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Seymour
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 105
| Posted 3/19/2002 11:18 PM (GMT -6) |   | Today’s title is:
Is Technological Civilization Decadent? Dangerous?
Doc said that he found the Amish silly for not using electricity or other forms of technology. I guess that this is part of that 30% area of disagreement within Christian stances. First of all I must confess that I really don’t know too much about the Amish. I wonder if Doc knows more, but it wouldn’t be surprising to me if his finding them silly is based on as much actual knowledge as my attraction to them.
But there are other traditions dedicated to simple living also that attract me including the Mennonites and the Anabaptists and the Quakers and some Eastern Orthodox and Catholic orders. Do we have anything to learn from them? Might they be on to something that we are missing and don’t know that we’re missing it? Might they be at-tuned to something we are tuned out on?
But I just want this thread to be about general thoughts about technology. I think there is something to be said for simple living. One of my pastors lives on a communal farm. The Christian writer Wendell Berry has quickly become my new hero. He lives on a farm and writes with a typewriter because he doesn’t own a computer. One of my best friends never learned how to drive a car. I’m thinking of giving my computer away (I’m sure you’ll all be sad that I couldn’t post anymore right?). I like Gandhi and Mother Teresa, both of whom were suspicious of technology. Mother Teresa always washed her clothes by hand, even a washing machine was ruining something of which she valued.
One of my newest favorite films is “Koyaanisqatsi” it is beauty incarnate. The film was inspired by a French Christian mystical thinker Jacques Elleul(sp?) and his thoughts on technology. His basic argument was that once humans can do something technologically they will do it. Whether or not it is ethically right to do it or not doesn’t matter, human beings simply do not have the strength not to do something they can do, and this is the problem with increasing our technology. In Elleul’s mind there was no question about whether we would drop the A-bomb. Once it was developed it was inevitable that it would be used. Human cloning is just a matter of time.
It is not just Christians who are thinking like this. Philosophically there is a trend towards a questioning and critical relationship with technology. Heidegger and his students have also influenced me. Heidegger’s question concerning the technological. His student a Christian named Jan Patocka’s “Heretical Essays” (which is a really cool book to carry around at church Doc should check it out) especially his essay “Is Technological Civilization Decadent, And Why?” has really influenced me. One of Patocka’s students, Vaclav Belohradsky’s “Thinking Green” and “The Crisis of the Eschatology of the Impersonal” speak to the battle between the interpersonal relationship and the impersonal anonymous irresponsible and uncontrollable juggernaut of power he calls ‘megamachinery’ which can only serve principalities.
But by far the coolest is Koyaanisqatsi. It is a different kind of film. It is non-narrative, however a conflict and storyline emerges anyway. There are no actors or characters in the traditional sense. But there are two personalities at war, nature and technology, nature and humans. Not many people will find it enjoyable as entertainment, but as a work of art I think it deserves plenty of notice. I saw it once and it blew my mind. Since then I’ve taken every opportunity to see it or it’s sequel. I absolutely love it. Phillip Glass composed an eerie score for it. I just got the record of it.
ko.yaa.nis.katsi (from the Hopi language), n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life disintegrating. 4. life out of balance. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.
Translation of the Hopi Prophecies Sung in KOYAANISQATSI
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky which could burn the land and boil the oceans."
www.koyaanisqatsi.org/index.php
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