Crafting a New Praxis:

The Art of Excoriating Science & Technology

For the Sake of the Natural

By Frank Joseph Smecker

7/7/09

War to the death should be instantly proclaimed against [the machines]…Let us go back to the primeval condition of the human race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

—Samuel Butler

It is imperative, when acting from one’s ethical sensibilities, or hankering for conditional propitiousness, to remain grounded in craftsmanship. Author and philosopher Christopher Manes states: “Technology confronts the world, forces it to do things it wouldn’t do naturally. Craft belongs to a humbler, more ancient relationship with nature…Craft fits human needs into the existing landscape…technology attempts to alter and deny landscape at an ever accelerating pace with no recognition of nature’s limits.” I would go on to promote that craft is an agency for creation that is heedful to the limits of its resources and the latter’s ecological provenance.

The advancement and progression of technology has indeed accelerated, as well as offered convenience and expedience to the tasks and avocations of our everyday lives. However, the evolution of technology has left a lucid trail of debris, destruction, and annihilation (e.g. CFCs, depleted uranium, automobiles, airplanes, dragline excavators, routine international trade, fellerbunchers, computers, plastics, endocrine disrupters, pesticides, vivisection, internal combustion engines, televisions, cellphones, and nuclear [and conventional] bombs). The ascendancy of technology has, undeniably, exacerbated oil and other energy sources, water sources, and food sources (not to mention it has been culpable for the genetic transmutation of crops and trees i.e. tomatoes spliced with fish genes, fish spliced with human genes, cotton with larval genes, trees vacant of lignin [picture a human being without a skeletal structure], pesticidal seeds, ad nauseam).

Over the last seventy years, annual pesticide use has gone from zero to more than five hundred billion tons worldwide. How much sense does it make to poison our own food?

Technological advancement (viz. technomania) has been responsible for forced and violent dissolving of traditional communities in order to access mineral-rich lands; it has been responsible for curable cancers and other degenerative ailments (while ironically providing novel remedies and cures for specific ailments that, well, nature has provided all along). And let’s not forget Zygmunt Bauman’s book Modernity and the Holocaust – which is quite the indictment of the modern industrial rationalistic scientific instrumentalist perspective – as well as Derrick Jensen’s The Culture of Make Believe. And industrial technology has, invariably, been culpable for the assault on ecosystems that pervade into the myriad regions of the planet, undermining the homes of variegated species and cultures of remarkable complexity.

Migratory birds are in inexorable decline.

Honeybee populations are in inexorable decline.

Whale populations are in inexorable decline.

Siberian tigers are in inexorable decline.

There is more plastic in the planet’s oceans than there is phytoplankton.

Rainforests are in inexorable decline.

Potable water is in inexorable decline.

Amphibian populations are in inexorable decline.

The Eastern Lowland gorilla is in inexorable decline.

Traditional, vernacular communities are in inexorable decline.

My tolerance is in inexorable decline.

Ultra-sonar blasts, conducted by the U.S. Navy, also used for seismic surveying for oil beneath ocean swells, are killing whales. The sonar causes gas bubbles to form in the whale’s blood, fatally damaging their livers and kidneys. The fact that schools of hundreds upon hundreds of whales no longer impede the passage of seaborne ships brings me to tears.

Year after year, technological contrivances and the latter’s byproducts are discarded profligately into the planet’s waters, ground, and air (e.g. landfills, greenhouse gas emissions, illegal dumping, fluoridation, spent uranium holding tanks, et al.) – destabilizing the only known complex system that supports life. The continuation of technological advancement (keeping in mind its stringent reliance on fossil fuels and mineral ores, and the damage done to this fecund planet and communities of human and nonhuman beings in order to access the former and latter, and then the damage done again to the planet and communities of human and nonhuman beings through refinement processes), at the rate and condition it is at now, will be responsible for the loss of one-third of all species on this planet within the next forty years, and according to Michael Soule, the founder of the Society for Conservation Biology, says “for all practical purposes vertebrate evolution is at an end… only large mammals left in another decade or two will be those we consciously choose to allow to exist.”

The anthropologist Marvin Harris admonished about the industrial bubble and that as it expands “its skin becomes thinner.” And it will pop.

Whether technology of “civilized” proportion has been implemented for practical purposes or for recreational purposes, it is not sustainable, and essentially has only been of practical use to humans (and of course not all humans) as a way to pander to a Western ethic, or Transcendental ethic, proclaiming, “certain obligations hold true everywhere at all times for all people.” Omniscience and omnipotence, a (delusional) set of desires that has emerged from the Western philosophia perennis canon, is the ultimate (delusional) goal of a static and technologized world.

