…those who use cunning tools become cunning in their dealings, and that those who are cunning in their dealings have cunning in their hearts, and th

The Technological System - by Darren Allen - Expressive Egg

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2024-10-07 20:30:05

…those who use cunning tools become cunning in their dealings, and that those who are cunning in their dealings have cunning in their hearts, and that those who have cunning in their hearts… are restless in spirit, and that those who are restless in spirit are not fit vehicles for Tao. It is not that I do not know of these [ tools you wish me to use] . I should be ashamed to use them.

Most people don’t know, and don’t want to know, what the real problem with the world is. Their attention is hopelessly narrow-minded, focused on a range of secondary effects. They worry about the despoliation of the wild, technofascist mission creep, the criminalisation of gender, preposterous inequality, the state of the youth, rising prices and so on, but ignore what all these things have in common. It’s like someone who never washes and, rather than deal with this, spends his life fretting about his itchy skin, oily hair and fungal infections, buying medications to deal with these second-order effects and finding ways to ingratiate himself with people who are offended by his smell.

So it is with the wider world. When it comes to the problems we face as a society, it’s not just that ordinary people cannot see the wood for the trees, they are terrified of the wood and hypnotised by the trees, transfixed by the isolated ills that face them and afraid of tearing their attention away from them. This is not an intellectual bias, but a deep-seated unconscious fear of grasping a truth so immense, so awful, that to do so would annihilate everything they’ve built their lives on.