Can art rescue us from technology?

Heidegger argues that the essence of technology is nothing technological.  Rather, technology is driven by enframing, the impulse for humans to order and quantify the natural world as materials and resources waiting for use.  He argues that this enframing causes technology, while not the cause of ecological disasters, to be an exasperating factor.  It becomes the source of a worldview that approaches nature in an unhealthy way.

What can overcome the bleak outlook that we are entrapped in a technological worldview?  Heidegger offers art as an alternative way of uncovering the hidden truth of the natural world.  Art is a form of poiesis, a process which reveals the essence of natural materials in their context, as opposed to the quantitative ordering of enframing.

The notion that art can be a means of revealing hidden truth is exemplified in Heidegger's example of the Rhine River.  He sees it currently (in the 1950s) revealed through technology, as a hydroelectric power plant dams the riverway to harness its power.  He contrasts the revealing through a power work as opposed to the version of the revealed through artwork, specifically in a poem of Friedrich Holderlin entitled "The Rhine."

This poem is a particularly poignant choice, as it describes how the landscape of the Rhine and the distant Alps "devolves /To man yet many a thing /Decided in secret...."  Thus art professes to be an alternative means through which the truth of which Heidegger speaks is disclosed.  This can be attested in the shear volume of poetry, music, and visual art that has been inspired merely by the landscape of the Rhine River, arguably far more than is revealed through geologic surveys or technical reports.

 

Die Lorelei, a rock above the Rhine River that is a famous subject of poetry and art.

(Wikipedia) 

The question that proceeds from this is whether art at its essence could really form a worldview that could displace the one formed by technology.  Among the considerations at hand is the use of technology in almost all forms of economic employment or production.  The arts are often seen as secondary components of society which are fueled monetarily by industry and its technology.  Could people abandon the economic incentive that technology offers and replace it with art?

Panel Discussion on Extreme Populations

Here's the link to an event next week that may be of interest given our recent discussions about population: https://www.facebook.com/events/413075622154392/?previousaction=join&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular&source=1

Heidegger and Technology

Heidegger: "The Question Concerning Technology"

Contributor: Ben

In the opening lines of Heidegger’s essay, Heidegger informs us that “Questioning builds a way” (3). This essay contains Heidegger’s analyses of language, which provides insight into the relationship between human existence and the essence of technology. Heidegger begins by discussing and rejecting the colloquial and common definition of technology as incomplete; he tells us “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological”(4). He tells us that this approach is rooted in the ancient view which stated that “the essence of a thing is considered to be what the thing is”(4). This view which emphasizes the material and physical aspects/properties leads us to think of technology as means to an end and as a human activity; he calls this the instrumental-anthropological definition of technology. On this understanding, technology is a tool; it is the collection of machines, instruments, and devices we invent, assemble, and utilize. It is something we control.

Heidegger argues that this instrumental-anthropological view is correct in a trivial sense but it is also inherently incomplete and limited. Heidegger claims that the essence of technology is unaccounted for in the everyday understanding. Because of his beliefs about language and truth, Heidegger proposes that in order to encounter or discover the essence of technology we need to describe a technological mode of being. Through analysis of his native German language and ancient Greek, Heidegger arrives at the claim that the essence of technology has everything to do with revealing(12). This “revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology…. is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such”(14). Heidegger’s main point here is that the modern, technologically influenced revealing understands all phenomena—animals, atoms, plants, people, etc—as nothing more than energy resources to be used or stored for use. Heidegger presents the Rhine and the trend of renaming personnel departments as ‘human resources’ as evidence for his claim. Heidegger wants to show that the technological mode of being reduces the natural beauty of the Rhine into a mere resource. This revealing has led us to think of conversations with new people as “networking opportunities” instead of a chance to enjoy the company of other beings. Heidegger’s claim is that our naïve-instrumental understanding of technology is blinding us to the actual case in which technology builds a deeply reductive and destructive view of the world. Heidegger is arguing that this ugly, reductive view defines modernity as a way of being and understanding the world. He claims that this view follows once one realizes that mathematical or exact science “demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve” and requiring that “nature report itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remain orderable as a system of information”. By showing that modern-technology’s mode of revealing only reveals beings as solely the measurable and the manipulatable, Heidegger argues that our thinking reduces beings into not-beings; existing things into data points and quantitative descriptions. I think Heidegger is trying to point us towards two ideas here. The first is that the kind of technological revealing either ignores or destroys the wonder and marvel in beings like the Rhine; and secondly that we are unmoved by loss. I think Heidegger would say that we respond to the loss of natural wonder by substituting a “technological feeling” like the drive for information and consumption of entertainment and information.

