RhetoricThug wrote:Humanity must unite 'organically,' and we must resist being coerced or hood-winked into a form artificial unity brought to us through technology.
I very much agree. I remember once a discussion in a Buddhist forum in which a "Buddhist" said he welcomed the advent of modernity. He wanted artificial food without living input in the form of organic matter, a sanitized food production in which animals didn't have to suffer because they have been replaced by synthetic fertilizers and machines. He didn't want to know about farming and the fact that a wide range of toxic chemicals is needed to destroy all lifeforms, animal, plant, fungi, etc., in order to grow the cash-crop by synthetic means. He welcomed denatured food with chemical additives produced according to Vegan ideology in which deficiencies like B12 was complemented by additives. He wanted a sanitized environment and human body in which all bacteria have been killed by a vast array of chemicals. He didn't want to know about the fact that the human body consists to a large extend of bacteria and other microorganisms. We couldn't survive a single moment without them.
How can it be that people who follow one of the most advanced and beautiful thinking humans have produced go wrong to such an extend? Is it that the great Yin will turn into the great Yang, that the great good is close to the great evil? Is it the absolute equilibrium at the dead point of the chaos pendulum that can go either way, depending on how the forces of the whole universe will combine to let it fall left or right?
At that absolute equilibrium we can no longer make any judgement, neither left nor right. The moment we make a judgement the world is frozen into one reality excluding innumerable potentialities.
Anyways, for a "Buddhist" to want to sacrifice all living beings for a moment of peace of mind or for saving an insect he might inadvertently tread on is totally sick. It is a symptom of the sickness of our age.
But we do need our pursuit of technology. There is no way around that, just like we can't stop breathing. That pursuit was started long before the first human made stone tools. Today, we must go on like a runner must put one foot in front of the other to keep from falling. That is our motion and distinguishes us from plants which are fixed at a location and can only go places by expanding. Like we keep the balance of the pendulum, we keep the balance of the body in running and we keep the balance of technology by moving forward. We have to invent better and "greener" technology to get rid of the old and dirty technology. The potential for innovation is the only growth industry on this planet that is unlimited.
The trouble is that science doesn't have ethics to serve as guideline for what is right and wrong. Is it right to develop WMDs for the empire by using a false narrative? Is it right to blindly fiddle with the genetic code of life in the name of corporate profit? Is it right to develop AI weapons for the subversion of democracy in the service of neocon ideology?
Who can put a check on all these obvious abuses?
Only a true democracy that includes the interests of all and not just the interest of the empire. Those who believe that imperialism is without alternative are wrong. Imperialism is a dead end because it is invariably destructive. It cannot reach equilibrium.
Jianzhi Sengcan, 6th century China:
毫釐有差 天地懸隔
Even with a hair's breadth of difference,
heaven and earth are rent asunder.