Technologies of Love and Magic

The conversion of attempts to address love and the magical into technologies has become the major way of dealing with humanistic efforts. Science can then return to the business of making the world as if nothing happened. Love and magic are routinized as new techniques within the system. To complicate matters, many humanists have played into this game and even encouraged it. Eager for Status and credibility within the scientific community, they have sought to "package" their views in ways that scientists might easily understand and incorporate in their framework. They have argued for their humanistic views in ways that would be marketable to the larger audience -- Western culture. Indeed, for example, we find McGregor (1960) seeking to sell humanistic values to management by referring to love as a "hygiene factor." (McGregor's work is frontier breaking for management theory; Maslow uses his work extensively; there is a humanistic tone to his effort.

Such is an understandable metaphor: just like failure to have breakfast, if one does not get their love "needs" met before going to work, it will interfere with the day's work. Despite the attractiveness of such expedient marketing approaches for encouraging executives to pay attention to the human side of enterprise, such an approach seriously diminishes our understanding. Love is not a hygiene factor -- it is the active component in the creation of meaning.

Even for those who would wish to avoid the scientific approach, the traps which are inherent in any effort to avoid the scientific method are subtle. And it is difficult to outgrow the scientific mind set.

The popular culture is always clamoring for some new way of remedying our situations. It becomes easy to technologize love. Love becomes translated into power in the scientific mode. And if the humanist does not turn the effort into a technology, then often the media does. We are a culture craving instant techniques for love and meaning. We seek techniques in the cause and effect mode. Have not we been raised to expect that science will provide us with "push-button'' techniques for love?

In high school, we can all remember our eagerness to learn techniques which would make us lovable. If only we had the right clothes or memorized the right phrases, then love would surely come our way. Unfortunately, as we have matured to adulthood, most of us have not given up the desire to find such a formula. We have changed our "outfits" -- down to even the houses and the cars we "wear" and the club we join. We have a new rendition of catch phrases, ways of ''being" and emotional recipes that will solve our problems. Yet, there appears to be no shortcut to intimacy. The "horrible" truth is there are no quick psychological techniques that will return us to wholeness. As Fromm (1968, p. 88) wrote: "there are no psychological shortcuts to the solution of the identity crisis except the fundamental transformation of alienated man into living man."

When it comes to relationship, we are all novices. We are breaking new ground each time. Yet the "little scientist" in all of us wonders from time to time if perhaps the world is not "color-coded" -- that perhaps if we were but initiated into the secret, we would be able to

read situations and operate in them masterfully. We have demanded such techniques from our social science and rushed towards each new gimmick for intimacy much as we would try a new fad. But this all belies and covers up the real problem. Love cannot be technologized. Even with those insights which do work, if we turn them into techniques and ready-made steps/programs, they become but parodies of themselves.

A technique is foolproof. You step into it. It makes no difference who the user is, what their motivations are or their level of understanding. A light-switch is operated equally well by a genius, a moron, a saint, or a criminal. You turn it on and turn it off. We have come to

expect such devices. Science has courted the inception of such fool-proof techniques. But there are no foolproof solutions to the major problems of existence. If, indeed, we are fools, then nothing will save us.

However, encouraged by science, we have shunned such wisdom and sought a type of ''knowledge' which allows us the knower to remain essentially unchanged. We would like merely to "plug into' techniques without ever having to change ourselves. "Indeed,' as Fromm (1968, p. 95) said, "what most people would like is to be aggressive, competitive, maximally

successful in the market, liked by everybody and at the same time tender, loving, and a person of integrity." We neglect to observe that the problems may stem from our own value structures, wishes, and desires.

This lack of ethical engagement reflects a corresponding lack of knowledge of those truths which most profoundly "change the knower and thus cause life to transcend itself" (Roberts, 1982, p. 189).

By searching for push-button techniques for love, we have once again aligned ourselves to the mechanistic approach of the scientific world view. Such techniques (and the separation of the knower and what is known) are luxuries that we can ill afford. Such a strategy obscures and further postpones our understanding of love. This eagerness to cast any insights which we may have upon intimacy into scientific techniques tend to obscure and pollute the understanding of love that we do have.

