Western Technology and the Recovery of Indigenous Wisdom
Joseph Isidore Fernando
Mother Pelican, August 2025
We need to review critically the historical rise of Western technology, its impact on the world and how it is imperative to save the wisdom of the local cultures. This critique is aimed at creating awareness of the blunders committed by the West and inviting both the West and the rest to seek the pathway to wisdom and sanity.
The Origin and Growth of Western Technology: Contributory Factors
The world is both the environmental world of nature and the social world of everyday activities. The environmental world is supportive as well as harsh; supportive because it sustains life and harsh because humans need to tame it to suit their purposes. Down through the ages, in all the regions of the world with their varying geographic conditions, humans have used their wisdom and time-tested experience to live in the environmental world. They have their own technology the world over, which has stood them in good stead until arrival of the dominant Western model.
Euro-centrism
Professor Rajani Kanth, economist and Fellow at Harvard University rightly remarks that: "Around the 17th century, post-Renaissance Europe struck upon a brand new model of societal being, best described as Eurocentric modernism. It is both a prescriptive ontology and epistemology, that is, a philosophy, politics, societal framework, an economic modus, and a way of living, thinking and interacting. It is this paradigm that has brought the entire world today to the brink of various kinds of extinctions that we know or anticipate of the environment and planet itself. It is a fateful system and we need to exit it." [1]
The Western development model has been imposed all over the world at the cost of the indigenous ones. By way of tracing the roots of Western domination, an examination of the American creed would reveal the ambiguity of such a creed. The core of the American creed as expressed in the Constitutions is the pursuit of happiness which may mean several things. To the American mind, happiness may predominantly consist of good living. Good living may mean prosperity which may primarily be consumption of material goods, more precisely, maximum consumption of material goods. Thus happiness may be equated with maximum consumption of material goods. This may be a general trend. But that does not mean everyone indulges in maximum consumption. The chief way of pursuing happiness may be by accumulating material comforts. But everyone cannot possess as much wealth as one would like. If some possess more, some others will have less or none. If the European-Americans want to be prosperous and pursue happiness in a material sense, then obviously some other groups will be deprived of their legitimate share of wealth. A scapegoat may be found.
The Industrial Revolution
"Industrial Revolution, in modern history, the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. These technological changes introduced novel ways of working and living and fundamentally transformed society. This process began in Britain in the 18th century and from there spread to other parts of the world.... The main features involved in the Industrial Revolution were technological, socioeconomic, and cultural. The technological changes included the following: (1) the use of new basic materials, chiefly iron and steel, (2) the use of new energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine, (3) the invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom that permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy, (4) a new organization of work known as the factory system, which entailed increased division of labor and specialization of function, (5) important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio, and (6) the increasing application of science to industry. These technological changes made possible a tremendously increased use of natural resources and the mass production of manufactured goods."[2]
The stages of the Industrial Revolution are as follows:
Stage one: 1760 –1840. Invention of machines, Use of Steam and Fossil Fuels
Stage two: 1870 –1914. Electrification, Steel, Mass Production
Stage three: 1914 –1947. Transistors, Information Technology
Stage four: 1947 – 1990s.Computers, Internet, Globalization
Stage five: 1990s – present. Pollution, Toxification, Overshoot
Although the Industrial Revolution brought about unprecedented changes in the mode of production, communications and transport, it ushered in unfortunately the unethical exploitation of both humans and nature. The ever-hungry machines owned by the ever-greedy capitalists consumed never-ending human labour and raw materials for mass production. Wealth continues to get accumulated in the hands of the owners of the means of production leaving the masses pauperized. The emphasis is not on the welfare of all but of a few. Some may say this story dates back to the 19th century England and no longer valid because circumstances have changed. But not exploitation! With the introduction of factories and other paraphernalia in the colonies the degree of exploitation increased. Nowadays, highly sophisticated machinery replaces humans but at the same time the profit of the capitalist shoots up. In the Third World, child labor and bonded labor exist. Trade Unions and workers’ rights are trampled upon. The State usually sides with the capitalists.
Colonialism
When the Europeans discovered the new lands, they believed unjustifiably that they had a claim over them. Discovery was linked to occupation, appropriation and ownership. It seldom occurred to them that the ‘new’ lands were the homeland of the ‘natives’ for thousands of years. Thus the so-called Third World became colonies of Europe. When the Europeans encountered the non-European cultures, perhaps the former suffered from the assumption that the latter were inferior to theirs. This assumption is obviously baseless, since these cultures had their own antiquity. For example, the civilization of India is older than that of Europe. The archaeologist Gordon Childe remarks that at the time of the Indus Valley Civilization known for its palatial buildings and a highly developed urban culture, people in England were in the Stone Age. Nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America were plundered for the sake of European capitalism. This resulted in mass poverty in the colonies. The colonies struggled for decades to be free from the shackles of slavery and oppression. Colonizing somebody else’s land amounts to robbery, lawlessness and gross violation of the principles of justice. It would seem Europe was the center of the world and the rest of the world existed for its sake. The Industrial Revolution spread from England to the rest of Europe, which was in dire need of raw materials from elsewhere to keep its industries going. That was the beginning of colonialism.
Globalization
With globalization of economy nowadays there is a fresh threat of neo-colonialism because the West has superior technology. The Marxists seem right in their observation that the owners of the means of production have their wealth multiplied even in their sleep. Multinational corporations, backed by their governments, run the world as they deem fit. Industrialization ushered in the era of modernization. The rest of the world believed that modernization was one of the best things that could happen and aped the Western model forsaking time-honored native wisdom. The consequence of this is a long list of woes: disappearance of native manufacture, exodus to the cities, cut-throat competition, greed, consumerism, disintegration of the family, artificial lifestyle, junk food, pollution, arms race, militancy, suicide bombs and numerous conflicts ultimately heading to the probable decimation of all life.
The problems of globalization are essentially moral rather than economic or ecological. Globalization is a product of the predatory Western civilization, which is spiritually and morally decadent today. It is a threat to the rest of the world. Globalization stems from neo-pagan secularism and predatory colonialism. Some Westerners seem to assume that they have more rights to a comfortable life than non-Westerners. For Westerners, racial discrimination seems necessary to keep non-Westerners out of the mainstream economic opportunities. Violence too is necessary since the days of colonialism to subjugate the natives. The trinity of racism, militarism and materialism are embedded in globalization. For some nations, globalization is a major part of their empire-building exercise. Is globalization synonymous with Americanization?
Western Economics
"It is inherent in the methodology of economics to ignore man’s dependence on the natural world." [3] If economics fails to recognize human’s dependence on the world, the consequences will be terrible. The kind of economics we have is predatory and globe-threatening. E.F.Schumacher writes that: "I suggest that the foundation of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modern sense, because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man." [4] Universal prosperity is a lie.
The Philosophical Presuppositions of Western Technology
Cartesianism
Descartes is responsible for changing Western philosophy dramatically. He upholds human as the ontological centre. Reality is what human asserts it to be whereas the Greeks understood reality as constant presence. The Medieval human believed in God, the absolute ground of all existence. For Descartes, reality is understood from the viewpoint of the subject who looks for sure and certain knowledge. What is true is rational. Heidegger calls this truth not subjective but subjectivistic. Nature is mathematized and science is the mathematization of nature. Everything extended is measurable and quantified. What is not quantified does not stand the test of truth. This marks the dawn of the technological age. Descartes unwittingly had negative impact on the environment. His famous dictum, ‘I think; therefore, I am,’ created a dichotomy between the thinking thing or the knowing subject and the extended thing or the known object. This has had far-reaching consequences down through the centuries. The world is divided into two kinds of beings: beings with mind and beings without mind. Beings with mind are endowed with knowledge and can make sense of the world. Beings without mind are simply there. Beings with mind are humans for whose sake beings without mind are there. The human is the Lord of all non-human beings. Some humans believe in being Lord of other humans too! Otherwise how could colonialism and racism emerge?
Descartes did not probably foresee the practical consequences of his dualism of mind and matter or dichotomy of subject and object. But what has happened is the emergence of the belief that the world exists to be dominated by the rational beings. The world is there to be rearranged, redesigned and reordered to suit human purposes. The Lord of the earth happily continues to cause environmental disasters. The Western technological model is unthinkable without enormous harm to life-sustaining eco-system.
Francis Bacon’s Inductive Method
Francis Bacon introduced the inductive method to control nature for human comfort. As Heidegger remarks, a cardinal motive of science is power. Science bestows power on humans over nature. He calls this 'the logic of domination’ which has been violent and exploitative. "Baconian method (is) methodical observation of facts as a means of studying and interpreting natural phenomena. This essentially empirical method was formulated early in the 17th century by Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, as a scientific substitute for the prevailing systems of thought, which, to his mind, relied all too often on fanciful guessing and the mere citing of authorities to establish truths of science. After first dismissing all prejudices and preconceptions, Bacon’s method, as explained in Novum Organum (1620; "New Instrument"), consisted of three main steps: first, a description of facts; second, a tabulation, or classification, of those facts into three categories—instances of the presence of the characteristic under investigation, instances of its absence, or instances of its presence in varying degrees; third, the rejection of whatever appears, in the light of these tables, not to be connected with the phenomenon under investigation and the determination of what is connected with it."[5]
Bacon’s inductive method had a degrading impact on humans and the environment over the centuries. The technological world is largely a legacy of Bacon. Polluting the atmosphere began with the Industrial Revolution as factories were set up for large scale production. Mistakenly, we think the world belongs to us. But the truth is the world does not belong to us; we belong to it. We ought to save it to save ourselves. The choice is between save the world or perish.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a typical colonialist British philosophy which might have inspired the consumer culture. After the discovery of America by Columbus, the Europeans colonized it. They grabbed land from the natives, drove them away, and finally almost exterminated them. The Europeans were born to rule, to enjoy the good things of the earth! How could the natives stand in their way? There is no society or nation wherein some philosophical belief is not operative to such an extent that it manifests itself in social institutions and processes. Obviously, there must be some philosophy behind the American creed, the core of which is the pursuit of happiness.
Philosophy in Britain has been chiefly empiricism and British ethics markedly utilitarian. As America was once a British colony and many settlers were from Britain, culturally the former was like an extension of the latter. Therefore, the dominant philosophy of Britain, in my opinion, probably became the dominant philosophy of America too in its early years. Utilitarianism was founded by Richard Cumberland in 1672 and developed by David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, J. S. Mill and Henry Sidgwick in the 19th century. "The two principles of utilitarianism are: 1) the consequentialist principle that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the goodness or badness of the results that flow from it and 2) the hedonist principle that the only thing bad in itself is pain. The greatest good and happiness of human is the sum total of pleasures. The utilitarian doctrine can be expressed in the form of a single principle, the greatest happiness principle: the rightness of an action is determined by its contribution to the happiness of everyone affected by it." [6]
This philosophy which upholds pleasure as the goal of life has further strengthened the legacy of exploitation. Aristotle considers happiness as the goal of life. But the Utilitarian philosophers depart from this position to uphold the pleasure principle. Perhaps for them happiness is equated with pleasure. How should humans go about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain? What would be the behavior of humans in a society which seeks pleasure? How would social life be possible? Is human only a pleasure-seeking animal? If everyone in a society is a pleasure-seeker, what would be the nature of such a society? What comes first, pleasure or goodness? Is it more important to be a good person than being a pleasure-seeker? In order to be good, do we not renounce some pleasure? Although some pleasure is legitimate and necessary for humans, does that mean we live only for the sake of pleasure or do we have certain higher purposes in life? Is the meaning of life found only in pleasure? It seems that the philosophy of Utilitarianism would justify exploiting the world for the sake of experiencing pleasure. This world is finite and not sufficient for everyone’s indulgence in maximum pleasure. Although humans are in need of material things for living, they are distinctly beings of moral concerns. We need to create a world where all would have the opportunity to live a truly human life devoid of dehumanizing conditions. The Western technological model is tinged with Utilitarianism.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a typical American philosophy. Only America can produce and afford such a philosophy. As a regional philosophy, pragmatism may have little relevance to the rest of the world. Allied to the utilitarian tendency of America is her native philosophy of pragmatism. The leading pragmatists like founder C.S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey under the influence of Darwinism conceived philosophy in down-to-earth terms. Pragmatism is another expression of empiricism. In his Pragmatic Theory of Meaning, C.S. Peirce advocated that concepts have meaning only when they are related to effects. Concepts of meaning are the same as concepts of effects. Take for example, the term "fragile" which means, "If we were to strike a thing, it would snap or shatter." William James converted theory of meaning into theory of truth. According to him, truth is that which works. That which is useful and leads to success is the true. ‘The true is verified.’ Truth has to be tested in experience and experiment. If a thing cannot stand the test of experience, it cannot be true. For John Dewey who advocated Pragmatic Instrumentalism, the human intelligence is a tool for successful adaptation to conflicts arising out of man’s encounter with new situations. Dewey attempted to apply instrumentalism to society and education in order to make human life happy and successful. Like the Utilitarian philosophers, the pragmatists believed in happiness or pleasure, rather than goodness or virtue as the goal of life.
Is there a connection between the oppression of the natives by the Europeans and the philosophies like utilitarianism and pragmatism? In my opinion, the answer is in the affirmative. On closer examination of this connection one can come to know that Western domination arises out of the implications of these philosophies. They are as follows: firstly, the Greatest Happiness Principle justifies an act if it produces happiness, which is the goal of life. Happiness is to be obtained if human life is to be meaningful. Adhered to seriously, this principle would result in one’s accumulation of pleasure in a competitive society where survival is most important. In a society where utilitarian ethics is in practice, excessive selfishness, cut-throat competition and exploitation would be rampant. Economic advantages are most desired and certain groups have to remain disadvantaged and marginalized. It would be no exaggeration to say this is what happened in America. For the happiness of the European-Americans, the African-Americans have remained disadvantaged.
Secondly, the greatest happiness of the greatest number could imply the greatest happiness of the dominant European-Americans. So the minority African-Americans would be deprived of the greatest happiness. Thirdly, pragmatism with its equation of truth with success and usefulness has worsened the plight of the African-Americans. Although the situation in America today has changed to some extent thanks to the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., who could be successful except the European-Americans? The success of the Europeans is of paramount importance and the failure of others insignificant. When success becomes a supreme value, it hardly matters how one achieves it.
Materialism
"In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man. If only there were more and more of wealth, everything else, it is thought, would fall into its place. Money is considered to be all-powerful; if it could not actually buy non-material values, such as justice, harmony, beauty or even health, it would circumvent the need for them or compensate for their loss. The development of production and the acquisition of wealth have thus become the highest goals of the modern world in relation to which all other goals, no matter how much lip-service may still be paid to them, have come to take second place. The highest goals require no justification; all secondary goals have finally to justify themselves in terms of the service their attainment renders to the attainment of the highest. This is the philosophy of materialism..." [7] Materialism rejects Transcendence and is trapped in matter. Thought process is material and possible because of complex nervous system. Humans and dogs perish in the same manner. The philosophies of Utilitarianism, Pragmatism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism and fascism are predominantly Western expressions of materialism. The Gulag Archipelago and the concentration camps were created by the materialists. The Western technological lifestyle is materialistic in terms of exploitation and a consumer culture.
The Impact of the Western Technology on the Globe:
Ruthless Exploitation of the Natural Environment
Although Western technology cannot be totally demonized, aping it blindly the world over without consideration for local conditions has resulted in environmental decay. The world is getting devoured and finished. Climate change and nuclear weapons threaten the survival of all life. The doomsday clock is ticking. Are we equipped to stop it?
