The Social Context Of Being Brainwashed and Human

The New Age movement would have me believe that I'm a malfunctioning human because I've been indoctrinated, brainwashed by mainstream society and culture. I can not only not handle the truth, I can't see the truth because I'm blinded by my experiences in the world. I luboriously trudge through my woeful life dragging an inordinate amount of psycho-baggage, passivily inherited from my life experiences, which I'm unwilling to unpack to lighten my load because I'm not even aware of the 'negative speak', my inner voice, my psychobabble, that apparently runs (ruins) my life. Accordingly I'm in need of salvation. Socialization is the enemy. Insularity and Perfection is the goal - reversing all that is wrong with (my) life to all that is right (according to whom?). Simple. If I attempt to argue with the New Agers that I'm feeling quite fine, that I enjoy my life, my friends, my family and the challenges that modern society present, I'm characterized as delusional, unable to break through to the true self and listen to my 'inner wisdom' which apparently knows more than I do. I've tried meditation - to no avail. Sitting quietly trying to get to nowhere in my head is boredom in the extreme. It's in this state of 'Profound Boredom' that Heideggar reveals that Human Dasein is "being held suspended in the nothing." Apparently in boredom I become human and of the world. Agamben succinctly puts it thus: "Dasein is simply an animal that has learned to become bored; it has awakened from its own captivation to its own captivation. This awakening of the living being to its own being-captivated, this anxious and resolute opening to a not-open, is the human." So my revelation of boredom is really an expression of my being alive because I'm able to see through and into the world and simply not be a reactive captive to it. I'm aware of my existence and I can choose to interact with the world or not. New Agers seem to be saying that I must withdraw from this world to experience true life. Heidigger seems to be saying that to be human is to experience a disengagement with my animal-self (my uncaptivated instinctual behaviour) to actually clear the debris of instinctual-captivation to see and interact with the world. I don't wish to disengage with myself (I guess that would be self-induced schizophrenia) or the world or on the other hand do I wish to submerge my ego, my individuality completely into a world (then I'd be denying the self). I do want to be part of the world through my family, community, and country. I need to listen to my inner spiritual self which is made up of emotion and intellect, driving me inexorabley towards the social aspects of being human. We are social animals and society is what we make of it and visa versa. To the chagrin of New Agers the individual maybe gets a bit lost in this social world of interconnectedness but its reality (not just mine, but yours and that of all others) and its all we got. If you disengage with society then you disengage with yourself.
I agree that we as individuals should be existentially responsible for our own actions. Atheisticly I agree that there is no higher power where "salvation ultimately lies with external agency." But by turning only inward to the self to find perfection and guidence if taken to extremes can only lead to anarchy and a fallout society that thrives on exclusion and greed (I guess we have enough of that already). And still the problem persists that they too, much like orthodox religions, must set up ways of teaching and methods of indoctrination to sustain and swell their ranks and fill their coffers. Where is the difference. What is the point.
We may be witnessing the disintegration of aspects of our society and culture through social inequality and mass consumerism, but turning our backs by turning inward for some kind of revelational salvation is not the solution. We all have a stake in keeping our culture healthy - we don't walk this earth alone; we have each other.

Nasr's Lament

Nasr sees modern technology as the major cause of destruction of the environment and as having debilitating effects on the spiritual health of mankind. His solution is to return to a simpler past, a near primitive existence, as dictated by the Koran, where man's handiwork really was 'hand work', and not machine work. This sentimental, idealistic lament is serioulsy flawed. We can't turn back. He seems naively amazed that when technology offers wealth, power, and conveniences, Muslims everywhere want in on the action. To counter their enthusiasum, Nasr points out that the quality of life has gone down, and not up with modern technology and the only way back is to embrace the traditional technologies that still exist (ceramics, carpet weaving, sari sewing and comb making etc.). When i talk to my grandparents or even my parents of a generation ago, it is very clear that life has gotten a whole lot more comfortable - from the clothes we wear to the way we get around to the houses we live in to the food we eat. Of course not all is a bed of roses - clothes as status symbols, impossible traffic ills, tainted food stuffs, environmental degradation - but with all these setbacks we are still living longer and healthier lives due to modern technology. Much like the North American Amish and the aboriginals, who do engage in stratagies to slow down the growth of technologies by limiting its use, Nasr is pleading for Muslims to see the devil in modern technology (which he claims comes mostly from the West) and to rise above their inferiorty complex and embrace the past while limiting their use of modern conveniences. But these stall tactices will eventually give way to the modern world as they gradually reappraise what limited use entails, allowing more and more modern conveniences into their lives. I know of no technology that has not started out as something only for the wealthy and the elite to eventually trickle down and be available to all at affordable cost.

