44 Comments
User's avatar
Stegiel's avatar

“Day after day the wind blows away the pages of our calendars, our newspapers, and our political regimes, and we glide along the stream of time without any spiritual framework, without a memory, without a judgment, carried about by “all winds of doctrine” on the current of history, which is always slipping into a perpetual past. Now we ought to react vigorously against this slackness—this tendency to drift. If we are to live in this world we need to know it far more profoundly; we need to rediscover the meaning of events, and the spiritual framework which our contemporaries have lost.”

—Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (p. 138)

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

So where I am looking at this again is not anti-tech but appropriate tech. Instead of pesticides use birds say, or instead of ignoring ecology learn to use it wisely. Citing the work of sociologist Marcel Mauss, Ellul describes the affinities between magic and technique:

“Magic developed along with other techniques as an expression of man’s will to obtain certain results of a spiritual order. To attain them, man made use of an aggregate of rites, formulas, and procedures which, once established, do not vary. Strict adherence to form is one of he characteristics of magic: forms and rituals, masks whichever vary, the same kind of prayer wheels, the same ingredients for mystical drugs, for formulae for divination, and so on.”

And a little later on he writes,

“Every magical means, in the eyes of the person who uses it, is the most efficient one. In the spiritual realm, magic displays all the characteristics of a technique. It is a mediator between man and ‘the higher powers,’ just as other techniques mediate between man and matter. It leads to efficacy because it subordinates the power of the gods to men, and it secures a predetermined result. It affirms human power in that it seeks to subordinate the gods to men, just as technique serves to cause nature to obey.”

This latter observation also recalls Walter Benjamin’s observation that “technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature and man.”

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

You've gotten me thinking on modern day rituals.

From the discarding of tradition to the covidian rituals, satanic and the anointing etc of King Charlie.

Family rituals over mealtimes and bedtime. Habits developed for their usefulness task wise or to smooth socially tricky situations.

I am liking the quote of magic development meant for efficiency.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

I know it does really fit. This is why I am reading Gabriel Marcel and Jacques Ellul. I read in the thought of Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, Geddes, Mumford, Merton, Baudrillard, Virilio, C.S. Lewis and more like Heidegger and Berdyaev and Steiner. To think alongside them in time of Covid; well, read my re-post of John Waters, he doesn't but might as well. Our ground right at this cross-roads is difficult to determine. Either death machine is stopped or more die. No protest. Animal Rights get more focus. Climate. Blacks. Women. Sexual different people.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

That's a bit of a test of a thinker/writer; how do their words stack up against today.

I tried to read one of my husband's Donna Leon whodunits the other day. All the fuss about one body, huh. It was just written last year and a bit derogatory about anti mandaters.

I was bored quicko.

But your philosophers are now getting your new lens.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

The old saying is we do not read great books, they read us. Moby Dick is a good example. Crime and Punishment too. And so with philosophers. After Covid we have the summation of Technique.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

I do not know about Australia or NZ during WW2. In the USA we had Victory Gardens. Obviously how land is developed and what is on the land matters. Ellul and others focus on the dark side of technology but do not call for a mass return to the land.

I have always had an interest in this idea. Urban Collective farming. Urban collective living. I am not strongly inclined to country life. I do not mind isolated country life in the urban. When I ran a cafe in the Mission in 1988 there was a couple acre commune called the Farm that had chickens a few blocks away. Developed away by the 90's.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

NZ house plots were traditionally quarter acre, and there's still lots of them.

Many now put a cheap second dwelling out the back, but it always looks bad with poor access along the side of the main house.

Flowers out the front and fruit trees and vegetables out the back.

With lawn between.

Mother did the flowers and some veggies.

Father did the lawns and the digging.

No victory gardens required.

Lots of potato and cabbage and mutton meals.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

Suburbs had victory gardens. Large parcels in suburbs rare.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

You have faith in the collective.

I am intolerant of anyone not pulling their weight and would call such people out.

I had trouble enough with my book group where someone habitually didn't bring refreshments. I ended up setting up a roster.

Expand full comment
S...'s avatar

I've spent a significant amount of time working on market gardens, and really contributing heavily to community gardens. Traveled all around to see how this works in different areas. It's the same everywhere. You are right on calling out the issue of people pulling their weight. So few people do most of the work. Little Red Hen syndrome as far as the eye can see. So many people pontificating about gardening, painting about organics, singing about farming, while so few pick up the fork and spade.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

The book group *friend*, a vocal socialist, seemed of the mindset that those good at a certain thing should do it, those willing to provide a certain thing should provide it. I would bring her and others lemons from our tree, every meeting, but no acknowledgement from her.

No doubt she thought she had her attributes (maybe her attempts at *enlightening* me about socialism was her *contribution*) LOL.

