As I drove away after it was fixed, I thought how meagre my knowledge was about cars, even though they’ve been an important part of my life for decades. I depend on them yet I live with a general ignorance about how they work and the intricacies of their operation. In fact, I understand precious little about the workings of the mechanical and digital technology that is part of my everyday world – televisions, refrigerators, phones, computers, the internet, trains, airplanes ... I interact with all of them, yet they are largely a baffling mystery.
I admit I’m not a practical person and am more comfortable in the world of ideas than the world of things, but it struck me that it was impossible for any of us, given the level of development and complexity of modern technology, to have a strong understanding of all the material components of life. We sail along dependent on the specialized knowledge of others and in blithe ignorance until a malfunction or breakdown of some kind happens. I believe this state of affairs contributes to the psychological disconnection and alienation that is so prevalent in contemporary times. Our culture is materially focused, yet because of the complexity of the human-created world, few of us are actually “grounded”. The material conditions of life, which ought to be affirming identity and meaning, present seemingly insurmountable barriers to a healthy psyche.
Culture mediates our relationship with technology, creating a means by which we make sense of it and integrate it into our lives. Our culture emphasises material expansion and consumption, where a person’s relationship with things is about identity through possession. The more things we have, the better we are supposed to feel about ourselves and the more integrated we are supposed to be in a world of meaning. The relationship with the object doesn’t matter, nor does our knowledge of it or skill in using it; the primary value is simply that we have it. I have therefore I am.
No psychologically dynamic or creative relationship with technology is encouraged. We are left to be, in the main, passive consumers of objects created by other people in systems of mass production. The introduction in recent years of more “interactivity” in technology – such as through the internet and smart phones – is simply a means of expanding choice in consumption and doesn’t improve the pervasive sense of alienation created in the first place.
The antidote to this situation lies in the values we can summon towards a healthy life: simplicity, self-sufficiency, sustainability, connection and meaning. We don’t have to take an extreme low-tech turn and go back to living in caves, but we do need a reappraisal of our individual and collective materiality so that objects are part of the way we serve our deepest needs and not a means to enslave us. There is a small but growing movement in this direction: community gardens, Transition Town groups, local sharing networks, home craft and cooking, the popularity of cycling, environmentally responsible technology, are all evidence of a more connected materiality. They still require levels of specialised knowledge, but this is in service to a more grounded and whole picture of humanity.
Ultimately the material world has to be seen in greater context, as part of a bigger reality. We are much more than flesh and bone. As we age and watch ourselves, our loved ones and the world around us change, we become more aware that matter is in an endless process of flux and that to be attached to objects creates illusion and suffering. We can live fully in the material world on the condition we are prepared to let all of it go, that life asks us to recognise and fully accept that what is here today will not be tomorrow, and that is OK. Wisdom traditions teach us to build a relationship with the Spirit at the core of all life, the essence, that which animates and infuses everything. “Make every act an offering to me; regard me as your only protector,” Krishna, representing Spirit, says in the great Hindu text, The Bhagavad Gita. So we begin to experience all things differently, perhaps as they ought always to have been experienced.
