Essence of Technology? Additional knots in this labyrinths of meaning of technology and spirituality
And of course, Heidegger and his essence of technology...What is so enigmatic about Heidegger? Is it his charismatic way of writing, a combination of poetry and analytic philosophy? Anyway, essence is what needs to be taken into the account of meaning. As we move along the landscape of ideas, we tend to miss essential moments of technocultural intersections. And this is where Heidegger comes into play.so essence...of technology is enframing..something that orients humans towards their destiny, something that frames destiny into meaning..."as a destining, it banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering" (p.27). Hmm, ordering is some ultimate goal as in Noble's analysis...Order is what we want. Predictability and Mastery. What about chaos theory?
Nevertheless, this illusion of the mastery has been so powerfully constructed that it becomes reality. Agamben would say that this reality is what closes humanity in perceptual worlds, it is what separates them from animality or the open space of relationships. This illusion has its roots in the biblical myths of man dominion over nature. This illusion makes technology. This is what rules the anthropological machine. "...the posture of lord of the earth..In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists insofar as it his construct..This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion:it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself" (Heidegger 27). This mirrored reality makes us the machine more humane...becomes a reflection of our values and motivations...It is an illusory, yet, real construct that empowers humans as humans. Perhaps, we need some other than human entity (not nature) but something constructed or created to feel all the power of being humans. It is the other that makes the self, at the end of everything. The other can be a machine that represents self's ideas. So the self is perfected with this other's constructed reflection.
Yet, Heidegger, admits that "man never encounters his essence"....Essence is something slippery, something that is not easy to realize or understand. The problem is not technology, but the essence of technology. Human essence reveals itself in a human-constructed essence of technology. And here is where a potential danger hides. The danger "of enframing [that] threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.."(28). This is what frightens us. Perhaps, in order to manifest something, to create and to reveal, something always has to be destroyed first, concealed..destruction and creation are those two poles that are bind together beyond any dualistic constructions. This is why Heidegger quotes some poet: .."where danger is, grows the saving power also..."