In the Presence of Things, Part III

Technology forms a background of values that perpetuate the will to dominate nature, the desire for disburdened consumption, and the belief that subjugation, consumption, and the good life are inextricably tied together. The technological narrative has had a detrimental effect on our own sense of self and moral duty. If we are to reform technology and establish a richer sense of self along with ties to human and biotic communities, we must begin by creating a new narrative wherein we can express our lost yet vital moral and cultural values through the rediscovery of our relationships with things.

The Things Themselves

In parts I and II, I described at length the nature of technology, technological devices, and how they provide commodities without encumbering us. I want to now look at the nature of things as a contrast to devices. Because I use the term “thing” in a special sense, we need to start by defining what a thing is.

Martin Heidegger undertakes an etymological analysis of the word “thing” to illuminate its meaning and significance for modern man living in a technological culture. He writes that that an earthen jug is not merely an object for holding water or wine, but instead is a thing that is revealing of the world.

“The jug presences as a thing. The jug is the jug as a thing. But how does the jug presence? The thing things. Thinging gathers. Appropriating the fourfold, it gathers the fourfold’s stay, it while, into something that stays for awhile: into this thing, that thing. The jug’s essential nature, its presencing, so experienced and thought of in these terms, is what we call thing (Heidegger 174)”

Thus, what Heidegger shows here is that in the thing is a myriad of relationships—the clay from the earth, the water from a stream which fell as rain from the sky.
Philosopher Albert Borgmann builds on Heidegger’s notion of things, and writes that they reveal not only the abstract “one fold fourfold” of “Earth, sky, divinities, and mortals,” but very real and tangible engagements with our immediate world. He writes in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life,

“A thing, in the sense I want to use the world here, is inseparable from its context, namely, its world, and from our commerce with the thing and its world, namely, engagement. The experience of a thing is always and also a bodily and social engagement with the thing’s world (Borgmann 41).”

Therefore, in Borgmann’s notion of things, the things do not just reveal the “onefold fourfold,” but are actually revealing of “manifold relationships,” that is that our encounter of things involves bodily and social engagements. If we take as Borgmann does the example of the fireplace, we see its many physical and familial engagements. As Borgmann puts it,
“In calling forth a manifold engagement, a thing necessarily provides more than one commodity. Thus a stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. Its coldness marked the morning, and the spreading of its warmth the beginning of the day. It assigned to the different family members tasks that defined their place in the household. The mother built the fire, the children kept the firebox filled, and the father cut the fire wood. It provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons (Borgmann 42)…”

Borgmann expands Heidegger’s notion of a thing, and in doing so, shows how things can be an integral and revealing part of our lives. The example above shows the thing’s ability to not only disclose the change of seasons, but to engage us bodily in various duties, and engage us in familial or communitarian sense by helping create a roll and duty for us. Therefore, what we see above all else in Borgmann’s notion of things is an interweaving of means and ends, and an engagement with the world, as opposed to the disburdened commodities made available via modern technology.

I have showed what is meant by the term “thing,” and how they gather and presence a world. I want to now though look at what it means to have an intimate relationship with things, for this will form the core of our reform of technology. David Strong --my friend and teacher from Rocky Mountain College-- explores the nature of our relationships with things at great length, and brings to the forefront their richness and vitality in what he has termed correlational coexistence. He writes,

“Our very being is tied to things in a relationship I call correlational coexistence…Things, allowed their fullness, take into account a world of considerations. Means and ends are interwoven in them, and so too are nature and culture, shared and personal experience…So seen, the depth of things correlates to the complexity of the world. Things are rich in their capacity to reciprocate each and every tie to the world (Strong 68-69).”

Strong’s thinking therefore appears to be very similar to Borgmann’s in that he emphasizes the means/ends split of technological devices and the interweaving of means and ends in things. However, David makes an important contribution to the discourse on things by showing how the relationship between people and things is profoundly reflective—things and humans grow in importance in accordance with each other. He further writes that,
“As people feel, think, act and develop in relation to things, the things themselves are also disclosed in their manifold depths. So, both what people are capable of and what things are capable of are simultaneously disclosed in this relation. Since both human beings and things emerge into being at the same time in this process, and since there is no conflict between the two but actually the two require each other, this symmetrical relationship is a correlational coexistence. By responding to things in their full dimensions, I too emerge in the fullness of my dimensions. If I lack the power to be equal to them, neither do things emerge into the fullness of what they can be. If things are not allowed to be, neither am I allowed to be. If I sever my bonds with things by dominating them, I too am diminished. Realizing that human beings and things require and can harmonize with one another is the basis for a respectful and harmonious relationship with our surroundings (Strong 70)”

David’s contribution is in how he illuminates our relationships with things. Whereas Borgmann sees the importance of things as how they interweave means and ends, Strong sees how absolutely integral to our sense of self things are. The self and the thing come into being not independent of each other, but are fully disclosed only when they “arrive on the scene” together. When we equal a thing, we become more, and in putting forth our efforts, the thing comes into its own. In this resonant relationship between people and things that Strong calls correlational coexistence is the core of a reform of the technological narrative. From these relationships we can derive a narrative that expresses our connectivity to a world independent of purely positivist means, and give a fuller expression of the importance of wilderness, community, and the things that challenge and form our sense of self. This way of thinking and being in the world of rich engagements is couched in a correlational narrative.”.

