My brilliant career as a book writer

Launch of The Search for Edward Lewis in February 2019 at Parramatta Female Orphan School

“Twenty-four in ’24!” It’s almost a slogan.

It’s June 2024, and I am in the process of publishing my twenty-fourth book: The Sailor, the Baron and the Dressmaker, the story of a couple in my family tree (the lady was a cousin of my father). I thought it was a fascinating story, about a remarkable man and what looks like a genuine love story. I researched it mostly through documents from the National Archives of Australia. I think I have told the story well.

What will become of the book? I don’t know. I have uploaded it to my website, along with all the others. I may have an occasion where I talk about it in public. Not necessarily. But if you have occasion to find my website, you will be able to order the book from Lulu.com and they will print it and send it to you, through the modern magic of print-on-demand. Many of them are also available as ebooks. And sometimes my books find their way onto Amazon or Booktopia.

Next, I will move onto another book. The “Sailor” book started out as a short story, to be included in a book of short stories about a number of people in my family tree. After a while, I realised that the story was too big to be just one among many other stories in a book, so it became its own book. I still have the other stories sitting idle; there are four or five already written, and a few others waiting for me to get to them.

Launch of The Ten Thousand Things in November 2010

Saying that makes me look like a machine; the books are already planned and waiting for me to do the work. So it’s just a matter of work. Although it is not. There are layers and layers of ideas, some of which may never come to fruition. On the other hand, some books seem to come out of the air without any apparent forethought. Others change their direction immediately when I pick them up, like Siegfried and Ellen’s story (he was the sailor and the baron; she was the dressmaker). I had thought that this book would be done in a month, yet it has taken more than six months, and it has taken me to numerous libraries and museums, and on online trawling expeditions.

But I am not simply a researcher, or even primarily a researcher. This makes writing seem like a secondary thing, something that’s merely necessary to finish off and present the research. I prefer to say I am a writer of books. If I am asked the question that invariably follows: what genre? – you will have to accept that there is more than one answer. I have written several books about family history. I have written books that I call “reflections on experience”, and others on ethics and values, and I have produced several books of poetry.

Most people then assume that I am a “jack of all trades and master of none”. They want me to be more specific (that is, narrow). They don’t want my breadth of writership to be greater than their breadth of readership. I try not to take part in such altercations. The books are there, and they are what they are, insults and inferences aside. For my part, I ask: did you enjoy them? And, were they helpful?

Sometimes, a person reads one of my books and says nice things. One person obtained my first novel (a reflection on experience) the day before he flew from Sydney to San Francisco, so he read it on the plane – a good use of a long flight. After arrival, he sent me a text message to say that he thoroughly enjoyed it, and he savoured it for days afterwards. 

Another person said my book saved his life! (This was a different book.) I thought this was a bold claim, and I asked for more details. He said he had travelled to Thailand to do community work, and was planning to return to Sydney when COVID happened. The country was in lockdown, so he couldn’t leave. For a couple of years, the main book he had to read was my book. He read it again and again, and learned the names of all the characters and all the twists of the plot. It kept him sane.

The author’s book stall at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, July 2014

However, overall, I get little feedback on my books. I get little indication that many people have even read my books. That was not the case for my first two books. They were about a specific place, Kyogle in northern New South Wales. They were official works, commissioned by the Shire Council and the local school respectively. They sold in impressive numbers for a small town, and the feedback was very positive. People thought I had done their region proud. 

One old man, whom I didn’t know, stopped me in the street and told me he loved the book. He said he never read, and he hadn’t read a book in more than ten years, but he read every last word in my history of Kyogle, called Places in the Bush.

It was several years before I started writing “my own” books. But I would observe that I always had a “day job”. I always paid my own way. I wasn’t like those intense people with persistently uncombed hair who live in a haphazard fashion, slaving away on their masterpiece for months or years, depending on those around them to support them and excuse their apparent dissoluteness. I don’t say this as criticism, merely as affirmation that I made a decision as a young adult to pay the rent first. 

It was part and parcel of the fact that I grew up in a family where money had to be worked for, and I grew up keenly aware that it was the responsibility of anyone entering adulthood that they should support themselves.

Writing is not a job, and society does not owe you a living. The exceptions, of course, are where writing is a job, and where an author has “cracked the big time”. I did have a job as a writer for a couple of decades. I wrote commentary on management topics for a publishing company. It was a satisfactory living, writing competently but anonymously on subjects I was expected to address in order to meet our audience’s professional needs. 

The modest success of this career did not carry over to the books I wrote personally. I moved into an arena where I wanted to articulate my perspectives on experience. It was a shift, because formerly I needed to project authority, an air that I knew what I was talking about. I did, in fact, know what I was talking about, but eventually life pushes you into areas where you can’t rely on the concept of authority. Then, all you’ve got to say is, “My experience was this, and this is how I dealt with it…” 

Miles Franklin was still only young when she wrote the book, My Brilliant Career, and it was published by a (traditional) publishing company. It went into bookshops, and people had opinions about it. Her story was about wanting to be an author, and persevering through the obstacles that faced her, which included being a woman in a world where only men wrote books, and having to undertake paying work (being a governess). I haven’t had the same obstacles, apart from having to have a job, which initially was teaching.

Glenn’s display of books at book launch in February 2019

However, I have found the world of publishing formidable. Nowadays it is crowded, and publishers tend to be dismissive. Often, they don’t even reply to letters or manuscripts.

The first book I wrote after the Kyogle books was on business ethics. I had thought that a publisher would be interested. It was in the period after 2001, when several large corporations in America (eg Enron) and Australia (eg OneTel) had collapsed, and the reasons were primarily due to bad ethics. But the most concrete response I got was from the publisher who asked me if I was a university lecturer and could I require all of my students to buy the book?

