The most striking aspect of labor today
is its relationship to technology. Technology is generally understood
as the application or utilization of knowledge for practical ends.
In a sense, technology is to labor what the liberal arts are to
leisure. Because labor requires intelligence, it is near impossible
even to think of a task of labor today which does not involve some
technology, be it primitive or cutting-edge. But here I contend that
technology can only be called good
in the same sense that labor is called good.
That is, it must be humane and ordered to its proper ends. As labor
must be consciously performed for the sake of preserving man's
physical nature (and by extension, the rest of creation) and
disposing him for leisure-work, so technology must be consciously
applied for the sake of aiding this good work. Thus, when technology
hinders man's leisure (such as the worship of God), corrupts his
physical nature, or distorts the order of creation in some way, it is
not good and useful, but evil and destructive.
Martin Heidegger argued that there is a
problem with modern technology, specifically in the relation between
its application and the knowledge required to apply it. That is, the
application of technology does not in itself have anything to do with
the knowledge that made it possible. This can be easily observed in
modern society: Always and everywhere, people make use of things
whose inner workings are beyond their comprehension. And the more
they make use of these things and become attached to them, the more
estranged they become from reality. This is because, as Heidegger
explained, technology's application determines how people understand
reality. What a thing is,
through its continued exploitation, becomes obscured by fixating on
how it can be
exploited. In this way, a thing's “usefulness” eclipses
one's understanding and appreciation of the thing itself. This
creates a peculiar moral predicament. As Heidegger puts it, “so
long as we represent technology as a [mere] instrument, we remain
held fast in the will to master it.” (17)
This insight into technology is related
to a concept proposed by Marshal McLuhan. He argued that, as humanity
progresses in technology, the modes of communication (i.e. media)
change with it. Because our knowledge of the world is vastly
dependent on communication, a change of media creates a change in how
we approach and understand the world. Simply put, we perceive the
world through media; so as media change, so changes the world (or so
it seems). We can extrapolate from this idea another moral insight:
As we use technology, we are forced to compete with it, in a sense.
Our exploitation of creation is, in a word, reflexive: As we impose
our own purposes on the world, we become increasingly confined by
those same purposes, even in the manner in which we think about the
world. For example, in a society where automobile travel is
prevalent, distance is measured in minutes and everything between
one's location and his destination is irrelevant. The auto-driver
does not have a clear concept of space or direction; he is only
concerned with duration and obstacles.
Considering this drastic effect
technology has on our minds, it is easy to see what Baudrillard meant
by “hyper-reality.” Modern man is generally not concerned with
reality as such, but only the reality that is available to him; the
sphere of action and information in which he lives. Whether the sun
has risen is completely irrelevant to him; He
rises at six o'clock am, Eastern Standard Time. He knows it is six
o'clock because his computer screen has told him so. To him, the day
has begun, solar and sidereal events be damned.
We now see the link between modernity's
technological marvels and its moral distortions. Man has become so
skilled at manipulating creation that he no longer comprehends
creation, and without this comprehension, he no longer has a reason
to manipulate it. Man's continued manipulation of creation is
apparently driven by his unabashed desire alone, but this desire is
not by any means “free”: It is informed by the world as he
experiences it and this world is
none other than the one shaped by his very manipulation. Of course
this is not the result of inescapable material causes, but of
imprudence and greed. We should have been asking ourselves at every
avenue whether we are accomplishing the Thomistic ideal of
art-perfecting-nature. Instead we have rather the inverse, the
violent imposition of nature-becoming-art, or so it seems. Absurd!
Indeed
every misapplication of technology both reveals a misunderstanding of
nature and further obscures it. For instance, Heidegger asserts that
a fixation on the use of something strengthens the will to master it;
and we see the worst of this in making use of other human beings. One
of the perennial criticisms of Capitalism is the exploitation of
workers and, even in a society that condemns chattel slavery, we see
a prevailing conflict of interests between disparate classes of
people; most notably between those who use people and exert dominance
over them, and those who are used and dominated. But on both sides of
the class-conflict, whether they are aware of it or not, the working
class looks to the owning class as conduits for “job-creation” or
a “tax-base” and the owning class look to the working class as
employees, consumers, and voters. Another example can be seen in the
corruption of medicine: Doctors willingly kill and mame according to
the whims of their patients. The integrity of the body is often seen
not as a sign of good health, but as an obstacle to its exploitation,
in an overt form of hedonism prevalent among those who objectify even
themselves. One's body is seen as a tool to accompish some degree of
pleasure or as a vehicle, rather than as a part of oneself, to be
perfected and preserved. Even in the use of contraceptives, one is in
conflict with her own body, demanding service in the form of pleasure
but denying the outcome which her body is striving for.
The
remedy to this state of affairs is not necessarily Ludditic. We must
simply strive to be aware of the purpose of our labor. We must ensure
that the technology we employ assists labor in its goal of serving
us, rather than allow ourselves to become the tools that serve labor.
This entails breaking out of the “hyper-reality” which we have
created and imposed on ourselves. And when we are once again
conscious of our nature and our purpose, we must be willing to do
what is necessary to prevent the very work of our hands from becoming
our masters.
