Heritage

What if we separate out the "mechanical heritage" from the cultural heritage in general?

This mechanical heritage would include of course the knowledge and software integral with the mechanical--in fact, perhaps that would be the essence of it, as individual machines pass away--indeed in computers there are regular new generations, the improved bodies of systems marked by numerically expressed increments.

There are profound implications to a recapitulation of the evolution of our mechanical heritage.

Imagine: twenty thousand generations, say, of evolution of that curious companion of humankind's journey, since (arbitrarily) the Indian canals were dug in 5,000 BC: 20,000 generations of human labor before and after inspirations--and where has that labor gone? Emerson said the farmer's days, his labor can be seen in that rock wall or stack of hay; but incalculable labor has gone into Eternity where only the subtle contemplative mind can conceive it and in turn make something out of it. There are paragraphs in books about Thomas Edison's 15,000 tries (failures) at finding a material to serve as an element in his (flash!) lightbulb. 15000 no's to that yes. And what is it to Thomas Edison that a few people read that paragraph and look up and shake their head and get on with their day? For that matter what is Thomas Edison?

Inspiration spoke in ecstasy to people's heads. Labor raised models out of the earth--more inspiration and more labor refined those models; and eventually the modeling of the human body itself was affected by these models which became environments, the vessels of modeling.

Inspiration is an invitation to labor, some might say. Others might say "hold on with that!" One may simply wait, and watch the thing rise up out of the earth.

Time itself, in such a discourse, is sleight-of-hand: the painstaking hours of labor the card-shark or stage magician spent practicing is in another time-room, invisible to most eyes. The same with the breathtaking magic of the trapeze artist or any skilled performer, artist or artisan. The same with our technology: it may truthfully be said that 20,000 generations of human inspiration and incalculable labor set this model up before me, this computer with its word-processing software into which I type these musings--how might this relate to its price? A line, a lien of inspiration, labor and refinement effected the reduction in price. Price and worth, then, how might they relate?

A woman I talked to on the night of Sunday, March 9, 1997 in the dark of the moon, said she felt bad somehow either about "ripping off the system" or about the possibility of other people hearing that she had "ripped off the system."

What might this system be, and entail?

20,000 generations of inspirations and labor evolved an industrial-technological Enframing and grid, and the integration of inventions and improved efficiency despite displacement of attention and development from "maximization of quality and efficiency in the machine" to "maximization of profit" which often requires inefficiency in the machine which can produce "gluts in the market" and needs a certain built-in obsolescence, are still on an accelerating-acceleration curve 40 years after science declared that there was enough living essentials for all at improving material standards of living.

This is a cornucopia pure and complex, and "the system" is what stands as a baffle between the Plenty and us. This is the Great Thief's Goon who has been robbing our inheritance, stiffing the poor, bloating the rich. Its fibre-optic wiring is unexamined custom, which declares it is, and looks, hard.

Reading Tod Sloan, it seems as if "modernity" came down between us and natural participation mystique when "Nature" became no longer something we lived in, but something out there (objective) to be manipulated, cut, changed according to our subjective desires. Us, and nature. And tools for us to change nature. So the idea of individuality and the development of the mythology (discourse) of "individuality" came into being. Why? Well, it seems because we may each have a different idea of what is to be done to change nature. That's not from Sloan. There is a connection, I think I got it from Joseph Campbell, of the development of the individual from the development of the mythology (discourse) of "romantic love". And now depth and process psychologists like Hillman and Mindell lead us out yet again (diastole) from "individual" to community-- though the "individual" hasn't yet been given a chance: there was no "me generation"-- there was a lot of consumerism, celebrity worship, social climbing-- but that is a parody of individuation, a parody in which the voice of Self, crying in the wilderness, its still, small voice down all the years of our institutional sentences, is lost.