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Written by Eve
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Sometimes I cannot even believe I am writing this blog.
I used to hate computers. I had this weird boyfriend I met on my travels in India who would flip his laptop open the first thing in the morning. I would just look at him and wonder if he was already a lost soul or just a slave of his habits (which I knew I would eventually break down, of course).
When Tara asked me to do this blog, my immediate response was “No way!” I had never even read any blogs, so why on earth I would be writing one? But there you go--Tara got me in by using her usual unassailable reasoning. She said that if I didn’t write there and defend organic life--by which she meant the Feminine Wisdom, of course--then those geeks and tech addicts would have all the possible impact on people and deviate their readers from the real issues of this planet.
After hearing that, what else could I do?
These techies get all so excited about their new little tools and toys of the latest technology. Some people think that the chip (silicon is actually the second most common element on this planet) will triumph over carbon-based life as we know it. In other words, they believe that artificial intelligence will take over eventually and that it is just a matter of time.
If people would—at least once—just look around themselves to see life and nature and sink into it! The complexity of it, the uniqueness, the beauty of it…
But this is part of the puzzle, of course. Have you ever stopped to wonder why machines—computers, cell phones, communicators, TVs—are so immensely popular among men and women of their twenties and thirties? Our white Western consumptionistic and capitalistic culture has just made people more and more lonely and alienated from all sorts of forms of organic life. It is not just about alienation from nature, it is alienation from other beings. Machines have become a source of comfort and even a replacement of human contact for so many of us. Like, “I have my own blog, therefore I am!” (I do see the irony in this, as I am writing a blog here.) The computer is like a reflecting surface that reinforces a person’s faint idea of “I may exist” into “I exist”.
I confess that I still don’t get it. Why are these geeks so obsessed about the machines? What did machines ever do to deserve such glorification? While young people get so excited about the technology and its possibilities, marveling about every new turn and twist documented in Wired magazine, they totally lose contact with their own carbon-based existence, their own soulful bodily being, and all that is required for them to even be there marveling about computers in the first place! As if it was silicon that pushed them into this world! (I won’t even go into silicone breasts!)
In the end, if your partner would rather stare at his computer screen than you, maybe silicon already is taking over…
On the other hand, if all life is equally important, one can argue that silicon is, as a part of nature, equally important. Surely the division between artificial and natural is a complex question and Life has probably far more faces then we could ever imagine. But with more freedom, one has to make more choices. And hopefully they would be wholesome choices, enriching and deepening humankind’s soul and spirit. So why don’t we first learn to have some respect towards the “natural nature” before embracing blindly all the rest of it? Like John Lennon and Yoko Ono would say: “Give organic life a chance!” |