Philosophy aside, technology has become the hallmark of modern societies and contemporary economies and deeply imbedded in a culture of extraction, hyper-exploitation, and a lack of reverence for the natural and physical reality we are circumscribed to. There is no doubt we are about to find out what it means to overshoot our physical limits, as we’ve invested an entire history of thought and actions into a way of life that is deleterious and unsustainable.

Wendell Berry, a prolific author, essayist, and critic wrote in an article for the May 2008 issue of Harper’s Magazine on the topic of peak oil:

To deal with problems, which are after all inescapable, of living with limited intelligence in a limited world, I suggest that we may have to remove some of the emphasis we have lately placed on science and technology and have a new look at the arts. For an art does not propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the work. It is the artists, not the scientists, who have dealt unremittingly with the problem of limits.

Berry’s expatiation on art is parallel to defining craft, through which engaged, craft respects its natural limits in order to “enrich” not “extend.”

Vermont, the state in which I reside, home to many fine craft folk, artisans, potters, and more, know intimately this convivial relationship between their handiwork and the natural landscape that offers up its influence and consent to be enriched when such a relationship is respected and met with reciprocity.

Renowned playwright and Vermont resident David Mamet reminds us: “All machines are limited. The more elaborate the mechanism, the narrower its application (there are myriad things one can accomplish with an ax, but only one thing with a photocopier).” This is why I love Vermont. We seem to have an intimate understanding of Mamet’s latter aphorism.

DREAMING MACHINES by *vmaximus

Technological compulsiveness: a condition under which society meekly submits to every new technological demand and utilizes without question every new product, whether it is an actual improvement or not (Mumford, 186).

It is impractical, fatuous, and irrational when folks advocate for technology as an answer to the problems we are facing with exponential growth and the quest for sustainability. I hear quite too often that technology is a hopeful option for survival and sustainability, and that if we just keep trucking along, advancements in science will resolve our plight (the word hope conflated with the planetary mess we’ve made implies that this culture does not want to accept the reality that we will need to fix this mess, rather than some future in which we have no agency over). This strikes me as frightening for many reasons; there is already a plethora of realistic, pragmatic choices to make and actions to employ that will benefit not only the human species for generations to come, but the ecosystems that harbor the complex webs of relationships that support our very lives– and they do not require the aid of modern technology. These choices and behaviors include large-scale moderation, self-limitation, and a halt to many of the conventions we have today that are perceived as “healthy” for a “civilized” life.

We know that burning fossil fuels in order to bolster the industrial culture not only alters the global climates, but acidifies the oceans and creates dead-zones where no sea-life whatsoever can thrive; and that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for preventative cancers and other respiratory ailments resulting from air pollution causing agents, i.e. particulates, mercury, sulfur dioxide, lead, and more (there are 14,000 deaths biweekly in the U.S. from preventable cancers). And yet the baleful impacts felt by millions upon millions of humans and non-humans as a result of poisoning our only atmosphere and our only sources of water are not good enough reasons to stop burning fossil fuels….but instead are reasons to continue scientific exploration to search for solutions to these problems, when in fact, the monolith that is technological advancement can only continue with the plinth that is cheap and efficient energy resources such as fossil fuels and other mineral resources, as well as a vibrant economy with an annual growth trajectory of three to four percent. It should be known that any economy that does not benefit the land through which it is reliant upon is fucking stupid, let alone invariably unsustainable. I hope the reader is realizing the illogic embedded in the pattern of thought here. In psychology this would fall pretty damn close to perseveration. No wonder the dominant culture is so insane.

Let us recall, too, Lewis Mumford’s clarification that at the moment any impulse becomes irresistible, for no other reason than that it just exists, it becomes pathological. The unawareness of this pathology among scientists who are driven by such impulses, and whose discipline putatively serves as a prophylactic against irrational conclusions or behavior just further attests to the insanity that imperils their pathologically impaired minds (Mumford, 186).

There is also John von Neumann’s scientific injunction that “technological possibilities are irresistible to man. If man can got to the moon, he will. If he can control the climate he will.” Following the logic of Neumann’s socio-scientific forecast, if man has the means to annihilate life on the planet, more than likely he will attempt to do so. I can not say for sure that he will – by placing the ability to eradicate all life on the planet in the hands of humans is still narcissistic and undeniably humancentric, hence the word attempt up above. However, this does not exculpate the dominant culture from being accountable for perhaps the largest case of species extinction the planet has ever witnessed, alongside global climate change, and never-before-seen pollution, vertically and horizontally, so widespread that clean, unadulterated air – anywhere – is nearing obsolescence. These are more than enough reasons to dismantle civilization.

