Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Heideger and Illich

I have so many things at a fierce rattle in my brain, that I hope to take a rest. There are two intelligent places for my readers/guests to visit while I take a snow day and do some writing on my current book: Martin Heidegger and Ivan Illich. For Illich, I will point readers to a previous blog essay on the manipulation and machinations of conservative politics made possible by the dearth of hands-on learning. Forgive me, this is long and deep. 

For Heidegger, I offer this quote:
There was once a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name technē. Once that revealing that brings forth truth into the beautiful was also called technē. Once there was a time when bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was called technē. And the poiēsis of fine art was also called technē. In Greece, at the outset of the destining of the West, the arts soared to the supreme height of the revealing granted them. They brought the presence of the gods, brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings, to radiance. And art was simply called technē. It was a single manifold revealing. It was pious, promos, i.e., yielding to the holding-sway and the safekeeping of truth.
And so the importance of technology may not be in what it does for us, but in what it reveals about us, or reveals to us about ourselves.

The stock knife shown above was hammered from steel yesterday by my friend Bob Patrick. While a book might be fresh off the presses, this object containing volumes of experience and information could be described as fresh from the quench. My thanks to Bob for leading me on my way.

Make, fix and create...

1 comment:

  1. I happened upon your blog by looking up Ivan Illich articles. Interesting perspectives here.

    My response in regards to your recent post:
    99% of modern day schools have become little more than places tasked with pacifying children by hurting them spiritually and emotionally within the confines of the law; Lets be real and not fall… there is little to nothing left that is “good” in the standardized school racket. I don’t care if a kid cheats to gain the system, it spares them the further torture, I’m gonna call it what it is TORTURE, of really having to take those APs.

    To those who are squealing in the news media ‘But what about those kids who worked really hard, it’s not fair to them!’… I’d say, “what do you mean people? You mean those kids who sold out the most, those kids who were most willing to submit to the boring, stultifying and un-substantive memorization drills in order to prove how much more obedient they were than the “dumber kids””? Getting angry about the milk-cream separator for the Ivy-league student body getting “subverted” is morally disgusting… the whole machine is a bad, cruel joke that hurts every child.

    Two questions never enter the “high-up” discussions about education: One, why put kids in competition with each other in the first place? Two, does that competition really show who is the universal “best”, and is that even possible/valid?

    They spoke: Gatto, Holt, Kozol etc…. but “they” have never listened. Historically, for some reason I cannot understand, being a morally responsible and informed human being has always been the province of a minority of the human race. So, we’ll continue to have 99% of schools remain the way they are and I see nothing that is gonna change that. Holt spoke of a kindof “underground railroad” for some kids to escape it and I guess that is the best we can hope for. I wish I was one of those who escaped it.

    Now I’m left with the task of scrapping my spirit/heart back together after the damage the system had inflicted upon me; in a spiritually and physically dying world.

    - From a millenial.


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