Again, no criticism; I am just describing the shape of the landscape. In the end, I self-published and promoted the book myself. I had a book launch in a bookshop that had a space upstairs for events. I managed to sell enough books to pay for the cost of the book launch. The sad point was when, after the book launch, the shop said they didn’t want copies of the book for the shop. Could I please take them away?

I suppose that some people would have kept up the pursuit, looking for other avenues for publicity and other bookshops to take copies to sell. In fact, I did work on this for six months, and I spoke at conferences about the book and the ideas in it. The result was, I did not create any traction at all. Some people would have left it alone at that point, and taken up a day job or gone back to their day job. I already had a day job, which meant two things. First, I was not in a state of financial crisis, and secondly, I didn’t have to give up.

But give up what? I could give up on the book, or I could give up writing. My drive was to keep on writing, along with the day job. I know that some people think that you have to be prepared to take great risks. They would advise you to give up the day job, to sacrifice everything, and put all your energy into doing what is going (apparently inevitably) to make you a success. People who write books with advice like that tend to be very successful, feeding into (other people’s) dreams and desires.

My approach was a bit more measured. I didn’t really have a plan, but I was still impelled to write – moved along, you might say. Some things evolved which helped me. The printing of the ethics book was a big cost, and a storage problem. Boxes of books filled up my garage, and I had no bookshop outlets. I sold a few through my website, but there was a large disproportion between sales and stock. However, technology was making print-on-demand viable for books. Would it be possible to produce books and not print them at all, or just to produce a few to have on hand?

After the ethics book and one other, I was able to take this approach. Eventually I threw out most of the books in the garage. It hurt, but there was no alternative. I would have been buried underneath that pile for years. One of the first lessons of having a brilliant career is not to get locked into methodologies that magnify failure. 

One must work with the flow and not against it. One must work with time and not seek to force matters to bend to your will. I face obstacles, but I learn the strength of my will, and the directions in which to apply it. My books are not idle entertainment; they seek to serve the good. And I learn the lessons I have to learn, such as how to accept responsibility as well as to carry it lightly. I know I have been too serious in the past.

Each time there is a finished book, I have learned something. There are always lessons in the subject matter. From Siegfried and Ellen (the sailor and baron, and the dressmaker) I learned a lot about what they did with their lives, and how they lived their lives. From the problem of how to find out about them, I learned more about the pathways the research process can take. And I experienced once again how I could only do so much. Sometimes I could only guess and suggest what the truth might have been. But if readers find it heart-warming or inspiring, that at least is something that I felt along the way.

And if readers are scant or undetectable, I take comfort from words written by Ursula Le Guin: the will to create is its own justification. She goes further; she says that the creator’s primary responsibility towards their work does not cut them off from society. Rather, it engages them deeply with society. 

So, in any conventional sense, mine is not a brilliant career, but I write books, and I assume it as a responsibility. I seek to do it well. And the books are, at least, available.

Six Hats and Five Human Values

Edward De Bono has a conceptual tool called six thinking hats. De Bono says, “Thinking often proceeds as drift and waffle and reaction.” By adopting the strategy of looking at an issue from six different perspectives, De Bono says, one has a better chance of solving problems, and solving them more satisfactorily. It will lead to more creative thinking, better communication among the people involved, and better decision-making.

It can be used in conjunction with other models, such as SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).

Glenn Martin’s framework consists of five dimensions of human functioning: Cognition, Emotion, Valuing, Energy (spirit), Psyche (soul, identity). There is a value associated with each one: truthfulness, peace, right action, love, appreciation.

What are the six thinking hats?

White: facts, figures, objective information.

Red: emotions and feelings.

Black: logical negative thoughts.

Yellow: positive constructive thoughts.

Green: creativity and new ideas.

Blue: control of the other hats and thinking steps.

Without the conceptual tool of the six hats, people generally just use White and Green. They seek to focus on the ‘facts’ and then try to “think outside the box”. All the other stuff still sits around and gets in the way, but it is not articulated. The problems with the chosen solution generally arise after the decision has been taken. They may arise during the implementation of the plan (eg creating a new product to sell), or perhaps, not even until after the completion of the plan (when the product fails in the market).

The six hats have been applied to the various stages and types of problem-solving, from considering initial ideas to choosing between alternatives, process improvement, and strategic planning.

One of the advantages of using the six hats is that people are focused on one perspective at the same time, rather than some people suggesting new ideas and someone else immediately knocking them down. New ideas need air. Using the method should result in people working more collaboratively.

Another approach to problem-solving has been to think of possible outcomes, in terms of scenarios. This considers how to respond to an unknown future, by examining the range of possible outcomes, the risks involved, and the capacities that might be needed to address the varying possibilities. It seems clear that the six-hats approach would be helpful here.

Another approach has been to analyse problems in terms of their effects on stakeholders. This approach arose because organisations tend to operate for the benefit of the stakeholders who are most important to them (people with power and influence such as major shareholders) and ignore their effects on others.

The stakeholder approach reveals the role that power plays in decision-making. It also reveals the place of ethics in human actions. Society might regard a detriment to a particular group of people as being important, even if the organisation causing this detriment would prefer not to think so.

De Bono’s rationale was that if the different types of brain functioning are not identified (eg concern with facts is one type, negative or positive orientation is another), they may be overlooked in practice. But using the same reasoning, it can be noted that De Bono’s model does not identify ethics as a perspective at all. The closest it gets is to identify the Red hat: emotions. However, the effect of this structure is that ethics and human values become reduced to just being feelings, which can be disregarded.

