Recently, I got into a stupid, pointless argument over atomic energy on LinkedIn. I realized that instead of opposing any particular technology or energy source because of the inherent or real hazard it poses, all I have to point out is how horribly commerce handles said technology — invariably they’ll find some reliably (self) destructive ends for it.
The most apt criticism that can be wielded in response to commercial hubris, is the tale known as “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” In an animated production called “Fantasia” Walt Disney introduced mass audiences to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s original poem, the source material for the cartoon featuring Mickey Mouse as the shiftless, know-nothing apprentice to a wise and powerful sorcerer.
Tired of the drudgery of literally carrying water for the sorcerer, the apprentice fancies himself up to the task of donning the master’s enchanted, cone-shaped head covering.
With some effort he conjures a broom to continue the repetitive task. Eventually, the apprentice finds the situation over his head as the broom has flooded the sorcerer’s entire work space. The broom will not heed the apprentice’s command to cease carrying water. Splintering the broom into pieces with an axe, merely creates an army of brooms bearing buckets of water.
Unlike Goethe’s poem or Disney’s cartoon, in the real world there’s never a responsible sorcerer around to vanish the flood and reprimand the apprentice.
The last fifty years are littered with examples of humanity’s arrogance writ large in a font of great destruction: Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Bhopal Union Carbide, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, Fukushima, et. al.
The problem isn’t nukes, AI, or particle colliders. The problem is human arrogance and the utter lack of humility required to wield said technologies responsibly.
Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. However, when the almighty dollar comes calling, irreparable harm is too often the price for taking leave of our senses.
Dire, fatal consequences typically rouse the conscience only as an afterthought — that is, after calamity has struck. To give credit where credit is due, consider the absolute absorption of cost-benefit analytical thinking by industries that pose the most harm; cost-benefit analysis assumes that irreparable harm can be quantified as an expenditure that a business can absorb or perhaps even pass on to consumers without decreasing the company profit margin.
CBA remains so thoroughly rooted in business philosophy that companies hold to it with a zombie-caliber conviction; it’s as orthodox as laissez faire or the belief that “only little people pay taxes.”
These days, the industry most ripe for a sorcerer’s apprentice critique is Silicon Valley. Netflix’s documentary The Social Dilemma provides a number of examples of technological wizardry plied in the service of increased revenues, while leaving a tattered and unraveling social fabric in its wake.
Several former employees of influential internet companies are interviewed in a film that aims to illustrate the would-be whistleblowers’ cautions.
Tristan Harris, a past design ethicist for Google, describes the corrosive effect social media can have as they hook, insulate and mislead users, all the while lifting data about their users’ internet browsing patterns. Social media companies tailor subsequent content and ads based on the user’s clicks.
The end result is the user wanders into an ideological echo chamber. Delivered content reinforces one’s beliefs, prejudices, paranoias, etc.
Extrapolate said user by a factor of hundreds of thousands and one begins to see one of many seething ideological divides fracturing this nation. It would be nothing short of a miracle if we could collectively extricate ourselves from social media’s mesmerizing grasp.
As mentioned earlier, in the aftermath of the mess made by a real life sorcerer’s apprentice, there is no readily available mentor to rescue the hapless protege. So, to whom might we turn?
As a preamble to an answer that speaks to that question, consider the words of Old Lodge Skins, an American indigenous elder featured in the 1970 film “Little Big Man” (dir. Arthur Penn). They’re a fitting critique of the assumptions that inform the agenda of technology and energy industries:
But the white men, they believe everything is dead: Stone, earth, animals, and people. Even their own people. If things keep trying to live, white man will rub them out.
As damning a tone that Old Lodge Skins’ critique rings, it lends urgency to our need for a source of wisdom or understanding to guide decisions about technology and energy development. CBA represents the very ethos — what I would call a moral impairment — that cripples the reasoning when industry decides what products and services consumers will endure.
First Nations people have an unimpeachable record living in the Western hemisphere over 10,000 years and never having jeopardized humanity nor nature like technology and energy industries have over the short span of fifty years. There is no time like the present to begin exploring how we might integrate Native thinking about technology and energy into everyday decisions. We are living in real time Goethe’s vision, as animated by Disney, of waters rising and posing one of many emerging threats against civilization.
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Previously Published on Medium
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