Reforming the Technological Narrative:
Narrative and Values in a World of Things

The discourse over the preservation of wilderness, community, and self that is conducted from the point of view of a correlational narrative by its nature avoids the irony and superficial posturing of the technological narrative. Whereas the technological narrative is concerned chiefly with expressing the significance of things in terms of quantifiable standards such as economic expediency, cost analysis, or inputs and outputs, the correlational narrative is couched in experiential knowledge, and is articulated by showing the importance of things. So, as the technological narrative relies on the “apodictic discourse” which argues, the correlational narrative is a “deictic discourse” which shows. However, it is important to note that to adopt a correlational narrative is not to deny the importance or place of empirical knowledge such as we find in the sciences, but it does mean we must realize that it is limited in what it can disclose to us. I am reminded of a story by John Steinbeck which illuminates this distinction quite elegantly in recounting a scientific expedition on the Sea of Cortez to study the Mexican sierra fish. He writes in The Log from the Sea of Cortez,

“But if the sierra strikes hard so that our hands our burned, if the fish sounds and nearly escapes and finally comes in over the rail, his color pulsing and his tail beating the air, a whole new relational externality has come into being—an entity which is more than the sum of the fish plus the fisherman. The only way to count the spines of the Sierra unaffected by this second relational reality is to sit in a laboratory, open an evil smelling jar, remove a stiff colorless fish from formaldehyde solution, count the spines and write the truth “D.XVII 15-IX.” There you have recorded a reality which cannot be assailed—probably the least important reality concerning the fish or yourself (Steinbeck 2).”

Removing the lifeless fish from the jar of formaldehyde no doubt reveals a fact about that particular fish (the number of spines it has), but it does not and cannot reveal the truth of the thing: its context and resonance withing a larger biotic community; the context of the fisherman and the experience of landing the fish while drifting on the Sea of Cortez. There is an entire reality that lies outside the mere facts about the fish, but which is subordinated by a purely positivist approach.

Steinbeck’s observation is mirrored by writer Barry Lopez. Lopez frequently accompanies scientific researchers into the field, and writes that in his conversation with these researches he has discovered that,

"The animals they scrutinize may draw them back into an older, more intimate and less rational association with the local landscape. In this frame of mind, they may privately begin to question the methodology of Western science, especially its purported objectivity and its troublesome lack of heart. It may seem to them incapable of addressing questions they intuit are crucial (Lopez 199)."

This is a very good start. If, as a culture we can acknowledge that our methods have failed to account for so many crucial things by their “troublesome lack of heart,” such as our relationship to wilderness and its inhabitants, then we can begin to tell new stories which guide public policy with the same power as scientific data. But to begin this move, we need a new generation of storytellers who can see their own personal experiences in wild places and tie it inextricably to our cultural values, or give us cause to adopt values we have hitherto ignored. If we do finally admit that the truths vital to our happiness are diminished by scientific discourse, then a critical role opens up for other academic disciplines with greater disclosive powers.

Thought of in such disclosive terms, philosophy takes on a new and crucial role under the correlational narrative. For whereas Descartes saw philosophy as a means to forward scientific knowledge and the domination of nature, philosophy under the correlational narrative is a philosophy in the service of things. Philosophy of this sort is evocative of things, and possesses a profound disclosive power. The philosophy of Henry Bugbee beautifully articulates this idea. He writes,

“…my philosophy took shape mainly on foot. It was truly peripatetic, engendered not merely while walking, but through walking that was essentially a meditation of the place. And the balance in which I weighed the ideas I was studying was always that established in the experience of walking in the place. I weighed everything by the measure of the silent presence of things, clarified in the racing clouds, clarified by the cry of hawks, solidified in the presence of rocks, spelled syllable by syllable in waters of manifold voice, and consolidated in the act of taking steps, each step a meditation steeped in reality (Bugbee 139).”

As Bugbee walked, all that he studied, and all the empirical knowledge that reading and lectures imparted to him made sense in light of the things around him. The things themselves disclosed to him what the things he had read and thoughts he had really meant. We see in Bugbee the sort of change in narrative to which I am pointing. In his reflections, we find a philosophy richly evocative of a place, and that elegantly conveys the power of “the silent presence of things.”

