Year Eight

Aesthetic Exercises to Accept the Mind and Mirror the Mind of the World

Eight Year:  Technology and Science

Technology, despite the commonplaces surrounding it, is historically and ontologically prior to science, in the same way as religion is historically and ontologically prior to philosophy and literature.  We are in awe (or surprise, anger, fear, ecstasy) before we think or write about our awe, and certainly before we feel ironic about our experience.

Technology precedes science because feeling and touch precede thought and abstraction, because the body precedes mind.  The initiate should not forget this relationship and dependency, for, although our Exercises are founded on it, the bias of the world around may be so against it, in denial, rebellion and hubris, that she forgets the very structure of her development and, indeed, her very person.

Technology is the human attempt to extend, first, the power of our bodies and, second, the power of our minds.  Science is our attempt to generalize about these experiences of extension and, in turn, further extend our power through applying its generalizations.  It is this latter process that leads to the perception that science is the foundation of technology.

In contrast to the development of religion to literature, which begins with the unseen and explodes into artifacts, our present category begins with the seen¾the body and its tools¾and evolves into unseen abstraction of number.  It is at the intersection of the end of religion and the beginning of technology that the initiate should look for spiritual and aesthetic fecundity; there, in the chaos of number and the coffin of God, angels and demons copulate; should the initiate train herself properly, she may be able to see the products of their stormy and fortuitous union.

In this eighth year, the initiate should come to know the foundations of technology and science, these disciplines of extension.  Because of the nature of science, it may be difficult for the initiate to avoid the academy as she must do in the seventh year if she is to achieve a primary vision and not one tainted by secondary constructs¾for the paid purveyors of knowledge are cheapened by their comforts and are lovers of wind incarceration.

To know technology, the initiate should deconstruct and construct technology, understanding how it works.  She should invent things.  She should work with a variety of technologists, on a volunteer basis if necessary, to learn how technology is thought about, created, acted upon, and acts.  She should immerse herself in the three core areas of technology:  machine technology, computer technology and language technology, gaining access both to the brightest minds in each area and those minds which are mediocre, but nevertheless highly instructive for their commonality, and in their commonality indicative of how technology acts.

To know science, the initiate should expose herself to its fundamentals:  mathematics, physics, biology and astronomy.  Nothing should be assumed.  All should be explored.  The code of nature should be unraveled, dissected, mapped, and applied to the creation of a new world.  The initiate should befriend scientists and explore their international codes, instruments, mores and language.  She should take nothing for granted.  All should be translated into method and rigor.  All should be risked for the sake of number and formulae.

Through this year’s explorations, the initiate should take care to observe the relationships between technology and science, and each of these and the human.  She should reflect on the relationships between them and the explorations of the past year:  religion, philosophy and literature.  She should not shy away from reflections that are not commonplace.  She should become as much as possible as a number or machine, giving up her identity to the extension of human power through the creation of the new.  For to be a technologist or scientist of any merit, one must believe in creation, that creation continues to take place, that one is contributing to it, in however small a way, and that this creation that one partakes in has, even inexplicably, more positive than negative effect on something the scientist values.

In rare cases, the technologist or scientist performs his operations not from the above beliefs or values but because he is driven to do so by an inner necessity and does not associate what he does in any way with creation, progress or individual effect; such a one has achieved an exuberant melancholy on par with the universe and is a particular kind of artist, though not the kind of which we speak, that the initiate should seek out and study.  Such people are pure and in their purity are amoral and indifferent to their fate and the fate of all.  But most are not of this type; most are common.