Humans as Technological Creatures

One version of the Greek myth of the origin of technology goes as follows: Prometheus, the Titan blessed with foresight, is given the task of distributing qualities to all the creatures on earth. Prometheus has an annoying brother called Epimetheus, cursed with forgetfulness, who follows him everywhere. Epimetheus begs his brother to let him do the job, and somewhat unwisely, or perhaps thinking of more enjoyable things he could do, Prometheus accepts the offer. So Epimetheus goes diligently to work in distributing the qualities to all the creatures. To some, like the Lion, he gives strength, power, claws and the ability to roar. To others creatures that might fall prey to the Lion, like a Zebra, he gives agility, speed, and the ability to blend into the environment. And so to all creatures Epimetheus tries as best he can to distribute the qualities evenly, and so produce a balance between all living things. Having distributed all the qualities he returns to his brother, proud of his efforts, only for Prometheus to realise that Epimethues, in his forgetfulness, has forgotten to give humans any qualities. Humans are then those creatures left naked and forgotten in the distributions of qualities. Prometheus, probably frightened of the gods anger at his failure to complete the task appointed to him, embarks upon a foolhardy mission to steal fire from Zeus, king of the gods. Thus Prometheus gives to humans the skill and mastery of fire. As punishment for his thieving, Zeus binds Prometheus to a rock while a great eagle eats his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day.

Fire, then, is the origin of what we now call technology and what's significant here is that the origin of technology is simultaneous with the origin of humanity. The consequence of this reading of the myth, as elaborated by the philosopher Bernard Stiegler (who, incidentally, became a philosopher whilst serving jail time for armed robbery) is that humans are humans because they have fire. Humans are not creatures who invent technology, but are themselves technological creatures. So from the beginning of time we are, through and through, technological beings. There is no pure essence of humanity which then goes on to discover and invent technologies over time. We are contaminated from the get-go and what defines us is our technical nature, our technicity.

I hope that isn't too arcane. The reason I bring it up is because of the way it re-frames how we think about our relationship to technology. This re-framing gives us a better chance to think about how to deal with technologies as they come into our lives, and the ever increasing speed with which we, as a species, express ourselves technologically. The most obvious result of complicating the relationship between humans and technology is to make Luddite hysteria look absurd. By buying an iPod and a MacBook Pro I'm certainly guilty of encouraging the cult of Apple Mac, that sacred society of fanatics that surely don't need any more encouragement, nor any more of my money. But in spite of their shiny curves and fetish-tendencies, I'm not endangering the future of humanity by using them. They are not going to spontaneously "wake-up" one day and decide to kill me, and this is because they are extensions of myself. The computer is just an external accessory of my body, a prosthetic device that does the same kind of processing that I can do and only eclipses my "natural" abilities with its (admittedly impressive) capacity for processing speed and information storage.

But at the same time as this reading of the myth of the Epimetheus challenges the reactionary, it also challenges that perspective which relentlessly fetishizes technology, ascribing to it an almost infinite power of emancipation, of problem-solving, of transcendence and even mortality. If we exaggerate this perspective into a narrative caricature, then it goes something like this: At the start of human history we had no technology and were completely primitive. As we started to discover more technology we became less primitive, and the more quickly we got more and better technology the faster we shed our primitivism and at some point emerged as modern. And as our "modern" technologies become more "advanced" we become more "modern" and more "advanced" until, presumably, in the future we will have become so advanced and modern that will we be "post-human" and immortal. Soon after this we rocket off into space (having despoiled our own planet) looking for another planet to continue the advance (and the despoiling).

But if we humans are always already technological creatures, then it's easy to falsify this linear narrative of progress. For example, an Australian soldier currently on duty in Afghanistan is equipped with an automatic rifle called a Steyr AUG, a weapon which would be considered more advanced than the rifle the same soldier's grandfather would have used in World War II, and it would certainly be considered a more advanced technology than the Woomera used by the indigenous people. But it depends on what one means by "advanced". Certainly, the obsessive effort given to making the weapon more efficient leads to experiments with different materials, mechanisms and designs which do make the weapon more efficient than others before it. But while efficiency may lead to advantage, it doesn't make it any more or less advanced. If the automatic rifle, like the computer, is an extension of the body and it's capacity, and is therefore still human, then the advanced technology remains the fact that the human stands on two legs and has its hands free to operate the weapon. Bipedalism and opposable thumbs are a much more advanced technology than even the most horrific weaponry.

