Embodying a will

TALKING about technology we usually have in mind a highly specialized activity, turned mainly toward the construction of machines or tools and the organization of the methods required to use them. In this essay technology I call the invention, composition or organization of the way to realize whatsoever of our aims. I name technique the recurring, without ad hoc inventive activity, employment of tools or organs: constructions, devices, methods, organizing systems, etc. The Greek term teuchein corresponds to both definitions being identical sometimes with technology and sometimes with technique.^{1=teuchein and mechanasthae} From these definitions we gain at first the following conclusions: technology (techno-logical activity) presupposes consciousness, since without consciousness we don't have any aims, but only instincts, lusts, appetites or habits. Moreover, it ceases to be considered an indistinct and vague strengthening of a part or of all our abilities, and becomes the very way of embodying our will. We can not talk about a good or bad, successful or not, technology, but only if we mean a worthy or insignificant or dangerous will. The (held up as a) disclaimer of technology constitutes also a technology as long as it dis-poses a certain will. Eventual absence of the technological dimension is not a philosophical problem but a psychopathological one. Even during the highest religious/mystical experiences technology does not end; the mystic consents to God, he is not dragged by Him. In the so much discussed icons of Christ taking the faithful by the wrist we see that they stare at Him: they know where they are going and agree and, for that matter, they have tenaciously pursued it through their lives. This stare is a work of a specific technology, the technology of co-operation between man and God. The use of the same term in different fields of human doing may bewilder us but it is necessary if we are to consolidate a consciousness of man as a unity. Any usage of the body as well as of any material element, inasmuch as it entails a judgment and a decision, it constitutes an action and it founds a more or less distinct kind of technology. We can think back to the action of the Homeric hero who was about to see his visitor off. They already were at the shore and the foreigner was going to sail; having nothing else to offer, he gave him earth from below. This action is included within the framework of a momentous technology: we know that on this earth and thanks to this earth a society later grounded. The result of technology is a work, not a product. It does not constitute a fortune, but a specific appearance of freedom. After technology has done its work we may judge it and talk about its quality, which corresponds to the quality of the consciousness that created it. Thus, our problem is not technology, but the quality of consciousness. That we posit something as a problem, it presupposes technology. Man does not exist before technology. consciousness inactive is inconceivable. Without technology we are not powerless, we are not just this and it is not this of the most importance to us: without technology we are not human.

The original sin

ACCORDING to our definitions there is a kind of technology beyond our ability. Since technology presupposes consciousness it is impossible for us an out of nothing creation of consciousness. Awareness of this limit is evidenced primeval. It will assume the dimensions of a divine prohibition:

"but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die".²

Man, therefore, is not a foolish being^3=evidence but the spring of his consciousness lies out of him. According to the Old Testament it is the oblivion of this spring that exiled him out of paradise, so that man is presented as self-exiled. His subsequent care to build himself a proper consciousness did not heal him, but, on the contrary, it comprised a duplication of sin and it prolonged punishment. In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound consciousness remains a gift, but not from God. The donator of fire was not punished because an odd and inhuman God wanted His creatures powerless and shuddering; Zeus was going to exterminate mankind exactly because they were unable for technology:

“they had death in front of their eyes” (Prom. Bound 248).

We also know that after the development of technology Zeus allowed people to live, so that he did not tortured them, he tortured Prometheus. Therefore, Prometheus was not punished because he granted technological ability to the people, but because the specific technology of his was not potent enough:

“blind hopes in them I embedded”⁴

he himself confesses. Despite technology - Oceanides point out to Prometheus - the short-living people (the "ephamerioi") remain a flock which “breathless and impotent, / blind it creeps as in a dream” (ibid. 546-550). Their consciousness is poor to the extent that their origin is poor.

Horizons of being

IN Works and Days Hesiod describes exhaustively the principles and limits of technology and suggests the possibility of a self-constructing of consciousness as impious, and therefore dangerous to the highest degree. He is not after a critique of technology and he is far less interested in preserving techniques and methods: it is with Perses that he concerns himself, and thus he suggests technology following pedagogical criteria. The traditions of the two Strifes, of Pandora and of the genealogy of mankind, determine the technological space. Without awareness of its horizons any technique becomes an illogical activity and consequently an enslavement, so that it turns against its own purposes. The intent of Hesiod's work is to strengthen freedom and only on freedom to ground, as its menials, all techniques. Freedom is imperceptible without knowledge of all possibilities. The first lesson Hesiod gives reminds us that our technological power is not a trinket but it could neither be our ideal. The four generations — the golden, the silver, the bronze and the heroic — constitute horizons of being, horizons different from the technological one (iron generation). Half of them (the golden and the heroic) is supposed to be superior to the technological horizon, while the other half (the silver and the bronze) is considered disastrous. By conceiving the whole frame, we shall be able to sufficiently understand why Pandora kills.