The key to adopting a correlational narrative is in realizing our unease with the dominance of technological devices. Martin Heidegger writes,

“The terrifying is unsettling; it places everything outside its own nature. What is it that unsettles and thus terrifies? It shows itself and hides itself in the way in which everything presences, namely, in the fact that despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent (Heidegger 166).”

Heidegger is speaking of modern technology; not just the ability to “snuff out all life on Earth,” but also the fact that for all our technological advances, and the supposed happiness that goes with it, something is missing—the nearness of meaningful things. Borgmann echoes this sentiment when he writes that the thought of the further dominance of technology is “fraught with misgivings and sorrows, and in these sentiments a genuine alternative quietly asserts itself,” and “a real conversation” can begin over what should be at the center of the good life (Borgmann, CPD 115).”

Technology has its place, as does the empirical knowledge of science, but our unease grows when we think that science and technology under the paradigm of the technological narrative have become the sole possessors of truth to the exclusion of experiential knowledge and correlational narrative. From this unease, we can begin to articulate a new story to live by. Consider the poet’s orientation:

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figure, were ranged in columns
before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add,
divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. (Whitman 340)”

Unease becomes the salvation. Empiricism counts, but ultimately makes us “tired and sick” with its strangling hold on truth, how we may measure value, and what we may regard as meaningful. Conversely, the correlational narrative settles our unease, ties us to our place, and encourages us to “[look] up in perfect silence at the stars.” The correlational narrative encourages us to turn off the television and rediscover the things at the center of the good life.

Work’s Cited

Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992
Borgmann, Albert. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical
Inquiry. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1984
Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought.
New York: Harper and Row, 1975
Lopez, Barry. Crossing Open Ground
New York: Vintage Books, 1988
Steinbeck, John. The Log from the Sea of Cortez.
New York: Viking Press, 1971
Strong, David. Crazy Mountains: Learning From Wilderness to Weigh Technology.
Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1995
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass.
New York: The Modern Library, 1993

Hiking the Crazies

We headed out to Montana the first week of July. Originally, the plan was to attend the powwow on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. However, my friend Dennis, with whome we were to attend, fled for the warm embrace of a woman in Washington State. So, we skipped the visit to Lame Deer, and headed into the Crazies instead. We spent three days in the mountains. Lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery. This was Hilary's first time backpacking, and in hindsight, it may have been a bit much for a first outing. However, she was a real trooper, and our marriage survived. I'm already planning a return trip...

In the Presence of Things, Part II

Consumption and Our Fragmented Communities


Our desire for more and more commodities has lead to not only a fragmentation of wild places, but of our communities as well. As the consumer culture places greater and greater emphasis on the individual as the prime consumer of goods and services, less and less attention is given to the value of public life. Charles Taylor notes that a major issue in modern times is the emphasis on private consumption to the detriment of civic responsibility; he sees consumer culture creating individuals who possess “an outlook that makes self-fulfillment the major value in life and that seems to recognize few external moral demands or serious commitment to others (Taylor55)” Furthermore, the result of such an outlook is that people will “will prefer to stay at home and enjoy the satisfactions of private life, as long as the government of the day produces the means to these satisfactions and distributes them widely (Taylor 9).” Given the rapid decline in voter turnout, the disappearance of many fraternal and service organizations, and the advent of “gated communities” which seek to separate the homeowner within his castle from the larger community, Taylor’s observations are sensible. The continued growth of suburban sprawl is driven by the desire to escape the intimacy of urban life for a larger house, greater privacy, and space to fill with commodities.
Taylor’s observations then are critical to those of us who value not only community, but a free society as well. After all, democracy is contingent on the participation of the people. Without such participation, democracy either collapses completely, or becomes the tool of a few who remain interested. Either way it fails to be a reflection of the population at large. Therefore, we have at hand a fundamental paradox in a democratic society that is a byproduct of the narrative of technology--we have come to define freedom not as self choosing, self making, or even the ability to develop what is most unique about ourselves, instead we have come to see freedom as the ability to choose among a vast number of commodities and enjoy them unemcumbered, free of any cultural, social, or environmental context. However, that very notion of freedom is undermining our most basic principles of democracy, which is the necessity of participation. As Langdon Winner observes,

“Material abundance would make it possible for everybody to have enough to be perfectly happy. Eventually, Americans took this notion to be a generally applicable theory: economic enterprise driven by the engine of technical improvement was the very essence of human freedom. Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly remarked that if he could put one American book in the hands of every Russian, it would be the Sears, Roebuck catalogue (Winner 45).”

