A Breath of Sea Air

Way north of my city, in the upper reaches of the Salish Sea is Hornby Island. I have never been there, but I hear it is a magical place. Here the great cycles are recorded. This video is a wonderful revelation to us urban dwellers who so rarely have the opportunity to witness the immensity of the natural world.

Orlov revisited

In my last review, I didn't include some salient points about the Orlov book that should at least be mentioned as they pertain to how his thesis holds together.

I skipped over chapter four, but it is crucial in understanding what he refers to in the harm/benefit analysis. If the power and control of the technosphere is to be diminished, he suggests that we need to hold as our standard the health of the BIOSPHERE.

But allow me to digress here a bit. Back on page 67, or there about, I read some passages that I can't get out of my mind. It is not that I remember them verbatim, but that I remember the essence of their meaning, and that is what has left a lasting chill.

Part of the control that the technosphere wields in getting people to adhere to certain beliefs, and thus behaviors, is the idea that we are becoming (or have already become) a global culture. This implies that as we think and act we follow along ever more converging paths of socially accepted behavior. Social media, for example, nearly demands it. If you have the courage to speak your mind, are you waiting to be struck by someone else's observation that you have not followed in line with the accepted world view that is now part of the popular meme? (I have often found this to be true, and as such deleted my Facebook account, for all the good it will do me!)

We have left behind centuries of previous forms of social organization that gave our lives definition and meaning. We understood our place in society through the boundaries of family, tribe, folklore, geographical location, city-state, nation-state, etc. Now, it seems we are swimming in a soup of humanity that is held together with the perfidy of imposed ideas. This is most evident when examining the vitriol that comes in response to political correctness.

In order to be inclusive of others our language use and behavior needs to conform to ever morphing sets of criteria. The intention is to acknowledge and correct a previous expression of prejudice or dismissiveness of individuals defined by the groups to which they belong. But by trying to erase the boundaries of these groups, regardless of how they are named, we are effectively asking others to join in where they may not want to go.

Not everyone wants to be identified with humanity as a whole. And so what you get is an ocean of identity politics and all the folks are clamoring to stake their claim in the please-acknowledge-me-I-matter territory.

I do not place myself on the political spectrum anywhere near the right end, and yet, I despise political correctness as much as any of those torch-bearers. And that is where the chill sets in.

If you have that many people in your society feeling dispossessed, underappreciated, unrecognized, and thwarted in their attempts at self-actualization, stirring the soup with platitudes of inclusion is not going to achieve your aims.

If we want to create a society that values the lives of all its participants, we cannot afford to ignore the fears and insecurities of those who bellow and scream obscenities. This is a horrifying realization. We are all guilty of writing off those who we are convinced will never listen to us, and that brings us up to NOW.

If we don't start bringing down the walls between us, the technosphere will continue to perpetrate its memes in order to conglomerate us and denigrate self-definition by any other means than the perceived, acceptable one. What we have lost in the meantime is any definition of basic, essential humanity--the idea that love confers value on all. That's it. Not language, not policy, not coercion. We need a vision of what love is, so we can know what it is like to extend it for ourselves as well as others. Our society, through capitalism, and other features, blinds us to the possibilities that matter most. Can we ever believe that the only possibility that matters is love??

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Critical Thinkers Need Apply: A look at Orlov

If you go searching for works that answer interesting and urgent questions, you may be most rewarded by the writing of Dmitry Orlov. But I will warn you, don't expect a comforting narrative laced with platitudes or pablum. You are not in that territory.

In his book, Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a grip on the technologies that limit our autonomy, self-sufficiency and freedom, Orlov taps into the zeitgeist like a needle biopsy and shows you the cultural molecular structure in new and disturbing ways. The aim of his book is to discuss the ways in which our civilization has become enslaved by the new, technologically advanced, more efficient methods in which we conduct our daily lives.