Medieval technology

A BOOK of engravings on medieval technology could give us sufficient help. In what place the craftsmen work? Their place, to begin with, is not only the workroom. When they are not working outdoors we can see that the workroom has windows, the position of which in the engravings does not reveal any kind of trivial realism. The engraver observes with the same attention everything that the windows allow to appear and he develops it with impressive concern. Technology does not seem to restrain nature. No other workshop can be seen out of the window. Obsession with work is not displayed. Furthermore, nature is not something to be annihilated. We can see a sense of order — from the position of the tools and the materials on the walls or on the benches, to the outer site, which comprises the frame of all working activities, so that this work is not being done in void but it is located in a ceaselessly wider meaning. Any tool and any object, even the pettiest one, is drawn up with thoroughness, not to say affection. A tree, too, or some bush lay claim to a gentle glance. Weary grimaces come into sight if a hard muscular effort must be depicted, as, for example, when manual systems of wheels are used; but these grimaces never hold sway. The engraver let us imagine noise, heat or cold because he wants to manifestate the result of the effort, the discipline, the work. These engravings were not something like the nowadays advertisements; they have been made out of delight and admiration. Admiration for the artisan because he can think and create something despite his tiredness. Some animals too can build properly working constructions, but none of them could contemplate its work, and that is why speaking of a diligence of the bee or of the ant, or, moreover, of a technology of theirs, is a mere formalism: animals have only attributes, not virtues; that is exactly what the engravings set off, not just a profit — after which even a common gang of robbers could aspire.

The humanitarian function of technology has been appraised even by the most detached from the world servants of God, namely the monks. Not a few monasteries, it is well known, were centers of significant technology. They were cultivating the land, they were using, and in result they preserved, expert handicraft methods, they organized the trade and often pioneered in the renovation of a technique. Benedictine monks for example were among the first who embraced what is today considered the agricultural achievement of the Middle Ages, namely the replacement of the two-years rotation of crops by the three-years one (interchange of winter grain or pulses, spring grain and fallowness).

The enchanting wheel

IN the engravings depicting works in which machinery is used, it is at first impressive how much the wheel predominates and seduces. Compared to the raising of important buildings, even of churches, the wheel appears more bewitching to the engraver — more embossed and more carefully depicted are the images of wheels, of devices with a wheel and, especially, with a system of wheels. Circular movement fits to the ideas of self-sufficiency, recurrence and familiarity. In the systems of wheels movement is transmitted while changing direction. The eye distinguishes the movement from its cause and focuses more on the quality of the movement than on its cause. The link, of course, does not cease to be visible. Hence the joined wheels do not give the impression of parts of a machine but of different dimensions of one and single movement. Coexistence of autonomous and distinguished, but also cooperative and connected, actions, the synergy of which promotes and extends ad infinitum the composing of a System. A problem however will appear. The first thing the eye observes, right after the fascination of the wheels declines, is the source of the energy. The sense of self-sufficiency collapses in front of the torrent in which the first wheel ducks its screws. It is exactly this problem, this weakness, that the aeikineton had been called to cure. The inventors of the aeikineton were not quaint guys indulged in reveries at the margins of technique and science. They were confronting the most crucial question of whatsoever technology. They were in front of the Sphinx.

Absolute master of truth

I EXACTLY reproduce the inscription of an engraving of the early 18th century:

The ENGINE for Railing Water (with a power made) by Fire.

This inscription does not imply some kind of magic. The witch flying with a reversed broomstick is fighting the natural laws. She always imposes her will in disobedience to nature. But the steam-driven pump of our graphic, acts, according to the above inscription, rather differently. Fire must approach water without eliminating it, and in the same time it must remain fire! Hence the qualities of the cosmic elements are transformed but only per accidens. Man is the absolute master of truth. At the center of the (would-be) paradise he chooses the meanings: rejection can not be a permanent property of existence. Null could never and for no reason be the fate of the world. Therefore, nature suffers some disease and needs therapy. Technological fire is called to penetrate everything and purify it, but with a power made the enclosures remind, which might mean: we wish technique was unnecessary, however it is temporary (parentheses, as well as the smaller font size, reduce its importance); technology merely returns to nature its we-don't-know-how lost essence. We should take notice of the parentheses. They seek removal, and we know that the crucial, if hidden, is either sacred or the opposite.

The horizon of horror

I SEE the passion of many writers to speak about technology so narrowly as to tell us that it is a second reality or a tremendous deterioration of nature, and all the rest. In other words, they lay stress on a part or on specific outcomes of some technological activity without pursuing at bottom a comprehensive definition. It is not that they always are wrong, yet the manner of their attack, the technology of anti-technology, brings out a deeper anguish they may have. It would benefit if we took heed of this anguish, despite the fair indignation most of their statements cause.

The prevailing feature in all these attempts is the psychological pressure of an unbridgeable gulf between nature and technology. They feel, I think, that human beings exercising their technological ability become unnatural. They do not necessarily become something inferior to nature, they may get ahead, but in all cases they become something opposite and incompatible to a nature that, however, continues to be their nature! Therefore human beings are considered to be more human before logic! This is the feeling of Jacques Ellul, for example, when he alleges that it is a proof of deliverance from the domination of technology that we, at last, enjoy the works of marquis de Sade and Henry Miller! One feels that in such a conversation, where marquis de Sade is presented as an erotic and vital force, there is nothing to be said, that the mere existence of such statements has stained all of us indelibly. Any way, is De Sade suggested as technology's seventh day, or maybe recommended as the proper entertainment to follow a hard and wearisome technocratic endeavor?

