The Human and the Machine

The defining image of the human, mastery over nature, and human nature

The machine and the human.  A very simple relationship?  I think not.  Our culturally inhibited language encourages us to place “machines” beneath and under the control of “man.”  (Interesting that we still think of “the tool” as “man” business.) 

Perhaps, little harm is done by yet another reference to the “over and under” principle, the hierarchical way we have of placing things.  Afterall, we tend to agree over and over again with Emerson, “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”  And we still eulogize John Henry’s, a steel driving man’s, competition with the machine,:

John Henry told his captain.
Said, "A man ain't nothing but a
man. But before I let your steam
drill beat me down, I'll die with
a hammer in my hand..."

Both seem a plea to keep the machine, and by extension they who use the machine, below the “uber man.”  Or to elevate the heroic, “titans” of industry, above the “swarm.” 

This should be disturbing.  It claims that the role of the human is to dominate, to subject—the hulking brute or the savvy con artist, putting another down. 

And when the machine has proved its worth, itself it becomes the hammer, or the weapon, or the vaccine.  We see it as a challenge—to make, to use—and as a human triumph.  And the maker becomes the hero, defending the mass of humanity from yet another “beatable” threat.  Today, Thor’s hammer is science driven—finally, we don’t have to worry about steam. 

Do I exaggerate the part such images play in our human identities?  Domination and conquest imply separation.  Power as an end in itself.  Expression of power over nature our only destiny. 

There are other ways of seeing, other ways of being.  We and all our tools and all our adventures and all the moving parts of our aspirations are part of a vast relational complex touching all reality in Heaven and on Earth.  Not that the human is one more interchangeable part in a whole, but that the whole is sacred.