conceptual mind itself. As with a car in mud, the harder we try to get out, the deeper we become mired. Trying to gain anything through external tools can only start a vicious cycle, since the goal will never be reached that way.
In our dependence on technology to recover our completeness, we can become servomechanisms of technology. Lewis Mumford (1934) pointed out that since the advent of the clock, we have gone from timekeepers to time-savers to time-servers. And since the invention of the clock, technology has grown far more sophisticated and encompassing.
Pure Thinking Without the Body
For reasons similar to those which gave technology so much power, we have become disconnected from close, felt connection with our bodies. A sort of Cartesian “pure thinking” has taken precedence over other cognitive modalities.
When the first virtual systems appeared in the 1990s, Mark Slouka (1995) wrote that the context provided by the physical world enables us to judge good and bad. Birth, pain, pleasure and death provide the ground for judging what is preferable. By contrast, virtual systems give a reality divorced from the world, offering a view into a universe with no ethical ground.
The digital environment is basically disembodied. The body has a marginal role – or may even be seen as a hindrance. The roots of this attitude are to be found in the Judeo-Christian tradition which exiled the body to a role far from the divine – the very root of all sin. Our market society is recovering the body almost exclusively in hedonistic terms. Knowledge of our body translated into technical terms comes down to: What heart rate do I need to burn fat on the treadmill? What scores on my medical tests assure me I’m healthy? How can I improve my body-mind with certain chemicals? How can I re-engineer myself through genetic technology?
The relationship with the body easily turns digital when we approach it from outside, without felt connections. Bodies today are managed by technologies – from birth through our last breath. Several studies point out that proper brain development requires a baby to be in touch with the mother’s breast, receiving stimulation from both the environment and from appropriate human contact. If deprived of these, intelligence and social skills will not develop correctly. Later the ego-mind is left to recapture something which only the heart, body, and awareness can.
The Western culture, in devaluing the body, negated as well the very roots of compassion which is felt in the intersection of body, mind, sensations, and ethical values. It is hard to feel compassion and empathy when there is no connection with an embodied reality. We thus remain unconcerned when the media show people being killed. Repeated exposure to virtuality can weaken our capacity for participation. Laing (1959) said, “the person who does not act in reality and only acts in fantasy becomes himself unreal” (p. 85).
Jerry Mander (1978), in his classic Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, quoted an experience of journalist Jane Margold who entered a “mediated” version of a dramatic experience: “This is real; there’s a wounded man lying here in front of me, bleeding to death, yet I have no feeling. It seems like a movie” (p. 236).
In negating the role of the body as a bridge to our soul, compassion becomes merely a mental state. Snatched away from our totality, compassion can then fit on Facebook with the hugging of a teddy bear, or writing “Hope you get better.”
Tools for Inner Growth
There are tools and technology that have been employed to develop authentic human qualities. Chogyam Trungpa (1999), an adventurous Buddhist teacher who grew up in Tibet, recalls being attracted by Western life, thinking that Westerners must be very wise. When he was a boy he received a watch and took it completely apart to see how it worked. Though he tried to reassemble it, it would not run. When he was later given a clock that chimed, he took that apart as well. He compared the parts of both, laying them out side by side. Seeing the mistakes he had made with the watch, he was able to put both back together and, having cleaned them, they worked better than before. He was quite proud. Having no concept of factories, he was very impressed with the discipline and patience required, based on all those little screws that somebody had made by hand. When he came to the West he met the makers of the machines that do wondrous things. He found that there was not much wisdom in the West, though there was lots of knowledge.
His attitude toward tools was as much an inner as an outer perception. Can the aspects of technology – like precision, perseverance and patience – be matched both in the manufacturing and internally? Are tools just a way to “get something done” and to extend our power? Or can they be applied for developing our inner qualities? Through tools, do we need to arrive as fast as possible at a result, without our actual presence and full attention? Or can we use them as instruments for training our souls?
Children use tools in a playful way, without needing to arrive anywhere. Often they discard what they build, for it is the activity of building that they enjoy. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a practice of creating elaborate mandalas of colored sand. Once completed, sometimes after months of patient work, the mandala is swept away.
A very simple tool, like a small knife for carving ornaments out of wood, can be used with different attitudes. We could start with a design and a plan and look forward to finishing it as soon as possible. We might swear when we don’t achieve the shape we envisioned, or be proud when we reach our goal. We could also start with no plan, simply feeling the contact with the wood and the tool, let the design flow according to the moment, integrating our “mistakes” into a novel design. We might consciously discover new skills with our hands, observe where the idea to do a certain thing comes from, look at the different feelings that occur during the carving – our joy, flow, frustration, and silence. In this way, we can develop attention, patience, awareness, and the ability to let go of plans and accept the ever-changing flow of life.
Technology in our culture is intended to give us more power, extension, and possibilities. The emphasis is on what we can do with certain tools, not on how we do it nor how a specific tool connects us with our inner states. The ego takes charge – after all, that is its job.
For the ego, every repetitive task after a while tends to become unconscious, and attention fades. The ego-mind craves novelties and is easily bored. Once automated, we are no longer there with our presence, attention and participation – since the task is outsourced to the machine. The ego wants goals and power.
The artificial intelligence scientist Marvin Minsky, talking about a new project at MIT at the end of 2009, pointed to the fact that his iPhone can download thousands of different applications, instantly allowing it to perform new functions. Why not do the same with the brain? “I would like to be able to download the ability to juggle. There’s nothing more boring than learning to juggle” (quoted in Chandler, 2009).
Minsky believed we can separate the ability to juggle from the inner transformation which occurs in learning to juggle. Knowledge, in Descartes’s style, is seen as something “pure,” removed from our subjective participation and the involvement of our body-mind. If we see knowledge as something which can be represented digitally, then we should be able to download it into our neurophysiology, as we do with software in a computer. This is what Kurzweil and others are forecasting.
When we don’t give importance to our activities as instruments for growth, nor feel “presence” in our actions, then we want to automate everything that can be automated, including activities which could be helpful for the growth of our soul. The concern shifts from how boring or how useful an activity it is, to how it can shape our soul through the presence we give to that task. In Zen monasteries, even the most repetitive tasks – like cleaning rice and sweeping walkways –are used as a path for awareness. But the ego wants goals – and wants to reach them fast.
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