The Wheel is the First Principle of Evil

 Rota est primum principium mali

 

I.

 

If, like me, you get much of your historical knowledge from the Carry On films, then you could be forgiven for believing that Hengist Pod, an ancient Briton, invented the wheel. However, if like most people you get your information from the internet, then you'll be of the view that it was actually the Sumerians who first came up with the idea sometime in the 4th millennium BCE [1].

 

Either way, I'm not concerned here with the first solid wooden wheels attached to rickety old wagons pulled by oxen, nor even with the wheels used on horse-drawn chariots in Asia Minor, which, thanks to possessing spokes, represented a significant advance and allowed for the production of vehicles that were lighter, faster, and more reliable.   

 

What concerns me, rather - as a thinker troubled by the question concerning technology - is the fact that the wheel is the essential rotating component that allowed for the mechanization of agriculture, the industrial revolution, the becoming-robot of mankind, and the destruction of the natural world. 

 

 

II.

 

In other words, it isn't ithyphallic demons that we have to fear - for even "the double phallus of the devil himself" [2] never truly threatens - but, rather, the spinning wheel wherein mortal danger lies: for the spinning wheel is "the first principle of evil" [3], both within the external world of things and material activity and within the inner workings of the human psyche. 

 

Or, if you want to be a bit Heideggerian about this, you could say that the wheel is that which enframes being; that upon which Dasein is bound and broken and "absolved from kissing and strife" [4].   

 

And those who think the heavens rotate like a wheel are mistaken; the stars and planets may revolve, but they move in their movement, we know not where. Only a fixed wheel, whose centrifugal motion is denied by a stationary axis, spins round and round but never wanders or goes anywhere [5]. 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1]  Of course, it's impossible to know for certain who first invented the wheel because records of such things were not kept in the ancient world. It's more than likely that the wheel was discovered independently by different peoples at different times. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Doors', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 624.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'What then is Evil?', The Poems, Vol. I ... p. 626.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Death is not Evil, Evil is Mechanical', The Poems Vol. I ... p. 627.

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, 'The Wandering Cosmos', The Poems, Vol. I ... p. 627.

 

Note that the above four verses were originally published in the UK in D. H. Lawrence, Last Poems (Martin Secker, 1933).

For a related post to this one on D. H. Lawrence and the poetry of evil (published on 27 May, 2019), click here.