Is the Future of Technology Actually Ancient?
“What is the relationship between Spirit and the technological? This is an invitation to consider that there is something technological in spirituality, as there is something spiritual in technology.”
-Malidoma Somé
I think the best-case scenario for how technology could transform under Pluto in Aquarius is not “more” technology or even “smarter” technology. Nor is it a pendulum swing in the other direction, where we condemn technology as evil or as something to be feared and overly skeptical of. In my view, the best-case scenario would be a shift in how we understand and approach technology, including what it is, what we develop and use it for, what ideologies and worldviews its serves, and who or what it benefits and who or what it harms.
And, like most challenging or existential or philosophic questions, we would need to embark on a Sankofa* style journey through the time-tested wisdom of the ancestors and indigenous ideologies—folks who, as Malidoma Somé put it, “see nature as the originator of our tools,” and “know that our tools or our technology must be used in harmony with nature’s design and purposes”—for insights and clues we can use to answer those questions today.
Here are a few compare-and-contrast observations about modern/Western technology and indigenous/African technology that I’ve compiled from Somé, author of Ritual: Power, Healing and Community and The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual and Community. Just keep in mind that “this is not a polemic intended to foster dislike of modern technologies, replacing them with a worship of indigenous ones,” as he wrote in The Healing Wisdom of Africa. “Rather, the purpose here is to open a window of reconciliation between two cultures’ way of responding to the world.”
NOTE: Somé was a member of the Dagara community in Burkina Faso, West Africa. As a child, he was removed from his community and raised by French Jesuit priests before re-integrating into his community as an adult. He was initiated as a Dagara shaman and scholar of traditional healing practices, and earned doctorates from the Sorbonne in Paris and Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
Also be sure to check out the companion piece to this article: The Road Technology Won’t Let You Take
*Sankofa is an Adinkra term for “going back to our past in order to go forward.”
Q: What is technology?
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the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry
machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge
the branch of knowledge dealing with engineering or applied sciences
Oxford Languages/Google
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“A dynamic interplay among the mind, emotion, spirit, and senses of the human body on the one hand, and the natural world on the other”
“Indigenous technology concerns not only the material world but extends to and grows out of our interaction with Spirit”
“the embodying of our relationship with Spirit”
Malidoma Somé
Q: What is the purpose of technology?
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“industrial, commercial and military uses”
“the immediacy of power”
“ascendancy, acquisition, and control and mastery over the material world”
“intimidation”
“power over workers and citizens”
“visibility”
“[make] life seem easier, comfortable, cozy”
“[keeping] oneself distracted” and, as a society, “[protecting] itself from having to face even subtle duties toward its higher self”
“its purpose is not to give life, but to suck the energy out of it”
Malidoma Somé
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“[keep] the individuals, and the relationships between individuals and nature, healthy”
“[preserve] the delicate balances of the environment and [serve] human needs”
“heal and help people remember and fulfill their purpose in life”
“fulfill basic human needs, such as community, health, harmony and a sense of meaning and purpose in life. In this sense, technology is oriented toward Spirit.”
“help human beings increase their awareness and consciousness.”
“attend to the lower part of human existence”
“[serve as] the vehicle for going home” (“home” meaning nature and the spiritual world)
“[a way to] be attentive to what liberates the person toward taking care of the higher level of existence.”
“maintain and serve the individual and community”
Malidoma Somé
Q: What impact have these technologies had on their respective societies?
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Stability, secured by a “heavy load of military hardware”
“Though Western culture aims at improving the quality of life (and has accomplished this, at least as far as the eye can see), these improvements have come at a price: humans have become indebted to their technology. To indigenous people, the individual in the West has been made a servant to technology”
“[people who] are progressively emptied out of their spiritual and psychic fuel,” because “the machine world either refuses to provide a sense of complete satiation or it just doesn’t have it to provide”
“attractive…material abundance” alongside “repulsive…spiritual and emotional poverty”
“[a society where] you must rhyme your life with speed, rapid motion and time”
“[a society] where it is not possible to think of life outside of the context created by the Machine”
“careless waste” with “explosive and destructive side effects”
“pure water having become like sewers”
“the noise of traffic and factories”
“industry abandoning its droppings anywhere it wishes, knowing full well that what [nature] cannot digest, nothing can.”
“power that produces the poor, the menial worker, the man and woman in debt and the homeless.”
“general degeneration of the spiritual”
“a person or culture [that] forgets its crucial relationship with other worlds, that is, with the ancestors”
Emptiness & unfulfillment, as “the machine world either refuses to provide a sense of complete satiation or it just doesn’t have it to provide…one cannot live in harmony with technology; one serves it and is fed with the hollow hopes of being fulfilled by it some day”
“[a context where] the Machine has overthrown the spirit and, as it sits in its place, is being worshipped as spiritual…Anyone who worships his own creation, something of his own making, is someone in a state of confusion.”
Malidoma Somé
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Stability, secured by “a state of alignment with Spirit, with cosmic rules and regulations”
“harmony with nature’s design and purposes”
“the ability to change and adapt, and they usually adjust themselves to changing needs in the community”
“wholeness…realizing [our] purpose and contributing to the healing of this world”
“an intimate connection between [our] work and the products of [our] work”
“evolution [that] takes place quietly, without the explosive and destructive side effects of Western technology.”
“subtler and less polluting technological evolution”
Malidoma Somé
Q: How do these technologies work?
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“[by] manipulating matter”
“[by steaming] through life like a locomotive, controlled by a certain sense of careless waste and destruction”
“[by rushing] ceaselessly forward with a consumer’s mentality, [polluting] everything in [the] way, conquering and destroying anything that interferes”
“by exerting a powerful magnetic shadowlike pull on the psyche of the individual. Thus the individual feels compelled to respond. But as he or she tries to respond, the individual begins to realize that the source of the pull is elusive. For the machine world either refuses to provide a sense of complete satiation or it just doesn’t have it to provide. And yet the machine world cannot let go of the individual (or else the machine will cease its motion) in spite of the fact that it cannot fully provide for the individual’s needs”
“[keeping people] busy enough to forget that there could be another way of living their life”
Malidoma Somé
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“its intention is not to disturb the natural world” but to “remain in service to nature”
“A harmonious relationship between Spirit and technology begins with trust in one’s vision and one’s perception…Our vision is the starting point of a primal technological power, which is the ability to manifest, to make Spirit real in material form.”
“In producing anything, indigenous people make it a point to inquire with the Spirit World as to whether this product is appropriate. Usually it is, otherwise the idea would never have come to their consciousness to begin with. For indigenous Africans, dream and vision are evidence of the Spirit pointing the way to us. What is shown to you in that manner is actually an invitation from a higher realm to consecrate yourself to the production of something that is going to benefit the greater community.”
“[with careful] attention to community and to Spirit”
“[by making sure it’s] contributing not only to the individual but also to the collective or the community.”
“anything that can be accomplished by manipulating energy without consuming resources is preferred.”
“Since the source, and home, of indigenous technology is nature and the world of Spirit, to that source you must go in order to learn and grow and evolve.”
“What may be difficult for the Western mind to accept is the sophistication of a technology that includes so little machinery. But indigenous people are committed to interacting with the natural world without consuming resources.”
“Since the source, and home, of indigenous technology is nature and the world of Spirit, to that source you must go in order to learn and grow and evolve.”
Approaching things “from the context of spiritual perception” and having “a mind that is not antagonistic to the whole of things, to communion between the natural and spiritual.”