Chapter 23 » 23.54

The individual and the community

Work and economic affairs

Part of understanding life and one’s place in life is to form a ‘right’ relationship with things. The philosophy of the industrial revolution is to ‘direct the forces of nature for the use of man’ (following the words of the charter given to the engineering profession in 1821). Now, to seek mastery is not to gain a ‘right’ relationship. The latter requires sensitivity and yields wisdom along with an adequacy of power. The search for mastery alone yields a power that corrupts faster than it is mastered.

Jim Platts, 1976

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