Fad-like techniques of intimacy then become a mock theater of the intimate. For example, humanistic psychology has found that authenticity is a crucial component for meaningful interaction -- a prelude to synergy and significant involvement. Popularized, however, we find this insight translated into almost a normative compulsion "to be real." It is carried to its logical extreme in the status-like charade of "I'm more real than you." Such a reaction completely misses the point. Authenticity emphasizes that if one is secure and open, such transparency actually works itself out in meaningful relationship. One does not have to mechanistically play the ''game" to achieve interpersonally.

The above is by no means a random example. It represents in a very crucial sense how humanistic psychology and the counterculture movement were routinized into popular fads that could then be dissipated by the larger marketplace mentality. The larger culture responded to the counterculture by mass producing its symbols and packaging its techniques. The human potential movement was safely relegated to weekend retreats for affluent business people -- addressing problems of individual consciousness but leaving intact the social structure which had produced these problems. The Scientific culture technologizes and then moves on looking for new worlds to conquer. Humanistic efforts are thus routinized to the world of Science with its neutral values and foolproof technologies. Unless we realize the pervasiveness of this process, humanistic efforts to base culture on love and the magical are doomed to failure. They become but additional commodities marketed like any other.

Treated in this manner, love becomes but another item in the bag of tricks which we acquire and use to manipulate people. The magical becomes only something we stage to overpower people and get something that we want. We have exchanged "love as world view" for "love as scientific, mechanistic technique." Such mechanization of love further estranges us from the world and those very ways that could heal the split. By subverting the sacred world of humanistic values to a secular scientific technology, we are changing not only the "internal" world of the human heart, but the world itself.

The alarming thing is, he said, that this time it isn't the changeable things that are changing, but the unchangeable as well. Anyhow, that's the danger -- even for me. Not only dress and manners and bank balances and the social order, but the sea and the sky. The sea, the sky . . . not only the sky and the sea are in question. The song of birds, firelight and sunlight, the woods, the turn of the season, the earth itself and the smell of it, the whole natural magic going on behind our little journey from the cradle to the grave. Well, you have to choose. What are they? Are they still what they have always been: the perspective of our mortality and, for some of us, an emblem or at least an analogy of our immortality? Or have they become, as it were, infected by our impermanence? Are they little more than a stage-setting to our personal and social drama? It's a question of relationship and our view of that relationship. Are we related to them at all, as mankind has always supposed? Is the earth that we touch a part of ourselves, or has it become just a thing we walk on, like pavement? Are we becoming, in our consciousness, separated from the stars -- as indifferent to them as we are to electric chandeliers in the lounge of a hotel? Are we being driven, or driving ourselves, into exile from the unity of nature? It is a simple question (Van Den Berg, 1961, pp. 235-236.)

Van Den Berg (1961) commented:

The answer to this 'simple question' is less simple . . . primarily because the answer from the present, the answer from the middle of the twentieth century, is lacking. The answer is important; it inaugurates the recovery of a fatal separation (p. 236)

The scientific vision has pushed to the edge of its frontier and is now standing on the pinnacle of its success. By ignoring the difficult questions of values and human consciousness, science has been able to shape a world by separating mind from matter. The scientific self-fulfilling prophecy has been an overwhelming success: it declared the world to be an object separate from the realm of the human and proceeded to study this world apart from human values, purposes, and participation. Any attempt to include human involvement was accused of being anthropomorphic. The world was gradually shaped and carved to this vision. With such objectification, few noticed that magic and wonder had been chased from view.

With the scientific consciousness, the world itself changed. The mechanical scientific metaphors gradually replaced the metaphors of Nature -- and the world was shaped to this new artificial image. A walk in the woods no longer meant what it once had: children marched out from the classroom not to smell a flower but to count its petals; the trees became timber; the rocks became mineral resources, and the forest itself hanged. It was logged and paved and cities with factories were erected on the most scenic spots. The world was made manageable and fitted to the scientific vision. All that did not fit into the scientific view was minimized or trivialized. Gradually, also the human elements were also changed. There was no longer a place for them in this scientific world. Religion became a soothing opiate and love was deemed expedient.

