We continue our chapter-by-
Chapter 10 marks the book’s half way point. Titled, “Technology With a Human Face,” David calls the chapter “essential Schumacher.” And indeed, there is a lasting freshness to Fritz’ analysis of technological development within industrial modernity. In part, that is a credit to his ability to infuse timeless insight from the world’s wisdom traditions into contemporary questions of technological innovation. The urge to caution and uphold more universal human values are no less relevant today in the face of rapid advances in computational algorithms and language processing (often shorthanded under “A.I.”).
Access the Guide.
Excerpt from the Guide to Chapter 10
“We are poor, not demigods.
We have plenty to be sorrowful about, and are not emerging into a golden age.
We need a gentle approach, a non-violent spirit, and small is beautiful.
We must concern ourselves with justice and see right prevail.
And all this, only this, can enable us to become peace-makers.”— E . F. Schumacher’s version of the Beatitudes, adapted from the Gospel of St. Matthew Chapter 5 (the Sermon on the Mount), in this chapter
“Schumacher would certainly have supported the Gaia hypothesis, the view that planet earth is a self-regulating system. But there is nothing self-regulating about technology, which is still driven by notions of limitless growth, labor-saving, and expansion of consumption.”
— George McRobie, author of Small is Possible, from the 25th anniversary book (1999)
The first 10 chapters of Small is Beautiful cover policy areas over which Schumacher had long had “bees in his bonnet,” perhaps especially Chapter 10’s treatment of appropriate technology. Had it not been for the expansive considerations in the remaining chapters, this single issue may have provided Schumacher’s main claim for a legacy.
The chapter is based on his lecture given at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Teilhard Centre for the Future of Man, London in October 1971.
What the Chapter Says…
If the modern world is shaped by its faulty metaphysics, that is bound to affect its education, its food and its tech, says Schumacher:
“If that which has been shaped by technology, and continues to be so shaped, looks sick, it might be wise to have a look at technology itself. If technology is felt to be becoming more and more inhuman, we might do well to consider whether it is possible to have something better – a technology with a human face.”
The natural world which we are part of tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing, says Schumacher:
“Not so with technology, or perhaps I should say: not so with man dominated by technology and specialization. Technology recognizes no self-limiting principle — in terms, for instance, of size, speed, or violence. It therefore does not possess the virtues of being self-balancing, self-adjusting, and self-cleansing. In the subtle system of nature, technology, and in particular the super-technology of the modern world, acts like a foreign body, and there are now numerous signs of rejection.”
He then looks at three simultaneous crises:
- Human nature revolts against inhuman technological, organizational, and political patterns, which it experiences as suffocating and debilitating.
- The living environment which supports human life aches and groans and gives signs of partial breakdown; and
- It is “clear to anyone fully knowledgeable in the subject matter that the inroads being made into the world’s non-renewable resources, particularly … fossil fuels, are such that serious bottlenecks and virtual exhaustion loom ahead in the quite foreseeable future…” (Ch. 8).
“Everywhere the problems seem to be growing faster than the solutions. This seems to apply to the rich countries just as much as to the poor. There is nothing in the experience of the last twenty-five years to suggest that modem technology, as we know it, can really help us to alleviate world poverty, not to mention the problem of unemployment which already reaches levels like 30% in many so-called developing countries, and now threatens to become endemic also in many of the rich countries.
…So we had better face the question of technology – what does it do and what should it do? Can we develop a technology which really helps us to solve our problems – a technology with a human face?”
The study guide continues with a timely discussion on “inner-directedness,” a concept from Sociology, and its implications for profound social change.
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Those local to the Berkshires are invited to register and join us Wednesday, September 11th at 3:00PM at Saint James Place for “To Be Thy Adam: Agency, Activism, and Collective Intelligence in the Ruins of the Human.”
This public conversation will feature author Dougald Hine, theologian Catherine Keller, philosopher Alex Forrester, and posthumanist thinker Bayo Akomolafe. Together, they’ll explore accountability, agency, collective intelligence, and responsibility in a time marked by wars, quests for justice and reparations, the troubling phenomenon of A.I., and all-too-theological questions of how to think with (and within) the ruins.
Note: registration is for in-person attendance only. The conversation will be filmed and shared online after the event.