Nelson Mandela on Mahatma Gandhi
by Vinay Gupta • May 15, 2007 • Hexayurt • 1 Comment
Gandhi remains today the only complete critique of advanced industrial society. Others have criticized its totalitarianism but not its productive apparatus. He is not against science and technology, but he places priority on the right to work and opposes mechanization to the extent that it usurps this right. Large-scale machinery, he holds, concentrates wealth in the hands of one man who tyrannizes the rest. He favors the small machine; he seeks to keep the individual in control of his tools, to maintain an interdependent love relation between the two, as a cricketer with his bat or Krishna with his flute. Above all, he seeks to liberate the individual from his alienation to the machine and restore morality to the productive process.
J.R.R. Tolkien also criticized this, albeit covertly. My personal view is that machines are alright as long as they do not inhibit creativity. But who can tell when a machine inhibits creativity and when not?