Technology and the Body

 

   To summarize what I said before: the machines that corporations build have the technological mindset built into them.  The salesmen of these machines tell us that their technologies have no purposes other than the ones we give them – that we, not the machines, are the masters. But the truth is that the machines do have purposes of their own, purposes hidden from most of us by the pervasiveness of the mindset those purposes express. Technology is not neutral but embodies the hidden purposes of the regime that produces them and that their technologies perpetuate. Whoever does not understand this truth is defenseless.

   This mindset conditions our attitude toward nature – and thus toward our bodies. The same matrix of metaphysics and values embodied by capitalist technology permeates our thought and feeling about the human body. To quote from an article written by someone who understands this truth:

The very act of refashioning (or attempting to refashion) the world technologically also refashions (or attempts to refashion) the conditions of our bodily existence. It is already a first technological assault on our bodily existence. By de- or re-naturing the world in which we have to live as bodies, we de- or re-nature our bodies themselves. How we treat physical nature is by definition, and in the same act, how we treat ourselves, and the modern attempt to become “masters and possessors of nature” has always aimed at making us masters and possessors of our own human, bodily nature. We thus come to the deepest reason for the vague unease that the latest technological gadgets arouse in many of us: technology is the project of erasing the distinction between artifice and human nature. To put it provocatively, technology has always been biotechnology, and biotechnology threatens the irreplaceable uniqueness and inviolable sanctity of the body. (Not Neutral: Technology and the “Theology of the Body,” Adrian Walker.)

Our minds, spirits, or consciousness – ala Descartes – is a radically different kind of thing from our physical bodies, which are experienced as containers of the mind – the mind being like a ghost in the machine. Or: our minds are themselves part of nature, thus raw material like the rest of the body to be programmed and reprogrammed by those who control the programming technologies. The food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the abortion industry, the fertility industry, the fitness industry, the fashion industry – in short, industry – all see the body as a miner sees the forested mountain. Technology-driven attitudes prioritize efficiency, scalability, and profitability – dissolving personal fulfillment, aesthetic depth, and communal bonds. People see their bodies as billboards upon which they advertise their identities. They see it as a house they can decorate according to taste. They see it as property, unborn child as well. They see themselves as an autonomous sovereign ruling over their body as a king did his kingdom, determining what happens to it even to the point of making their natural sex something constructed, assigned, changeable. 

I will list some phenomena that I would understand in the context of this thesis (not original to me) about technology, illustrating how the technological mindset attempts to dominate even the most profound and universal aspects of human existence.

·        Smartphones are extensions of our senses but also mediators that dictate what we perceive. Augmented reality applications, for instance, overlay artificial constructs onto physical environments, blending the boundary between the "natural" and the "designed."

·        Wearable devices reduce bodily experience to metrics—steps taken, calories burned, sleep cycles—encouraging users to view their bodies as data-driven projects to optimize, rather than as holistic, lived realities.

·        Biotechnological tools like CRISPR offer the promise of eradicating diseases but also reflect the human aspiration to "perfect" nature, making the human genome a canvas for technological manipulation.

·        The cosmetic surgery industry allows individuals to sculpt their bodies to align with socially constructed ideals, reflecting the commodification of physical identity.

·        The transformation of agriculture into a mechanized process not only estranges humans from the land but also alters dietary habits, health, and perceptions of nourishment. The nature of domestic animals is violated in a way I can only think of as Satanic.

·        The transformation of agriculture into a mechanized process not only estranges humans from the land but also alters dietary habits, health, and perceptions of nourishment.

·        Video games, metaverses, and digital platforms offer immersive worlds that challenge the primacy of the physical body and natural environment as the center of human experience.

·        The body and mind are commodified further in a digital age, as behaviors, thoughts, and preferences are captured, analyzed, and monetized.

·        Technology often seeks to maximize efficiency, reducing human labor to repetitive, task-oriented processes. Assembly lines and automated systems alienate workers from the creative and fulfilling aspects of their labor, turning them into "cogs in the machine."

·        Apps like Uber and TaskRabbit transform labor into an on-demand, fragmented service. Workers are less likely to identify with their craft or trade, as technology prioritizes convenience and speed over skill and mastery.

·        Skilled trades that once required years of apprenticeship—like woodworking, blacksmithing, or tailoring—are replaced by mass-produced alternatives, eroding the intrinsic satisfaction of creating something unique.

·        The digital age commodifies art through platforms like NFTs and algorithm-driven art generation. Art becomes less about personal or cultural expression and more about market trends, clicks, and monetization. Books of permanent value, for example, are lost in the drive to generate the ever-new and fleeting. What Nietzsche wrote about newspapers applies to all art now: “There is nothing deader than yesterday’s news [art, literature].”

·        Globalized technologies disseminate a narrow range of aesthetic ideals, pressuring artists to conform to trends dictated by algorithms and consumer preferences.

·        Platforms like Instagram turn artistic and craft processes into spectacles for consumption rather than practices of personal or cultural enrichment.

·        Apps like Tinder commodify romantic and sexual relationships by transforming the search for a partner into a game-like experience. The focus shifts from intimacy and connection to instant gratification, often reducing individuals to curated profiles and swipes.

·        The proliferation of pharmaceuticals like Viagra or surgeries aimed at enhancing sexual performance reflects a technological mindset that sees the body as a machine to be optimized for addictive pleasure rather than a subject of mutual human experience.

·        Technologies like IVF and surrogacy are framed as empowering, but they also reflect a shift toward treating procreation as a controllable, commodifiable process. Eggs, sperm, and embryos become resources to be frozen, stored, and used on demand.