Of course, if we step outside the military barracks and into a world that includes ecological ethics, then such a claim of being "advanced" becomes obscene. Cast in this light, an automatic rifle and it's unrivaled capacity for killing is absolutely not an advance, and it's the Woomera that is the advanced technology. The Woomera, which is a tool that lengthens the arm of the spear-thrower, is an efficient killing device, but it only can only kill once per throw, and if you attach a sharpened stone to it then it doubles as an axe to chop wood and meat. It's advanced because it has multiple uses, and more importantly, it's capacity does not exceed the needs of the person who uses it. It's advanced because it's not an automatic rifle, it doesn't give you a disproportionate advantage over your environment, which, ecologically speaking, is a wonderful thing. Disproportionate advantage in an ecological system leads to catastrophe for the system. In this way indigenous people were very advanced in their technological expression. It's a difference between what the poet and critic David Antin calls a "software solution" and "hardware solution". Take the problem of seasonal water-shortages. The software solution, as practiced by indigenous cultures, was to figure out which water-holes ran out first, and which water-holes would run out last, and to chart their journey through the country based on that solution. It's an elegant, tactful solution to a problem that is, I would argue, emblematic of a highly advanced culture. The hardware solution to the water-shortages problem is to commission a dam, and begin a massive engineering project requiring vast materials, resources and labour. No doubt a dam is an impressive structure, but as Charlie Weir will tell you about the Tallawa dam, which he helped build, the ecological result for the lower Shoalhaven since it went up in 1976 is devastating, and irreparable, short of pulling it all down again.

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Heart-spaces: sentiment & emotion

Chris Presland from the Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority (CMA) introduced himself to us on Tuesday afternoon in two ways. Firstly, and briefly, he spoke from what he called the "logic-space", that world of action-plans, strategic partnerships, facilitations and outcomes. But then he unfurled a canvas across the floor and spoke from what he called a "heart-space". The canvas was something he and his CMA colleges painted under the guidance of an indigenous artist who asked them to think about their life-stories in terms of what sort of land they wanted to leave to their grandchildren.

Chris' heart-space sentiment was re-iterated by Pia Winburg who spoke about the passion that underpinned her scientific practice as well as her sea-weed advocacy, and Ivars Reinfeld said how much of a privilege it was to have studied the river for the last five years. All three of them, as biological farmer Marrten Stapper had done the previous day, used those familiar dichotomies of reason vs. emotion, passion vs. cold logic, intuition vs. facts. And while I'd never contradict the necessity of attempting to think beyond or outside of our own interests, assumptions, limitations and investments, I'd like to suggest that this opposition of the rational to the emotional is a false one. And Chris, Pia and Ivars, and their presence here at Bundanon, are the embodiment of why it is a false opposition. Clearly they feel a powerful sentiment towards the complex ecosystem of the river, and clearly the emotional attachment to the river is why they dedicate their lives to a better understanding and management of it. And this sentiment and emotion is in no way the opposite of rationalism or logic. There's a very good reason to be emotional about the proper management of a river. It's entirely logical to be sentimental about complex ecosystems, since those ecosystems are what give rise to us, and which sustain us, and to which we will return.

Sentiment and emotion are both Latin words, relating to sensation and movement. Sentiment comes form sentire, which is to feel, and emotion comes from movere, outward movement. Put back in their etymology like this these words reverberate an embodied engagement with the world. And if we place sentiment and emotion at the level of the body in its environment (as opposed to a psychological category of the mind) then we open the way for a philosophical practice in tune with a living-practice that is properly ecological.

Let's call it sentimental logic or emotional reason. Let's use it to counter the "cold" dogmas of techno-scientific and economic rationalisms that have been the drivers behind so much degradation, and yet not discarding those crucial elements from technology, science and economics that we need. The aim being to be neither dominated by nor irrationally dismissive of the products of technological, scientific and economic processes.

When I leave Bundanon I will be going back to Sydney to help compile an application for a large-scale research project with my boss (and friend) Ross Gibson. He has a wonderful idea to create a "sentimental mapping network" which would be investigating "how citizens generate and lodge emotions in particular places". The aim would be to understand how we can "improve our care for places by understanding how and why people care about those places", and to produce a "national map of the emotional intensities lodged in Australian landscapes, regions and cities... to engage the passions and energies of local communities in processes of care for the Australian environment."

If we get the funding for this project I would be wanting in the first instance to talk to Charlie Weir about the Shoalhaven river, since I can think of no better exemplar of someone with their very life-force lodge in the landscape. He embodies the sentimental logic that I have been talking about.

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How's it going? / How did you get here?

Recently I was studying in up-state New York, and as I bumped into people on campus I would say, as you do 'How's it going?' And they would stare uncomprehendingly back at me. At first I assumed it was the way my accent slouched the "o's" – 'how's it goin' – but it turned out that the phrase itself was causing the problem. Their vernacular greeting was 'How ya doing?' and so the phrase 'How's it going?' was interpreted as an eccentric way of inquiring about their travel plans. In defence of my own idiom I aruged that going was superior to doing because it implied a direction you were going because you wanted to, rather than a thing that you may or may not want to be doing. It must be noted that this argument was not universally accepted by up-state New Yorkers, who pointed out that what you could be doing was going somewhere that you didn't want to go.

I thought of this misunderstandings when Illawarra historian Michael Organ was talking to us on Saturday afternoon about the misunderstanding of indigenous words. Bundanon, or Bundang, is, we think, the Wodi-Wodi word for deep gullies. It's not clear whether the Wodi-Wodi referred specifically to this place as Bundang or if they even had any need to give specific names to places within their country. Perhaps the need to give a place a name is a habit particular to whitefellas, a cognitive structure ingrained by our modes of settlement, inhabitation and movements in the environment we occupy. But if this place (now called Bundanon) is a one part of a song cycle, one place along the path of many places, and you know the places along the path by the song and by your movement along it, then what sense would it make to give that place a name? In which case, if a whitefella stands and points at something and asks 'what do you call this?' then a Wodi-Wodi may well – and with good reason – respond 'bundang / this is the deep gully path.'

In the 16th century the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún asked an Aztec for a definition of the Aztec word for cave, he replied:

"It becomes long, deep; it widens, extends, narrows. It is a constricted place, a narrowed place, one of hollowed-out places. There are roughened places, asperous places. It is frightening, a fearful place, a place of death. It is called a place of death because there is dying. It is a place of darkness; it darkens; it stands ever dark. It stands wide-mouthed, it is wide-mouthed; it is narrow-mouthed. It has mouths which pass through. I place myself in the cave. I enter the cave."

The Aztec assumed – once again, with good reason – that if the Franciscan friar knew his language well enough to ask him about it, then he must want to know about his experience of a cave. Now I assume that the magnitude of misunderstanding between myself and the up-state New Yorkers was a lower order misunderstanding than between the whitefella and the Wodi-Wodi and the Franciscan friar and the Aztec. The former is an easily explained difference of vernacular while the latter is a significantly different way of understanding the world and how to apply language to it. In any case, what appeals to me about these three things – How's it going/doing?, Bundang/deep gullies and the Aztec's cave – is that they are all united in a sense of travel, of moving through a landscape and the way you move through it.

The way you move through the world says a great deal about your relationship to it, in fact, it structures that relationship. I drove to Bundanon from Sydney in my car, and even if I wasn't in a rush to get here on time, my relationship to the land I went through is defined by the speed by which I left it behind. I drove alone, listening to my iPod, appreciating the vistas and stopping only for bad fast food. It was a pleasant and easy experience, and I don't regret it (except the rushing part) but it's a mode of travel that should not go unquestioned. In fact, since the vast majority of the world has been re-ordered by the possibilities and limitations afforded by the road and the car, it's a mode of travel most in need of questioning. While I was driving to Bundanon with a belly full of unhealthy food I starting thinking about which route I would have come if I had decided to walk to Bundanon. I guess that the coast would be the only sure way to go without constantly running into that obstacle of obstacles, private property. What an effort it would have been to walk, the physical toil would have made the journey in parts difficult and unappealing. Much easier to just drive. But that's the problem with this concept of it being easy: the physical effort of moving your body 160km by car is only easier for me , and the physical effort required does not vanish, but is only displaced onto the engine. And the engine (let alone the rest of the car or the roads it uses) requires an massive global apparatus to construct it, fuel it and maintain it. And if the physical cost required to walk is only displaced when I drive, then the ecological cost is magnified significantly, especially given that my car is one of more than 750 million cars out there.

