Theodore Roszak "In Defense of the Living Earth"
from Turning away from Technology, Stephanie Mills (1997)
- Extreme characterization of the debate is between:
- Luddites (who supposedly have indiscriminate hostility toward
industrialism)
- And those who favor "indiscriminate industrial growth"
(technological enthusiasts)
- Replies to false characterization of Luddism
- There has never been a movement that
- Unthinkingly hated machines and destroyed them
- Called all tech evil and want to get rid of all of it and live in
caves
- Original Luddites were angry weavers put out of jobs by factory
owners who used power looms and knitting frames
- First victim of technological unemployment
- These first Luddities, after appealing reasonably and getting
nowhere, resorted to busting machines
- Quickly put down by armed force and several hanged
- "A small futile gesture of defiance at outset of industrial
revolution"
- Note that Roszak's focus is on industrialism, not technology per se
- Not all tech
- Industrialism as a type of technology
- Industrialism involves inhumanity and destructiveness
- Putting people out of work, making work meaningless
- Env. impacts of pollution and habitat degradation
- Roszak's characterization of inappropriate tech: Machines and systems
of machines that sacrifice public good to enrich selfish few
- E.g., practice of some corporations to buy up patents of their
competitors and sit on them
- E.g., if it were true that the automobile manufacturers had
technology to make cars get 60 mpg, but where withholding the
technology, because they can make more money by selling gas
guzzling cars (perhaps because they are financially tied to the oil
industry)
- ROSZAK AIMS FOR A MIDDLE POSITION BETWEEN
EXTREMES OF TECHNOLOGICAL ENTHUSIASTS AND
EXTREME LUDDITES
- Absolutist Luddites
- Sweeping prescription for tech withdrawal
- Believe that "Our species can't be trusted with anything that gets
much beyond water wheels and windmills"
- Absolute technophiles, technological enthusiasts
- Any technology is a good technology and should be employed
- Accept Francis Bacon's statement of goal of science/tech:
- To establish and extend the power and domination of
humans over the universe.
- Conflicted middle
- Have anti-tech principles but also board a 747 to attend
conferences, and use word processors and email
- Roszak is in the conflicted middle:
- He has no choice; his current life is due to high tech medicine,
for which he is grateful
- Also he finds both pleasure and fascination in much modern tech
- Motion pictures are a marvelous art form
- Electricity marvelous convenience
- Science behind tech is "most enthralling intellectual adventure of
our age"
- Can one love science and be a Luddite (skeptical and
worried about technology)? (Yes)
- Still worries that our growing dependence on computer will spell
disaster down the line
- A Neoluddite can make many compromises with Modernity
- Wisdom is in the conflict
- Defense of homo faber (man/woman the maker)
- Humans as makers account for some of humanities greatest
achievements (but not the only source of those)
- Can't write them off
- But it is arrogant for them to insist that these engineers and
corporate forces behind them can be trusted to prescribe own
values and limits
- NEOLUDDITE CRITICISM
- Neoluddite critique is utterly rational and realistic
- Owning machines is a form of power
- Abuse of power to use technology
- To drive people off the land
- Take their jobs away
- To desecrate the natural environment
- True progress -improvement in quality of life not quantity of goods-
never grows from machines (new technology) but from judgment and
conscience of other humans
- High tech is incredibly seductive
- High tech is "subtlest and most seductive stage of industrialism"
- Offers us nothing short of magic
- Create own virtual universe and bend nature to our will
- Breed perfect babies
- Enjoy medical immortality
- Redesign plants/animals to our specification,
- Globe trot the planet on economy fares
- Colonize the cosmos
- A tremendously intoxicating and deluded program
- LUDDITE PROGRAM
- Luddite program is simple:
- Scale down
- Slow down
- Decentralize
- Democratize
- Bigness is a key problem
- A benign and constructive invention that is built too big
scale turns into a monster
- E.g., solar power (on rooftops or in the stratosphere?)
- Such bigness happens where profit is measure of progress
- Luddites generally prefer small scale technology
- Luddites plea for
- Living within limits
- Appeal for loyalty to place
- Respect for natural order that was here before us
- (Building core env. values into Luddism)
- Earth is neoluddites most powerful ally
- Environmental limits that Luddites want us to respect are earth's
own limits and won't long be violated
- Is modern technological society threatening the life support
systems on the planets on which humans depend?
- Luddites address great moral challenge of our time:
- Create a sustainable, post industrial culture
- A sustainable culture can't be industrial? Why not?
- One movement in world today that transcends the mystique of
progress and links us to life on the planet