                However, it would be a misunderstanding of Heidegger to only think of technology as a negative and perverting thing. Heidegger himself states that “It [technology] is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth”(12). Heidegger recognizes the urgent danger that technology presents but he also understands that it is a stage in the unfolding of Being. This leads us to the question: is technological revealing and its effects on the natural world something humans are responsible for? Heidegger tells us that humankind is the active agent of technological revealing so we must have some part in the responsibility. Yet on the other hand, he says “Since man drives technology forward, he takes part in the ordering as a way of revealing. But the unconcealment itself, within which ordering unfolds, is never a human handiwork”(18). In effort to shed more light on this point, we must dive into Heidegger’s own terminology; specifically his concept of Enframing. Yet this is where I am uncertain about what Heidegger is actually getting at but here goes.

 Enframing is that challenge which drives man to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve(19). He also describes it as “the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e, challenges him forth, to reveal the real….(20). Enframing is a particular ordaining of Destining.  Where Destining is “what first starts man upon a way of revealing”; it is an apriori transcendental aspect of our Being (of dasein?) and thus, it is beyond our control. Technology then is a manner of the essential “swaying of being”; it is of Being’s own unfolding.

                Unsurprisingly Heidegger has more to say and Heidegger leads us farther down the rabbit hole as he develops his previous claim that technological thinking defines our age. To see this let us return to the previous example of the Rhine. Heidegger sees the old wooden bridge as an example of Poiesis. Poiesis is a process of gathering natural materials in a way where the anthropological purpose brings forth the essence of the materials and the natural environment it is in. But does this not suggest that technological thinking existed before our age? If so how can it be the defining trait of modernity? Heidegger answers this in his discussion of Poiesis. He is suggesting that our age is dominated by technological thinking and Enframing. Heidegger is arguing that Enframing “drives out every other possibility of revealing”, and that it blinds us from the concealing-unconcealing nature of knowledge and forces us into one reductive viewpoint.

Now remember the discussion of our apathetic stance towards loss that Heidegger identifies. This happens because we are Enframed by technological thinking. I think Heidegger is claiming that we have forgotten the fourfold nature of causation. Importantly, one must not hear Heidegger’s words as calling for a radical abandonment of technological thinking. Heidegger warns that we should neither “push on blindly with technology” nor “curse it as the work of the devil” (330). Heidegger is not advocating for an end to technology but rather a reconceptualization of it and a recognition of how our interacting with it changes ourselves.

-What do you think of Heidegger’s heavy reliance on linguistic analysis and appeal to definition? Is it a good way to get at the truth? Does “Questioning” build a way? What about concerns about Greek being a dead language? How can we know we are correct in our understanding of the language?

-How is Heidegger’s understanding of truth as a process of revealing related or different from other author’s understanding of truth and nature? (Ex. Kant, Nietzsche, Callicot, Aristotle, King)

- Is Heidegger’s analysis of modern science still fair today?

-How might Heidegger’s suggestions alter our political policies toward nature and is it possible for modern society to accept and embrace them? If so what kind of measures would need to be taken for this kind of conceptual overhaul?

Wired article that may be of interest

This is an article by Bill Gates that came out today on Wired's website. I just thought some of you all might find it interesting, especially since it relates to some of our recent readings.