Expand full comment
S...'s avatar

Hahaha. I think I've met her, or maybe it was a hundred like her :)

Also, to be clear, there is a place for arts and culture. I'm not trying to denigrate that. But most nature/back to the land fantasizing doesn't take into account the fact that there is a much higher need for turning compost than decorating walls. And for some reason, everyone wants to be the wall decorator.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

Many many reasons. Coined money circulating amongst quite unequal demographies may be one if seen from my extremely biased viewpoint.

Say a Holy Roman Emperor and a money lending family. Or a merchant cut out of traditional money forced to take a bloody haircut or even a consumer. Or when my wife was ill and I had no money for rent for I could not work I took a pay day loan at extortionate interest. One does as one must or suffers consequences drastic and unfair.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

The wall decorating is a more feminine art.

And males are encouraged to be feminine.

I employ strong young men to do the heavy work in the garden, and I do the dainty planting and harvesting. Makes for expensive beans that I can virtue signal as having grown myself. LOL some more.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

Think of machines and man in time and in place. Fernand Braudel wrote his histories rooted in time and how time with machines is shaping civilization. Braudel summarizes the broad themes of his three-volume Civilisation materielle et capitalisme, 1400-1800 and offers his reflections on the historian's craft and on the nature of the historical imagination...Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism.

Technique, for Ellul, encompasses not only material technology, but also the extension of machine logic into social and personal spheres. “Technique,” Ellul explains, “integrates the machine into society.” It amounts to the conditioning of man for a world of machines. More generally, it is a mentality that privileges efficiency and rationalization.

According to Ellul, “technique has evolved along two distinct paths.” The “concrete technique of homo faber [man the maker]” and “the technique, of a more or less spiritual order, which we call magic.”

Citing the work of sociologist Marcel Mauss, Ellul describes the affinities between magic and technique:

“Magic developed along with other techniques as an expression of man’s will to obtain certain results of a spiritual order. To attain them, man made use of an aggregate of rites, formulas, and procedures which, once established, do not vary. Strict adherence to form is one of he characteristics of magic: forms and rituals, masks whichever vary, the same kind of prayer wheels, the same ingredients for mystical drugs, for formulae for divination, and so on.”

And a little later on he writes,

“Every magical means, in the eyes of the person who uses it, is the most efficient one. In the spiritual realm, magic displays all the characteristics of a technique. It is a mediator between man and ‘the higher powers,’ just as other techniques mediate between man and matter. It leads to efficacy because it subordinates the power of the gods to men, and it secures a predetermined result. It affirms human power in that it seeks to subordinate the gods to men, just as technique serves to cause nature to obey.”

This latter observation also recalls Walter Benjamin’s observation that “technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relations between nature and man.”

Regarding magic’s relationship to technology, Mumford explained that “magic was the bridge that united fantasy with technology: the dream of power with the engines of fulfillment.”

https://thefrailestthing.com/2011/12/14/technology-and-magic/

Expand full comment
S...'s avatar

I wanted to hop in here and say thanks. Thanks for the effort you've put into this stack. I saw you over on Sage or Sarah's stack, I forget which, but I'm catching up on yours this week. Going back through the archive. The issue you have landed on, eloquently examined in this post, is THE key issue I think for our era. I roll it around and around in my head almost every day. I don't know that there is a solution, a way to spiritualize the technology. It's possible they are simply mutually opposing forces. I hope not. I've been back to the land, off and on, over my life. I don't think that is the answer. It's part of the answer, but incomplete, the same way technology as a life is incomplete. I've done high tech work as well. It is not without it's value. There is a place for it. Magic feels like part of the answer. Greer has been talking about re-enchanting life on his blog this year. That is certainly part of the solution. I just don't know that we sort this existential issue out before it's too late.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

Technology is human imagination enacted. What imagination post 19th century men have, is new in the world. Our predecessors both in recent Antiquity and Deep Antiquity had a technics as well rather different than our mass technics. So many writers have been ignored writing on Technics and Technique for so many different reasons. Especially those writing about Deep Antiquity.

Across the world artifacts remain pointing to a difference in imagination.

Rene Dubose -The very process of living is a continual interplay between the individual and his environment, often taking the form of a struggle resulting in injury or disease. Ellul goes further to suggest of course Technique is our inhabited and lived environment, shaped by Technique, the shaping is at least as recent as an advertisement in Forbes magazine from the early 30's on disposable cans. Fisherman on a remote lake finishing tin can beers now can toss them for they are not glass.

Expand full comment
Edwin's avatar

Governments must build the machine that enslaves man.

