Reaching beyond technology-dominated world views: intuitions and practices

Part 1: the technical-empirical indoctrination

Having worked in technology for 20+ years, my observation is that the majority of people working in technology have, knowingly or unknowingly, adopted a world view that does not entertain intuitions about immaterial things that defy empirical study. We aren’t comfortable with phenomena that cannot be explained with words, models, formulas - with intellect.

You may ask why should you? Here’s why: to cultivate perspectives that complement your rational intellect and give rise to intuitions about meaning and connectedness beyond our material existence.

Why should you care about that? Lisa Miller, writing about the psychology of spirituality based on her empirical studies, concludes that “the ability to be spiritual is our birthright” and backs the claim by empirical evidence. Her data shows how embracing spiritual characteristics leads to well-being.

It is not a question of why you should, but how spiritual self-inquiry can grant you meaning throughout your time on this planet. As Miller notes, spirituality is a birthright:

The new research raised the possibility that just as we are cognitive, physical, and emotional beings, we are also spiritual beings. In other words, it's possible that we are built to be spiritual and that spirituality might be a fundamental and necessary part of our human inheritance that contributes to our mental health. Kendler's groundbreaking study suggested that spirituality isn't just a belief, but something each of us is born with the capacity to experience. - Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain. Psychology of Spirituality and Our Search for Meaning.

Unexamined Technology is a reader-supported resource for re-examining your relationship to technology. The best way to support my work is by becoming a paid subscriber and sharing it with others. Thank you! -Aki

The technical-empirical indoctrination

Young people entering education in the various technology-related disciplines are guided to adopt values that privilege technical and empirical interests for knowledge. Focusing on this set of values alone creates an artificial rift between technology and other socio-cultural dimensions — including ethics and spirituality. In the process, a false dichotomy emerges between the rationalist engineering mindset and more qualitative intellectual pursuits, such as the humanities and the arts, let alone spiritual endeavours.

Stephen Petrine and Franc Feng have explored the relationship between technology and spirituality through the values that technologies embody. They put forward five values: technical-empirical, socio-political, ecological-natural, ethical-personal, and existential-spiritual.

Petrine and Feng talk about the importance of addressing each of these dimensions in education. Yet, they observe that technical-empirical values, i.e. those that speak to an uncompromisingly rationalist world view, are the ones that are emphasised and prioritised in current educational systems. As a graduate of such systems and with experience as an academic within them, I have to agree.

Zachary Stein writes about how the notion of human capital permeates western educational systems. It predominantly readies young people to serve the markets, rather than readying them for a sustainable life as partners, parents, and citizens who seek wisdom through social interactions and self-inquiry.

Technology education typically covers operational principles of machines, their physical properties and materials, design of related processes and services, and to an extent, their historical contexts and economics. While the climate crisis has put more emphasis on the interdependences of nature, culture, and technology and their mutual sustainability, ethical and psychological inquiries into technology are still underdeveloped. Addressing ‘a theology of technology’ or how technologies generate meaning and contribute to world views is almost non-existent, certainly in the mainstream. More balance is needed, but even starting points are scarce.

I suggest we need to renegotiate this rift. Technologists can benefit from tools for thought that invite them to reconsider what spirituality means. For example, spirituality can be approached as a set of practices and perspectives that help in reaching beyond ordinary, everyday existence. Such intuitions complement the workings of the rational intellect and cultivate intuitions about meaning and connectedness beyond the technical and empirical; beyond the intellect and language and towards what can’t be said but only felt.

The mind is an ecosystem, not a computer

The metaphors of machinery and computation have historically dominated descriptions of the workings of the human mind. Examining the human mind as a computer implies that flows of information and physical processes are computational and ‘all there is to it’. The approach implies, for example, that consciousness arises from the matter of the brain, even if no one has come even close to explaining how that happens.

Hence, the thinking goes that equations, models, and words can be used to describe the mind exhaustively. If not today, then in the near future — it’s always just a decade or two away when we can upload our brains somewhere, according to deluded ideas about eternal life. In contrast, intuitions about spiritual matters tend to defy verbal descriptions and speak to emotions and the body rather than the intellect alone.