·        The ability to select traits in embryos represents a profound technological redefinition of parenthood, where children may be seen less as gifts and more as customizable projects.

·        High-speed internet and streaming platforms have made pornography a pervasive presence, normalizing its consumption and shaping cultural attitudes toward sex. The immediacy and abundance reinforce a detached, consumerist approach to sexuality. Pornography often reflects the values of industrial production—efficiency, scalability, and objectification—reducing human bodies to mere instruments of pleasure and normalizing depersonalized or violent interactions. Widespread pornography consumption fosters unrealistic expectations, undermines real-life intimacy, and often leads to addiction-like behaviors that prioritize instant gratification over meaningful connection. Pornography is what happens to sex when re-engineered by the devil.

·        Technology enforces the notion that all aspects of sexuality, fertility, and reproduction can and should be controlled. This mindset mirrors the technological domination of nature and echoes the industrial ethos of efficiency and predictability. The natural processes of attraction, conception, and intimacy, once imbued with mystery and ethical weight, are increasingly reduced to technical problems with technical solutions. [The much maligned and ridiculed sexual teaching of the Catholic Church reflects a technological fundamentalism.]

·        Advances in medical technology have shifted death from a natural, communal event to a highly medicalized and institutionalized process. Death is often treated as a failure of systems to be delayed or prevented rather than an inevitable human reality.

·        Technologies that promise to "defeat death," such as cryogenic freezing or research into radically extending the human lifespan, treat death as a solvable technical problem, rooted in the belief that nature, including mortality, can be mastered.

·        Projects that seek to upload human consciousness to the cloud or create AI avatars of deceased individuals attempt to erase the finality of death, presenting an artificial form of continuity that reflects the technological ambition to transcend human limitations.

·        The funeral industry increasingly relies on technology, offering livestreamed funerals, digital memorials, and even eco-friendly "green burials." While some of these innovations respond to practical needs, they often reflect a broader trend of commodifying the rituals surrounding death.

·        While hospice movements push back against the technological framing of death, they also highlight how far removed many people have become from the natural process of dying, often experiencing it as a clinical event rather than a shared, existential passage.

·        Technological advancements enabling assisted dying shape debates around autonomy and control over death, reflecting a desire to master even this most final and mysterious of human experiences.

·        The technological mindset seeks to control and deny the inevitability of death, reinforcing a disconnection from the natural cycle of life and death. Death is increasingly seen not as meaningful (painfully so) but as a mechanical failure or a data point to be managed, extending the industrial mindset into the realm of the ultimate.

 

I am sorry – this list is too long and yet I could go on and on. As Philip Sherrard wrote: “There is a price to be paid for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and as mechanized as our own, and this is that we can exist in it only on condition that we adapt ourselves to it. This is our punishment.”

. . .

Iris Murdoch once said we are animals that make pictures of ourselves and the world, and then become like those pictures. We have replaced a picture of the universe as sacred, of ourselves as embodied souls created in the image of God, with the picture of autonomous selves coexisting with a meaningless nature (which includes our bodies).

   I am aware of and am grateful for some of the technologies that Science-Technology-Capitalism has spawned, but technology has been at least until now a total package: you don’t get modern dentistry without the Internet and the automobile. Perhaps we can figure out a way to keep those truly valuable technologies – much fewer than most people suppose – in a more humane regime once Science-Technology-Capitalism has been overcome. Or ends in catastrophe.

I will end with two quotes from Philip Sherrard:

“We are treating our planet in an inhuman, god-forsaken manner because we see things in an inhuman, god-forsaken way. And we see things in this way because that is basically how we see ourselves. How we see the world depends above all upon how we see ourselves. Our model of the universe – our world-picture or world-image – is based upon the model we have of ourselves, upon our own self-image.  When we look at the world, what we see is a reflection of our own mind, of our own mode of consciousness. Our perception of a tree, a mountain, a face, an animal or a bird is a reflection of our idea of who we think we are. What we experience in these things is not so much the reality or nature of these things in themselves as simply that which our own limitations, spiritual, psychological and physical, permit us to experience of them. Our capacity to perceive and experience is stereotyped according to how we have moulded our own image and likeness.” – Phillip Sherrard, The Rape of Man and Nature

 

“The industrial and technological inferno we have produced around us, and by means of which we are now devastating our world, is not something that has come about accidentally. On the contrary, it is the direct consequence of our allowing ourselves to be dominated by a certain paradigm of thought – embracing a certain human image and a certain world image – to such a degree that it now determines virtually all our mental attitudes and all our actions, public and private. It is a paradigm of thought that impels us to look upon ourselves as little more than two-legged animals whose destiny and needs can best be fulfilled through the pursuit of social, political and economic self-interest. And to correspond with this self-image we have invented a world-view [GL: conditioned by capitalist life a world-view has been imposed on us] in which nature is seen as an impersonal commodity, a soulless source of food, raw materials, wealth, power and so on, which we think we are quite entitled to experiment with, exploit, remodel, and generally abuse by means of any scientific and mechanical technique we can devise and produce, in order to satisfy and deploy this self-interest. Having in our own minds desanctified ourselves, we have desanctified nature, too, in our own minds: we have removed it from the suzerainty of the divine and have assumed that we are its overlords, and that it is our thrall, subject to our will. In short, under the aegis of this self-image and world-view we have succeeded in converting ourselves into the most depraved and depraving of all creatures upon the earth.” – Phillip Sherrard, Human Image, World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology