Technology or Magic?
A hundred thousand years ago, people with the same sort of brains we all have, speaking languages no less complex, lived, worked, loved and died. Recorded history, however, begins between eight and six thousand years ago- coincident with the development of agriculture in several regions of the Old World. Before that, a great silence. Some ninety thousand years of silence.
And so I wonder, what were those pople doing with those excellent brains and those endless days and nights? Not working all the time. Hunter-gatherers in warm climates do not work very hard. their tools are made simply as are their shelters. Most hunter-gatherer tribes work fewer hours a week than most Frenchman, far fewer than the average American. So what do they do?
So I ask you, what would you do with your marvelous brain? No books, no writing, no man-made things, little pressure from the environment, no television or radio.. only the same hundred or so people to talk to?
I think you would play with the environment. You would invent art to symbolize this. You would develop a love for your environment so deep that we children of the industrial civilization can scarcely imagine it. They would be participants in an environment that was alive in the same way that they themselves were alive, whereas we are merely observers of an environment that is dead.
Another thing we would play with would be our own minds, and those of others. And with this, very slowly (centuries and centuries remember!) a technology develops.
This technology is based not on the manipulation of the objective world, as our own is, but rather on the mainpulation of the subjective world. Stay with me now- trust me, I'm on to something here. Now you may (or may not!) be familiar with this quote by Arthur C. Clarke which he says: "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic". And what I am proposing is that among traditional cultures there is an advanced technology of which we know very little, and what little we do know of it we dismiss and for want of better term, we call this magic.
Now us industrialized kids, we refer to a wide spectrum of things as magic: slight of hand, levitation, any professional illusionist, spoon-bender with his mind guy to voodoo and tarot cards. Anything that can't easily be explained- or explained at all. But if you think about it, making a phone ring across a vast ocean was magic too. Turning on a light. Magic. Horseless-carriages or cars as well like to call them, all magic. That's not even touching on microwaves or cell phones or palm pilots or computers!
Take any of these items back to the man who lived six thousand years ago and you'd be ousted from the tribe. Come to think of it, it wasn't too long ago that we were burning witches at the stake. So why is it so hard for us to take the leap and believe that after centuries of practise that people really can move things with their mind? They've had lots of practise! You remember that guy with the key and his kite out in the lightening storm? He zapped himself many times before he successfully develped a way to harness electricity- and you know what he's famous for saying? "I didn't fail two thousand times, I found two thousand ways how not to make a light bulb."
So you tell me, is what we are doing today technology? or magic? I guess it just depends on what side of the fence you happen to be standing on.
And so I wonder, what were those pople doing with those excellent brains and those endless days and nights? Not working all the time. Hunter-gatherers in warm climates do not work very hard. their tools are made simply as are their shelters. Most hunter-gatherer tribes work fewer hours a week than most Frenchman, far fewer than the average American. So what do they do?
So I ask you, what would you do with your marvelous brain? No books, no writing, no man-made things, little pressure from the environment, no television or radio.. only the same hundred or so people to talk to?
I think you would play with the environment. You would invent art to symbolize this. You would develop a love for your environment so deep that we children of the industrial civilization can scarcely imagine it. They would be participants in an environment that was alive in the same way that they themselves were alive, whereas we are merely observers of an environment that is dead.
Another thing we would play with would be our own minds, and those of others. And with this, very slowly (centuries and centuries remember!) a technology develops.
This technology is based not on the manipulation of the objective world, as our own is, but rather on the mainpulation of the subjective world. Stay with me now- trust me, I'm on to something here. Now you may (or may not!) be familiar with this quote by Arthur C. Clarke which he says: "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic". And what I am proposing is that among traditional cultures there is an advanced technology of which we know very little, and what little we do know of it we dismiss and for want of better term, we call this magic.
Now us industrialized kids, we refer to a wide spectrum of things as magic: slight of hand, levitation, any professional illusionist, spoon-bender with his mind guy to voodoo and tarot cards. Anything that can't easily be explained- or explained at all. But if you think about it, making a phone ring across a vast ocean was magic too. Turning on a light. Magic. Horseless-carriages or cars as well like to call them, all magic. That's not even touching on microwaves or cell phones or palm pilots or computers!
Take any of these items back to the man who lived six thousand years ago and you'd be ousted from the tribe. Come to think of it, it wasn't too long ago that we were burning witches at the stake. So why is it so hard for us to take the leap and believe that after centuries of practise that people really can move things with their mind? They've had lots of practise! You remember that guy with the key and his kite out in the lightening storm? He zapped himself many times before he successfully develped a way to harness electricity- and you know what he's famous for saying? "I didn't fail two thousand times, I found two thousand ways how not to make a light bulb."
So you tell me, is what we are doing today technology? or magic? I guess it just depends on what side of the fence you happen to be standing on.
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