But by placing such an emphasis on private enjoyment or personal pleasure, we subvert more than just democratic participation. Winner also notes that,

A belief common in writings of ancient Greece and Rome that civic virtue and material prosperity are antithetical. Human nature, according to this view, is easily corrupted by wealth. The indolent, pleasure seeking habits of luxurious living tend to subvert qualities of frugality, self-restraint, and self-sacrifice needed to maintain a free society. By implication, any society that wishes to maintain civic virtue ought to approach technical innovation and economic growth with the utmost caution (Winner 43)”

As Winner sees it, it is not only electoral politics that suffer, but also the very virtues that allow for even small communities to exist such as self-restraint and self-sacrifice. Consideration for the good of neighbors and communities is subverted.
Juliet Schor sees that in competitive consumption--acquiring visible goods as a means of establishing status--uses up resources that could otherwise be used to strengthen and build communities. She writes,

“A second problem with competitive consumption is that the pressure to keep up with acquiring visible, private status goods crowds out other, competing uses of income. The four major competing uses of income are leisure, savings, public goods (including the environment), and non-visible private consumption. The experience of the past two decades in the United States suggests the plausibility of such a dynamic (Schor 49-50)”

The use of income primarily on the acquisition of status goods has pushed the other uses to the side, and as private consumption rises, community investment declines.

Consumption and the Impoverished Self


In addition to our public life, we have on a personal level become impoverished as well. Alex Kotlowitz sees consumption as a process of replacing or compensating for things we lack—not only the love and support of others, but also a means of defining our self. Kotlowitz notes that “it is as consumers that inner-city children, otherwise so disconnected from the world around them, identify themselves not as ghetto kids or project kids but as Americans or just plain kids (Kotlowitz 67).” Consumption being far from the pleasure of the wealthy or even middle class, is really a source of identity for those who live within paler circumstances—circumstances that consumerism actually exacerbates. Ironically enough, Kotlowitz sees that affluent suburban kids purchase the same clothing as those in poor urban areas as a means of emulating and identifying with a different socio-economic group. Identity among people from these two widely divergent backgrounds is inextricably entwined with consumption, but lacking in any real ties to reality. Above all else though, it may also be quite damaging, for as Kotlowitz writes,

...in lieu of building real connections—by providing opportunities or rebuilding communities—we have found some common ground as purchasers of each other’s trademarks. At best, that link is tenuous; at worst, it’s false. It lets us believe that we are connected when the distance, in fact, is much farther than anyone cares to admit.” (Kotlowitz 72)

Instead of seeking out connections to things that are very real, such as friends, neighbors, and communities, consumerism has given us an impoverished notion of self that is based merely on purchasing power and the surface appearance of belonging to something.
But there is even more to the problem than just superficially defining one’s self. At the core of the problem is the nature of commodity itself, which is the aspect of disburdened enjoyment which has brought to the forefront a degraded understanding of individualism. Albert Borgmann traces the decline of our sense of individualism from the first rugged individualist who shaped our nation, to the beneficiaries of that effort. He writes of the rugged individualist,

The image of the rugged individual conjures up people who, facing up to a wild continent, were provoked to superhuman feats of ingenuity and endurance and bespoke in their weathered faces and plain behavior the grandeur of the land they had prevailed against. (Borgmann, CPD 38)

These were people of great courage and discipline. Placing aside for now any criticism of their will to dominate and control nature, we see that these people earned their place and name through a great deal of intelligence and hard work. However, Borgmann sees that that brand of individualism has given was to a degraded form of individualism which he calls “commodious individualism.”

The individual is the author of the enterprise [the rugged individualist] and the beneficiary of its fruits. The former of these two functions has been fixed in the American consciousness as rugged individualism; the latter leads a more surreptitious life in commodity consumption. I will call this second function commodious individualism. (Borgmann, CPD 38)

This commodious individualism is impoverished because the commodious individual has not out forth the discipline or effort. But commodious individualism is not merely a problem of buying things or having this or that without really earning it, it is a fundamental problem of self.
Commodious individualism is the final step we take when our way of defining our self is no longer what we are capable of, what is unique about us, or what we have accomplished in our lives. Instead, commodious individualism comes when we surrender everything that is uniquely defining about us and acquiesce to the call of consumption—I am me because of what I own. Uniqueness becomes ironically enough a function of one’s ability to associate oneself with a particular style or fad. Wendell Berry writes,

“There are, to begin with, two radically different, even opposing meanings of style: style as fashion, an imposed appearance, a gloss upon superficiality; and a style as the signature of mastery, the effervescence of long discipline. It is obvious that the style of mastery can never become the style of fashion, simply because every master of a discipline is different from every other; his mastery is suffused with his own character and his own materials. Cezanne’s paintings could not have been produced by a fad, for the simple reason that they could not have been produced by any other person. As a popular phrase,” life style” necessarily has to do only with what is imitable in another person’s life, it’s superficial appearances, disciplines, or devotions…An essential recognition is thus obscured at birth by the old lie of advertising and public relations: that you can alter substance by altering appearance. “Alternate life style” suggests, much in the manner of the fashion magazines, that one can change one’s life by changing one’s clothes (Berry 175).”

