As Tzu-Gung traveling through the regions north of the river Han , he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He had dug an irrigation ditch. The man would descend into a well , fetch up a vessel of water in his arms and pour it out into the ditch. While his efforts were tremendous the results appeared to be very meager. Tzu-Gung said, There is a way whereby you can you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like to hear of it ? Then the gardener stood up , looked at him and said , And what would that be ? Tzu-Gung replied , You take a wooden lever , weighted at the back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well. Then anger rose up in the old mans face , and he said , I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machines. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like machine , and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in strivings of his soul. Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things ; I am ashamed to use them. -------the outlook of a Chinese sage as told in Understanding Media : The Extension of Man ( chap 7- Challenge and Collapse : The Nemesis of Creativity ) by Marshall McLuhan.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 01:11:56 +0000
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