in resistance to modern civilization and its machines. Khadispinning is the most well known of them but another one which began much

earlier at Phoenix Farm was printing. This long term commitment to

interaction with the printing-press (Gandhi used a hand-operated version thatwas donated to him) has recently been studied in great detail by the South

African scholar, Isabel Hofmeyr in the historical work Gandhis Printing

Press. By focussing on the South African years and the genesis of the firstedition ofHind Swaraj,Hofmeyr argues that Gandhis approach to printing,

writing and reading (his textual culture) is worth investigating not only

for its own sake but for the light it throws on the philosophy of satyagraha.(Loc 73).6This practical focus echoes Gandhis belief in the practical basis

of self-rule, or ruling the self, creating sovereignty, one person at a time(Loc 73). In this vein, Hofmyer presents accounts of 1) Gandhis use of the

printing press in the Phoenix Community to create an interactive community,

2) the counter-imperialist and counter-nationalist forms of the work that he

produced through it (i.e., the copyright free pamphlets and the newspapers)and finally 3) the ideal reader and kind of reading that he wished to create by

his writing and printing work. For our purposes, this account is important

(and especially the finally point) because it illustrates Gandhis practicalapproach toaddressing, resisting and transforming the effects of the

machine/technological culture through a necessary interaction with the

6Loc numbers are given to the Kindle electronic edition of the work, which unfortunately does not provide

access to original book page numbers. This is a great irony of course, when contrasted with Gandhis hand

press.


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machine. This is, in effect, an interaction with the technology in order to

create a heightened awareness of it and its effects.Early in the work, Hofmeyr offers a good summary of Gandhis

intention:

He favored hand printing and encouraged a style of reading that was

patient, that paused rather than rushed ahead. He interspersed newsreports with philosophical extracts, and he encouraged readers to

contemplate what they read rather than hurtle forward. In effect, heexperimented with an anti-commodity, copyright-free, slow-motion

newspaper. (Loc 87)

On the question of reading, she notes, Gandhi was very concerned with how

the pace of modern civilization had affected consciousness and the style of

learning. For example, he was very taken with and reprinted Thoreausaccount of how that modern technology had increased the speed ofcommunication such that it had effected reading by macadamizing (paving

with asphalt) the mind (Loc 86). The result was that thought, reflection and

internalizationthe pondering of the ideas--was left behind. Readingbecame more superficial and less critical because it did not engage the whole

reflective mind-spirit of the reader. As Hofmeyer notes, the slow reading

which Gandhi tried to create by his writing was meant to pause industrialspeed and, in doing so, it created small moments of intellectual

independence (Loc 92).

In an eloquent and insightful analysis of the production ofHindSwaraj, for example, Hofmyer points out that the ways that Gandhis chosen

medium and form of writing, also embodied his message. Thus Gandhispeaks of placing the text before the reader and Hofmyer notes that this is a

paradigm of ideal social relations:

The act of placing something before a reader carries overtones of agift. Such gift-giving creates relationships of obligation between the

Reader and the Editor and shifts reading away from the realm of

anonymous mass consumerism and toward the domain ofsemipersonalized reception. Placing an object before a group equally

creates a certain ceremonial association[a] commonwealth [in

which] all can find a place provide if of course, they are prepared toundertake the necessary apprenticeship of reading. In a Gandhian

theory of reading, those who do so with virtue and application willturn themselves into true readers and writers, exemplars and


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analogues of self-ruling subjects, and miniature and summarized

zones of sovereignty. (Loc 2228)

All of this of course, creates a heightened awareness of relationships and

also of the mediating technologies in the reader and that seems to have beenGandhis primary intention as a writer. Here he is trying to accomplish a

slowing down and a counter friction to the machine as Thoreau put it (Loc1342). Hofmeyr concludes by noting that Gandhis appeal to the interiority

of the reading would be a much more difficult in our own post-modernculture:

Post-modernity now operates as modernity without interiority, a seriesof instantaneously assimilable, visual signs and experiences. From a

Gandhian perspective, such turbo-reading would represent

macadamaization taken to absurd lengths: to those living in the swirland confetti of social media he would no doubt quote Thoreau,namely, that they had not heard from themselves in a long time (Loc

2368).

