Anthropological investigation interwoven with autobiography, Athena Techne is a call to arms for those who want civilization to succeed against the onslaught of demagogues and the weakest imaginations.
The book is not a threat to any religion, it is not a call to practice Paganism in the forest. It is a call to become workers improving the grand human endeavors we call cities, the internet, space travel, and complex inter-racial, inter-cultural trade networks.
Below are quotes from Athena Techne:
The word “demiurge” is a Latinized form of Greek demiourgos, literally "public worker", and which was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan".
Techne can be translated "human endeavor", and zombies are those who have ceased to contribute to human endeavor. Athena Techne is a mythological goddess, a patron of human endeavor, whereas Ares, her brother, is a patron of bloodlust and dumb violence on a massive scale. Zombies listen to an unending message lodged in their heads, such as the Earth Liberation Front’s message to destroy civilization in order to save Nature, or Reagan’s message to downsize government and the public sphere to a point of no use, or Osama bin Laden's call for Jihad. Zombies eventually aggregate together and fight on the side of Ares.
This work recognizes a conflict that most people have not realized: a struggle between Ares and his Zombies against Athena and her Public Workers.
Techne is human endeavor, whether it be highway construction or amending the Constitution of the United States. All techne (technology) needs maintenance. Any society, as a technological object, should not be seen as inherently running well forever without intervention, nor totally run through and through with evil or stupidity. We should expect some degree of upkeep and modification. The demiurge is human endeavor's only saviour, and the demiurge is you.
Chapter 1: Life and Death at Birth
This is a perfect final statement: "The demiurge is human endeavor's only saviour, and the demiurge is you."
ReplyDeleteAt first the reader feels confronted. He's heard this "only saviour" stuff before, and might have his own personal favorite (evolution, Jesus, communism, etc.) Then he reads the sentence again and realizes you are not talking about saving yourself, your soul, or the world, but "human endeavor." No god has ever promised to save the works of man, no natural law will intervene to protect what we have made, and no ideology seems sufficient to preserve our endeavours.
What you make, you own and you are responsible for. If you waste it, or let someone take it from you when you could have prevented it, then you have no one to blame but yourself.
I think most people in societies that respect private property believe this, even if they can interpret it in radically different ways, from conservationists who lean toward aggressive precautions to protect the raw materials we use to make stuff (literally through the protection of natural capital and more symbolically by protecting parks and wilderness areas that give us inspiration and breathing room,) to pro-corporate-america conservatives who lean toward more limited interference with the processes that currently turn those materials into stuff we use.
Lance's book encourages people to think about how the basic principle applies to specific problems and solutions rather than leaning on ideological poles for simple explanations and panaceas. I think this is very timely as the gulf oil spill has people thinking about our relationships to technology, business and government on a level that 9-11, two wars, two controversial presidents, financial catastrophe and even radical healthcare reform barely scratched.