For instance, Gates trusts that science and technology will save the world, saying, "At heart I’m an optimist. Technology is helping us overcome our biggest challenges." Along those lines, he talks about things like poverty and the Green Revolution in Africa (about which I'm not convinced he's actually right-- see our readings from the other day about sustainable ag from Jackson, Keller, and Brummer). 

Anyway, you can just read it yourself and draw your own conclusions. Here's the link: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/11/bill-gates-wired-essay/

Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons"

Garrett Hardin explores the concept of the tragedy of the commons in light of the depletion of natural resources. Hardin explains overpopulation in terms of the tragedy and it's causes. 

The tragedy of the commons is the outcome of many individuals, acting autonomously, depleting a shared resource. Hardin uses the famous example of a "pasture open to all". Herdsmen might bring their animals to graze on this land and for each additional animal he brings he benefits greatly. Every other rational herdsman with access to the land will do the same and will bring more and more animals to graze. Eventually, the animals will begin to degrade the land. But the negative utility for each herdsman is shared and nominal and so the negative utility from land degradation is outweighed by the positive utility of a larger herd. This pasture is a microcosm of the shared resource that is our natural environment. As population grows exponentially and the world's resources remain finite, something has got to give. 

While overpopulation is a truly pressing concern and the tragedy of the commons is a completely valid concept, the rest of the essay gets ethnocentric and classist on many different levels. Hardin condemns families that reproduce excessively (greater than the replacement rate) regardless of culture. He proposes basing foreign aid upon birthdate reduction. He suggests awarding young women "non-baby"stipends. He also majorly criticized what he sees as the welfare state and the individuals that depend on it. Is Hardin's argument at all discredited by these statements?

Hardin also clearly attached a system of ethics to this concept. He claims that to have excessive amounts of children is immoral and he explains "the immorality of being softhearted" about population control. Even his closing words are, "making these tough conditions is the kindest thing we can do for the needy peoples of the world. And, ultimately, for the whole world." Given this concept, what is the answer to overpopulation? How does it relate to ethics?

The Impact of Population Growth

People are bad. Well, more like having lots of people is bad. Or actually, how said people live is pretty important, too. The point is, we need to address population growth if we want to have any chance of mitigating global climate crises such as climate change, pollution, species extinction, and the like. Ehrlich and Holdren set out to disband the idea that US population size and growth are nothing to worry about, a myth that I personally find hard to believe ever existed. Their discussion centers on five theorems about population size and per capita impact, global context, population density and distribution, meaning of environment, and solutions both theoretical and practical, respectively. They introduce a formula to try to gauge total negative impact of us on the environment: I = P x F(P), where P is the population and F is per capita impact. This equation makes clear that impact can increase faster than linearly with population. In fleshing out the theorems that introduce this essay, they basically explain why are screwed, and how what we thought we knew, we actually don’t.

With increasing resource use, diminishing returns increase per capita energy use and environmental impact as we try our best to get to the last little bits of (effectively or actual) non-renewable resources. Another worry is the threshold effect, where straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back type scenarios result in rapid widespread problems, such as a forest of dead trees. Direct cause and effect problems not enough to scare you? Then consider the issue of synergistic effects, where problems work together in sync to make the sum worse than the individual parts. And to even maintain the environmental status quo increases disproportionately in cost/difficulty as population increases. Trying to increase per capita effectiveness of pollution control alone highlights aforementioned issues such as diminishing returns and threshold effects, and economies of scale are basically irrelevant, as these guys already calculated them in their gloomy evaluations.

Thinking in terms of a global context makes clear the uneven resource consumption and environmental destruction by (over-) developed countries, as well as how such places are not even really allowing the possibility that underdeveloped countries can follow in their footsteps towards prosperity. Here the authors note that even if population growth were halted or even reduced, if per capita consumption remained the same (or increased), we would still be in pretty deep (like, existential) trouble.