Berry is correct that life style is a popular phrase, and that there are indeed two ways of understanding it; the first is as the “signature of mastery” and the other as a “gloss upon superficiality.” Modern culture is consumed by the fallacy that to alter appearance is to alter substance, and that to change one’s clothes is to change one’s life. This fits under the umbrella of the technological narrative because it is indicative of our expectation of disburdenment. Self realization requires effort, and self actualization requires even more effort, sometimes stretched out over decades (such as the skills of an artist or craftsman). However, in the age of instant gratification, we have been lulled by the promise of technology and the availability of commodities into thinking that self making should be like other forms of consumption—fast, without burdens, and disengaged from a larger social and ecological context.
The culture that values superficial self defining and self gratification leads to a degraded moral sense, and makes the individual the last source of moral appeal. In his book The Ethics of Authenticity, philosopher Charles Taylor makes such an observation. Taylor notes that one “malaise” of modern culture is a relativistic “flattened and narrowed” sense of individualism. This is not to say that individualism is bad in Taylor’s view, for quite to the contrary, he sees modern man’s ability to be self determining and self creating as vitally important. However, Taylor’s critique of modern individualism is that it has been diverted from the ideals of self determination and co-opted by a radical and disconnected subjectivity based almost exclusively on self gratification, or as Taylor puts it, “the spread of an outlook that makes self-fulfillment the major value in life and that seems to recognize few external moral demands or serious commitment to others” (Taylor 55) This is reflective of the disengagement with culture and community that Kotlowitz observes. Taylor also writes,
“The worry has been repeatedly expressed that the individual lost something important along with the larger social and cosmic horizons of action…People no longer have a sense of a higher purpose (Taylor 4)…”

He further writes that,
“This loss of purpose was linked to a narrowing. People lost the broader vision because they focused on their individual lives…The sense that lives have been flattened and narrowed, and that this is connected to an abnormal and regrettable self-absorption (Taylor 4)…”

What Taylor acutely locates here is the division between the ideal of the self creating yet intimately connected individual, and the disconnected and radically subjective “flattened and narrowed” individual that is the product of the modern consumer culture.
Thus, we see that within the framework of the technological narrative and its associated consumerism, the self becomes increasingly disconnected from community, while the cultural value of disburdenment brings about a situation wherein the self is defined superficially, and the demands placed on us by external moral obligations are marginalized or simply done away with in favor of a purely self gratifying approach wherein the self is the final moral authority. Having looked at all of these issues concerning modern culture in light of the technological narrative, we will now turn our attention to a reform of the technological narrative via a rediscovery of the importance of things.

In the Presence of Things Part I

Posting the pics of our trip to Montana put me into a different frame of mind. I think about David Strong’s book Crazy Mountains: Learning from Wilderness to Weigh Technology and how deftly he captures his sense of wildness and the place of mountains in his life and philosophy. Strong himself was influenced by his teacher, Henry Bugbee, whose book The Inward Morning remains, in my mind, one of the most elegant and evocative works on man and wilderness ever published. Bugbee’s is a lyrical philosophy that continues to captivate me. I have not written about wilderness in awhile, but think about its claims on me constantly. Why am I so drawn to it, and why do I se an invitation to explore while others see forbidding ruggedness, or worse, a desire to dominate and bring nature under control? I think also about the claim that wilderness makes on me as well, and how often I struggle to articulate that claim. It is I think the essential conflict between those of us who advocate for environmental preservation and restraint and those with a more exploitative approach. In the end, it is our language that fails us. The pro usage lobby has a sophisticated argument for opening roadless wilderness, mountaintop removal, and clear cutting. They speak in a language everyone can understand: jobs, money, returns on investment, and greater consumption. It is logical and empirical. This positivist discourse is the dominant voice in our environmental decision making, and though I dislike it, I understand its appeal. The language of domination has been with us so long, it is of no surprise that alternative voices would sound so alien to our ears. We seek absolute knowledge and rigorous scientific or economic arguments to inform our choices about wilderness, and to be sure, science and technology deliver. Understanding modern discourse requires an archeological expedition that can dig through past centuries of discourse and arrive at an understanding of the will to dominate and the language in which it is so effectively couched.

