[D66] Anti-technology

[R.O.]

"we resign ourselves to conception only for want of perception."

We are captives of so much that is not only instrumental, fodder for the 
functioning of other manipulable things, but also ever more
simulated.  We  are  exiles  from  immediacy,  in  a  fading  and 
flattening landscape where thought struggles to unlearn its alienated 
condition-ing.  Merleau-Ponty  failed  in  his  quest,  but  at  least 
aimed  at  finding  a primordial  ontology  of  vision  prior  to  the 
split  between  subject  and object. It is division of labor and the 
resulting conceptual forms of thought that   go   unchallenged, 
delaying   discovery   of   reification   and   reified thought.I t   i 
s ,   a f t e r   a l l ,   o u r   w h o l e   w a y   o f   k n o w i 
n g   t h a t   h a s   b e e n   s o  deformed and diminished, and that 
must be understood as such. "Intelligence" is now an externality to be 
measured, equated to profi-ciency in manipulating symbols. Philosophy 
has become the highly elaborate rationalization of reifications. And 
even more generally, being itself is constituted as experience and 
representation, as subject and object. These outcomes must be criticized 
as fundamentally as possible.The active, living element in cognition 
must be uncovered, beneath the reifications that mask it. Cognition, 
despite contemporary ortho-doxy, is not computation. The philosopher 
Ryle glimpsed that a form of knowledge that does not rely on symbolic 
representation might be the basic one.' Our notions of reality are the 
products of an artificially constructed symbol system, whose components 
have hardened into reifications or objectifications over time, as 
division of labor coalesced into domination of nature and domestication 
of the individual.Thought capable of producing culture and civilization 
is distanc-ing, non-sensuous. It abstracts from the subject and becomes 
an inde-pendent object. It's telling that sensations are much more 
resistant to reification than are mental images. Platonic discourse is a 
prime example of thinking that proceeds at the expense of the senses, in 
its radical split between perceptions and conceptions. Adorno draws 
attention to the healthier variant by his observation that in Walter 
Benjamin's writings "thought presses close to the object, as if through 
touching, smelling, tasting, it wanted to transform itself."' And Le Roy 
is probably very close to the mark with "we resign ourselves to 
conception only for want of perception."' Historically determined in the 
deepest sense, the reification aspect of thought is a further cognitive 
"fall from grace"


On 29-07-2020 14:40, R.O. wrote:
> 
> "Technology is "the knack of so arranging the world that we need not 
> experience it."' We are expected to deny what is living and natural 
> within us in order to acquiesce in the domination of non-human nature. 
> Technology has unmistakably become the great vehicle of reification. Not 
> forgetting that it is embedded in and embodies an ever-expanding, global 
> field of capital, reification subordinates us to our own objectified 
> creations. ("Things are in the saddle and ride mankind," observed 
> Emerson in the mid-19th century.) Nor is this a recent turn of events; 
> rather, it reflects the master code of culture, ab origino. The 
> separation from nature, and its ensuing pacification and manipulation, 
> make one ask, is the individual vanishing? Has culture itself set this 
> in motion? How has it come to pass that a formulation as reified as 
> "children are our most precious resource" does not seem repugnant to 
> everyone?"
> 
> --Zerzan, Running on emptiness, The pathology of civilisation
> _______________________________________________
> D66 mailing list
> D66 at tuxtown.net
> http://www.tuxtown.net/mailman/listinfo/d66