But God's man builds one that serves men, not Governments.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

My time coming, any day, don't worry about me, no

Been so long, I felt this way

I'm in no hurry, no

Rainbows and down that highway where ocean breezes blow

My time coming, voices saying they tell me where to go

Don't worry about me, nah, nah, nah

Don't worry about me, no

And I'm in no hurry, nah, nah, nah

I know where to go

California, preaching on the burning shore

California, I'll be knocking on the golden door

Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light

Rising up to paradise, I know, I'm gonna shine

My time coming, any day, don't worry about me, no

It's gonna be just like they say, them voices tell me so

Seems so long I felt this way and time sure passin' slow

Still I know I lead the way, they tell me where I go

Don't worry about me, nah, nah, nah

Don't worry about me, no

And I'm in no hurry, nah, nah, nah

I know where to go

California, a prophet on the burning shore

California, I'll be knocking on the golden door

Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light

Rising up to paradise, I know I'm gonna shine

You've all been asleep, you would not believe me

Them voices tellin' me, you will soon receive me

Standin' on the beach, the sea will part before me

Fire wheel burning in the air

You will follow me and we will ride to glory

Way up, the middle of the air

And I'll call down thunder and speak the same

And my work fills the sky with flame

And might and glory gonna be my name

And men gonna light my way

My time coming, any day, don't worry about me, no

It's gonna be just like they say, them voices tell me so

Seems so long I felt this way and time sure passin' slow

My time coming, any day, don't worry about me, no

Don't worry about me, nah, nah, nah

Don't worry about me, no

And I'm in no hurry, nah, nah, nah

I know where to go

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

TPTB have plans for a new religion to suit the new tech world.

Maybe we need one but not theirs for sure.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

Always at the mercy of something.

Once the weather and the seasons, now at the mercy of progress.

We can't reject "technics" for then there will be nothing. Can't see most people trying to scrabble around in the soil trying to get back to some sort of simpler time.

We wouldn't even like it for more than five minutes.

I grew up on a farm but it was mechanised of course, with chemicals and scale.

I would be hopeless at the scrabbling in the dirt, and I don't want to.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

It is not doing away with technics as much as having a higher view of technics and civilization. Corona Virus public policy can be seen as an Technique. Machines speeding human time up as well. Each introduction of a new technology has an impact which may be ill used and may by design be inimical. A logic of the brake.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

The speed of tecnhnics has been on warp.

Thanks to this war on humanity, innovation on man/tech machine is racing apace.

Usual story that war *advances* society.

Then there's always the two ways of looking at *advances*. The nice way or the real way.

Expand full comment
Richard Seager's avatar

I grew up on farms and an orchard. There was always a very big garden as my father has green fingers. My mum did too but she stuck to flowers.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

You yourself have not chosen that lifestyle. Melbourne is not exactly rural. LOL

Expand full comment
Richard Seager's avatar

Despite being a very keen gardener Dad didn't attempt to pass that on. His garden was his own domain. But you're right being a kiwifruit orchardist or a dairy farmer did not appeal to me.

But in 2021 I was keen to buy rural. But my wife was not at that stage at the time. So now we have to hope we do well with retail as my wife has now changed her mind and pushes the idea that we should grow our own vegies. Will have to stock up on tools so as I can gouge other gardeners in 10 years time.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

German seceteurs, loppers, shears.

And a way to sharpen them.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

But you were recently in Germany and didn't see evidence of all their furnaces *mothballed*.

Expand full comment
Richard Seager's avatar

Next door neighbours used to grow a lot of potatoes for personal consumption. Must have fed a few families I figure.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

Gardening can feed everyone.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

You do have an interest in a community garden don't you Stegiel. How is that going?

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

Garden grows nicely. Probably will put into the garden food vegetables for the fall.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

I must wait for our garden meeting and the outcome from electing our garden officers and see if the extra plot held by Judith is my plot as it appears right now. This is in mid-August.

Plenty of time to plant. Have a couple books on intensive small container gardening and of course on intensive gardening period.

Expand full comment
S...'s avatar

It's true. It always shocks me the amount of food a small space can produce. Every year. The amazement never ceases. Why we live with a poverty framing, when the world can be so abundant...I'll never understand.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

I grow tomato, potato, beans, kale, bok choy; mostly flowers; but I don't want to be a Maoist peasant farmer.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

What happens when the gardening tools wear out. Do I use a digging stick?

Pastoral idyll I think not.

Expand full comment
Tarn - mutual eye-rolling's avatar

You can glean what my *optimistic* (huh?) brave new world view is.

There will be technics for the obedient, but for you and me they will be turning off the power and gas, no shopping for us and no computer and no fires, just polluted rain and unable to pay our local rates bill.

I've probably missed out a few details. Probably a bit of looting and being rounded up.

Expand full comment
Stegiel's avatar

Yes I think group solutions arise in the collective. Charisma is important in the collective. And primate dominance hierarchy is important in the collective. We are not bloodless abstractions but people. Our people problems are mind control problems. Free will exists even if not obvious. There are disturbances in the field of Technique. Even in Xi's China where 24/7/365 propaganda boosts his Buddhahood Brilliance and Pure Light Being for all to recognize and the best study closely.

Expand full comment