I do agree with his argument that technology is not neutral in its effects on mankind and the world. But simplistic whitewashing of technology as either all bad or all good is not the answer. The bad effects are giving us some pause to think about how we treat the environment and to come up with new, greener solutions. Along these lines i agree with Nasr that modern technology should be more aligned with its environment. There should be a more synergestic approach to the implimentation and use of technology - there are no simple solutions and there should not be a one-technology-fits-all-situations mentality. Nasr's final plea that Muslims gain a better "awarness of what modern technology entails and develop a more discerning attitude toward it", seems like solid advice that we all should abide by.

Strange Bedfellows and Ideological Log-jams

I read with great interest the Islamic Era Science Time Line. Clearly science was a major part of Islamic history: alchemy, free libraries, mathematics, medicine, philosophy. It has been well documented that in recent history, at least from the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (1281-1923), there has been a sharp decline in the involvement of Muslim countries during their secular regimes in development and research of the “sciences, innovation, book publishing, art and literature”. As well, Islamic politics in Muslim countries are depicted as trigger happy and intolerant when it comes to any form of dissent and ruthlessly literal in their interpretation of the Koran, leading to authoritarian nonsense such as forbidding male doctors to attend to female patients and banning music on public transport. Islamic principles and laws based on the Koran (which I have never read) seem to make strange bedfellows with science. In my mind the Koran limits human activity, limits the boundaries of reason and hems in any attempt to understand the universe except through the irrationality of the mystical. Their universe is already, always has been, delineated and authoritatively defined by the word of God. The Islamic claim that humans can not even contemplate the mysteries of the universe is, in the world scientific community, refuted every day with advancements in every field of scientific enquiry, especially in biotechnology and nanotechnology (that’s not to say that this progress is all good – global warming, the toxic air and water of the world are mainly problems of scientific hubris and Western capitalist/consumptive greed).

It is a sad fact that Islam concentrates great attention and money on military R&D, while many of their countries suffer poverty and horrendous food shortages: “For many Islamists, achieving independence from Western nations, defense and national security are higher priorities than the Islamic duty to care for society’s poorest”. On the other hand, the poor and the needy are neglected in wealthy Westernized countries as well, although agencies and institutions are democratically working at ‘ground zero’ in genuine attempts to ameliorate the plight of so many that fall through the cracks of a harsh and unforgiving society.

I sympathize with the Islamic wish to govern their own countries, their own way, without the help or support or interjection of Western ideas and ideals, but it would be in their best interest to encourage independence and freedom of thought instead of an intolerant, literal, blind obeisance to the ancient Koran which inevitably allows the world, even Third-World countries, to outpace them in social, political and educational advancements: “How literally they interpret the Koran will clearly influence how the new Islamist governments regulate science and technology.”

It was encouraging to read about the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian scholar, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who supports critical thinking and self-criticism. He worries that Islamist opposition movements are “too literalist and are not doing enough to encourage independent thinking using reason”, thinking which they fear will weaken the Islamic teachings. If they truly believe in the limitless, omnipotent knowledge and mystery of their God then they should have nothing to fear. Clearly an Islamic purist mindset that only functions in ancient shared histories and traditions could create a repressive atmosphere. Already there are reports of crack downs on reformist movements and restrictions on female university admissions, for example. In an interview with Mostafa Moin, a doctor and medical researcher who has served in Iran’s government, he does not see Islam as ‘anti-science’ but he is concerned that “superficial, narrow-minded and non-democratic interpretations of Islam – and the political behaviour of certain traditional administrators – risk having a negative impact on both scientific development and social reforms in Iran.”

