Pretechnological Age

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OK so granted much more needs to be argued to even explain what pretechnological Age means and to give context for this quote ... but blogger don't have time for that right now so:

"Oppportunities in a pretechnological society were to be grasped and acted out as a destiny. More precisely, one opportunity among others, however few, was to be taken up and lived out in a lifelong commitment; and all other opportunities ceased to be open and to exist. In liberal democracy, on the other hand, any one opportunity never turns into destiny but merely into a state one is free to leave for the sake of one of the many opportunities that have remained open." (Albert Borgman Technology and the Character of Contempory Life P. 91-92)

When freedom is the highest value commitment is not. When commitment is in place there is a much more vigorious form of freedom preserved. I am in bondage to my wife in that I am responsible to my voluntary vows of life-long fidelity. However it allows me the freedom of entering into deeper and deeper vunerability and shared responsibility (ie children). If freedom and "keeping options open" is the highest value then perhaps I never feel safe to enter into shared responsibility or vunerability. And this is not only true of marriage, but almost everything of significance and depth. To take up anything, whether vocation or study or land ownership, etc. is to enter into strong and manifold bonds ... "to abandon that thing is to suffer the trauma of the disruption of those ties and of injury to one's facilities."

But "when the supporting structure of daily life assumes the character of machinery that is concealed and seperated from teh commodities it procures and when these become isolated and mobile, then it becomes possible to style and restyle one's life by assembling and disassembling commodities. Life becomes positively ambigious ... "

Styling and restyling ourslves through assembling and disassembling commodities ... we are all like the invisible man. The invisible man is the story of our age ... the direct opposite of the emperors clothes, we think ourselves invisible and have to style and restyle to acheive existence. Maybe technology and political worldview has played into some of these feelings.

The picture is the unfortunate fate of this technological life ...

Comments

Cameron said…
"...we think ourselves invisible and have to style and restyle to achieve existence."

That's a striking observation. So much of what we busy ourselves with really is nothing at all, when it comes to it. What we pursue only perpetuates a sort of false existence (the false self), which is really no existence at all. How much is our entertainment worth? How much does it cost us?

I think this is a place where Lewis's "Great Divorce" has something to say. We are moving toward true existence in Christ, or to non-existence by communing with lifeless facades and dead objects. How will we feel in the age to come when we find out that that place is more real than this one, and more real than anything we have so far experienced?

Sorry, a bit of a tangent there. But I see that technology often becomes a kind of artificial life support system (not that it has to be that). We get the idea that what we're doing is living, when really we're under the spell of [sometimes] beautiful, moving images and missing the life that won't be taken away from us at every turn.

Lord, have mercy. Too often I'm counted among that number.
June 2, 2009 at 8:02 AM
jaypercival said…
Excellent comments ... not a tangent at all. Yep, "non-existence by communing with lifeless facades and dead objects" pretty much nails it on the head. And I think artifical life support system is a good way to describe much that technology offers once you push on it a little bit.
June 2, 2009 at 11:01 AM
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