De Sade does not provide just a naughty, or even sordid, amusement. He does not constitute something like a jab of disorder, a counterweight to the austerity of logic or to the cold perfection of our technological achievements. He founds a technology, and a rigid one, at that: the wheel of work and cultivation is being transformed into a wheel of torture. A machine which from pain and suffering extracts pleasure. According to this kind of technology the only allowed excitement is the one being evoked by torment and brutalization. Joy has to be abolished. Erotic contact will not be giving joy, man will not entirely participate in it: it will become an anxious hunting of the maximum possible, the more blind, inflammation; clean from inhibitions of consciousness, clean from the calming interest in all the dimensions of human existence. Pleasure will be obtained only by oppression, by escalation of disrelish, by immersing imagination in its capability of absorbing everything, by tasting a totally uncontrolled power. The psychological and corporeal strength by which an organism coils itself up to affront pain, the screams and convulsions of a body while it is tortured, are the means by which this technology of inflammation can reach to the highest point of satisfaction. It is well known that something makes a sharper and stronger impression if contrasted with its opposite. Inflammation uses its victim as a backdrop of humanity: thus it gains a deeper self-consciousness as pure inflammation. Only pure inflammation is able to being unlimitedly intensified — to the degree of "melting the universe", as someone in Sodom declares. But pleasure is not the final objective. The fact that annihilation can be systematically organized, so as to fulfill senses and mind, is the testimony which de Sade inserts in an imaginary court where accused is whoever believes that a human being has a meaning and a weight, that there is a reality that transcends us and to which we must refer ourselves in order to know ourselves. Technology of horror produces for nihilism the latter's most powerful argument: horror as a pleasure.

EVERYTHING perishable and cheap has been usually considered a condemnation of man, a corrective punishment or even an undeserved deal, work and instrument of an inferior, inhuman God. The impression that we are made of a material appropriate for unworthy creatures, shows characteristically in a Greek tradition. Sometime God asked the mother of a hero what kind of gift she wanted Him to give to her son in order to honor his faith. She requested for her son to fall asleep and never again awake. How did in our days come to be regarded more natural what is the more brutal? How could it be explained that our idea of cultivation and technology is an idea of a taming, an ennoblement that does not fit us and that sooner or later, or from time to time, fades, decays, and then comes to surface everything we had been trying to hide, entire quantities of cruelty and brutality, our true nature?

Koyre's distinction between the before science world-of-about and the after science universe-of-precision, must not be interpreted as a distinction of civilizations. The scientific revolution and the attempt to be foundationed/constructed an harmony of universal dimensions, are prescribed and, I would say, already present, in the enchantment of the wheel. Yet, the workshop of the medieval craftsman does not belong to the first of the 120 days in Sodom. The wheel of horror comprises the tool of a completely different technology. If technique and science lay claim to absolute dimensions, they will be obliged to absolutely fail. Their cancellation, however, does not drive to the rise of one and only horizon: failure does not necessarily impels to horror. After de Sade's works and days we know that nihilism has a positive content, its own fascination and its own pleasures. Its own technology, at that. To Hesiod's horizons of being we have to add one more.

Notes

1.   Technology tallies with conscious and motivated invention which is akin to mechanasthae; while technique tallies with implementation and functioning and so it is more related to mechanismus. Yet, teuchein and mechanasthae, technema (work of techne) and mechane (:machine or invention), technike (technique) and mechanismos (mechanism) — are not bywords. Derivatives of deugh- root (:tech-) imply a more constant result, a work determined to last, while derivatives of magh- root (: mach-, mech-) refer to more or less temporary inventions, emergency solutions to usually unexpected and momentary problems. In Homer's poems, rain, for example, is a work of divine technology (teuchein), while Ulysses' achievements are called mechanae and Ulysses himself — the man whose inventions appear and disappear one after another, being not incorporated in a lasting system — is called polymechanus.

2   Gen. 2.17 (RSV). Cf. 3.3: "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die".

3   The divine commandment does not seem to imply that the inhabitants of paradise could not and should not tell right from wrong. In such a case how could they perceive and follow the commandment itself? We could maybe understand the essential meaning of this prohibition by remembering which motive impelled them to disobey God. The promise of the serpent was that they would be Gods and, no matter of a definition of God, this promise meant that they would not have to obey to anyone. Desire for an absolute independence appears as the evil in itself from which God had tried to dissuade them. Therefore, in such a context, we could not speak of a commandment more than we could speak of a warning. Knowledge of good and evil before the fall amounts to the recognition of evil inside a world created all-good by God.

4    "Typhlas en aytois elpidas katokisa", cf. Prom. Bound 250.