David Nobel talked about Western enlightenment science and technology which entailed both pious service to and a devout effort at identification with divinity through reason and rationality. The philosophical, sociological, technological logjam between the West and the East now may be as simple or complex as the difference between Western belief in technological determinism, whereby our cultural values, social structures are determined by technical forces, and Islamic tradition that views culture, society and religion as determinates of economic, social and political arrangements. Both East and West attempt to construct a unitary reality, a reductionism that views and corrals identifies negating how ones’ reflexive perspective of the embodiments of individualism, community and society can coexist. The big difference I see is how the individual is treated and legitimized. The Islamic Muslim is born into his community and is assigned a certain role or social stigmatization (caste system), a priori, that contains and restrains him/her – much like in medieval times when you where born either a serf or a Lord, your destiny already prescribed and there was no climbing up the managerial ladder. The logic of this is that the community, religious or otherwise, makes the individual. In the West there is this, arguably false, notion that you can legitimized yourself through self assertiveness (many Muslims would view selfish individualism, of using other’s to gain self-realization, as transcendentally egregious), allowing you a modicum of freedom to invent your own person, your own destiny, and therefore it’s the individual that creates the community, the social matrix, and not the reverse.

It was Haraway in her “Cyborg Manifesto” that said “Abstraction rules in knowledge, Domination rules in practice.” The closed boundaries of dominant Western and Islamic practiced ideals are at odds, both mired in essentialism and authoritarian hierarchies that dominate and squelch true ways and means to paths of knowledge that should involve scientific, socio-political and religious commingling. The ideological monster in both camps is technological and sociological myopia. I share Roxanne Euben’s cogent, albeit optimistic thoughts in her “Counternarrative of Shared Ambivalence” where she hopes for a unified epistemology, an inextricable co-meshing of reason and revelation that enables the interlacing of Western and Eastern ideologies, flattening out dominate and hierarchical influences of religious, patriarchal, political and socio-economical structures, making them more attuned to egalitarian sensitivities. .

Second Life

In our postmodern, posthuman environment - the breaking up, fracturing, and decentralizing of the self - we often blurr the line between what is human and nonhuman. This intentional blurring is a ruse to help mitigate our failures as humanistic human beings. By failures I'm thinking of a world that promotes and privilages violence, insensitivity to others and indifference to life itself. Mark Taylor in "The disappearance of the Self" claims that the "identity of the self is synthetic rather than simple". Among the myriad synthesized components of the self are the self-conscious acts of remembering and the internalized/externalized forces of time and space. Importantly, time is but one time - the present. The present is comprised of past-present (memory), present-present(sight), and future-present(expectation). He follows that if the self is made up of time and time is but a 'trace', then in a posthumanist turn the self is erased and the search for ourselves is our inevitable individual journeys to our deaths. Whereas Taylor writes about the entanglement of the self with time, space, and God, Hayles in "My Mother was a Computer" writes about the entanglement of the human and the non-human, specifically "human bodies, cultures, and artifacts entwined with intelligent machines". Hayles attempts to resist the sci-fi writer's vision of a postbiological world where the human mind and the self have the exponentially expanded powers necessary to create a "participatory universe", although she does acknowledge that in the near future we will see significant convergences between humans and intelligent machines even while we exist "both in the world and of it".

When we look at posthumanist attempts at entwining humans with machines, I'm always amused. We have cars, appliances and entertainment toys that talk to us in very unhuman, monosylabic tones. We have robots that look and move like humans rife with arthritis. That's not to say that eventually through biotech and computation we will not create 'humachines', cyborgs and clones, but at this moment our attempts, in my view, look and sound pretty pathetic. And when you look at computer web sites, like "Second Life", where you can create and participate in a virtual reality world it certainly makes me think that even though we attempt to marry machines and the human it is an essence of humaness in these technological assemblies that is the most crucial component. Maybe Posthumanism asks not"Who is a person? (more a psychological investigation that enbodies our humaness)" but "What and How is a person? (more a phyisiological, biological, technological investigation)", in an attempt to conjoin the human selves with the non-human, creating a destabalizing effect, unavoidably highlighting the differences and simultaneously searching for the similarities.

