The technology driven modern world and Gandhi

Abstract

Modernity is often identified by technology and technological artifacts. Heidegger, one of the most influential 20th century critics of technology, rightly argues that modern technology transforms everything into mere raw materials for our use and reuse and propels an era of decadence. Though decadence in various forms is rooted in the very art of technology it continues to be the winner of the day. The utmost decadence that we can think of, argues Gandhi, is the crisis of our own culture and the loss of our interior self-dimension. Gandhi treasured and accepted various aspects of modern Western civilization, like freedom, scientific temper, equality, and human bonds; however he enunciated an important counter view that in the long run these hallowed modern ideals good and valuable in themselves could not be achieved without reductive technologisation. Gandhi argues that modern technology comes with a sense of reductionism and pushes us towards an anthropocentric, exploitative view of reality. Though Gandhi appreciated modern scientific temper, he thought that the latter would cripple humanity and paradoxically would make the new human values – liberty, equality, and fraternity – empty, and the human pursuit after them violent and inhuman. He argued that the modern technological civilization denudes human values and ignores the essence of the soul. Gandhi believed that modern technology is harmful because human beings are unable to put a check or find a middle path in their engagement with technology. In this chapter I shall discuss how Gandhi appreciated the advent of Western modernity with a special focus on his critique of the technologically driven modern world.