But it's not just about the negative environmental effects of gratuitous car-use, it's also about the positive effect of walking. If I had walked to Bundanon I would have had to tune myself to the lay of the land, to the climatic conditions and to the temporality of moving on foot. I would have had to be in accordance with the rhythms and scope of the outdoors. And as the French philosopher Michel Serres says in his book, The Natural Contract:

"because we don't live out in the weather, we've unlearned how to think in accordance with its rhythms and its scope... [powerful decision making takes] place indoors and in words, never again outdoors with things... those who used to live out in the weather's rain and wind, whose habitual acts brought forth long-lasting cultures out of local experience... have had no say for a long time now, if they ever had it."

I don't mean this as a romantic fetish for walking, or a (self-)hatred of the motor, but just to draw attention to how the mode of travel structures one's relationship to the world. It's for this reason that since coming to Bundanon I've taken every possible opportunity to get in the boat and move up and down the river. I'm trying to learn to think in accordance with it's rhythms and scope.

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on how to cook nettles

Indeed, let's start conversation around a table!

But first, preamble:

I am a plants maniac, one of those people who go around places and start naming green sprouts left and right, 'with this you can do that, with that you can do this' and so forth. I am so obsessed with botany that people started referring to me as 'the weed one', and i didn't mind, after all weeds are the strongholds of nature, the untameables, the unruly, the ones actually fighting back -blow after blow, seed after seed- our human prospective of what environment should look like.

I was also lucky enough to do a residency in Bundanon a few years back, and while there, blogging everyday for the all duration, I discovered a lush vegetation, proud and strong.

The same vegetation is still there, and there to stay (sorry revegetation knights, I truly respect your quest, I don't mean upsetting), and is living side by side the with native species, intermingled and fertile.

So when I was invited to be part of this great laboratory, it seemed natural for me to pick up from where I left it, adding more.
I met Jim back then and I have very fond memories of his generosity, Jim Wallis being one of this men who know Bundanon's property inside out, what grows where, what was where, what is no more.

His knowledge spans geology, botany, ornithology, he knows about mushrooms and early settlements, insects and natural fiber, aboriginal tucker and more.

So I proposed to collaborate, join forces offering my small contribution, mostly related to non-native species, in an attempt to piece together the ecology before us.

Nettle is everywhere, Urtica dioica, a blessed plant who fed human for millennia, and we will re appropriate this and more, mix it with native edibles and create what could be regarded as a cross cultural appreciation of the bounty nature has to offer, if we only didn't stop ourselves to the very few varieties commercially available.

Below is one of the recipe we been exchanging since we reunited in August, more (plenty more) will come:

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

* 2 Tbsp. butter, divided

* 1 onion, chopped

* 1 tsp. salt, plus more to taste

* 1 lb. potatoes, peeled and chopped

* 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth

* 1/2 lb. stinging nettles

* 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

* 1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

* 1/2 cup heavy cream (optional)

* Sour cream, yogurt, or Horseradish Cream (optional)

Preparation:

1. In a large pot, melt 1 Tbsp. butter over medium-high heat. Add onion and 1 tsp. salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are soft, about 3 minutes.

2. Add potatoes and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a steady simmer and cook 15 minutes.

3. Add nettles and cook until very tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in remaining 1 Tbsp. butter, pepper, and nutmeg.

4. Puree soup with an immersion blender or in a blender or food processer in batches. For a silken, less fibrous texture, run mixture through a food mill or sieve.

5. Stir in cream, if using. Season to taste with additional salt and pepper, if you like.

6. Serve hot, garnished with sour cream, yogurt, or Horseradish Cream, if you like.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Stinging Nettles Soup.

Yummy hey? and sooo good for you is not funny.

Let me finish now with a quote I bounced around in email exchanges, and that was recommend to be posted on this blog, I will just post it as it found its way out of my fingers earlier in the day:

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on another note i would like to share a paragraph from a recently found manifesto on food sovereignty, found here:

http://www.future-food.org/

it does sport some impressive signatories

I know i know, i'm throwing too much meat on the barbie, yet, the implications of a simple nettle soup can reach far beyond a table meal..lol
here it is:

'A holistic synthesis between people’s knowledge and the best of modern ecological science is vital for the return to a healthy planet, and healing human society. This synthesis has to be built on an understanding of interconnections and inter-relationships between parts and has to be based on mutual respect and recognition of equal relevance.'

... as in, we all love the environment, and wish to do our best to preserve it, heal it, care for it and respect it. we should then think about pulling together all of this 'love' sentiment, as we all are part of it, we all are part of the same soup, nettle and us

uhmm, i might make it my new signature quote even!

green cheers
:)

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See you all at Bundanon for a foraging feast

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