By the same token, the dominant culture’s behavior is also very similar to the behavior of heroin addicts; the incessant, self-afflictive abuse of a toxic, detrimental element to maintain an ephemeral feeling of satisfaction, ironically maintained by the counterforce of denial – upping the dose more and more. Until finally, chagrined with one’s dirty habit, one turns to methadone. “As long as the hospital is sanctioning my methadone, I’m not an addict, I’m a person under care.” Still that denial. Still that chemical attachment.

Let’s face it: addicts who really kick the habit get sick before they get better. They go through hell, through pain, and sweat out their woes in a state of ungovernable catharsis, contorting with spasms and cramps, enduring the screaming fantods and until suddenly – voila! they remember how to live again! And better yet, they live without the chemical dependence – and they return to their families and friends.

Weaning off of our reliance on fossil fuels and our addiction to technology will not be easy, and it will not be effortless – it will be a painful process through which we will need to turn to each other and to our landbases for support. But kicking the habit will fare much better than overdosing.

Furthermore, the argument that science will present synthetic options to substitute the natural resources and requirements we continue to deplete is outright asinine. This is proven with Liebig’s Law, also known as the Law of the Minimum. Richard Heinberg sums up the law pretty well in his book Powerdown, stating that “Every species has a list of requirements for survival: water, temperature range, degree of salinity of water, degree of acidity or alkalinity of soil, food of a certain nature, so many hours of sunlight, and so on.” Liebig’s Law elucidates that even if all factors are “optimal” it only takes the lack of one requirement to erode an organism’s ability to survive. Heinberg goes on to note: “This puts a tough burden on humans’ attempts to completely manage a fully artificial environment.” In other words, my exegesis of L’s Big Law is that if we continue to use the planet as a natural resource to be exploited for whatever it is we are trying to accomplish here (because, really, what is the reason for this giant circus…seriously…we have proof that acephalous cultures lived peacefully for hundreds of thousands of years without monotheism, science, government, corporations, bureaucracy, TVs, automobiles, industrial modes of production, et al – so what’s our deal; what is it we are striving for through all of this destruction and aimless development? Do we really think we’ll successfully colonize space or something? I think that’s it – some people want to be Masters of the Universe™); anyway, if we continue to exploit the planet as a ‘natural resource,’ (and if you’re wondering if it seems sociopathic to refer to living beings [trees, rivers, mountains, nonhuman animals, etc] as ‘natural resources’ it’s because it is very sociopathic to view other natural beings as ‘natural resources;’ but how else would this sociopathic culture rationalize their using [or destruction] of other beings other than robbing them of their subjectivity and willful unpredictability? As author Derrick Jensen told me in a recent interview I conducted with him: “If you see yourself as entitled to a resource, and if you’re not willing or incapable of seeing this other as a being with whom you can and should be in relation with, then you’re going to take the resource”); so yeah, back to my explanation of L’s-Law-of-the-Minimum– if we continue to objectify and exploit the shit out of our only planet, well, we will eventually undermine all ecosystems, leading to a complete collapse of all other life on the planet. This is by no means a scenario that can be managed realistically – we would eventually reach the point where we would have to synthesize everything. Looking at this logically and rationally – and really, just commonsensically (because we all know what logic and rationality can lead to sometimes), humans cannot survive in a world deprived of its natural requirements, let alone attempt to synthesize them all – duh.

Even if fortuitously, science does prevail and a cheap energy source is discovered to supplant our reliance on fossil fuels (which, c’mon – it just ain’t gonna happen folks), what then? Self-aggrandizing economies will surely use it up, continue to dismantle the planet’s pristine land-bases to provide resources for other innovations and contrivances, and exponential growth will continue. One important fact one must always consider is that energy comes from matter, and matter is finite – meaning it does not last forever – there is a limit that cannot be exceeded. Without self-limitation, the quest for energy will be a perpetual concatenated tail-chase exhibiting severe nocuous, deleterious, and ultimately annihilative repercussions – over and over again. And again. And again.

