A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation
Spring 2002 Volume 24, Number 4

Spiritual Responses to Technology

Jonathan Watts & David Loy, Editors

We live in a world increasingly dominated by technology. Today most of us think that new technologies are not only essential to our lives, but that they are value-free, ‘neutral,’ and ‘natural’. These notions, however, prevent us from asking why ever-accelerating technological development has become so important to us. Modern science and technology assume a mechanistic worldview, but we remain unaware of the metaphysical presuppositions upon which they are built. This blind spot is cause for concern since many of the social and political issues that will preoccupy us in this new millennium will focus on how to respond to the opportunities and problems created by new technologies. Without an ethical and moral point of view, our responses to these issues will remain confined to a kind of “systems maintenance” and fail to address our deepest needs for meaning and happiness.

What role can the world’s spiritual traditions play in this evaluation? Because the major world religions have premodern roots, they have an ambivalent relationship with modern technology. On the one hand, it has not been easy for them to understand and address its challenges, because they originated and developed to meet other human needs. On the other hand, however, their very different spiritual worldviews and moral perspectives may be crucial in helping us gain a better understanding of the meaning of technology for us today. In addition to the more traditional religions, new movements with deep spiritual implications — such as deep ecology and ecopsychology — have sometimes developed in direct response to the effects of modern technologies, and therefore have much to say about the implications of technological change.

This issue will offer spiritual perspectives on technology from traditional religions and some modern movements, in the hope that they will contribute to a better understanding of this most important, and perhaps least understood, aspect of our contemporary world. This third issue of our occasional Think Sangha Journal will be presented as a special issue of ReVision – the journal of transpersonal pyschology and social change. David Loy and Jonathan Watts are serving as the guest editors of this special issue and a number of Think Sangha members, as well as other writers, will be contributing.

You can purchase the journal through Heldref Publications at http://www.heldref.org/html/rev.html. Individual articles may also be found in the ReVision archives at this above site.

CONTENTS:

Introduction
Spiritual Responses to Technology
Jonathan Watts

I. Existential Technology
Filling Our Heads and Instant Fulfillment: A Buddhist Muses on the Internet
Diana Winston

Right Speech in a World of Mirrors: Scattered Reflections
Alan Senauke

II. Technology’s Shadows
Technology and the Muse: The Erotic Life of Electricity and Water
Gwen Gordon

Lovingthe World as It Is: Western Abstraction and Andean Nurturance
Jorge Ishizawa, with Eduardo Grillo Fernandez

The Lack of Technological Progress
David Loy

III. Political Technology
Technology Globalized or Localized? Buddhist Reflections
Sarah Laeng-Gilliatt

Women Carrying Water: Homeplace, Technology, and Transformation 
Yoko Arisaka
SPECIAL! Not included in print publication

Deep Ecology, Ecoactivism and Human Evolution (pdf)
Michael E. Zimmerman

Postscript:
What about Technology?
Santikaro Bhikkhu

Poems 
Ailish Hopper

All artwork in this issue is by Mary Hambleton, including the above painting Blue Mary Hambleton has shown widely throughout the United States and the world. Her painting explores “a web of connections”, a multi-faceted way of seeing our world, and the pleasures ofseeing. From microcosm to macrocosm, she looks at how we exist and survive in our world. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with artist Ken Buhler and their son, Jacob Hambleton Buhler.