In Education in a Time Between Worlds, Zachary Stein tears apart the notion of mind as a computer metaphor. He shows how the computer metaphor, in educational contexts, has led to standardised tests and sidelined the holistic contributions to human development that the study of arts, humanities, and spirituality can bring.

In Near Enemies of the Truth, Christopher Wallis analyses quasi-spiritual platitudes such as ‘you make your own reality’ and how believing in them can increase one’s anxiety rather than ease it. He discusses the lack of classes in emotional care towards others in primary and secondary education, and how that sets the scene for suffering when young people experience feelings of inadequacy in the school subjects that most educational systems privilege.

Stein refers to developmental thinkers, including Ken Wilber, who have suggested that a more agreeable metaphor for the mind is that of an ecosystem: something that is in constant flux, endlessly forming and reforming into something the development of which can only be evaluated in longer timeframes and in context, rather than poking at it with blunt, one-size-fits-all instruments, such as standardised tests.

Ecosystem also points to how all human phenomena are related: how all individuals and what we perceive are ultimately connected, and how individualised minds can draw strength and comfort from that unity. The notion of such connectedness lies at the heart of spiritual traditions that seek to awaken us to unity rather than separation.

Spirituality as access to what is sacred

I know the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘spirituality’ can be woolly and even feel embarrassing or resentful to you. Some of you might be more comfortable with the word ‘sacred’. But how much have you given thought to what the words actually mean? Why do you feel uncomfortable with them?

Perhaps a look at definitions will help. Maya Spencer defines spirituality as,

the indefinable urge to reach beyond the limits of ordinary human existence that is bounded by unconscious forces and self-interest, and to discover higher values in ourselves and to live them consistently in our relationships and roles. - Maya Spencer (2012), What is spirituality?

In his book Essential Spirituality, Roger Walsh defines spirituality as the ‘direct experience of the sacred’. Another definition can be found in neuroscientist Lisa Miller’s book The Spiritual Child:

Spirituality is an inner sense of relationship to a higher power that is loving and guiding. The word we give to this higher power might be God, nature, spirit, the universe, the creator, or other words that represent a divine presence. But the important point is that spirituality encompasses our relationship and dialogue with this higher presence. - Miller, Lisa J. The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving (p. 25).

Notice how these definitions include the notion of a higher being or level of existence, or direct access to it, i.e. something that transcends mundane existence. Elevating oneself from the mundane, ‘the grind’, can help in finding a more profound meaning to one’s every day.

In Buddhist terms, this means letting go of suffering — not necessarily in the physical meaning of the word. Rather, in the sense of suffering that emanates from the need to continuously move the goal posts in striving for more wealth, more recognition, more high marks, more material possessions, more items on your CV, and so on.

Such achievements tell us that happiness always lies elsewhere, whereas spiritual traditions and teachers have for centuries acknowledged that happiness emerges from letting go of beliefs; it lies within, not in our thoughts (of craving, analysing, planning, ruminating, clinging to things) but in our ever-present awareness.

“You are the happiness you seek”, as Rupert Spira has put it.

Spirituality in practice

How, then, can we cultivate such transcendent aims? While it is useful to establish a definition of spirituality, definitions tend to be quite abstract. What does spirituality mean in practice?

Vedantic monk Swami Sarvapriyananda cites a Ramakrishna colleague who defined spirituality as “when I close my eyes, I find peace within and when I open my eyes, my attitude is ‘what can I do for you?’ This is spirituality.”

Spirituality is about awakening to the oneness of everything and consequently to the service of others. I have found this insight practical, for example, in growing into parenthood and mentoring colleagues. As Roger Walsh has said of it in Essential Spirituality, ‘Spiritual practices are those that help us experience the sacred — that which is most central and essential to our lives—for ourselves.’

In what follows, I suggest that day-to-day spirituality comes together via two aspects: intuitions and practices. I am eager to explore what this means for technologically oriented minds; how such exploration in the form of self-inquiry can shift such a mindset and unveil assumptions — to produce a ‘critical technical awakening’ as I proposed in an earlier post.

We’ll pick up from there in part 2.

Thank you for reading. As always, I will leave you with a piece of contemplative algorithmic art.

With love and kindness,

Aki