This is a major flaw in De Bono’s model. One could say it is a fundamental flaw. Glenn Martin’s Five Core Human Values model is based on an understanding of how humans function in the world.

Cognition corresponds to the White hat. It deals with the concrete: facts, figures, logic, reasoning.

Emotion corresponds to the Red hat: It deals with people’s feelings, emotions and attitudes.

Valuing. This dimension is missing in De Bono’s model. It deals with judgements about right and wrong (and how this is understood), and the effects of our actions on others’ well-being. It includes our sense of fairness, justice, dignity, and respect for others.

Energy/Spirit. This dimension is about the vital principle, the animating force of living beings. It is a deeper layer and with it we distinguish what is trivial from what is more important. Human actions always have a human effect in the end. Problems and solutions do not eventually remain simply “objective facts”. Energy arises when the Cognition, Emotion and Valuing dimensions are functioning well. Then people can work together competently, harmoniously and ethically; and a spirit arises where greater goals can be pursued, and creativity is possible.

The Energy dimension includes the Black, Yellow and Green hats. Has De Bono done us a service in dividing this into three hats? Not unless there is a recognition of how energy develops. Otherwise, the identification of negative and positive thoughts becomes merely an intellectual exercise and they are unexplained.

Nor is there any reason why creativity should occur, unless the scope of thinking embraces the functioning of the initial three dimensions – Cognition, Emotion and Valuing, and the role of Energy is embraced.

Psyche/Soul/Identity. This corresponds to De Bono’s Blue hat. It is the dimension that observes, coordinates and makes sense of the other dimensions. It is the dimension that observes itself as well. Hence it is given the value of Appreciation.

Every one of the five dimensions is given a value. The fifth dimension: Psyche, soul or identity, has the fundamental value of Appreciation, because its functioning is about awareness, and appreciation is the basis for all else.

The value associated with Energy is Love (in some contexts, this word could be substituted with an alternative, such as deep respect, or compassion).

Right Action stands for a constellation of values, such as fairness, justice, dignity, and respect for others.

The value associated with Emotion is Peace, because our drives can result in strong emotions (desires, ambitions, anger) and they need to be managed.

And the value associated with Cognition is Truthfulness; competence in this dimension is not possible without it.

The Core Human Values model reveals that human functioning, alone or in social contexts, is not possible without exercising some form of human values. Things are better when this fact is made explicit.

It also shows that ethics is not the province of petty rules that interfere with the big games of commerce and worldly affairs. Rather, it is the model that puts human decisions and actions into a holistic perspective, in terms of seeking to identify what is of lasting human value.

The De Bono model may be helpful in a limited context, where the moral landscape is a stable given. However, it likewise solidifies any moral blindness that exists.

Edward De Bono, Six Thinking Hats, 1985, Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

Glenn Martin, The Little Book of Ethics: A human values approach, 2011, G.P. Martin Publishing, Sydney

You can also read about the five core human values in my later book, A Foundation for Living Ethically. See the Ethics page.
January 2024

Four Pillars

After I finished writing A Foundation for Living Ethically, I started to think about what I hadn’t said in that book. It was, after all, a book on ethics, not the whole of life. I had been trying to articulate what was important to an ethical point of view. But the question remained: what are the things that are important if we were looking at all of life? I was thinking about the assertion of the poet John Keats in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

I can see that there is truth in beauty, and there is beauty in truth, but it doesn’t quite answer my concerns. If you wanted to name some fundamental categories of life, that were wide enough to embrace all that you thought was important, what would they be? Of course, morality would be one of them, but morality does not stretch to cover all that we think is important in life. I was thinking very broadly, although I was not interested in summoning up a multitude of things. I felt there had to be a short list that was broad enough.

Part of my interest in this question was because of family history. When you are exploring an ancestor, you have certain things in mind: what were the things in life that were important to them? So, that became my context. These categories, could I see them in relation to my ancestors’ lives? That would be a good test.

So, after a while, I came up with four categories – what is important in life? I called them “the four pillars”. They are: Competence + Morality + Beauty + Love.

The thinking was this: when we start out in life, we are on a progression towards competence. We learn how to look after ourselves, feed ourselves, dress ourselves and so on. We learn to read and write, and many other tasks, even sporting activities are part of our competence. Competence is basic to our self-esteem. When we grow up, we generally learn an occupation, a craft or profession, and that becomes a big part of our self-esteem as an adult. Many of my ancestors were artisans – carpenters, miners, stonemasons, painters, plasterers, dressmakers.

Morality is a fundamental part of life. There is no human community without it. Care for one’s family and neighbours, honesty, responsibility, fairness, are all aspects of morality. Among my ancestors I see many signs of their commitment to morality. Their lives seem to have been imbued with it.

Beauty is the third pillar. This is to say, it is not enough to be competent. There is also an urge to make things that are beautiful. Keats would approve. I see this also in the work that my ancestors did, that there seemed to be a quest for aesthetics in their work. And in our lives, we may see that it permeates everything, from the littlest things, like tidying objects on a table and putting them in order, to the biggest things.

And the fourth pillar is love. It is not necessarily romantic love, but it includes that. It is a broad appreciation of everything in life. Without love, there is no joy.

There are other aspects that I would call “outputs”, such as happiness and joy. My four pillars I would describe as “inputs”, the things you should focus on. Happiness may come, but so too will sorrow. Focusing on happiness does not guarantee happiness, and will likely interfere with it. Focusing on Competence, Morality, Beauty and Love will give you a full heart. Striving to be “happy” will then not matter so much.

[This post comes from my book, Long Time Approaching: An Incomplete Memoir. (to be released February 2023). It is from Chapter 87..]

After Meditation

[This article is based on Chapter 28 of my book, FUTURE.]

