A Dao of Technology?

Abstract

Scholars have detected hostility to technology in Daoist thought. But is this a problem with any machine or only some applications of some machines by some people? I show that the problem is not with machines per se but with the people who introduce them, or more exactly with their knowledge. It is not knowledge as such that causes the disorder Laozi and Zhuangzi associate with machines; it is confused, disordered knowledgesuperficial, inadequate, unsubtle, and artless. In other words the problem is not with machines but with the ethics of engineering and the government of technology. The Daoist argument does not devalue machines or knowledge of them; instead, it sets a new goal, defining an alternative ideal-alternative to techniques held hostage to despotic ideas about efficiency and profit.Keywords Daoism . Technology . Knowledge Scholars have detected hostility to technology in Daoist thought. Joseph Needham finds what he calls an "anti-technology complex," "an ambivalent attitude to those techniques which the society of force and dominance could use for its own ends" (Needham 1956: 125; see also Schipper 1993: 197). Machines make things happen that would not happen ziran 自然, by themselves, through a natural development of circumstances. That sounds like a calamity. We should not try to make things happen. We need instead to become adept at letting things happen and going with the flow. The problem with machines is the disequilibrium they introduce, the surplus of rigid yang 陽 energy, which destroys the vital balance people need with the environment, all for the mechanical advantage machines give the few who control their output.The skills that matter to a balanced life do not use tools or machines. By relying on such contrivances, we forget the most important skill of all: knowing how to keep our balance and nourish our vitality. A tool or machine is an adventitious imposition. It is visibly constructed, artificial, forcibly imposed against the grain of ziran process. Machines rip the Dao (2010) 9:151-160

Ethics and corporate social responsibility – An analysis of the views of Chinese hotel managers

“…For example Allen (2010) argues that Daoist belief systems about the use of technology have strong ethical principles that require a questioning of efficiency and profit as motivating forces for technological innovation. Bond (1981) established a Chinese Value Survey that comprised four dimensions, namely Confucian work dynamism, human heartedness, moral discipline and integration.…”

Frankenstein’s Monster as Mythical Mattering: Rethinking the Creator-Creation Technology Relationship

“…To put this another way, our created technologies only become "monstrous" in the first place when we falsely believe we exist separately from nature or from one another [16]. To love our technologies means only having technology that aligns us with the world, not technology where we attempt, like Frankenstein, to impose our will over nature, or the world more broadly, as a result of seeing ourselves as being separate from it, or expecting to find answers to life via our individualistic knowledge pursuits.…”

The Virtual and the Vacant-Emptiness and Knowledge in Chan and Daoism

“…The problem with these artifacts is not their artificiality, however, as is often thought. 34 They do not want to rely on artifacts in the way that Confucians rely on the classics and the li . They want instead to innovate artifacts, to create new forms, to participate in the ziran productivity of nature, and vanish into things.…”