Masters and Possessors

The modern project was constructed on the crumbling remains of the medieval epoch, a project championed by some of the greatest minds of the Western tradition: Francis Bacon, Renee Descartes, and John Locke. As philosopher Albert Borgmann points out, their works

"…are pleas as much as proclamations. They plead for a new order and derive much energy from their indictment of medieval disorder, the duress of daily life, the deadwood of tradition, and the oppression of hierarchy and community. (Borgmann, CPD 23)"

At the forefront of this new world was the triumph of science. For Bacon, misery, toil, sickness, and suffering was an “insufferable scandal that was to be overcome through the domination of nature” (Borgmann, CPD 23). Thus, whatever human needs were to be met would come via the subjugation of nature.
Descartes exalted the dawn of a new era in human history deeply rooted in method of “irresistible cogency,” which would contribute an understandable order to the universe, as well as provide a method by which all problems great and small could be scrutinized, reduced, and finally solved. Like Bacon, Descartes took dead aim at nature as something we must dominate and shape to fit our needs. He writes in Discourse on Method,

"But as soon as I had acquired some general notions respecting physics, and beginning to make trial of them in various particular difficulties, had observed how far they can carry us, and how much they differ from the principles that have been employed up to the present time…For by them I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life; and in place of the speculative philosophy usually taught in the schools, to discover a practical philosophy, by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, just as distinctly as we know the various skills of our craftsmen, we might be able, in the same way, to use them for all the purposes for which they are appropriate, and thus render ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature. (Descartes 35)"

Thus, science will make us the “masters and possessors of nature.” Philosophy would be practical and seek empirical truth that could be applied to the science of domination--happiness and the good life are to be achieved not by cultivating a relationship to nature, but by securing our dominance over it. And if the primacy of method and the dominance of science would reshape the world, then Locke would create the new man for that world.
Traditionally the individual for better or worse was subject to communal authority. With the old medieval order thoroughly shattered, Locke sought to recast man as the prime entity apart from society. In fact, society for Locke could only exist by means of a social contract arising from a collective agreement of individuals, but as Borgmann points out, “this contract remains subservient to the individual” (Borgmann, CPD 38). Therefore, communities would nevertheless exist, as they had existed for centuries before, but with one key difference; the individual, not the collective ideal, would hold the primal position in the relationship. If Bacon and Descartes’ philosophies would disburden us of toil and make us the masters of nature, Locke would see to it that nothing would be held sacred above the wants and desires of the individual.
This preeminence of the individual combined with the subjugation and reordering of the natural world is what Borgmann defines as modern technology. Therefore, technology is not just electronic devices and powerful machinery, but is instead a distinct way in which modern culture takes up with the world. Modern discourse on politics, economics, and the general well being of the citizenry is conducted using the unstated premise that all great gifts come from the rise of technology. As such, the technological state and the actions of the government and citizenry hinge on an underlying adherence to the attitudes affixed to modern technology that Borgmann points out--a technological narrative from which personal and community narratives are derived.
Thus, the technological narrative, that is the background of knowledge and understanding that orients us toward the world is based on the dominance of empirical knowledge, the lust for commodities, the preeminence of economic values above abstract values such as wildness and beauty, the gratification of the individual over communitarian values, and the belief that freedom, prosperity, and happiness are all a function of the rise of technology.

A Deeper Look at the Nature and Promise of Modern Technology

The promise of technology is that it will liberate humanity “from disease, hunger, and toil,” and furthermore, as Borgmann points out, it will enrich our lives with “learning, art, and athletics” (Borgmann, TCCL I 36). Surely we cannot find anything disagreeable in assuaging suffering or encouraging learning, but as Borgmann notes, the fundamental drive behind the promise of technology is the will to dominate nature. The rise of science in the modern period, and its application in the production of technologically advanced machinery in the industrial revolution, was the fruition of the dream of men like Descartes who foresaw the “invention of an infinity of devices to enable us to enjoy the fruits of agriculture and all the wealth of the earth without labor” (Descartes 35).
We view the earth not as something to live in synch with, but is instead something we may now set upon and from which we extract what we will. This setting upon is what Martin Heidegger refers to as “enframing”, a condition wherein the earth is seen as merely a standing reserve of resource for our projects. Furthermore, technology makes those resources available to us with little effort. Albert Borgmann writes,

"As a first step let us note that the notions of liberation and enrichment are joined in that of availability. Goods that are available to us enrich our lives and, it they are technologically available, they do so without imposing burdens on us. Something is available to us in this sense if it has been rendered instantaneous, ubiquitous, safe, and easy. (Borgmann, TCCL 41)"

Borgmann is providing us with a very clear notion of the nature of modern technology. Its goal of disburdening and enriching us is based on the will to dominate nature, and bring it under control such that it can be made to suit our needs. As such, nature becomes viewed as a resource to be set upon, a standing reserve of materials to provide us with a revolutionary number of goods for our welfare and enjoyment. Technology also ensures that the wealth of the earth embodied in a plethora of goods will be made available to us without imposing burdens. It is this last facet of technology that I want to deal with next, for as we will see, disburdenment is the key to understanding the effect of technology on modern culture. To see the impact of disburdenment though, I want to first explore the modern manifestation of the promise of technology inherent in what Albert Borgmann calls the device paradigm.

