So many great insights here. I’m reminded of Wendell Berry’s essay, “The Use of Energy,” which, in the penultimate paragraph, he refers to none other than Ivan Illich. Forgive me for quoting parts of the concluding paragraphs at length here. They’re just so good and go so well with your essay.
“To argue for a balance between people and their tools, between life and machinery, between biological and machine-produced energy, is to argue for restraint upon the use of machines. The arguments that rise out of the machine metaphor—arguments for cheapness, efficiency, labor-saving, economic growth etc.—all point to infinite industrial growth and infinite energy consumption. The moral argument points to restraint; it is a conclusion that may be in some sense tragic, but there is no escaping it. Much as we long for infinities of power and duration, we have no evidence that these lie within our reach, much less within our responsibility. It is more likely that we will have either to live within our limits, within the human definition, or not live at all...
“The knowledge that purports to be leading us to transcendence of our limits has been with us a long time. It drives by offering material means of fulfilling a spiritual, and therefore materially unappeasable, craving: we would all very much like to be immortal, infallible, free of doubt, at rest. It is because this need is so large, and so in different in kind from all material means, that the knowledge of transcendence—our entire history of scientific “miracles”—is so tentative, fragmentary, and grotesque. Though there are undoubtedly mechanical limits, because there are human limits, there is no mechanical restraint. The only logic of the machine is to get bigger and more elaborate. In the absence of moral restraint — and we have never imposed adequate moral restraint upon our use of machines—the machine is out of control by definition. From the beginning of the history of machine-developed energy, we have been able to harness more power than we could use responsibly. From the beginning, these machines have created effects that society could absorb only at the cost of suffering and disorder.
“And so the issue is not of supply but of use. The energy crisis is not a crisis of technology but of morality. We already have available more power than we have so far dared to use. If, like the strip-miners and the “agribusinessmen,” we look on all the world as fuel or as extractable energy, we can do nothing but destroy it. The issue is restraint. The energy crisis reduces to a single question: Can we forbear to do anything that we are able to do? Or to put the question in the words of Ivan Illich: Can we, believing in “the effectiveness of power,” see “the disproportionately greater effectiveness of abstaining from its use”?
Yes, we have become alienated from “reality”, by our technology - we live in virtual worlds more clearly now than ever before. But if Jung (see Kastrup on The Metaphysics of Jung) is to be believed, which i personally do, the world “out there” is as much a projection or manifestation of the world “in here” as we are it’s creation. So we have always lived in a made up world. And our way of dealing with it has been to explore it, go out into it, find out about it, and, as far as I can see, never really consider returning to our starting point, except as tourists.
So, we need to master space travel as millenia ago we mastered the art of travelling by sea. When we do, it is no longer the world that is our oyster, but the galaxy. Bezos and Musk are simply building rafts, and inflating goatskins - good luck to them.
Err “ was strikingly novel in human history. ” I don’t think so. Sometime around 80,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens left Africa, for pretty much everywhere else including Greenland, Australia and the high Himalaya. It’s practically what makes us human.
So many great insights here. I’m reminded of Wendell Berry’s essay, “The Use of Energy,” which, in the penultimate paragraph, he refers to none other than Ivan Illich. Forgive me for quoting parts of the concluding paragraphs at length here. They’re just so good and go so well with your essay.
“To argue for a balance between people and their tools, between life and machinery, between biological and machine-produced energy, is to argue for restraint upon the use of machines. The arguments that rise out of the machine metaphor—arguments for cheapness, efficiency, labor-saving, economic growth etc.—all point to infinite industrial growth and infinite energy consumption. The moral argument points to restraint; it is a conclusion that may be in some sense tragic, but there is no escaping it. Much as we long for infinities of power and duration, we have no evidence that these lie within our reach, much less within our responsibility. It is more likely that we will have either to live within our limits, within the human definition, or not live at all...
“The knowledge that purports to be leading us to transcendence of our limits has been with us a long time. It drives by offering material means of fulfilling a spiritual, and therefore materially unappeasable, craving: we would all very much like to be immortal, infallible, free of doubt, at rest. It is because this need is so large, and so in different in kind from all material means, that the knowledge of transcendence—our entire history of scientific “miracles”—is so tentative, fragmentary, and grotesque. Though there are undoubtedly mechanical limits, because there are human limits, there is no mechanical restraint. The only logic of the machine is to get bigger and more elaborate. In the absence of moral restraint — and we have never imposed adequate moral restraint upon our use of machines—the machine is out of control by definition. From the beginning of the history of machine-developed energy, we have been able to harness more power than we could use responsibly. From the beginning, these machines have created effects that society could absorb only at the cost of suffering and disorder.
“And so the issue is not of supply but of use. The energy crisis is not a crisis of technology but of morality. We already have available more power than we have so far dared to use. If, like the strip-miners and the “agribusinessmen,” we look on all the world as fuel or as extractable energy, we can do nothing but destroy it. The issue is restraint. The energy crisis reduces to a single question: Can we forbear to do anything that we are able to do? Or to put the question in the words of Ivan Illich: Can we, believing in “the effectiveness of power,” see “the disproportionately greater effectiveness of abstaining from its use”?
Great piece. As always - thank you.
Yes, we have become alienated from “reality”, by our technology - we live in virtual worlds more clearly now than ever before. But if Jung (see Kastrup on The Metaphysics of Jung) is to be believed, which i personally do, the world “out there” is as much a projection or manifestation of the world “in here” as we are it’s creation. So we have always lived in a made up world. And our way of dealing with it has been to explore it, go out into it, find out about it, and, as far as I can see, never really consider returning to our starting point, except as tourists.
So, we need to master space travel as millenia ago we mastered the art of travelling by sea. When we do, it is no longer the world that is our oyster, but the galaxy. Bezos and Musk are simply building rafts, and inflating goatskins - good luck to them.
Err “ was strikingly novel in human history. ” I don’t think so. Sometime around 80,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens left Africa, for pretty much everywhere else including Greenland, Australia and the high Himalaya. It’s practically what makes us human.