To stop is to be stupid. To stop is to become a stopper, not a 'gob-stopper', but a 'life-stopper', an 'aliveness-stopper', a 'flow-stopper'. To stop is to be stupid. It's that simple. Look at the words. They're almost the same. And yet.
Etymologically, the word stop derives from vulgar Latin stuppare, to stop or stuff with tow or oakum, from Latin stuppa, 'coarse part of flax, tow'. This tow was used to make plugs that could then be used to seal leaks, to stop up drainage, to close eardrums.
This may explain why car drivers are so dumb, and why (wild) cyclists and walkers by contrast are so ingenious and alive in comparison, because of stopping and not stopping (otherwise known as flowing). The car driver stops where the wild cyclist/walker flows. One is thus cosmic whilst the other is anti-cosmic.
This anti-cosmos manifests itself in a loss of original continuity. To be sure, animals and the wild often come to a standstill - forests have been known to freeze - but they never stop flowing beneath this seeming stasis. Man, on the other hand, because he has aligned his self with the industrial, and with the machine, stops. This is your clue to 'Technology' and what is true techne-logos : the capacity and capability to continue flowing in spite of breakdowns. This is how you find out if your technology is true technology or false technology: true technology never stops, it never breaks down, it never conks out. Sure, it can have the odd mishap, say in the instance of a broken arm or a lost eye, but that mishap begins mending itself and regenerating immediately. If it can't regenerate then other organs will compensate for this. And if it can't compensate it will reconfigure. This is the essence of technology: always going and accordingly, never stopping.
To stop is to be stupid.
No comments:
Post a Comment