It concerns me that some of the writings on meditation seem to imply that there is no past or future; there is only the present, where one is perpetually meditating – being still, dispelling thoughts. My question is, how long do you meditate for, and what do you do before and after that? To keep it simple, do you drink water? Do you eat food? Do you have a shower and change your clothes? Do you walk down the street? Do you say hello to the people who pass you by?

I have also heard that one should not think about the past – it is not real, only the present moment is real. And one should not think about the future – it is something that hasn’t happened yet. Only the present moment is real.

Yes, there is a sense in which these statements are true. When you are walking along a beach at sunset but you are focused on the messages on your mobile phone, there is a lesson to be learned. But we are embedded between the past and the future, and what happens in this moment may make a considerable difference to the future. Moreover, it may be our thinking and intuition, which is grounded in the past, which enables us to act right in the present.

* * * * *

There is a past, and it has significance. People may disagree about particular facts, and even more about their significance for the present, but it matters. We have to see ourselves as a cosmic conundrum. In one sense we are complete: “It is as if it were so – all of it”. But in another sense, we are undeveloped beings who must learn, who must cultivate our higher qualities. Unless we recognise both aspects of this conundrum, we will get everything wrong.

Everything is in the past. All our knowledge is about things that have happened, and we live in the present equipped with that knowledge. The present is the interface of our knowledge with what has not happened yet. If we do not recognise the past, then we are trapped by it. Jacques Ellul was acutely aware of this; that is why his final message is placed on a knife edge. If we do not recognise the inherent power of the force of technique, we will be drowned by it (see my previous blog post).

However, if we know what is at stake, we may forge our own freedom; we can make a new destiny rather than the one that has been assigned to us by sociological facts. Our family, our social class, our profession, our society – every fact about us has a deterministic force. It creates a momentum to which we are prone. However, it is only a latent force. We have the simple power to see things differently and to act differently, in accordance with the recognition of our universal divine nature, which is available to us in any moment. In fact, that is our responsibility.

It may offend some people to be talking about our divine nature. But I am no defender of atoms. If that is all we are, there is no point in conversation. I am wresting the divine from its church-based, sanctified prison clothing. The divine dances naked on beaches. I want to make room for that, to give it back to people who thought they had to dispense with what churches have sought to keep captured.

Cups of tea

When we embrace all that is possible, we will experience ourselves as divine. And I want to wed that concept to cups of tea on the verandah, the lovely minutiae of ordinary life. Will you join me?

The future is different. I want to start by knowing in my own person that it does not have to be brutal, greedy, domineering, sneering, aloof, dismissive, cruel, lacking in compassion, ignorant. I know the list, and it is long. I say, I will follow the will of Heaven.

And then we have to stop again. We can’t talk about Heaven; that’s an old-fashioned Sunday-School concept. I have brought back the divine. I also want to bring back Heaven. This is what I have to say: the universe is conceptual. It is the wise sphere and in it I have placed my confidence. I know, some people are outraged, but they are protecting empty dreams of a world filtered through the lens of churches. Embodied in that is delusion and deceit intent on the preservation of institutions.

Heaven lies at the heart of every breath. It yearns for the full lives of people, who are living in harmony with each other and with nature. It does not create civilisations of hierarchies and greed. It creates civilisations of plenty, cooperation and harmony. People are allowed to be themselves, but there is wisdom that protects us from the worst implications of our occasional stupidity. And there is time for tea on the verandah. There is mighty living, but there is no despoliation of nature. Who would mistreat nature? And there are songs that make you cry with love and wonder.

The place of completion in our lives

Do you believe in Heaven? Some people will still say it is just a fantasy, so I go back to the beginning. We have to see ourselves as a cosmic conundrum. In one sense we are complete, and in another sense we are a work in progress. I say, everything that comes into being comes from the place of completion. I accept that that sounds a little like Plato. What can I say? He agrees with me.

Heaven is a completeness, and an idea we are bringing to completion. All of us are doing this, in little, inadequate ways. It all helps. When you accept Heaven, you accept what follows. You can find yourself in the place assigned by Heaven, central and correct. You can harmonise the people with Heaven. When you are centred in Heaven, you discover that she responds and seeks to bring situations to their fulfilment. How would you do this otherwise?

We simply have to stay centred, remaining in balance. Avoid the need to force things to a conclusion. That is not your place. Simply abide in the Way. Heaven will play its own part. It contends with the powers. When it enters the stream it absorbs the contradictory currents and accepts that it has no solid base. In this case it will arouse people’s desire to work and serve the whole. There is something greater than all of us. That brings us back to centre. It is as if the clouds have gathered and we must have faith in the rain.

The superior person rectifies him/herself and fulfils the will of Heaven. They nourish wise persons for the growth of a new regime. I am not trying to convince. I am just saying that this is so. “Walk along, talk along, live your lives quite freely, think about the beauty that spreads like morning sunglow. Seagull I don't want your wings, I don't want your freedom in a lie”, as Donovan said.

* * * * *

Glenn Martin’s book, FUTURE: The Spiritual Story of Humanity (2021). See https://www.glennmartin.com.au/big-picture

Technology will save us

[This article offers an argument. It is not everything that needs to be said. And, blog articles are ‘supposed to be’ 600 words long. This article is about 1900 words. It will take three times as much patience. My apologies.]

Much of our belief in the viability of the future (for humans) is tied up in technology: technology will save us! Technology has created the problems, but only it can save us. There is an argument that our biggest problem was the advent of machines. This was supposedly the biggest advance in the history of humankind: the replacement of human energy with machine power. The arguments for this conclusion are compelling. And yet, this blessing has likewise been a major curse. Here is an example.

