-Caveat Lector- http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/luddite.html
"Luddite" is today's stylish insult. To be called a Luddite implies a pointless and futile rejection of technology, tinged, thanks to Ted Kaczynski, with the threat of violence. In fact, it is neither a naive illusion, nor a nostalgic delusion, but an enduring tradition of resistance to mindless mechanization, whether it is of means of production or social organization or ways of thinking. It began with a group of passionate and rebellious workers in England's weaving industry in 1811 who took up whatever weapons were at hand in revolt against the machines that were taking their jobs and destroying their families and communities. These were the followers of the mythical Ned Ludd. But the essence of luddism is not violence – far from it. Instead it is a respect for and a confidence in those things that make us human, with a related rejection of the mechanistic approach to being that devalues that humanity. It is a philosophy that respects tradition, intuition, spirituality, the senses, human relationships, the work of the hand, and the disorderly and unpredictable nature of reality, as opposed to a mechanistic or reductionist construct of the world. It questions the domination of science and the elevation of efficiency to a superior value. It rejects materiality. Luddism favors a thoughtful use of appropriate technologies that does not damage those relationships we hold dear. And it goes without saying that it cherishes the natural world from which we attempt to separate ourselves only at our peril. Luddites today are self-selecting. There is no litmus test. You may live in a mud hut, carry water and chop wood by choice, or simply hate your computer, yearn to outdistance your cell phone and wish you could buy a car without automatic windows. But at bottom you feel some identification with all those who are apprehensive and resistant to the domination of the machine in our society, in our work, or in our individual lives. Luddism is neither conservative nor liberal; both capitalism and Marxism are committed to the concept of industrial progress, the wisdom of which Luddites question. It is, however, a conscious approach to living. Luddites, or neo-Luddites, if you prefer, carefully evaluate what contributes to the considered life and what does not. They do so to the degree they find personally appropriate. We must think about the "encompassing technocratic, manipulative world that we have established," writes Thomas Berry in The Dream of the Earth. "We must not over romanticize primitivism...yet when we witness the devastation we have wrought on this lovely continent, and even throughout the planet, and consider what we are now doing, we must reflect." Reflection is a beginning. Action follows. The tools for both reflecting and acting are, we hope and believe, here. The characteristics that define luddism can be discovered in the Romantic poets, in the writings of Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. They can be found in the life and work of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement; in the work of potters such as Bernard Leach and his followers. Resistance to technology is a thread that winds through the writings of the Southern Agrarians and the novels of such diverse authors as Wallace Stegner, Iris Murdoch and John Fowles. It reaches its heights in such recent cult figures such as Robert Pirsig and Edward Abbey. Modern poets from Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder to W.S. Merwin express their anger against the technological juggernaut and its rampage across the landscape. Environmentalism has its roots in resistance to this same ruthless domination of the machine and those who use it to conquer and subdue nature, a sentiment that has its roots in the writings of John Muir and Aldo Leopold and evolves into the deep ecology of Arne Naess. Behind the modern Luddite movement is a solid body of philosophical writing. Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford construct a base upon which present-day eco-philosophers such as Edward Goldsmith build. And carrying forth this thinking are contemporary writers and thinkers such as Jerry Mander, Stephanie Mills, Kirkpatrick Sale and many others, who with clear arguments and passionate voices articulate valid concerns that technology may undo more than we bargained for, leaving behind a wake of damage from which it may be difficult to recover. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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