I joined an online book club at the beginning of the year. I was motivated by the accountability entailed by membership. At the end of every month a zoom session, moderated by Jared Henderson, a philosopher-convener is offered to members. I figured this was sure to motivate me to read each of the monthly assigned books and associated readings.

Sure enough, for January I did a careful reading of Martin Heidegger’s essay The Question Concerning Technology. Heidegger’s work is not easy to read. He packs a great deal into every sentence. I found it worth the effort though. I wanted to share a paragraph or so with you. You too will hear Heidegger’s voice.

Heidegger admits that the nub of what technology means is no simple thing. It eludes a single definition because it discloses a double-sided mystery.

By our technologies, the machines and techniques by which we’ve “mastered” just about everything horizon to horizon – we have enframed to our order almost all… I might make a long list of examples here but am resisting that temptation. Perhaps you get my drift. As a collective of generations we in the West have granted this sort of reality to exist. I and my parents, great grand-parents and so on, called forth, disclosed this very society and culture which I experience in the present.

It is best that I be silent. Read for yourself Heidegger’s description of our reality, of the potential, of darkness and of light, presented to us. These lines are three pages from the end of the essay.

The essence of technology is
in a lofty sense ambiguous.
such ambiguity points to
the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth.

On the one hand,
enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering
that blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing
and so radically endangers the relation to the essence of truth.

On the other hand,
enframing comes to pass for its part in the granting
that lets man endure
—as yet inexperienced, but perhaps more experienced in the future
—that he/she may be the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of the essence of truth.

Thus does the rising of the saving power appear.

The irresistibility of ordering
and the restraint of the saving power draw past each
other like the paths of two stars in the course of the heavens.

But precisely this, their passing by, is the hidden side of their nearness.

…But what help is it to us to look into the constellation of truth?

We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power.

Earlier today I read a post from a good friend who is now in Las Vegas. CLICK HERE  He described the surface appearance of “the strip” and made reference to the back-of-the-house labor necessary to all of that glamor. Opulence, then a few feet of space and some drywall separate between those fated to work themselves to death. I felt haunted to ask, How much of the desert is obliterated, obscured by all of “that” sort of development? How much more of desert, of forest, of shoreline of this ancient earth will be consumed by our insatiable appetite?

Heidegger writes the siren call of “more development”, the dark star, is paralleled by another star.

There’s the growth of the saving power.

We stare into the dark abyss in order to see the saving power.

Will continue this tomorrow…

* The header image is of two neutron stars colliding.