In Cornwall (my father’s ancestors came from Cornwall), tin and copper had been mined for thousands of years, probably back to around 3,000 BCE. It eked along as a craft, and was interspersed with farming depending on the weather and the price of ore, for that long. But in the early nineteenth century, steam engines were invented, and were applied to mining. They ran the pumps that pumped water out of the mines, and all the other machinery involved in the mine.

In less than fifty years, the mines were mined out. Yes, a great amount of money was made in those few years (by a few people). For a short space of time they were the most profitable copper mines in the world. And of course the end point would have been the same if it had taken a hundred or a thousand years longer. But another way of saying it is this: they exceeded the capacity of nature to provide. The slow way had enabled them to persevere. If you take something to its logical conclusion, you have probably taken it too far.

There is a higher-level argument to be made as well: indigenous peoples never exhausted their environment by plundering non-renewable resources. They enjoyed abundance and left abundance to be enjoyed tomorrow.

This is the essential sadness. Technology is our conceit, our religion. We believe it will deliver us into freedom. We don’t ask why it has not done so already. We ignore the damage technology has created. We have not yet prepared an apology for the people of Cornwall for the empty mines, much less anyone since then. They are all just collateral damage in the onrush of progress.

I think of the things that are supposedly working now, and I think about the eighty percent of employees worldwide who are disillusioned by their work environment and their bosses, or who merely tolerate their bosses. I think: this is what is supposedly working.  Why would you put your faith in it?

A book called The Technological Society was published in 1954, written by a French thinker, Jacques Ellul. He is not against technology, but he takes issue with our attitude towards it. He was saying that we have been so beguiled by technology that we have made it the goal rather than a tool.

He goes as far as saying: “Since the religious object is that which is uncritically worshipped, technology tends more and more to become the new god.” This statement is hard for people to accept today, because we think that technology has been our salvation from religion.

However, Ellul says, “The distinctive characteristic of our time is a precise view of technical possibilities, the will to attain certain ends, application in all areas and adherence of the whole of society to a conspicuous technical objective. All these, taken together, constitute what I have termed a clear technical intention” (p. 52). He builds his case ominously and relentlessly.

It is not just about machines or other forms of technology. It is the place of technique as a mode of thinking in our lives. Technique overrides human life with its concern with method. Method usurps human considerations and eventually comes to constitute the end – in itself, as they say.

The effect is chilling. He says, “Technique is opposed to nature. Art, artifice, artificial: technique as art is the creation of an artificial system…. It destroys, eliminates or subordinates the natural world, and does not allow this world to restore itself or even to enter into a symbiotic relation with it…. We are rapidly approaching a time when there will be no longer any natural environment at all” (p. 79).

I think that Ellul’s concept of technique, fashioned in the 1940s, was an extraordinary insight, which encapsulated developments occurring in the twentieth century across every field of human experience and endeavour: “We are today at the stage of historical evolution in which everything that is not technique is being eliminated” (p. 84). To make it worse, the advance of technique necessarily accelerates. He goes on to say:

“Since techniques, proportionally to their development, exhaust the resources of nature, it is indispensable to fill the vacuum so created by a more rapid technical progress. Only inventions perpetually more numerous and automatically increasing can make good the unheard-of expenditures and the irremediable consumption of raw materials such as wood, coal, petroleum and even water” (p. 90).

Apart from consuming, destroying or despoiling the environment, technique overtakes humans themselves. (Ellul speaks of ‘man’ where he means ‘humans’; this was an understood convention of the time when he wrote.) It is supposed “that men orient technique in a given direction for moral, and consequently non-technical, reasons. But a principal characteristic of technique is its refusal to tolerate moral judgements. It is absolutely independent from them and eliminates them from its domain. Technique never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use. It intends, on the contrary, to create a completely independent technical morality” (p. 96).

Technique “dissociates the sociological forms, destroys the moral framework, desacralises men and things, explodes social and religious taboos, and reduces the body social to a collection of individuals” (p. 126). Ellul argues that there is just one, global civilisation, but not because of the rapidity of communication and travel. It is a ‘technical civilisation’. This civilisation “is constructed by technique (makes a part of civilisation only what belongs to technique), for technique (in that everything in this civilisation must serve a technical end), and is exclusively technique (in that it excludes whatever is not technique or reduces it to technical form)” (p. 128).

Technique has extended beyond the inorganic to the organic. For example, the manner in which we rest and relax becomes the object of techniques of relaxation. There is a technique of friendship and a technique of swimming. Our civilisation is no longer “the result of the profound spiritual and material effort of generations of human beings. Instead of being the expression of man’s essence, they will be accidents of what is essential: technique”, and “the cold calculations of some technician” (p. 130-131).

What is the end of this for people? “There are still artisans, petty tradesmen, butchers, domestics, and small agricultural landholders. But theirs are the faces of yesterday, the more or less hardy survivals of our past. Our world is not made of these static residues of history. In the complexity of the present world, residues do exist, but they have no future and are consequently disappearing” (p. 147). From the standpoint of sixty or so years later, one could say there are still artisans, but the thrust of technique and its direction are clearer than ever. The direction is to eliminate any aspect which is personal or non-systematised.

The dominance of technique raises many problems for humans. When a human value comes up against a technical imperative, the human value is reduced to a number (quantified) and then it has to take its chances in the technical paradigm. But there is no way to transcend the gulf between a technical ‘fact’ (eg the assignment of a monetary value to a human life) with a moral value (the intrinsic value of life).

Ellul says, “Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilisation. Everything is its concern” (p. 125). His book seems like a message of doom, but he says: “It is not my intention to show that technique will end in disaster. On the contrary, technique has only one principle: efficient ordering. Everything, for technique, is centred on the principle of order” (p. 110). This seems even worse than doom.

