Friday, October 21, 2011
In-der-Blog-sein
The Imaginative Conservative on why Tocqueville has a better understanding of technology.
The Imaginative Conservative on why Tocqueville has a better understanding of technology.
What is technology? Tocqueville rather than Heidegger makes a good introduction to this question for Americans, for Tocqueville made the technological view of nature a key element of the democratic desire for "present material enjoyments." For us, he wrote, "every new method that leads to wealth by a shorter path, every machine that shortens work, every instrument that diminishes the costs of production, every discovery that facilitates pleasures and augments them seems to be the most magnificent effort of human intelligence." Commenting on the sources of poetic imagination in Democracy in America, Tocqueville observed that the European image of America is that of the untouched wilderness. But Americans themselves hardly see the forests before they have felled them to make lumber. The technological view does not see the forest as a forest before it resolves it into its constituent parts to be unlocked and put to productive use. Where Heidegger would prophesy catastrophe, Americans saw the image of human conquest, and so of human liberation. In the vision of putting nature to our use we see the image of modern liberty.¶ 8:59 AM
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Heidegger calls us to the realization that Tocqueville's view of nature has seen its day. One need only look at the price of oil or of gold. If "thars gold in them thar hills" it takes a lot more digging to get it out these days.
The authors of the Constitution gave us an economy that rewarded exploitation. That will not work in our era of sustainability. Oh, sure, there still remains much to be exploited, but ours is the age of limits. Now we exploit living tissue along with the Earth's ore.
I will not rest easy until I see the growth of the realization that democracy does not depend on limitless exploitation. The current platform of the GOP candidates calls for more exploitation as the answer to our economic limits. That's just whistling past the graveyard.
The authors of the Constitution gave us an economy that rewarded exploitation. That will not work in our era of sustainability. Oh, sure, there still remains much to be exploited, but ours is the age of limits. Now we exploit living tissue along with the Earth's ore.
I will not rest easy until I see the growth of the realization that democracy does not depend on limitless exploitation. The current platform of the GOP candidates calls for more exploitation as the answer to our economic limits. That's just whistling past the graveyard.
de Tokeville?
the story of the railroad barons in the US would nearly suffice as a refutation of his optimistic views does it not. And what Jan. wrote.
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the story of the railroad barons in the US would nearly suffice as a refutation of his optimistic views does it not. And what Jan. wrote.
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