Heidegger thinks that man is driven by technology, not the other way around. That we keep on making bigger and better and smaller and sleeker machines and computers and weapons and ideas not because we want these things, but because they want to be made. I don't understand it entirely, but somehow something beyond man is making man make things.
But what if I don't take part. Sorry Heidegger but I don't want to play today. I prefer books to screens, records to mp3, typewriters and pencil to the cold, cold rainfall on skylights of keyboard clatter. I want to pound in my words, I want to press that pencil to the paper and rip it. I don't like plastic, I don't like electricity, I don't like gears and wires and pipes and things I don't understand. I guess it's ignorance, I guess it's stupid but I don't like these things. They don't seem honest, they don't seem true, they seem like magic corrupted. They seem like a man-made miracle. I don't want to take part of this inevitable march of technology.
But you see the inherent hypocrisy of this self-expression, since, after all, I'm writing this on a fancy macbook, I'm sitting in a heated apartment, my food is in a fridge, my shoes were shipped across the planet, I watch DVDs, I torrent, I steal, I'm dishonest I'm dishonest I'm dishonest.
That's not what I want, this isn't what I want. I just want to be true.
Heidegger says the pure truth is beautiful.
I ain't beautiful, Heidegger. I ain't truth.
4 comments:
why don't you play an a minor and bend it.
1) I really dig the above comment.
2) What Heidegger means by man being driven by technology has to do with the fact that man is driven to accomplish. It is within our nature to progress through time and advance our technologies. Once we become aware that we can create something we usually create it, and damn the consequences to us and to the resources we use - hence the danger of the enframing essence of technology that leads us to see the world and everything in it as standing-reserve, i.e. as existing to be exploited as resources for our projects instead of in and of themselves in their own beauty and truth.
BUT, there is a great hope in this world view. Because technology makes us actually look at the world (and even discover more about it) instead of ignoring it, it means we can overcome the above world-view and open ourselves up to the possibility of seeing the world in all its beauty - its aletheia.
It seems to me that you're doing fine, and that your worries our not as justified as you seem to think they are.
I hope you get it a bit better now... :)
Yeah, but if it's unconscious then wouldn't it be beyond man? Also I suspect that you're using "essence of technology" a bit too easily here, at least in terms of Heidegger, as Heidegger saw the essence of technology as "the most thought-provoking thing", which is constantly withdrawing from man and thus, while all thinking draws to it, with our present thinking we're not able to actually determine it, as our present thinking is too involved within knowledge, or "science", which, while it can supplement thought, is not thought in and of itself.
I think.
That seems to make sense to me, though I'm not sure if it actually acknowledges your point.
But yeah, I do understand that technology is different than Heidegger's technological progress. Unfortunately the paper I'm not writing right now has very little to do with that.
What you just said was the truth, on the actual blog post, and EVERYTHING THAT YOU SAY IS TRUE. YOU never tell the lies. ESPECIALLY NOT to your MOTHERLOVING self. DAMN.
Maybe you would still be who you are with less technology, but maybe you would not be. Maybe you would have never met your now loved ones. Maybe you would have something else to feel raw and such and such about.
COmputers are only extensions of the technologies that were started in typewriters wich were extensions of simple ink hand written on paper.
Maybe it is just you who feels dishonest for the world, but you did nothing to intentionally harm it.
Maybe the people who invent the things we use are dishonest, probably not, but maybe. THAT does not make THIS MUTHERFUCKER right HERE dishonest. It is what you do your things and your life that allow you and others to determine your honesty, not things that are beyond your reach to change.
Fucking Great man.
("great" referring to man, not fucking).
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