enowning
Thursday, October 13, 2011
 
In-der-Blog-sein

Country Singing on technology from the Rhine to the Nu rivers.
The philosopher, Martin Heidegger, chose to illustrate the two different approaches to nature by comparing the construction of a bridge with the construction of a hydroelectric dam. Modern technology, he wrote, was ‘a manner of unprotecting’ nature. A bridge, connecting up the two banks, shows ‘respect’ for the river, but a hydropower station actually turns nature into part of its own ‘inventory’. The power plant is not built into the river, but the river is built into the power plant.

To illustrate the difference in perspectives, Heidegger compared the Rhine as part of the inventory of modern technology with the Rhine described in a poem by Holderlin. After it has been devastated by technology, the river remains as ‘a provided object of inspection by a party of tourists sent there by a vacation industry’. Such a description seems appropriate in modern Yunnan. While the power companies work their way through the region’s rivers, foreign and domestic tourists have transformed old cities such as Dali and Lijiang, and plans to improve the transportation infrastructure to the west and to the south will see the character of prefectures such as Xishuangbanna and the Nu River changed beyond recognition.
 
Comments:
Does Heidegger (or the ghost of MH...geist) support something like OWS ,or not Enk? I think not. His writing may have had proto"green" aspects (ie QCT, the dwelling essay), and perhaps he's anti-capitalist in a sense, at least the technocratic aspects, but..in IMHO his Nietzschean roots (including his notion...of being-in- the-world) in generally ..win out over his Kantian or...somewhat katholic aspects. Granted.. that's a falsifiable..thesis.
 
Occupy Wall Street? I think he'd be sympathetic: prioritize beyng over those cosmopolitan globalized credit default swaps, and so on.
 
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