Of all the Chinese Empires, The Qing Dynasty received the most praise from its European visitors, specifically from the Jesuits and from historic writers that included Voltaire,who described China as the “most just and humane” civilization in the world. Here was a people that had a long relationship with science and invention, but according to their Western visitors, placed the bulk of their emphasis on excelling in ethical conduct in areas of public life and government. While Western Europe seemed to initially appreciate China’s ethical standards, its own technological hubris compelled these Western visitors to frown on what it saw as China’s technological sluggishness. Conversely, the Chinese, looking through a lens of ethics and conduct, viewed the Europeans as “hairy barbarians.” Though the Chinese catered to their foreign visitors, even tolerating the Jesuit missionaries and their agenda for Christianizing the world; in the end, China summarily rejected both European technology and religion. This was a huge blow to the European ego, which deemed itself the undisputed champions of civilization. It was an even bigger blow to Europe’s commercial interest in Qing China. Praise quickly turned into patronizing, as inflammatory reports of the Chinese being an unruly people with sub-standard technology and standards of living precipitated throughout Western Europe. Fiction writers like Daniel Defoe, with his legendary Robinson Crusoe tales, began to shape national opinion of the Chinese, as the title character openly slams any praise of China’s accomplishments, describing the Qing as a “miserable people....(not) worth my while to write of.” Defoe, like many de facto historians of China, had never been to the country. But this was a minor detail, since the real goal of their editorial hyperbole was to reinforce their countries self-image.

China wasn’t the first to fall victim to this Technocentrsm. History has several illustrations of how a Technologically Aggressive West which made itself a standard to measure, devalue and invade other cultures; justifying its actions on the merit of “civilizing” the other culture. Still to this day Post-War Reconstruction is the preferred strategy for optimizing an occupied country for eventual Technology Transfer and Western Business standards. For the United States, the Philipines War is a prime case study. “The White Man’s Burden” (subtitled “The United States and the Phillipines Island”) by Rudyard Kipling demonstrates how a nation demoted another people’s value by their inability to meet an outsiders standard of civilization. The first stanza of Kipling’s poem, “Go bind your sons to exile / To serve your captives' need”, compares to Spain’s ludicrous Requirement of 1512, a doctrine that required the Conquistadors to make it known to the American Indians (in a language they couldn’t understand), that it was Spain’s divine duty to the cause of civilization and God, to conquer them.

The fact that the benefits of technology are seldom weighed against its damaging consequences testifies to just how much oversight is caused by having a monolithic standard. Boredom. Unfulfillment. Superficiality are among the “soft” consequences of our technological inheritance. Obesity. Global Hazzards. And Civilization Diseases are among the “hard” consequences. Maybe these so-called “backward” cultures were wiser than we gave them credit for when they politely declined some of the early Europeans gadgetry. Unfortunately, American’s express intolerance with any person or people whose only rebuttal to expansionism is nostalgia. But an alternative standard to technology doesn’t mean its exclusion. Instead it means the inclusion of some kind of humanist or, at least, naturalist philosophy.

Lets go back to the original standard illustrated at the beginning of this article. It was a straight line that we can label as “Technology.” On the left end we see “Primitive Societies.” On the right end we see “Advanced Civilizations.” An alternative to this model would do two things. One, it re-labels the line to read “Philosophy.” But more importantly, rather than having technology travel without limit, restriction or discretion on a straight line into the future, perhaps it would be better if its evolution followed the path of a circle. If we follow such a path, technology has the benefit of returning to its past, and departing once again, this time taking with it a few key lessons from alternative cultures that did a better job living with the planet than we do.