He continues: “Technique elicits and conditions social, political and economic change. It is the prime mover of all the rest, in spite of any appearances to the contrary and in spite of human pride, which pretends that man’s philosophical theories are still determining influences and man’s political regimes decisive factors in technical evolution” (p. 133).

There is a sleight of hand involved in the operation of technique. The end point, Ellul says, is this: “Technique causes us to penetrate into the innermost realm of falsehood, showing us all the while the noble face of objectivity of results. In this innermost recess, man is no longer able to recognise himself because of the instruments he employs” (p. 146). 

Despite this conclusion, Ellul does not intend to leave us in despair. In his Author’s Foreword to the Revised American Edition he says, “We must look at it dialectically, and say that man is indeed determined, but that it is open to him to overcome necessity, and that this is an act of freedom. Freedom is not static, but dynamic; it is a prize continually to be won. It is not a question of getting rid of [the technological phenomenon] but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it. How is this to be done? I do not know.”

The conclusion to Ellul’s examination of technique is all but despairing. How do we sustain our freedom as a person? “I do not know,” he says. But I suspect he had some idea. The two key aspects are ethics and creativity. He has described at length how technique can hijack both of these aspects of life, but if you are clear that these are integral to a worthwhile life it will be easier. He even asserts that civilisation is the result of “the profound spiritual and material effort of generations of human beings”. If one knows the nature of technique one can continually distinguish how its elements can intrude on the higher (human) values.

What it takes is for someone to notice and point out the sleight of hand that occurs through technique. An example is in music. In the 1980s, synthesisers were invented and it became possible to record all manner of sounds and reproduce them at call. You could, for example, get a choir to record every single note on the piano (as ‘ah’ or ‘ooh’), assign those notes to a keyboard and then play a song as if you were a choir.

It was predicted that we would no longer need humans to sing music. We could have it all trapped in a music box synthesiser and generate music at will. The excitement lasted for a couple of years. But humans, it seemed, like to hear other humans play music live, with all its faults, costs and inconveniences. There is something essential about the human-to-human connection. Now, although recording studios still use machines to play with the possibilities of sound, the ‘industry’ has accepted that humans are essential, with all their frailties and idiosyncracies. No one has ever said that a synthesised soundtrack was sublime.

Reference

Ellul, Jacques, 1964 (1954), The Technological Society, Vintage, New York.

This article is based on Chapter 24 of Glenn Martin’s book, FUTURE: The Spiritual Story of Humanity (2021). See https://www.glennmartin.com.au/big-picture

The Human Story: Violence and Technology

The story of Easter Island, the statues (called moai, of which there are about 900) and the fate of the forests there may have lessons for our society. The warring and competition between the two factions of people on Easter Island were constant, even as the island became denuded of forests and other resources. Perhaps one lesson from the history of Easter Island is about violence.

Some writers have offered the same argument about the whole of humankind, world-wide. Its woes can be traced to its acceptance of violence. In some religions we learn that there was a Golden Age when the earth was abundant and relations between people were benign. This is the story of the Garden of Eden. The theme occurs in Chinese writings too – the ancestors understood the balance of yin and yang, leaders were noble and wise, and nurtured the well-being of the people, and the earth gave of its plenty.

At a certain point the connection was lost, and ever since we have (collectively) pursued power and greed. Societies have been stratified, and some people use their power to oppress others (like the slavers who visited Easter Island), and garner far more of the earth’s abundance than they need. The converse is that a stratum of people is created, who suffer lack of the basic necessities, including security and freedom. It is not nice. In our current society, the under-class (which still constitutes the majority of the population) persevere and tolerate their condition.

So, one theme of change is the role of violence in the deterioration of life, and this is seen as the destiny of humanity. As one might guess, this theme takes us back into the past about 10,000 years. Perhaps we are living in the wake of 6,000 to 10,000 years of madness. A related theme is the dominance of economics in life. What was once a legitimate examination of the economic aspects of life and societies has become an existential perspective on life itself. You could call it misguided, or ludicrous. You could certainly call it galling, or you could call it Neo-Liberal poison.

Another theme is the role of technology in life, given that the remaining source of optimism is the new powers that technology will give us to address the intractable problems of climate change. Technology is the new god. It sounds like science, but it has all the characteristics of religion. Rather more rests on faith than on evidence. And, as we currently see, even if technology does deliver the capacity for environmental breakthroughs, it has to get through the existing power structures of the Neo-Liberal economists.

This may seem Luddite. The Luddites were considered to be anti-machinery in principle, and most people today would still think this is an unacceptable stance. Machinery and technology are considered to carry an historic inevitability, which, apparently, is a moral argument. The Luddites were a secret, oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the early 1800s, and the myths that arose around them are larger than life. But from the standpoint of today, machinery won and it will always win. The Luddites smashed machines. No one does this now.

But, to make another moral argument, the point on which we ought to be focused is the point at which an argument over-reaches itself. There is a point at which technology over-reaches itself. Once again we have to ask, what is the point of human life – to serve the machines? To make life better for the machines? Let’s remind ourselves that machines have no feelings; they will do what we instruct them to do. There is a place for the sanctity of life. What price are we prepared to pay? Perhaps it will mean everything. Logic eventually is predatory; if you take something to its logical conclusion, you have probably taken it too far.

In the time of The Dreaming, when the land was being formed and natural ecologies were being laid down, and when rulers of (small) human societies were noble-minded, the costs of defying nature were known. It was not superstition; it was an acute knowledge of the natural way. For us to accept this, we would have to accept that our life up until now has been crazy, and we have lived all our life in unnatural toleration and obeisance.

