Wednesday With Words

Books by Indian Christian authors often give a unique perspective on Western culture because they view it cross-culturally and they perceive what we are blinded to.

The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization by Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi is one such book.

 The following quotes are from the chapter on Technology where he describes a visit to the city of Jinja in Uganda where he saw women and children hauling water on their heads not far from a hydroelectric dam and a pumping station.

That experience raised the questions: Why don't American women haul water on their heads? Why did Western people begin using their minds to do what most cultures used their muscles to do?

Technology is "magic of the mind." When you use the mind - that is, technology - water brings itself to you - water produces electricity and electricity pumps water right into your home......

Neither Africa or India lacks ingenious minds......

It's fashionable to reject technology. Mahatma Ghandi opposed it, and the city of Jinja has erected a huge statue to honor him. The problem is that cultures that reject technology end up forcing human beings to get their water, grind their grain, and even to clean their "dry latrines."

Ghandi's idea that technology was evil and that a simple, natural life was morally superior came from British idealists like John Ruskin. Sensitive people like him had become critical of England's Industrial Revolution because of the exploitation, oppression, and other evils associated with its  "dark Satanic mills."

Evil is in our hearts, not in technology.