I guess the mechanical hand at the top of this post serves to not only show an early, rather humourous, limited view of the melding of human and machine, but also to give one a sense of pause. The hand with the palm facing up is a signal to stop. Lets stop and reflect on our apparent willingness to become our machines, giving up in the process our unique, ambiguous, fragile natures indelibly embedded in our differences of identities as human beings.

Michael

Home for the Have-nots

Heidegger wishes for a free relationship with technology; an open understanding between the human and the technological. As well we should be ever vigil in our efforts to avoid being charmed by the easy seductions of technologies - elevating the technological to some form of salvational expedient. But if reality is an illusion constructed for and by humans then I guess Mankind is truley estranged from his essence - blinded to any revealing of true essences of anything. Heidegger looks to poetry and art as a way to unconcealing the concealed and alleviating the danger of technological enframing by becoming stuck between the possibilities and the impossibilities of knowing and unknowing, of representation and misrepresentation, of the living and the dead. Of course the danger is that there is no universal interpretation of reality, therefore there will always be the danger that the revealed essences will be misconstrued and misrepresented. Szersynski points out the reality of our global society: "This is not a society made infinite, sublime, guided perfectly by reason. It is a society without an outside, but it is still finite; its members can still only know and act from within the world, not as God from outside." Therefore our visions of ourselves in the world are "still multiple, partial and divided, and problems such as poverty and environmental degradation will never wholly be overcome." That's not to say that we shouldn't try. I just read an article about a Toronto architect who has put together a project for sustainable housing for the homeless in the Philippines; keeping in mind the materials at hand, in this case discards and junk from the wealthier sectors of the city; the land available, in this instance land was donated by the church and the University that it runs. His design maximizes ventilation and reduces claustrophobia and is self-sufficient in that the roofs are designed to catch and store rainwater. His mission is to design the best possible homes for the city's most marginalized people. This low-tech approach to ameliorating the unfortunate circumstances of migrants in Third World countries is a testement not only to our ability to work with nature but as well to our ability to work in global harmony, achieving positive change. Suffering is a reality in this new age of technology, global business, climatic change and natural disasters that work to dislodge and dislocate peoples from home and family. I just worry that technology will become the new religion - in fact I read somewhere that the reason we're not moving fast enough on such dire global issues of peak oil, environmental degradation and air pollution is that we have too much faith in science to absolve us from our destructive habits.