Population is best thought of in terms of carrying capacity (of regions and scaling up to the planet as whole, really), not just space itself; many of the worst environmental problems are essentially independent of how people are distributed. And also, redistributing people would be tough, in part because people live where they do for reasons such as its being a favorable environment for people.

Environment does not just mean forests and streams and stuff, and crowding seems to lead to increased aggressiveness (as do higher temperatures, but that’s not here in this text). The authors say our health suffers with population growth [see crowding, malnutrition, carriers of disease (although actually living in urban areas can definitely reduce carbon footprints/resource use as well as lead to better information/cultural exchanges and lots of other good stuff like good old fashioned compassion, for example, which benefit the species as whole, in my opinion, but again, that’s not in this reading- that’s just me)].

Theoretical solutions are not actually solutions most of the time, hate to break it to you. Tech solutions are all too often too little, too late, too expensive, too weird, or otherwise insufficient. And also most just shift our impacts, as opposed to removing them. So that has to be considered. Don’t rely on technology to be our savior.

We cannot have complacency (the authors call it “unjustified and counterproductive”) towards the many problems we face as a species and for the planet as a whole. There is no single solution or even small set of big solutions to save ourselves, but working on the population issue is a good start, especially since it is so big a problem and is so slow to take effect. So we better get on it, pronto.

In this reading, Ehrlich and Holdren do not get around to saying how they want to work on the problem of population growth. And that in itself seems like a pretty big problem. If you’re not careful you’ll get weird not good scenarios like forced sterilizations (shout out to India), heavy handed child policies (China), mass killings, attempts to label people as more or less worthy of living, increased eco-terrorism, and the like. How can we humanely address the issue of too many people using too many resources without eliminating human agency? Development seems like a pretty good solution, since it generally results in smaller families. But that, as is always the case with environmental issues, is not a clean and tidy silver bullet solution. Other thoughts? (Also, I wonder if the decades between when this was written and now have at all changed the situation as it is presented here... if so, I’m not optimistic that things are better today.)

The Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change

When the topic of climate change comes up, I immediately think about the number of American politicians (and citizens, for that matter) that strongly believe “there is no such thing as global warming” or that “climate fluxuations on Earth are completely normal”. Brown’s article addresses these common statements, along with a few others, and makes a compelling argument that intervention must occur now because of ethical and moral issues that go along with global climate change.

Brown sees climate change as a moral issue. He presents eight different ethical issues, along with factual context and ethical analysis for each issue. One point Brown emphasizes in many ethical analyses is that many of those who are most harmed by climate change have contributed little to the cause of the problem. Conversely, those who have contributed the most to climate change are often affected the least. Thus, some of the poorest countries are affected the most by climate change but cannot do anything about it. Brown’s article states “the human-induced warming that the world is now experiencing is already causing 150,000 deaths and 5 million incidents of disease each year from additional malaria and diarrhea, mostly in the poorest nations” (9). Brown says that everyone has a right to life, liberty, and personal security and uses this as evidence to argue that there is no ethically acceptable excuse to allow global climate change, because these changes threaten basic human rights. Brown seeing environmental problems as ethical issues, and his evidence for it, is definitely a compelling argument. Most people probably do not realize that global climate change affect those in poverty much more than others. The media portrays common negative effects of global climate change with examples of ice caps melting and ocean levels rising, not with an increase in disease among the poorest of people. If the media presented the negative effects directly affecting people today, would more people consider taking action?

While many governments and individuals think there is not enough evidence of global climate change to justify taking action on the issue, Brown presents ethical issues with this claim (Issue IV) in points 7 and 8 of his ethical analysis that are hard to argue against. Brown sees intervention against green house gases emissions (GHGs), which cause climate change, as a human duty because of the serious risks of climate change. However, no matter what evidence exists, I think there will still be obstinate people who refuse to support taking action of global environmental problems. It seems that the current struggle (at least in the U.S.) is proving that global climate change is an issue, rather than brainstorming ways to reduce human effects. What will it take for people to recognize that this is a serious issue if current scientific evidence is not compelling enough?