Perhaps none were more graphic in describing this change than the American Indians. They saw the approaching scientific civilization changing both the landscape and their world. Ohiyesa, an Indian writer, said:

As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since became civilized. I lived the natural life, whereas I now live the artificial. Any pretty pebble was valuable to me then; every growing tree an object of reverence, Now I worship with the white man before a painted landscape whose only value is estimated in dollars! Thus the Indian is reconstructed, as the natural rocks are ground to powder and made into artificial blocks which may be built into the walls of modern society (McLuhan, 1971, n.p.).

The scientific view of the human as separate from nature was not only taught in this new frontier, but its world-view was implemented. Things which did not fit into the scientific vision were relegated to the ''interior" nature of man. Van Den Berg (1961) argues that the consciousness of the "individual" was changed when all that did not confirm the scientific reality was swept into the interior regions. We are fascinated by those "psychological" regions -- belief, feelings, perceptions -- because they are so vastly different from the physical reality. Yet, while we were fascinated by those things of the "psyche" that had not yet been tamed by science, the landscape itself -- the world -- changed. They became things of science -- separate from the human.

The emotions, moods, and even the human heart have becomes "black holes" in an otherwise scientific reality. They are exceptions....... in an otherwise logical, rational scientific process. We have merely marked them as exceptions and world has marched on indifferent to them.

Human beings were left alienated from the world, and lacking any "realistic" canopy which would cover the human, were soon alienated from each other. Not only did we think and deal with the world in scientific terms, but the world was deemed identical with these scientific terms. A value-neutral science was incapable of providing us with a world which

contained meaning. Value-free techniques framed d world where human purpose and values were seen as separate from the natural process. Alienated from the world and from life itself, we were somehow strangers to the whole process.

Science sought a 'knowledge" of nature separate from the human "observer." It achieved such a vision and legislated such a world. There was no place for the human except as a consumer for the playthings of technology. Humans were left alienated -- a consumer and not a producer -- separate from the means of production and not able to feel involved in the process at all. The self-fulfilling prophecy of science had been realized at a terrible cost. This separation of the human from nature was worse than even the earlier mind-body split. Now, not only did the spirit have no place to dwell, but it was a "freak" of the universe -- an anomaly: a "psychological" curiosity.

The world had changed and we did not feel at home in it. Our way of viewing each other became colored by the scientific lens. The scientific view was translated into reality. Reason had replaced mystery, history had replaced myth, and technology had replaced magic. Science had succeeded in constructing a world without regard to human values or purpose. With such an objectivity, the human element could only appear -- as an anomaly: a "freak" exception in an otherwise natural process.

Scientific rationality prevails in our world. Science has not taken us on wings to heaven, but has left us estranged. C. Wright Mills (1969, p. 16) wrote that "We are at he ending of what is called The Modern Age." We have learned from the Enlightenment that "increased rationality may not be assumed to make for increased freedom."

Science, it turns out, is not a technological Second Coming. That its techniques and its rationality are given a central place in a society does not mean that men live reasonably and without myth, fraud and superstition . . . The increasing rationalization of society, the contradiction between such rationality and reason, the collapse of the assumed coincidence of reason and freedom -- these developments lie back of the rise into view of the man who is 'with' rationality but without reason, who is increasingly self-rationalized and also increasingly uneasy. It is in terms of this type of man that the contemporary problem of freedom is best stated . . . .

From the individual's standpoint, much that happens seems the result of manipulation, of management, of blind drift . . . Given these effects of the ascendant rationalization, the individual does the best he can. He gears his aspirations and his work to the situation he is in, and from which he can find no way out. In due course, he does not seek a way out: he adapts. That part of his life which is left over from work, he uses to play, to consume, 'to have fun.' Yet this sphere of consumption is also being rationalized. Alienated from production, from work, he is also alienated from consumption, from genuine leisure (Mills, 1959, p. 168).

People become alienated from life. Mills (1959) continued his indictment:

In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and meanings of 'human nature.' We do not know how profound man's psychological transformation from the Modern Age to the contemporary epoch may be. But we must now raise the question in an ultimate form: Among contemporary men will there come to prevail, or even to flourish, what may be called The Cheerful Robot? . . . Back of all this . . . there lies the simple and decisive fact that the alienated man is the antithesis of the Western image of the free man. The society in which this man, this cheerful robot, flourishes is the antithesis of the free society (p. 171).