Returning to the Stories and the Questions: Thinking on the Run

We began by reflecting on the difficulties of seeing, let alonereflecting upon, our interaction with technology. Its invisibility to

consciousness and its sinking below the horizon of what-we-cannot-live-

without, create enormous challenges for us. We tried to highlight thesechallenges by speaking of thesynergybetween the human and the

technological; the way in which human consciousness (and will) have beentechnologized and conversely the way in which technologies have been

humanized, (integrated into daily practice and given a human face). This

synergy truly shifts the boundaries by which human being might be

conceived and measured. We are already different and our self-reflection,our understanding of ourselves, has not yet caught up to these shifts. It is a

dangerous and still powerful denial that continues to see our technologies as

mere tools (to be used or not from some sovereign platform of will ) on theone hand, and to see ourselves as essentially independent of them. We have

shaped our destiny through them and continue to do so--but in a way which

is not critically reflective, which does not see the complete picture andwhich avoids seeing on the deeper ethical issues.

Tolstoy reminded us of one of these deeper issues when he askedHow much land does a man [sic] need?. In that story-fable, Pahom the


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main character takes up the challenge to purchase as much land as he can

traverse by running from dawn to dusk. He returns to his starting pointexhausted in the evening and drops dead. He is buried in some six feet of

earth. Tolstoy is contrasting the measure of how much we need when

measured by desire/greed and how much when measured by our intrinsiclimits (the body and mortality). He, like Gandhi, seemed acutely aware of

the danger involved in our desire to exceed limits, to transcend ourselves inwhat could be considered the wrong ways.

Like Pahom, we are already running and have been for some severalgenerations, as Gandhi suggests. On the run, we are still searching for an

appropriate measuring stick to gauge and limit our desires for the real and

the possible. He already seemed to see that finding our way among the helpsand hindrances of the technological was a complex and uncertain task. It

required a deep listening to the voice of conscience and a practical

commitment to work and be in the present moment. This is an important firststep, to be sure. But will it truly show us ourselves or will it simply reflectthe ways in which we have already been transformed?

The questions that Gandhi raises are of this nature: does this (new

technological possibility) make me more free? What is the nature of truefreedom/autonomy? What is the meaning of mutual cooperation? Must we

go higher and farther and faster, or rather deeper and toward a more patient

dialogue/listening to the inner voice? Where will the answers really comefromwithin or without? Where will we find true happiness, true

fulfillment, true love? How can we possibly fulfill our responsibilities as

human beings and meet our destiny together with a clear mind and and apure heart?

We will have to decide to what extent these are still ourquestions. Inthe meantime, we may at least be grateful that someone worked to see this

seam between the human and the technological with such sincerity and

dedication. Even if our questions are different than these, they open a path

for us.

In view of Gandhis theory of slow reading, I would ask you, gentle

reader, to ponder and reflect on your own running, your own searching ofconscience and your own light. Let us each try to ask and 'hear from

ourselves' about the questions that can and should be raised. I will also try to

listen and continue to listen with patience. In the next issue, inshallah, I willcontinue these reflections.

In the meantime, we may continue to learn from the questioning of thefishes:


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Well then, they ask again, 'What does the air feel like?' And we have to

think about this. Air feels like air, we say, and the fishes laugh

mirthlessly. 'Think!' they say. 'Think,' they say, now gentler. And we

think and we guess that air feels like hair, thousands of hairs, swayingever so slightly in breezes microscopic. The fishes laugh again. 'Do

better, think harder,' they say, encouraging us. It feels like language,we say, and they are impressed. 'Keep going,' they say. It feels like

blood, we say, and they say, 'No, no, now you're getting colder.' The air

is like being wanted, we say, and they nod approvingly. The air is like

being pushed and pulled and yanked, punched and slapped andmisunderstood and loved, we say, and the fishes sigh and touch our

forearm sympathetically. (Dave Eggers).

Paul Schwartzentruber,

Al Gharbia, UAE, 2014


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Abram, David.The Spell of the Sensuous:Perception and Language in a More-than-

Human World(2006).

Eggers, Dave,How the Water Feels to the Fishes. McSweeneys, New York, 2007

Gillespie, Michael. The Theological Origins of Modernity. University of Chicago, 2008.

Heidegger, Martin, The Question Concerning Technology "The Question Concerning

Technology", fromMartin Heidegger: Basic Writings from "Being and Time" (1927) to"The Task of Thinking" (1964), rev. ed., edited by David Farrell Krell. Harper: San

Francisco.

Hofmeyr, Isabel. Gandhis Printing Press: Experiments in Slow Reading. Harvard, 2013.

Kindle edition

Illich, Ivan. The Rivers North of the Future. The Testament of Ivan Illich as told to David

Cayley.Toronto, Anansi , 2005.

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