(This is Chapter 5 of my book, “FUTURE: The Spiritual Story of Humanity”. Am I being too harsh or extreme? Or not? Perhaps what I am saying is a jolt, a correcting perspective that calls us to come out of our state of sleep.)

Old Knowledge

There is a certain conceit about humans today. We think that we are the most knowledgeable people who have ever been on the planet. And yet there are so many things we do not understand much about, and there is also evidence that some early peoples had a wealth of ideas and knowledge.

We come with the prejudice of our present; we think the people of the past must have been cruder, more ignorant. Yet the indications from the very earliest cities are teasing: their diversity suggests different purposes at work, not a uniform development from hunting to agriculture and then commerce. And, for example, many peoples had knowledge of the cardinal directions and they accorded them with significance in their lives….? What does that suggest?

Then you can read a piece of history, how there was a plague, a natural disaster or a violent skirmish, and everyone died. So everything that was known by those people was lost forever. And meanwhile we might wonder if those people who died did not know wise things, amazing things. We are the inheritors of loss as well as gain.

But we are triumphalists; we worship progress, and place our hopes in that. We think that anything that was lost was learned again, or was not worth knowing. We think the ancient people may have been devoted, but they were mistaken. They were superstitious, believing in dark spirits and magic. We have learned knowledge, and we know that magic is only tricks and sleight of hand.

We say we know there is no evidence for the things of spirit. No one has found Atlantis, no one has found the fairies at the bottom of the garden. That has even become a joke. We are modern.

Yet, even when the first cities were made, there were memories of times no longer known. The first books of the Christian Bible were written after the ninth century BCE, long after the first cities had existed. In Genesis we are told that the whole world, with animals, birds, plants and humans, began with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is the story that came to endure over much of the world since then.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of god was moving over the face of the waters; and God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” (Genesis, chapter 1)

There were five more days, culminating with God creating humanity in His own image: “In the image of God He created them, male and female, and He told them to be fruitful and multiply”.

In ancient China the story goes differently. In the mists of the Kunlun Mountains, the First Ancestor was born when Lady Yuan of Jiang trod on the big toe of Di’s footprint and swallowed the egg of the Dark Bird; she conceived in awe. She gave birth to Prince Ji and to Hou Ji, Ancestor Millet. This happened at the Hidden Temple below the summit where the Tiger Spirit dwells.

In Australia, the world before the world began was, as in the Bible, without form and void. In the Dreamtime the land was first shaped and all the forms of life came into being. The totemic beings, such as the Rainbow Serpent, transformed the landscape and still live as the rocks and hills and watercourses. The moon and the sun and stars came to life. The tracks for following animals wove their way through the land, and there were ceremonies and rites for the maintenance of the health of all things.

I learned about Creation at Sunday School. We coloured in pictures of Adam and Eve in the Garden, enjoying the free gifts of the fruits and herbs. Often there were two pictures, the first of which was trouble-free. We were allowed to enjoy that for a brief moment. Then we were given the second picture, and a conundrum too hard for a child – there was one fruit that was forbidden, yet Adam and Eve ate of it. It contained the curse of knowing good and evil, and Adam and Eve were cursed and sent away from the garden to spend their lives in labour and in pain.

It was a hard lesson. Eating the apple was wrong, but we were told by our parents to eat apples every day because they were good for our health. And I never understood why it was wrong to know the difference between good and evil, and our parents reminded us of the importance of knowing that every day too. It was only years later when I read the Tao Te Ching that I understood.

“When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. When his work is done he forgets it; that is why it lasts forever.” (Chapter 2; Stephen Mitchell)

I learned early that some things will never be explained to you. The dominant requirements are to remember and to obey. The older knowledge was obscured.

This article is an extract from the book FUTURE: The Spiritual Story of Humanity. Find out more: https://www.glennmartin.com.au/big-picture

Image: Michelangelo, The Fall of Adam and Eve, as depicted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling (taken from Wikipedia)

Telling Human History

Human history is a story, so there are different ways of telling it. It depends on what you think is most significant. Here is my first attempt.

In the old, old days things were different. There was a time before people. There were other creatures, some of them very large, like giant lizards and dragons. Some of them flew in the air, and others lumbered along the ground, their feet crushing lush green undergrowth.

There were changes, and long passages of time. Into the landscape came creatures we would recognise as being related to us – like us but not quite us. They had similar bodies and arms and legs. They also had massive jaw bones, good for biting and chewing. They had no foreheads but two thick ridges above the eyes. That did not suggest deep thought, although looks can deceive. These people learned to use elementary tools, and hunt for food.

Among them were the people who have become us. These people also learned to communicate with each other, more than just making noises like grunting or the music of birds. They talked. And they drew pictures on rocks and the walls of caves. What did that mean? It suggests an appreciation of significance. It was not art, not as we know it, to make something pretty, or to draw it like science, a faithful representation. No, it was more likely to be wonder, or the desire for power – magic.

The ages passed, and the world became warmer. On our measure of time, it was around 12,000 years ago. The people learned to grow plants deliberately for food, and tame animals such as sheep, dogs and cows. This made a difference; there was greater stability and variety of life in that transition. It changed the nature of living.

But still the people were scarce on the earth. They lived in small groups, brought together mostly by the need for defence against wild animals, and the need to coordinate their activities. They learned how to build houses with the skins of animals, mud and clay and sticks and leaves. They learned the use of fire so they could cook. After long ages, they learned the use of metals like copper, tin and iron to make tools, weapons and implements. They made pots which they baked in their fires.

In time, some of the settlements became larger, with more people, who lived there permanently – villages and towns. People began to specialise in their labour – the hunter, the farmer, the maker of clothes, the trader, and others.