Roboticus or How Might I Live In a Tin Can

Apparently, according to Mark Poster, I am the technology that I use. The 'smart machine' I'm using to write this is not just a "neutral tool that only becomes objectionable by the uses to which it is put" or a technology that is judged primarily by its economic efficiencies and its end product (think large scale farming, smog, atomic bombs or agent orange). Simply put, the computer is not a technology that merely shapes and reshapes matter, it transcends the windmills and the hydroelectric plant of Heidegger's essay "Concerning Technology". Depending on your point of contact with smart machines this may be a bad thing (internet addiction, driving while on your cell phone) or a good thing (quick access to info, brain surgery, etc.). What smart machines do is reshape and reinvent our living spaces, figuratively and literally. Yep, I'm becoming my computer, my TV, my cell phone, my gaming machine, and my personal space is being invaded by all forms of wires and LED screens that dictate how and where I arrange the more mundane creature comforts of home and hearth, like desk, chair and sofa. I'm morphing at an ever increasing speed to become one with my electronic stuff: "Information machines transform the humans that use them". I would also contend that the lowly shovel, hammer, spear and wheel, transformed mankind as well, it just took a lot longer. This concept of speed and time and space is, I think, at the crux of the matter. If we look at older films, for example, we see that they had a different pace and spatiality to them. To the historic viewer they represented a reality that reflected their way of understanding narrative and emotion. Shots lingered longer, there were very few cut-aways and less frenetic cutting between shots. Gradually, with new technologies, movie and televisual presentations have become speeding bullets, zooming in and around the scenes, involving and engaging the viewer in ultra-reality and compressing time and space like never before. The narratives seem more involved with the superficial surface of things than the essence of narrative and character. And the interesting aspect of this is that we, the modern audience, can follow it and are able to understand and enjoy the product (well, some of the time). This fast paced style of communicating effects and is reflected in, every aspect of our daily lives. The speed of life has started to out-pace us and soon, possibly, as Poster suggests, we will ineluctably become "humachines". Should we be alarmed about the reconfiguration of time and space? Will it destroy our basic social institutions and the future of civilization? There is no question that it is already effecting our lives in innumerable ways, pro and con, but that doesn't mean that 'the end is nigh'. As Poster points out, it's not a case of Technophile against Technophobe. But he does caution against a neutral outlook that resigns to the fact that 'what we don't see or know won't hurt us'. Heidegger's claim that technology transforms our world and therefore ourselves but that our ability to see this transformation is not only hidden from us but "that our own being in the world is invisible to us" is a scary problematic. It's like being locked in a dark room and having to wrestle a one ton gorilla, oh, and you're blindfolded and in a straight-jacket - winner takes all. Poster wants to differentiate technologies, seperating the low brow (hydroelectric plants, windmills) and the high brow (computers, mass media), claiming that an essence, " a being of technology varies depending upon the material constraints of the technology." Poster believes that the specificity of the machine dictates its relationship to culture and to us. Therefore the being of my computer is found within itself: "The machine itself inscribes meaning...but it does so within its own register, not as a human subject would." Sooooo, my computer talks to itself and slavishly, but reluctantly does my bidding (wait, it doesn't rule me yet!). The technological essence is still hidden from us through Heidegger's enframing process. But, these new high brow machines are speaking a different, intrinsic language, a coded, covert language that is hitherto "unrepresentable" but is expressed, miraculously, through their interface with humans. Poster uses the example of the internet to explain that information technology is "opening new social and cultural worlds that are only beginning to be explored but that quite probably are already redefining what it means to be human". I love that quote - its filled with such blind optimism. You can't help but want to jump on board the cyberexpress and fullfill your human destiny, which according to Poster is to become the new human-machine; a technologically enhanced, biologically encumbered, irrational being, still trying to understand itself and uncover the hidden essence and communications of the technologies at its disposal through incomplete data seen through opaque eyes while time and space suck and blow simulatanously. I'm not sure I can handle the resounding echo of 'I told you so' in this damn tinny contraption!

Michael

DO WE REALLY WANT TO KNOW?

If we knew for an absolute certainty (keeping in mind there is no such thing as an absolute of anything) that there was indeed a higher power, a God or gods of some sort, then where would the mystery in our lives go? Don't we need mystery and ambiguity to go about our day to day existence in our preceived realities? If the mystery of the Godly unknown is made available to all on the planet (assuming it's a digestible epistomology for all, which would be a ridiculous assumption) would that change how we interact in society, politics, gender, class and war? Would this reduction in diversity and plurality, made possible by the undisputed truth of a higher power (there is no such thing as the undisputed truth), make less dichotomous the tensions between mind & body, animal & human, nature & machine? I'm not sure that I want to know the answer that unveils the omniscience of a higher power. I like the unrevealed mystery. It's the mystery that allows for a space between belief and disbelief, natural and unnatural, political and apolitical. Donna Haraway in her "Cyborg Manifesto" sees no coincidence in the fact that "the symbolic system of the 'family of man'...breaks up at the same moment that networks of connection among people on the planet are unprecedentedly multiple, pregnant, and complex." Why? Because our undulating and modulating narratives continue to interact, intersect and intercede with unpredictable story arcs that challenge the perception of the difinitive and the essential, creating new combinations of the cultural, societal and political, definitions that will in turn be questioned and rethought. That wouldn't be possible if the world community shared an unflinching, absolute knowledge of God. That kind of rigidity and close-mindedness is the stuff of religious fundementalism and intolerance. If we had that knowledge then we as humans would be omniscient and therefore Gods ourselves. But to be human is to err, to be imperfect and filled with uncertainty. The challenge is not in the search for evidence of God or Gods, but in the more grounded task of learning how to live with ourselves, to understand the empirical world (to understand the optics of the empirical world) and even if its diverse ideologies and practices don't align with one another or with our own, at least we can be tolerant and even a bit humble in the shadow of the great Mystery.

Michael