The Technical Embrace

I was at a talk tonight by Norman Solomon, on media and the war. I'm not quite sure what I expected but I know it didn't occur. He spoke mostly about the role between technology, education and the normalization of war, of the way that our society is carved as a grand hoax. That the people employed to put society at risk are for some reason trusted to its salvation. And that our fascination with and portrayal of technology in war and technology in general, royal science as some would call it, covers over and obscures the reality of American society, that we are to a large extent a nation of war. Half our taxes go to it, it's the real welfare and jobs training program for most of America, and big science is built and organized around it.

Some of his words reminded me of the absolute horror and frustration I feel about the whole miserable business. For instance, he talked about the Cold War a bit, and living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. And I am amazed at how easily a reality so obvious that few demand or desire its memory is forgotten, and the administration plays with nuclear toys and bridles that we resist their development and use. For fifty years the whole of humanity lives under the fear of death come screaming out of the sky like demons from the nightmares of insane mystics, and these wretches play with them, for money, for sick pleasure, who knows.

I think American identity has a variety of themes in it, the chief two being the trace of democracy and the trace of Empire. They oppose each other. There's a third trace though, the trace of technophilia, the love of applied reason. I have a deep suspicion that this is where the real ambiguity lies, that the fate of the battle between democracy and Empire rests in the allegiance of this faction, the faction oriented primarily to the world or metal and earth outside the social dynamics of man. Where shall they place their loyalty, to the Empire that offers them capital or the demos that offers them something else? The ambiguity lies in the fact that technophilia or the embrace of the nonhuman world can take two general forms. We can approach it with reverence as a way to learn the truth of the world to better respect and work alongside it. Or we can crave technology as a pure expression of power over the world. One involves understanding, the other simply contrivance and use, isolated interest.

I think the democratic forces of society can only win when this skilled faction works through respect and reverence, when it forsakes the appeal of simple power. We don't often know this, but I think it is necessary.

[or another way of putting things- will the war machine or the smiths turn towards the State or against it?]