We must not underestimate the role that technology played in this process of alienation. It often seems that the humanistic vision just short-circuited even at its highest peaks. This will remain the case as long as we approach humanism from a scientific, technological framework.

The technological approach contains an internal grammar that is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of humanism. Science assumes we need to be in control of our environment. We can then manipulate one variable or another to produce the "desired" effects. Unless we can eliminate outside variables and standardize internal variables, phenomena are not amenable to study using the scientific method. To produce scientific techniques, we must first assume control. A technique can then function as a mechanism much as a light switch. A technique is at our command. As long as it is in working order, we need not concern ourselves with understanding its internal mechanism. If we seek techniques of love and magic, then we are seeking techniques that we can command without having to understand the process of love or the magical. We can then turn them ''off" or "on" with no more regard for understanding the workings of love than we have for understanding the workings of a light switch.

This is not to say that benefits do not accrue from love. However, these are benefits from a way of living and are not to be cast in the vein of scientific techniques. They are not mechanisms where one presses a lever to get a desired result, but integrated structural components of a way of life. The benefits of love do not occur on command or by manipulation. They are more like "free gifts" -- related to a way of being -- closer in kind to the religious idea of -a "gift of grace" than to cause and effect.

Indeed, If love is manipulated or obligated, we say that that isn't love. The complicating aspect of the technological conversion of love and magic is that, having been raised in a scientific culture, our minds have been indoctrinated to think in this

way. We want to find the switch.

The use of love and the magical as techniques -- as means rather than ends -- changes them considerably. It is the conversion of love and magic into neutral technologies that invites the con artist, the evil magician, and the manipulative lover. If love and the magical are merely techniques, then the strategy of "loving a little to get what you want" becomes reasonable.

It is question here of commitment. Is a person committed to love as a technique for getting what they want or as a way of knowing life? Love works in strange ways. We will never know for sure beforehand whether the person we are relating to is using love as an attitude, or employing it as a technique. Thus, love and the magical -- and attempts to create the Good -- will always be interfaced with the possibility of the con artist.

It is in such a discussion of technology that the problem of "good vs. evil" might be focused upon most effectively. For it is precisely at the moment when we are the most trusting, open and loving that we are the most vulnerable to the con artist's "switch." Love is always a risk. To seek techniques that eliminate the possibility of risk, misunderstands love.

We might do well here to follow the classic legends and make a distinction between the "good magician" and the "bad magician." Roszak (1969) wrote:

. . . what significant difference is there between cultures based on scientific and visionary experience? The difference is real and it is critical. It requires that we make a distinction between good and bad magic -- a line that can be crossed in any culture . . . and which has been crossed in ours with the advent of technology.

Good magic opens the mysteries to all; bad magic seeks simply to mystify. The object of the bad magician is to monopolize knowledge of the hidden reality (or simply to counterfeit it) and to use the monopoly to befuddle or cow. The bad magician -- in the form of the priest or the expert -- strives to achieve the selfish advantage of status or reward precisely by restricting access to the great powers he purports to control. Something of the distinction that I am making survives in the Catholic Church's concept of simony, the sin against the Holy Ghost. The simoniac priest who uses his privileged control of the sacraments for personal gain is, by the teachings of the Church, committing the blackest of sins (pp. 260-261).

The doctrine of cause and effect restricts experience: it does not require understanding or exploring the mysteries. An ''expert" who has mastered a body of knowledge can always pull a "switch" turn it into technique, and use it for fair or foul.

The religious leader Ram Dass (1977) told a story that further illustrates this distinction. He compares "enlightenment" to a roulette wheel where one accumulates more and more "winnings." As the stakes become higher and higher, there is always the temptation to pick up your chips and go somewhere else. Love and affection are always readily exchangeable in the surrounding marketplace for power, for status, or for personal gain.

