Technology and the Stoic (Human)

 Being an aspiring Stoic, I continually examine myself and my world under the scrutiny of whether those entities exist "in accordance with nature". As someone who has grown up alongside the digital and technological revolution (I'm 32), I can't help but notice my linear growth compared to its exponential explosion. And as I continue my trod towards middle age, technology continues to blast itself into our daily lives and into the far corners of the universe. (I define technology as the gadgets, machines, and digital systems we use to accomplish tasks and entertain ourselves more efficiently in terms of space, time, and effort.) The only part of me that has kept any pace at all with technology has been the mental dissonance I acrue from living in an increasingly digitized era.

I realize the time may be too late to ask this question towards any large scale practical purpose seeing as technology certainly stands no chance of being rejected or merely halted by our global civilization. But, I'll ask anyways because there is still a poignancy to the issue in terms of our day to day existence. We still must decide on an individual level how we immerse ourselves into our world on a technological basis. My question being, "Does the technology of the industrial age and it's conceivable future applications stand in discord with nature?"

There are a number of ways to look at this question and neither Rufus or Chrysippus are going to have any answers for us anytime soon. Hopefully, my words may inspire a few of your own and we can address together what I see as the most dynamic force and period of change in human history.

-One of the fundamental premises of Stoic logic is that humans are social creatures. Now that we have jet planes that can get you anywhere in less than a day, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, cellphones, and text messaging I wonder if our social relations have improved at all. Certainly they are more convenient and expedient. My experience tells me that (as with many technologies) we've created many unforseen complications and removed essential components from the experience of communication and interaction. What we've gained in access and speed I perceive we've lost in humanity. We've been disembodied to a degree. We've become a world of avatars that has left many, myself included, feeling on the outside looking in on nowhere. Am I the only person who thinks it's funny and yet telling of something wrong that I get e-mails from someone sitting 40 feet from me in the same apartment?

-What indictment of technology is made from the fact that enough nuclear firepower stands available to wipe out humanity many times over? If that's antiquated 20^th century gibberish to you then what about genetically engineering human beings and computerized intelligence vastly superior to our own?

- From an agricultural standpoint, we've come to point where our meals depend on the fossil fuel technology we use to harvest and distribute our food. Our populations grow while relying on this, perhaps finite, resource. The future of food and maybe the environment itself seem rather precarious since we are now surrounded by problems created by technology that can only be solved by better technology. Is this a paradigm that can exist indefinitely or is technology bound to collapse upon itself?

- If there was consensus on technology being detrimental to the quality of our existence, then where would we draw the line? Electricity perhaps? Technology of the kind we experience today seems to be very much an all or nothing proposition seeing as it is made of highly interdependent systems.

Despite the tone of this essay, there is still a part of me that entertains the idea that this is an unavoidable, necessary, and perhaps benign part of the human experiment. As we have been given this intellect and reasoning capacities, we were bound to invent such wonders. But if put to task, the stronger impression I get is of a people, a species who may end up learning a very harsh lesson about the limits of their capacities and that of the planet they live on.

Lastly, I'd like to share an anecdote from my own adventures in undigitization. Over a year ago I stopped carrying a mobile phone. Since then, I can count on one hand the number of times I could have really used it. The big surprise has not been how well I've gotten by without it, but the amount of social pressure I've received from family and friends to be on the grid. As with being mostly alone in my philosophical pursuits, I'll take my solitude in this matter as another vote of affirmation.