Democracy 3D Debate Panel: Consciousness Evolution contra Technology

1 Democracy 3D Panel: Consciousness Evolution contra Technology

Fourth International Integral Theory Conference “Integral Impacts: Using Integrative Metatheories to Catalyze Effective Change” Sonoma State University Rohnert Park, CA July 16-19, 2015

Michael Schwartz, PhD Professor, Georgia Regents University

Arguing against the motion -- that “consciousness evolution won't save us; technology is still the best hope for humanity” -- there are two negations to address: (1) why technology is not the best hope for humanity and (2) why consciousness evolution will save us. Technology is not the best hope to save humanity at the present moment. Powerful critiques of technological fetishism and one-sided instrumental rationality go back to the earlier twentieth century, as with Weber’s analyses taken up by the first generation of Frankfurt School scholars such as Adorno, Horkeimer, and Marcuse. The general line of argument is that in modernity the relation between means and ends changes in kind. A given means and end had been, prior to the early modern period of the Renaissance, often tightly held together, such that even when new and superior technologies would come forth, they were at times not utilized. During the late Renaissance and after, means and ends would become more readily differentiated, the means bracketed in lieu of some end so to find a more efficient means to bring forth that end. The means – the instrument, tool, technique –could be upgraded: and in principle endlessly so. This is clearly a hallmark of modernity and a positive one. However, what would come to pass is that the end as substantial good would become bracketed to such an extent that the upgrading of means became the focus, losing clarity about the end, almost as if the upgrading of means became its own end. To wit, everyone knows that we shall continue to build “better and better” computers without fail, yet we rarely ask with seriousness if this is truly a substantial good for planetary flourishing let alone for human well-being. Yes, the means becomes the habituated focus, whether we admit it or not, to such an extent that one says that one “loves their smart phone.” This is technological fetishism. And to delude oneself into believing that it is easy to leap out of this mode of thinking, being, and systemic operating is to deny the priority, entrenchment, and force of socio-cultural structures that pre-exist agency. To take on the task of more technological upgrades as solution (where the motion at hand does

2 not define that, one must keep in mind) is to leap into those structuring habits that are by no means so readily transparent to awareness let alone easy to transfigure. From another perspective and angle, we might say that the end as a good has become increasingly and one-sidedly quantitative, as in more profit, a confounding of a quantitative “more” with a axiological “better -- what in Marxian parlance is exchange value impinging strongly on the various use-values of a commodity, as recently re-articulated with great clarity and concreteness by David Harvey. The clear, regular, and abiding aligning of new means towards ends that are substantively good as regards human and planetary flourishing is not very strong in the globalizing world as a regulative tendency. And it is this mania of endless upgrades of means that can be called the technological – Ancient Greek techne gone mad, tool-making gone sick: the logos of techne taking over other logics and domains. Instead, consciousness evolution is our best hope. And by consciousness evolution one does not mean cognitive development alone, as there seems to be high cognitive development in the world as regards instrumentalist thought, skill and action. Here the phrase is referencing the training up, on a wide scale, of other types of rationality and post-rationality, inclusive of but not reducible to altitude development. Let this be a very quick sketch of a big topic. Moral development is one dimension. While increase in the altitude of moral lines of development is important, it is no substitute for a much more robust moral maturation. First – and here I draw on my work in integral moral philosophy and too its translation into the terms of the philosophy of metaReality - there is the need to practice attuning to the always already silent calling of the good, opened through a meta-perspective in the 2nd person, a vast and unfindable Thou, a call that is otherwise than actuality calling actuality to be otherwise. We are deaf to this silent call, in part because our orientation and attentiveness to the Thou meta-perspective is culturally weak. This deafness in turn re-enforces the philosophically suspect view that would split facts and values – for not only are facts and values intertwined, as Bhaskar argues, there are even something like moral facts, if we follow the recent analyses of Axel Honneth. Such moral maturing, so absent in lieu of the countless hours of endless technical training and re-training in which we all engage (even as simple as endlessly learning how to use our Apple and high tech products), requires as well historical study and critical analyses to discern the healthy and unhealthy normative dimensions of the present moment. This is one crucial facet of the evolving of consciousness - a robustly integrative, moral-historical-critical sensibility that is oriented to action based on actual normative needs grounded in the clear siting of the fault lines of our collective situation. Aesthetic development is a second dimension of consciousness that requires maturation. By aesthetic I mean the immediate look and feel within direct experience that carries with it resonant significance. This

3 can include various kinds of shining-affects silently embodied in the experience. Beauty is not singular, there are modes of beauty just as there are modes of the sublime, where beauty and sublimity are not opposed or mutually exclusive as early modern theorists like Kant would have it. Hence there is a typology of shinings -- shining having to do with the breaking through of subtle, causal, and non-dual facets of being in conferring inherent significance and worth. It is the sensing of the inherent sacrality and significance of being and beings that graces (and greases) our attunement to where and how where we are called to act in any given moment. It is then the training up of the moral and aesthetic capacities of our consciousness, integrated with our already strong instrumental capacities, that is the best hope for us all. It is only then that suitable techniques as humble tools and not as fetishized idols will be brought forth in a way that keeps the fluidity of means and ends open while always re-uniting means and ends in that shining moral grace oriented to planetary flourishing.