Conversation

This Illich line distills the essence of the humanist stance that I have a radical disagreement with: “Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries.” There is no “vital equilibrium”
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There are quasi-equilibriated conditions that have lasted longer than one or even a few lifetimes in civilization, but to find a meaningful example of a “vital equilibrium” in the human condition you probably have to rewind way past the Neolithic Revolution. Like 20,000 BC maybe.
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Ideas like “vital equilibrium” are humanities phlogistons. They point to things you can convince yourself exist, and build whole theories around (“human-centric design” or “convivial tech”), but don’t really. They can at best be useful in suggesting lines of design evolution.
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Arendt had a sophisticated view here, an unapologetically normative one. The idea that the built environment/artificiality *should* aim for durability of equilibrium despite it being highly unnatural. This I can respect and appreciate, even if I’m skeptical of the possibility.
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But pretending there’s something natural about a “vital” (cf vitalism, bergsonianism) condition that’s artificially distorted by technology has it exactly backwards. It’s a pseudonaturalistic fallacy. An imagined state of nature held up as good.
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This doesn’t necessarily invalidate all the arguments Sacassas makes about how modernity specifically puts intense and historically anomalous adaptation pressure on humans (multiple adaptations in a lifetime instead of one several generations).
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But this has little to do with technology and does not need to rest on appeals to a pseudonaturalistic fallacy. It’s just a punctuated equilibrium type period of rapidly escalating adaptive pressure. Happens to all species from time to time. That we’re the cause changes little.
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The cleanest version of this argument is simply, “we should slow down because this constant pressure to adapt is tiring” To which the correct and dispositive response is the rhetorical challenge “who is we?”
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That said, Illich via Sacassas is probably the strongest, most steel-manned antithesis I’ve seen to the kind of unapologetic technological determinism I tend to subscribe to. So if you dislike how I argue about tech, Illich is probably where you want to be.
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