It is a question of commitment: a trust that one has placed their stakes in the right place and a faith that love is the right path. Without trust and a commitment to the process of love, even the highest saint can always convert "winnings" into technologies to exchange for something else. The problem of the con artist and the good and bad magician thus remains forever unsolvable. In a Hindu legend, the "Devil" and "God" were once partners, but the "Devil" did not trust the process and pulled out at the last moment: evil originates from an inability to maintain commitment to the process

We have even sought to technologize God and turn prayer into a push-button technology for achieving what we want. In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (1956) concluded a chapter on ''Love and Its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society" with the following comments:

In the religious revival of recent times, the belief in God has been transformed into a psychological device to make one better fitted for the competitive struggle . . . . The best-seller in the year 1938, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, remained on a strictly secular level. What was the function of Carnegie's book at that time is the function of our greatest best-seller today, The Power of Positive Thinking by the Reverend N. V. Peale. In this religious book it is not even questioned whether our dominant concern with success is in itself in accordance with the spirit of religion. On the contrary, this supreme aim is never doubted, but belief in God and prayer is recommended as a means to increase one's ability to be successful. Just as modern psychiatrists recommend happiness of the employee, in order to be more appealing to customers> some ministers recommend love of God in order to be more successful. 'Make God your partner' means to make God a partner in business, rather than to become one with Him in love, justice, and truth (pp. 88-89).

Religion and prayer can then be readily circumscribed by the prevailing scientific culture and turned into technologies. This is the strategy of the black magician. Love becomes a technique and prayers become commands. God is harnessed to technology just like any other resource. Such strategy thoroughly implies a misunderstanding of the humanistic spirit. Yet this tendency to deal with the humanistic vision in technological terms is precisely what we see occurring time and time again. Humanistic efforts were thus short-circuited. If we convert the humanistic ethos into technologies, we have hedged our bets, manipulated our commitment and once again enthroned science.

We must acknowledge that love is not a mechanism that can be repaired when defective so that rewards will come on cue. We can never be sure about the course of love. The poet Gibran (1923) wrote:

. . . think not you can direct the course of love,

for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course . . . .

When love beckons to you, following him,

though his ways are hard and steep . . . .

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.

Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses

your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

so shall he descend to your roots

and shake them in their clinging to the earth . . . .

. . . But if in your fear you would seek

only love's peace and love's pleasure,

then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness

and pass out of love's threshing-floor,

into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,

but not all of our laughter,

and weep, but not all of your tears (p. 11)

Love is an "entering into" -- it is a "letting go." Love is a commitment to a process. One is over "one's head,'' and never quite in control. With love, one risks vulnerability. If a person touches another deeply, they both are touched. To reach a person at their core, you must allow that person to also reach your core. It is not a matter of one person controlling and manipulating the other: both are involved in an experience of great depth. One person can always withdraw -- you have allowed them that power. There are no guarantees.

It is the miracle of love that authenticity, openness, and vulnerability can lead to response. The benefits which can be related to love, trust, and the magical are part of a larger structural complex. They cannot be readily abstracted or turned into tools. They occur together as components of a process. If we convert them into "means" to obtain an end, they loose their depth. Indeed, following Kant, much of humanism might be summarized in the idea that people should be treated as ends in themselves rather tan merely means to an end. If we seek technologies that control people, then we have significantly diminished our idea of the human. Humanism implies that we emphasize the full human potential rather than reduce others to smaller role-like versions for our use.

Love is always a risk because if we allow people their full humanness, we cannot predict and control the outcomes. Here, Ernest Becker (1968) made a distinction similar to Roszak's concept of the good and the bad magician.

. . . mostly people approach each other from the point of view of their roles, rather than as whole beings . . . . They have, in effect, subverted the possibilities of their total being to the narrow interest of action and uncritical survival . . . . The question posed by any cultural game is the question about higher and lower esthetics -- about 'good' art and 'bad' art . . . whereas true esthetics should liberate man, develop his freedom, and further his whole self, 'everyday' esthetics -- sacrifices most of the total man to a mere part, to the part that must convey the sliver of conviction necessary to sustain the ongoing cultural game . . .

. . . But 'higher' esthetics is precisely that; it calls more of man's spirit into play, releases more of the inner personality and brings it to bear upon the world.

. . . The problem, inescapably, is a social one. We have destroyed the interhuman in our time simply because we have refused to implement social forms which would liberate man . . . (p. 273).

When science opted out of life and objectivized man, scientists of course lost the possibility of seeing any mystery at all in man, of seeing any heightening being, even in secular terms (p. 267).

Such reduction of man destroys the spirit of humanism. If we reduce people to a "means" and deal only with the version we can manipulate, then we have lost our humanistic intent. We have substituted bad art for good -- the bad magician for the good.