ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the great loss of nonutilitarian values, as modern Western technology is blamed for placing the value of efficiency above the beautiful, the good, and the holy, with the resulting subordination of art, morality, and religion to technological forces. Cook Ting is contrasting two different types of relations between users and their technology. Both types of butchers manage to cut up oxen, at least in the sense of getting the job done, but Ting is more effective, for the absence of any resistance makes his action effortless and cost effective. A more effective kind of consciousness has all the characteristics of the meditational state of mind that made Cook Ting's action effective. Technological devices born out of an exclusive focus on efficiency impose themselves on the world, while technologies that fit in the larger context of human existence grow out of it.
