Thoughts on our circumstances...: Martin Heidegger's View of Technology on Our Road to Hell

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Martin Heidegger's View of Technology on Our Road to Hell

Editor's note: The most influential philosopher of the 20th century was arguably Martin Heidegger, especially considering his views on technology. The sledge hammer that has been dismantling America has been through schools administrated by people who have intentionally dumbed down the education of children. The consequences have been that very few Americans have read Heidegger. Comprehending Heidegger would go a long way in understanding the decisions being made today concerning the direction technology has taken. In Heidegger's book Being and Time, he argued that "man's relationship to tools precedes theoretical scientific thinking and is the ground of it." Further arguing that, "anthropologically, technology precedes science." Science has moved to the position today where its purpose is to ultimately control all of nature to achieve raw power. Heidegger stated that "science today is all about control and not knowledge" suggesting there was an "ungraspable dimension to nature that shows the limits of the instrumentality of modern science and the technological nature of modern science." A "quality of organic life that exceeds the mechanical." Consider this as we are on the road to hell...

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Source: TheBlogMire

The Middle of the Road to Hell

December 1, 2021

We are accustomed to thinking of great evil as instantly recognisable. From Nuremberg rallies to the squalor of the Gulag, great evil is something obvious and unmissable. Or so we think. Unfortunately, we have developed such a cartoonish idea of what evil, villains, and devils look like, that as a people we are entirely unprepared for the entrance of evil dressed in a very different cloak. As C.S. Lewis warned us decades ago in his Preface to the Screwtape Letters:

"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices."

Yet it is not only that great evil itself can be seemingly mundane, but it is often facilitated and allowed to grow by the ordinary, the middle-of-the-road. This has been the case in many totalitarian states, where the inaction and unwillingness of millions to confront the evil taking root and growing before their eyes has allowed it to thrive and take over their society like bindweed, and this is what is happening in our society right now.

The Belgian psychologist, Matthias Desmet, has done a number of interviews discussing the phenomena of Mass Formation (or Mass Psychosis) over the last two years. Amongst his many insights is the idea that totalitarian systems tend to see populations split into three broad groups. Firstly, there are those who are utterly hypnotised by the propaganda. Secondly, those who are not necessarily in thrall to the propaganda, but who nevertheless tend to go along with the demands it exacts on them. And thirdly, those who seem to be not only immune to the propaganda, but who oppose it as they are able.

Although Desmet puts this split at approximately 30%, 40%, and 30% respectively, I would put our current drift into totalitarianism at around 30%, 50-60%, and 10-20%. The numbers in the latter group, whilst low, have certainly increased this year, as many more have come to understand that the alleged response to a virus was actually nothing to do with public health, but rather about a manufactured public health crisis being used as cover for the reordering of society into a totalitarian hellhole, replete with Digital ID, Social Credit, decimation of SMEs, and the transhumanist dream of a fusion of our physical, biological, and digital identities — as Herr Schwab puts it.

But the facilitator of this evil is not so much the perpetrators at the top, nor the hypnotised 30%. Rather, it is the 50-60% in the middle. By and large, this group tend to go along with every absurd regulation and restriction, not because they really believe it to be necessary to "fight a virus", but rather because they believe it to be their best hope of getting back to normal life, and they are worried about standing out from the crowd. And so they cross their fingers, "do the right thing", and hope it will all go away. What they don't seem to understand, however, is that you don't defeat evil by appeasing it. You defeat it by opposing it. When bandits come along to pillage your peaceful and quiet village, you don’t get rid of the problem by agreeing to their every whim, closing your eyes and hoping it will go away. You get rid of it by standing your ground, even if it costs you dearly.

But what if the 50-60% don't realise they are being pillaged by bandits? What if they think the bandits are not really bandits, but are trying to do them good? Well, after two years of being pillaged, it can surely be only the most unthinking who fail to see that something is up, something is amiss, something stinks. Most must have at least a gut feeling that their lives are being upended for reasons which are vastly different that the ones they are told. Yet they choose not to listen to that disquieting voice, because to do so would mean having to awaken from inertia and taking a stand.

Please go to TheBlogMire to read more.

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Science and technology cannot be the answer with David Bohm...