Technology and the Limits of Rationality

There is a building supply store here whose motto is "Find a Need and Fill it." I have frequently thought that this motto would be good for the activities of the entrepreneurs and VCs. They are always looking for someone to disrupt, to fill a need better than the next guy. A more clever tool or placement of a tool. Google puts the search engine between  You Find Me and I Find You for the sale or the exchange.

Google solved a problem, a need, which was how the buyer and the seller find each another on the network without the buyer having to pay except for the purchase.

We have a lot of problems to work on, no doubt. Climate change, violence, economic and social disintegration. Is technology contributing to the solution of these problems? Isn't that what it is all about, solving problems?

But hold on, isn't climate change a result of our technologies? fossil fuel production; the energy costs of our lifestyles, in manufacture, in transportation, in keeping warm or cool. We can imagine technological solutions, like sustainable energy sources and more efficient mass transit. Is it just a matter of swapping the bad out for the good?

Might this be part of what you'd call Plato's dualism? It is really two sides of the same thing. Energy production, one type that gives bad side effects, then hopefully another type that does not give bad side effects. But since we couldn't see the effects of the first type, will we be able to see the effects of the second? We always seem to be getting in over our head. We get rid of the bugs on our crops and end up poisoning ourselves along with the bugs. Just can't seem to see where it is that we are going. Someone coined the clever term, unintended consequences.

Could it be the way that we are thinking to produce all this technology has some flaw to it? Could we do better?

With Plato's dualism we are following his RATIONAL pathway to the solution of problems. Tied into RATIONAL, hook line and sinker. Maybe we need to find a new way to look at our problems, to look at ourselves. A new method of viewing. What would that be?

Plato has created the idea, he called it the form, which is the abstraction of the object itself, or the particular. Hence the dualism, the concrete object and its idea, the abstraction. Somehow this leads us to opposites. We can abstract things in more than one way, when we find one solution, low and behold, there is a polar opposite to be found as well. Heaven and hell, good and bad, you give me Roland and and I'll give you Oliver, two sides of the same coin.

How does that happen? Why opposites? Simply you imagine it one way, I imagine it the other way.

It is like a vise that has us in its grip. We are caught in a methodology of living that is full of contradictions, and the amazing thing about it is that the whole purpose of the method was to follow a path that got rid of contradictions. Instead, it created them! And, contradictions are against the rules.

The rational method of living. 

What about taking a less rational path? One that isn't tied into all these rules of logic. Do you suppose that we could actually find some solutions by engaging in a little more feeling and passion and a little less thinking? What would that do for us?

So let us be content in this piece with raising the question, and save that exploration for the next pieces, since that is a big subject.

Comment by Jim the Bluesman:

Thanks for raising the question, Bronwen. Eager for more!  We have a few more days left in the States, flying home on Thursday.  Keep in touch and keep posting Jim