And these people saw themselves as being in relation to the world of spirit. It was a Sun God, or the God of the Heavens, or there were many gods – the river, the mountain, the great mother, the lordly father. The gods (or God) were loved and feared.

Priests and wise men rose up to mediate with the gods. God might be an angry spirit who needed to be placated. Or the god could be the provider of food and life through the sun and the rain. There were rituals.

Let’s say we are marking the time at around 3,000 BCE. At this point, networks of villages had been augmented by larger towns and cities at occasional intervals. As well as the separate, isolated tribes of people, there were rulers – kings and governments of a sort. The reach of these kingdoms was limited but growing.

Early cities developed in a number of regions, from Mesopotamia to Asia and the Americas. The very first cities were founded in Mesopotamia after the Neolithic Revolution, as long ago as 7,500 BCE. Mesopotamian cities included Eridu, Uruk, and Ur. At Gobekli Tepe in Turkey there is a collection of buildings signifying some kind of community dating from around 9,000 BCE. Another settlement in Turkey was Catal Huyuk, which thrived from around 7,000 BCE.

The city of Mohenjo-daro arose in the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan) from about 2,600 BCE and had a population of 50,000. In the ancient Americas there were also early cities, in the Andes and Mesoamerica, which flourished from as long ago as 3,000 BCE and up to 1,700 BCE. This is apart from the Egyptian civilisation that was established around 3,000 BCE which produced the enormous pyramids.

Were these cities a natural development from the establishment of agriculture? Yes, but early urban centres are notable for their diversity. Some cities were primarily political capitals and did not have large populations; others were densely populated trade centres, and still other cities had a primarily religious focus.

China's cities date from around 2,000 BCE. City-states emerging at this time used geomancy to locate and plan cities, orienting their walls to the cardinal points of the compass. Symbolic cities were constructed as celestial microcosms, with the central point corresponding to the pole star, representing harmony and connection between the earthly and other realms. In Chang'an the imperial palace lay to the north, facing south, absorbing the light of the sun, and royalty slept with their heads to the north and their feet to the south.

We could ask ourselves how such ostensibly primitive people seemed to know, and understand, about earth magnetism, the cardinal directions, and the compass. It doesn’t quite square with the image of a hungry, slightly desperate man holding a spear and hoping to catch a wild animal so that he and his family can eat. It raises questions.

The story of humanity

Books that tell the story of humanity are popular. We want to know, not just the facts, but the story of ourselves over the long term. We want to see ourselves as part of that ‘we’ – and belong to that ‘we’, all of us. And we want the story to say something about us too – we are clever, determined, brave, noble, or whatever it is.

It is more difficult today, when the world is faced with mounting problems, when the determination to consume continues unabated, and when the wealth of a few continues to mount obscenely compared to the misery of many. It is difficult when we don’t seem to be able, collectively, to change our ways and live within the capacity of the planet to provide.

The story of humans is different depending on the point of view you take. Some writers are excited by the adventure of it – explorations, civilisations, wars, empires, inventions, and the modern age. But what would an inquisitive spiritual perspective find? If we are ‘of spirit’ instead of being merely matter, what does our past look like now?

Our history has featured violence, cruelty, greed, unequal societies, oppression, and today, unregulated economics and unbridled technology. In the face of these failings, do we even have cause to hope for the future? Will there be a future at all, or will our poor relationship with ecology lead to global catastrophe?

On the other side, there is a notion that humanity is a tide, and the tide is unstoppable. When we are faced with problems, there is reassurance in this. We will triumph, as we have always done. Or, there is the other notion, that what we are seeing now is a rush to oblivion. There are plenty of examples of our capacity to keep doing the same thing, even when we know the result will be doom.

Then, there is no shortage of people and books that set out a pathway to redemption. We can change our ecological impact on the planet, we can cool down the heat we have generated over the last two to three hundred years. We can change our political systems, we can quench the causes of conflict. We can redistribute wealth more equitably.

The problem with all the solutions is that they have to be imposed on the planet. Everyone has to agree, or someone has to take charge, and the solution has to be accepted by all. Not only is this unlikely, is it what we want? Soviet Communism promised that all would be well if the Party decided how to run society. To be ironic, there were, inevitably, flaws. The symbol of that endeavour was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

There is no alternative, is there? We just have to try again, or we have to try harder to persuade everyone. Or hope that the next group of leaders has all the appropriate qualities of intelligence, determination, humility and morality, and that they remain that way once they have acquired power.

I think we need to follow another path – to start with the self. We need to look at ourselves differently: we are ‘of spirit’, and it is ourselves that we must recentre and rebalance. Is this defeatist? Is it giving up on the exterior world? I think not, because if we do not harmonise ourselves, we will be of little use to the world. We have to remember that we have been encouraged in our society to do the opposite, to run on empty in the desperation to achieve external goals. We neglect to see how our achievements are flawed because of this.

To say that again – we do not recognise that our external achievements are flawed because our interior environment is disharmonious. This is a hard lesson. We have to learn to stop our headlong rush in a sufficiently deep way to experience peace.

How does this affect our view of history? This is a new perspective. It is a spiritual story. It is a story of how people experience life – whether they act from fear or joy. All of our history looks different now. And with this perspective we can go all the way back to the deep past and ask ourselves about it again. What happened in that time?

What did people of those times know? Certainly they knew things we don’t understand, such as how to build huge structures like the pyramids of Egypt, and why. Was there a time when things came unstuck? For our future, this is an issue of great significance.

At the least it will change our view if we open up the past to these questions of wonder. But back in the present, it may only be our awareness individually, our attention to recentring, and our perseverance in right living that will save us all. Start with the self.

View and purchase Glenn Martin’s books at www.glennmartin.com.au