“Consciousness is not in the head. Consciousness is an emergent, symbiotic process that is planetary in extent.”

I’m really curious to read Kester Brewin’s new book about technology and transcendence titled Getting High (due to be published soon I suppose), but I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed to pick up a technophobe/Luddite vibe coming from him in an interview he recently did on Freestyle Christianity. The same cannot be said for Heidegger (who he references in the interview) or McLuhan, both of whom are known for theorizing about technology and both of whom resisted every attempt to categorize their views of technology as either optimistic or pessimistic. Conversely, McLuhan would always remind his readers that ‘we critique far too soon, we must first seek understanding.’

Reminding people that we need to constantly tease apart dignities from disparities and that we need to be cognizant of technology’s ability to influence and shape us is quite fine and good; for example McLuhan’s tetrad of media effects goes a long way in doing this, I think. But I’m not sure where Kester gets this idea that technology offers “false promises” implying that technology itself is inherently deceptive or evil (I’ll grant that technology is not necessarily neutral, but it feels highly problematic to assign technology any intrinsic moral value, good or evil)…Additionally, I guess I’m skeptical about Kester’s implicit claim in the interview that human technology is really some sort of feeble subconscious attempt at god-like salvivic progress and/or transcendence. I mean, sure there are some Silicon Valley types who think technology alone will save us, and they certainly are delusional (of course technology alone won’t do much), but I don’t necessarily think it’s the case that [most] people believe “technology” will offer any sort of perfect revelation. It’s my hunch that most people don’t have that much faith in technology.

Now, our technologies certainly influence and shape how we view things in the world (we become what we behold to some degree) and to that end we should always be mindful and attempt to understand the subtle power of technology, but to be fair, the things in the world are also shaping us just as we shape and influence them…And it is to this point that I became excited when in the interview Josef brought up the human body as an example of a “technology of the Earth,” and I had hoped he would make an evolutionary/naturalistic point about how humans are part of nature, and therefore, point out that in natural ecosystems (as we know) everything is shaping everything all of the time. To quote Matt Segall, “What does it mean that so many plants and fungi contain psychoactive analogs of the human brain’s endogenous neurochemicals? …The nervous system is an ecologically extended network of chemical interactions. The human brain has been co-evolving with these other organisms for tens of thousands of years. Consciousness is not in the head. Consciousness is an emergent, symbiotic process that is planetary in extent.”

As already indicated, I haven’t read Kester’s book yet so I certainly may be misunderstanding what he’s trying to say, but to me it’s not so much individual technologies that are making “false promises” (sure technologies “promise” or claim to do things, but most of the time they more or less follow though—e.g. indoor plumbing “promises” to pipe excrement out of my house, and it does just that most of the time), but it’s my suspicion that if there is any “false promising” going on, it’s the nihilistic, soul- and earth-destroying, market-driven, Capitalistic religion/system that is doing it on technology’s behalf. Perhaps then we should focus our energies more precisely.

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Painting above by Salvador Dali

Tags:capitalismHeideggerKester BrewinMarshal McLuhanmedia ecologytechnology