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.