Borgmann’s Device Paradigm

As we have seen thus far, technology promises to disburden and enrich us by dominating nature and using it as a resource for a plethora of goods. To see this technological framework in relief, I want to look at an example of how technology has disburdened us and changed our relationship to the world. To do this, I will use Borgmann’s example of the contrast between a wood burning stove and a modern central heating plant. In describing the stove he writes,

"It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. Its coldness marked the morning, and the spreading of its warmth the beginning of the day. It assigned to the different family members tasks that defined their place in the household. The mother built the fire, the children kept the firebox filled, and the father cut the fire wood. It provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together of the threat of cold and the solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and of carrying, the teaching of skills, and the fidelity to daily tasks. (Borgmann, TCCL 42)"

Borgmann locates in the pre-technological wood stove a great deal of engagements. To be sure, many of these such as chopping wood are indeed toils that many are happy to be without. However, the important point is that we recognize how the stove engages us with the world, and most importantly, that to receive its benefits (warmth) requires of us a great deal of skill and effort.
On the contrary, technological devices make commodities available to us with little or no effort. Of devices Borgmann writes,

We have seen that a thing such as a fireplace provides warmth, but it inevitably provides those many other elements that compose the world of the fireplace. We are inclined to think of these additional elements as burdensome [i.e. Chopping wood, tending the fire], and they were undoubtedly often so experienced. A device such as a central heating plant procures mere warmth and disburdens us of all other elements. These are taken over by the machinery of the device. The machinery makes no demands on our skill, strength, or attention…(Borgmann, TCCL 42)

Therefore, the devices separate means from ends because the means to produce a commodity are taken over by the machinery of the device with little input or concern on our part. For us, warmth is merely a matter of flipping a switch, and demands no effort beyond that. Thus, technology makes available to us a wealth of commodities. In this case, heat is the commodity provided via the machinery of the device free of “the encumbrance of or engagement with a context” (Borgmann, TCCL 47). Therefore, consumption is to “use up an isolated entity without preparation, resonance, and consequence” (Borgmann, TCCL 51). With this notion of consumption in mind I want to now turn our attention to the role of consumption in modern culture and how as a function of the technological narrative it has drastically altered our environment, communities, and sense of self.

The Rise of Consumerism

Jane Smiley argues that the rise of consumerism comes as a result of the convergence of heavy labor requirements placed on women by their respective households, and the lack of a “class of workers” to carry out the tasks. She writes,

"The fact is that nineteenth century domestic life in America was not for the faint of heart. By all measures of well-being that we consider normal today, women and children in the North and West were heavily taxed and profoundly burdened by a dearth of population, vast distances, and overwhelming labor. (Smiley 160)"

Women spent the better part of their days engaged in heavy labor, with little or no time for other things. Furthermore, there did not exist a population of workers large enough to alleviate this toil. It is for this reason that Smiley says of inventions such as the cotton gin, the steam engine, the sewing machine, and other great developments of the industrial revolution,

"…these grand American inventions were the children of the same necessity that gives us the antique, fascinating, and sometimes mysterious domestic gadgets we find in attics and museums…All these gadgets were designed to be savers of time, or enablers of a woman’s doing two things at once. (Smiley 161)"

Smiley’s argument mirrors the argument made thus far by Borgmann that technology and consumerism have contributed greatly in assuaging suffering and toil. What’s more, in doing so, technology has given us a new promise of freedom due to the dearth of choices it has made available to us and greater leisure time to enjoy them. Smiley is essentially articulating the manifestation of the promise of technology.
To be sure, Smiley’s observation is indeed an important one in recognizing the value of modern technology, but though she locates the reason for the rise of technology and consumption, she gives little attention to the resulting problem in modern culture which is over-consumption. As such, I want to now draw out three important results of over-consumption. The first is an ecological problem, as our lust for consumption places ever greater demands on natural resources. The second issue at hand is the effect that consumption as a way of life has on our communities, and the final issue I want to look at will be the effect of consumption on our sense of self.