By page 70 you may be thinking: This is beginning to sound like one very elaborate, but well-argued conspiracy theory. Nonetheless, it is challenging to dismiss the author's reasoning behind the layers of control wrested from our direct influence. For example, these are the characteristics of our state of adherence to the demands of the technosphere:

• it overcomes its natural limits, (conquest of nature)
• wants to control absolutely everything
• technologize everything
• put a monetary value on everything
• demands homogeneity
• wants to dominate the biosphere
• controls you for its own purposes
• demands blind faith in progress

Any of this sound familiar? Its only alternative to infinite progress is the apocalypse. It always creates more problems than it solves. 

Reading this book sheds some very discomfiting light on the degree to which our society is structured around ever increasingly demanding technological involvement. Orlov develops his narrative from many varying layers of historical and cultural analysis. In chapter three he references Ted Kaczynski, a cultural critic of some very prescient acumen. Had he turned his fervor to something other than bombing people, alas, he might have made a convincing revolutionary.

Chapter four is the harm/benefit analysis. I admit I got lost in this section. But his most fascinating illustration of how people can inhabit their world using nature-like technologies is in chapter five. Here he brings his observations to a personal level. Having grown up in Russia in the 60s and 70s, he experienced wilderness and homesteading in a way few North Americans would relate. Especially interesting was his description of the Russian stove and what it would look like to survive in Siberia using essential skills with tools for hunting, fishing, building, gathering. You get the idea. 

Chapter six addresses the need for restructuring society so that we do not, in fact, further destroy the biosphere. It takes a look at the ways in which we live under the parasite load of what he calls bad political technologies. These are structures that enrich, empower and protect special interests and privileged elites at the expense of the rest of society. They set the stage for injustice, exploitation, poor social outcomes, economic stagnation, mass violence, civil war and eventual political disintegration. Their forms of control are found in: 

• the medical industry
• higher education
• prison-industrial complex
• automotive industry
• agribusiness
• financial
• organized religion
• the legal system

So how do we shift to using good political technologies? We need ones that work to improve everyone's welfare, and build on previous successes to increase social cohesion and solidarity. While Orlov's work may not have answers, it is still a mighty provocateur's playbook. It will give you more than enough for reflection when he specifically points to recent attempts at regime change across the globe. Also, he is not one to shy away from taking a position. (p. 182)

"Nonviolence is nothing more than a tactic. It can even be used to promote violence by rendering a population defenseless in the face of aggression, in order to provoke a massacre and then use it for political aims, as was done by Gandhi, who preached nonviolence to Hindus, profiting politically when they were then massacred by moslems."

If you get this far and are still fence sitting, chapter seven will elucidate the milieu even further. Here he talks about social machines described as: (p. 189)

"...a form of organization that subordinates the will of the participants to an explicit, written set of rules, that is controlled based on objective, measurable criteria, and that excludes, to the largest extent possible, individual judgment, intuition and independent spontaneous action."

Ouch. I think I've been in that room before! The author doesn't pretend that extracting ourselves from these strictures of society will be painless, but I do appreciate that he reminds the reader of the flimsy premise underlying so much of our social glue (for lack of a better term). (p. 201)

"As society degenerates, social machines degenerate with it, and in spite of all the efforts at surveillance and automation, people find ways to survive. And if this requires throwing some monkey wrenches into the works, then more and more people will start doing just that. At some point it will become evident to all that most of the social machines have become so degraded that they are mere relics--empty shells maintained for the sake of appearances--while all of the decisions are made outside of them by actual humans applying their individual judgment to situations to which no written rules need apply."

The last two chapters, Wresting Control, and The Great Transition, offer ways of examining one's own life for clues of escape. Orlov, himself, has decided that living on a boat has provided him an acceptable level of freedom.

So dear reader, 2019 has most definitely been the year of I'd-rather-not-think-about-it books, but think we must, and I am grateful for the folks who have written the books of my last three reviews. They are brave and clear-headed individuals, the kind that I would like to figure into my Dunbar number. (Don't know this reference? Read the book!) As always....looking for my tribe. Ciao.