“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, December 13, 2012

Objects Praying

Bill makes this very astute point about Zizek on Buddhism:

"he glosses the buddhist prayer wheel as the precursor of canned laughter. the wheel prays even though the person who placed it is absent from it

it's an object praying"

Exactly. Exactly why I think Buddhism is dope. And what I'm arguing in two books and a couple of essays on the topic.

It's a fear of automation. Again, these Marxists are Romanticist Nature people really.



1 comment:

Bill Benzon said...

Did you know that, back in the days when industrial robotics was just getting started, Japanese workers would conduct a Shinto ritual to welcome their new robotic co-worker to the plant floor?