Impenetrable Moral Darkness

Has technology threatened human survival? Thomas Merton, sitting on the front porch of his hermitage in Trappist, Kentucky, fretted over such questions:

"We do not know if we are building a fabulously wonderful world or destroying all that we have ever had, all that we have achieved! All the inner force of man is boiling and bursting out, the good together with the evil, the good poisoned by evil and fighting it, the evil pretending to be good and revealing itself in the most dreadful crimes, justified and rationalized by the purest and most innocent intentions. Man is all ready to become a god, and instead he appears at times to be a zombie." (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.55)

"There is a danger of technology becoming an end in itself and arrogating to itself all that is best and most vital in human effort: thus humans come to serve their machines instead of being served by them....The more corrupt a social system is, the more it tends to be controlled by technology instead of controlling it. The intimate connection between technology and alienation is and will remain one of the crucial problems we will need to study and master in our lifetime. Technology means wealth and power but it bestows the greatest amount of wealth and power upon those who serve it most slavishly a the expense of authentic human interests and values, including their own human and personal integrity. Life in the United States shows this beyond question. But unfortunately, the rest of the world secretly or overtly wishes to become like the United States."

"What a tragedy that would be." (Punto Final)

Technology allows us diversion and escape into endless frenzy, and escape from inner journey of awakening.

"The tragedy of a life centered on 'things,' on the grasping and manipulation of objects, is that such a life closes the ego upon itself as though it were an end in itself, and throws it into a hopeless struggle with other perverse and hostile selves competing together for the possessions which will give them power and satisfaction. Instead  of being 'open to the world' such minds are in fact closed to it and their titanic efforts to build the world according tot their own desires are doomed in the end by the ambiguity and destructiveness that are in them. They seem to be a light, but they battle together in impenetrable moral darkness." (Zen and the Birds of Appetite, p.82)

On the Calling of a Cynic

I came across this passage in Epictetus that reminded me of wise man's way of life. The Cynics were philosophers who were like monks. They were early Beats. They sought happiness through freedom from desires; freedom from passions of fear, grief, anger. Freedom from religious or public authority  or public opinion  They wanted to live free, following the way of Nature:

“And how is it possible that a man who has nothing, who is naked, homeless, without a hearth, squalid, without a servant, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has sent you  a man to show you that it is possible. 

"Look at me, who am without a city, without a home, without possessions, without a servant; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no profession, but only the earth and heavens, and one rag-robe. And what do I lack? Am I not without sorrow? Am I not free from fear? Am I not free? 

"When did any of you see me failing in the object of my desire? Or ever falling into that which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any man? Did any of you ever see me with sorrowful countenance? And how do I meet with those whom you are afraid of and admire? Do not I treat them like equals? Who, when he sees me, does to think that he sees a king and master?”

Epictetus, On the Calling of a Cynic, Discourse 3.22