The Ecological Threat of Over Consumption

As I have already stated, the technological narrative has at its core the will to dominate nature and bring it under control for our own use. Therefore, over-consumption poses a serious ecological problem via the need for more and more resources, and a disregard for ecosystem integrity. Moreover, the increased production of the commodities our culture demands has produced a great deal of waste. As David Orr observes,

"The problem is that we do not often see the true ugliness of the consumer economy and are not compelled to do much about it. The distance between shopping malls and their associated mines, wells, corporate farms, factories, toxic dumps, and landfills, sometimes half a world away, dampens our perception that something is fundamentally wrong. Even when visible to the eye, the ugliness of such a system is concealed from our minds by their very complexity, which makes it difficult to discern cause and effect. It is veiled by a fog of abstract numbers that measure our sins in parts per billion and as injustices discounted over decades and centuries. It is cloaked by the ideology of progress that transmutes our most egregious failures into chrome plated triumphs. (Orr 146)"

Orr obviously recognizes the fact that we do not pay attention to the ecological impacts of our consumptive choices. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, Orr sees that environmental degradation—even when we do take note of it—is written off as the “cost of doing business,” that is easily justified in light of whatever new commodity or technological device is created. The abstract ideal of progress trumps the very real and tangible ecological problems around us. Furthermore, many who argue against restraint make the claim that progress itself will provide the answers, and that just around the next corner is the technological answer to our environmental problems. However, such hope is wrong on two counts, the first being that such statements fail to question the underlying assumption that the technological narrative is the only way to live, and secondly, though science may help us through an ecological crisis, we may still be left with a world that is not worth living in. I cannot even imagine a world without cold mountain streams or roadless forests, let alone consider living in such a place.
Technology and consumerism degrades ecological communities not only by extraction of resources, but by also fundamentally changing the way in which we engage wilderness. Since the underlying modus operandi of technology is the subjugation of nature, we find that even leisure activities that are meant to engage us with nature serve to separate us. Our contact with nature is itself a function of the promise of technology. There was an advertisement for the Toyota Land Cruiser which declares the SUV as “The Answering Machine to the Call of the Wild.” The implication being that to enjoy the wilderness one requires a machine to do it. This is I suppose why we build roads to the tops of mountains and through untracked forests. However, it is not merely the environmental damage done by road building in wilderness areas that must give us pause. What is so unsettling about such things is that they show how entrenched the technological narrative truly is, as these sentiments show that the dominant cultural ethos tells us that even to enjoy nature we must dominate it and bring it under our control. As one advertisement for a Ski-Doo snow mobile expresses it,

"The Mountain calls you. It taunts you. It dares you. You see it everyday. You’ve watched its face grow white, and it has created in you a will to conquer it that you simply cannot ignore. Sure, you’ve won highmarking contests before, but this new challenge requires something much more special. More determination, more concentration, more sled. This is why you pack the most potent mountain machine you can buy…This morning you’re going to show the mountain who’s boss. You’re rolling in with the Ski-Doo Summit Highmark Sled. (Ski-Doo Corp.)"

The violence of the language is obvious, as is the narrative upon which it is built. What becomes clear to us is that even protected wilderness areas are not immune from technology, for quite to the contrary, one difference between a clear-cut and a virgin stand of trees is that we have merely chosen a different means of technological domination; snowmobiles in one place, SUV’s in another place, and chainsaws and skidders in a third.
Lastly, but certainly of not the least importance is the fact the the technological narrative has silenced the voices that allow us to speak of value in wilderness outside of the language of domination. While scientific languages deal in quantifiable factors such as board feet of lumber or recreational user days, such language falls woefully short of fully articulating the values of wild places. Though such discourse is the dominant voice in decision making regarding wilderness preservation, we nevertheless sense that such language is impoverishing. As Paul Schullery writes,

"…the quantification of the ephemeral, emotional things into cash amounts stirs great uneasiness in our souls, because we know that not everything should be reduced to such flatness by a spread-sheet mentality that sees no farther than the cash register. (Schullery 260)"

To speak of wilderness in economic terms cheapens it, hiding its true value. When we talk of it in such terms, we are treating it as a mere resource, and we ultimately see that to protect wilderness because of recreational user days or recreational dollars is to further the technological narrative. These arguments serve only to further our disengagement.







Works Cited


Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992
Borgmann, Albert. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical
Inquiry. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1984
Descartes, Renee. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998
Orr, David W. “The Ecology of Giving and Consuming” Consuming Desires: Consumption,
Culture, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Ed. Roger Rosenblatt, Washington: Island Press, 1999 137-154
Schullery, Paul. Searching for Yellowstone: Ecology and Wonder in the Last Wilderness
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997
Smiley, Jane. “Ít All Begins with Housework.” Consuming Desires: Consumption,
Culture, and the Pursuit of Happiness Ed. Roger Rosenblatt, Washington: Island Press,
1999 155-172