Estrangement and Dehumanization
Alienation of humans takes place at a much faster pace. The Western development model with its emphasis on economic development, in fact, works against economic development. This economic model of production, distribution and consumption is driven by the motive of unjustifiable profits. A decent profit motive is understandable but acquisitiveness at the cost of human welfare is outright immoral. Today's corporations push forward the Western development model so that they can rule the world. This model seems to promote the underdevelopment of the Third World. Native communities are uprooted from their homes. In the name of development, deforestation is on the rise. Communities which are sustained by the forest and mountains are thrown into alien surroundings where they live in subhuman conditions. In mining areas too, excessive mining displaces thousands of people. The governments seem to support the multinational corporations which have scanty respect for the displaced people.
Global Violence
Western technology is one of the causes of global violence. Proponents of this model say they are interested in economic development and seemingly ignore holistic development. They treat humans primarily as consuming beings with the belief that the more they consume the more they are fulfilled. This attitude leads to greed. Greed is insatiable which in turn goads selfishness, cut-throat competition and violence. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Today, almost the entire world is engulfed by violence because of misplaced priorities. Such a lifestyle destroys the joy of living.
Science without Ethics
The benefits bestowed on us by technology are numerous that it would seem technology is a miracle-worker. But at the same time, the danger of technology looms large before us. "The greatest danger invariably arises from the ruthless application, on a vast scale, of partial knowledge such as we are currently witnessing in the application of nuclear energy, of the new chemistry in agriculture, of transportation technology, and countless other things." [8]. Modern humans are angry and violent. Their violent attitude towards others was glaringly revealed in the two world wars. They abused science and technology for torture and annihilation. Technology has entered not only every realm of human enterprise but also the human body. A great challenge is how to handle technology.
"Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. Even the greatest ideas of science are nothing more than working hypotheses, useful for purposes of special research but completely inapplicable to the conduct of our lives or the interpretation of the world. If, therefore, a man seeks education because he feels estranged and bewildered, because his life seems to him empty and meaningless, he cannot get what he is seeking by studying any of the natural sciences, i.e. by acquiring ‘know-how.’ That study has its own value which I am not inclined to belittle; it tells him a great deal about how things work in nature or in engineering: but it tells him nothing about the meaning of life and can in no way cure his estrangement and secret despair."[9]
Science without ethical responsibility would be disastrous. There cannot be such a thing as science for the sake of science. Science is always for humans, the moral persons. We humans are not moral enough and lack wisdom to handle what we have created. We may destroy ourselves by our own creation. Thinkers like Karl Jaspers lament that the atom bomb and total rule are the two terminal forms of destruction. "It was technology, with its communications and other tools of the omnipresent will of the state that made the total enslavement of all by the state possible." [10] Wicked intentions lead to wicked inventions which prompt wicked use.
Apocalyptic Possibility of Cessation of All Life
Nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat to the world because they can wipe out everything from the face of the earth. So the wisest and the most urgent task would be to eliminate them before they eliminate us. With heightened hostilities all over the world, a nuclear conflagration is not completely ruled out. Tendency to global suicide is no longer shocking. We do not seem to be distressed by the probability of the obliteration of the humanity. With increasing loss of the value of the human person, human life may not count much.
The Dynamics of Indigenous Wisdom and the Necessity of Its Recovery
Western technology is projected almost as a universal blessing. In fact, it is far from being so because of the enormous harm it has been doing to the whole world. What could be done best is to recover the wisdom embedded in indigenous cultures regarding the lifestyle of communities. The ultimate salvation emerges from within the local communities. This cannot happen without lived examples and conscientization. Aping the morally decadent West is a sin. Uncritical acceptance of the Western development model would spell disaster to the globe. Recovery of local wisdom is an imperative without which indigenous communities would vanish.