Peak oil should be a matter of concern, a matter of public interest, and a matter of sustainability for the inhabitants of this planet, and especially for our communities. Our options for handling the decline in cheap energy sources are found in choices of moderation and self-limitation, community solidarity and education. The belief that science will provide new technologies to help us endure nature’s response to our profligate growth (i.e. global warming, desiccation of potable water, diasporas, viral vectors, etc) is in my opinion a severe state of denial within the dominant culture, as well as a casuistic rationalizing for the way the dominant culture behaves, and for the way it is responding to (or denying) the repercussions of its treatment toward the very planet that has miracled us into existence in the first place; a planet, that without, none of us could ever write books, make love, play music, go swimming; think about it.

It is of vital importance that we begin to implement the steps needed to adjust our cultural behavior with regard to our personal limits alongside the laws of nature. Our holistic health, as well as our interrelations domestic and foreign, is commensurate with the condition of the land beneath our feet.

Vermont, as well as being a great example for other regions, yields the intact landbases that can provide for a community. CSAs (community supported agriculture), farmers’ markets, organic farming and gardening, are all well practiced endeavors that fare well for the state community. To bring to fruition a sustainable community, on a state level, relocalization is imperative. Initiatives such as worker and producer cooperatives, neighborhood and community associations, collective kitchens, unemployed worker mutual-aid organizations, and more–all working holistically together–are essential to have in a functional community. If humans can wholly embrace a functional model espoused to cooperation rather than competition in every sector, then immediately everyone on board is working together to build a sustainable community. Eventually, everyone could even transcend ‘state’ and ‘sector’ and just be a community again.

Vermonters owe themselves a pat on the back for being a step ahead of most of the country. Farmers’ markets, co-ops, community gardens in Burlington’s North End, the Intervale, Pete’s Greens, High Mowing Seeds and the rest of the folks involved with the High Field’s Institute, as well as many others, have done a lot of great work to put Vermont’s foot on the right path. But there’s still much work to be done, and Vermont also has to be wary of “mistaking motion for change” e.g., lauding over $20 lavish pints of interior finish made of soy whey while 19,000 Vermont children go without food every winter (I’m not putting down the soy finish – I’m grateful and very psyched for the safe version of finish over the toxic version, I’m just attempting to exemplify the overall situation). There’s no excuse for childhood hunger in a state that is quickly becoming defined by its sustainable agriculture endeavors. Poverty and hunger is a social deformity largely caused by the market. It’s time we say fuck the market –we’re a community. After all, it takes a community to raise a child. I strongly believe that in the wake of civilization collapsing, many can embrace a true cooperative community ethic. It just means we all need to preserve the health of our landbases, and engage with them reciprocally (put back that which you take out, if not more)– enrich rather than extend, and perhaps proselytize all of the technocratic capitalists back into compassionate human beings with real human emotions (and if that is to no avail, well, let them all play Monopoly™; real life does not follow market formulae).

Perhaps Wendell Berry has touched upon a crucial point, which is we must reevaluate not only our relationship with our habitat (the earth), but the way we engage with the earth as well. Perhaps the dominant, concerted view of expedience, tools, and appliances that beguile so many will be transformed by the concept of craft into a more sustainable and pragmatic notion of our vocations and avocations; and then the concept of technology can be replaced by the practice of art; blossoming a new praxis of engagement through arts and crafts.

I’ve been thinking lately about the word revolution. And I’ve been thinking about the response that word often conjures up in many folks. Sometimes fear. Sometimes a laugh. Sometimes a smile. The truth is, we’re in need of a serious revolution, and the sooner we recognize this the sooner we can begin. And it should be known that the bulk of any revolution is the time spent building a community. The Black Panther Party worked more toward building community schools for children, free health clinics for the poor, and other community projects. The Zapatistas, too, expressed that the most important work to be done during revolution is the nonviolent work, the education, the community gardening, the triage and networking, and so on. Harvey Milk fought for revolution, and indeed wanted mass protest and riot to draw attention when necessary, but he worked much harder at building safe communities for homosexuals and pushing for legislation that broadened equal rights.

During revolution it is most important to congeal as a community and to educate, to write, to garden, to relocalize, to deindustrialize while creating a replacement model that is sustainable and safe. It’s okay to be angry, even enraged, over current conditions; how else would we know that those conditions no longer suit us, never did suit us, and won’t ever suit us? But more importantly, we must love the land beneath our feet and every being, including ourselves and each other if we want a sense of peace and sustainability. We will defend with all of our hearts and might all that we love. Also, it must be fun. I agree with many who state that if a revolution is not fun –if I can’t laugh or smile, if I can’t dance or garden, make love or play my guitar, then I want no part of it.

Sources:

Lewis Mumford. The Pentagon of Power; The Myth of the Machine Vol. 2. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1970.

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