Indigenous wisdom is the collective knowledge and practices of a community, which are derived from thousands of years of experience. It is more than technical know-how. It is based on a profound understanding of the interrelatedness of everything. It includes ontology in the sense of the nature of various beings, epistemology with reference to the knowledge of things, ethics in terms of how the members of the community ought to behave and what duties and rights they have, value-based social and political interaction, jurisprudence regarding the function of certain rules and regulations for the community, economic activities, medicine, agriculture, production of artifacts, aesthetic enjoyment and many other things.
Conservation of the Environment
Local wisdom not only enabled the native communities to survive but also to flourish. Contemporary thinkers are critical of the Western anthropocentric approach to the environment and advocate biocentrism. Biocentrism is nothing new because that has been the practice of indigenous communities especially the tribal people who have a symbiotic relationship with the environment. There is a fundamental flaw in anthropocentrism. Being rationally endowed does not mean having license to treat nature whimsically without perceiving the interrelatedness of all things. A biocentric view includes only living beings. But we must transcend biocentrism to embrace pan-centrism which includes all things. It renounces a life of domination and convenience and opts for a life of concern which seeks to preserve, nourish, take care of and respect all things Heidegger’s call to be custodians of being is not new because this has already been the practice in indigenous communities. By saving other beings we save ourselves. Concern for all beings can free us from possessiveness, and annihilation. Some may ask: Is it not enough to respect humans who have intrinsic worth and dignity as members of the Kingdom of Ends, to use a Kantian phrase? Although humans are members of the Kingdom of Ends, this Kingdom exists together with other Kingdoms of plants, animals and minerals. All things are found in the one larger Kingdom. Reality is not fragmented but perceived in its unity.
Preservation of Rural Communities and Their Economy
Failure to save the villages would cause lots of problems. The cities will sink under their own weight due to exodus from villages. ". . . [T]here is the immediate question of whether ‘modernization’, as currently practiced without regard to religious and spiritual values, is actually producing agreeable results. As far as the masses are concerned, the results appear disastrous – a collapse of the rural economy, a rising tide of unemployment in town and country, and the growth of a city proletariat without nourishment for either body or soul." [11] The world today is in the hands of the multinational corporations. No village can escape the impact of the multinationals on it. Recovery of local wisdom is a long, arduous, uphill fight. Solidarity, sustainability and nonviolence have a pivotal role to play in shaping the wellbeing of the communities. Restoration of rural industries, medicine, agricultural and occupational practices and the like depend on the understanding of the communities. Fear is the chief obstacle to wellbeing. Courage overcomes fear and sustains the community. Several forces today are out to destroy the sense of community. The battle must go on. The world belongs to the brave. The choice of the rural communities is between fear and courage, between gloom and joy.
Endnotes
[1] The Times of India, Pune, Friday, October 13,2017, p.16.
[2] Encyclopædia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/).
[3] E.F.Schumacher, Small is Beautiful. Rupa and Co. Delhi, 1993, p.36.
[4] Ibid., p.26.
[5] Encyclopædia Britannica (https//www.britannica.com/science/Baconian-method). Retrieved on 2 November 2017.
[6] Anthony Quinton, Utilitarian Ethics. MacMillan, London, 1973, p.1.
[7] E.F.Schumacher, Small is Beautiful. p.246.
[8] Ibid., p.29.
[9] Ibid.,71.
[10] Karl Jaspers, The Future of Mankind. The University of Chicago Press, 1973, p.215.
[11] E.F. Schumacher. p.51.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joseph Isidore Fernando is Professor Emeritus , Arul Anandar Autonomous College, Madurai, obtained a Baccalaureate in Philosophy from the then Pontifical Athenaeum, Pune; Masters in Ancient Indian Culture, MPhil in Philosophy and Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Pune; and a Diploma in Gandhian Thought from Madurai University. He participated in a Postdoctoral Research Seminar Program conducted by the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. and has presented papers at several international conferences abroad. He has been teaching philosophy in India, Thailand and Macau. His books are: Dynamics of Liberation: The Social Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., Pathway to Peace: A Nonviolent Lifestyle, and Heidegger on Science and Technology.
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