Luxury & Technology (Part II)

We saw yesterday that it is not uncommon in history for the beneficiaries of new technology and luxury to be uneasy with this new technology and luxury. Just when life could never get any better, somebody poses that annoying question: Is it really good to live with all this technology and luxury?

It is certainly tempting to dismiss all these would-be reformers as a bunch of hypocrites with strange qualms about enjoying a good life. After all, they usually do not give up the benefits of technology and luxury. They are just a bunch of jet-set celebrities telling us to stop flying, bloggers telling us to give up blogging, and city-slickers telling us to leave the cities.

And yet, it seems unfair to label all these people hypocrites. Some of them no doubt are, but many seem to be acting in good faith, posing legitimate questions about the effects of technology and the luxury. They seem honestly perplexed about how best to come to terms with technology and luxury in their own lives.

What, then, is at the root of this perplexity, this uneasiness with luxury and technology?

There is a German word, Zerstreuung, which I find illuminating. A standard dictionary tells us that the word literally means “dispersion or scattering” (the English cognate is “strew”). However, Zerstreuung also has a figurative meaning: diversion or distraction. The idea behind this figurative meaning is that we must not allow ourselves to be “scattered”; instead, we must concentrate, that is we must "maintain our center," and not be "torn apart" by distractions. When we seek out distractions, we are choosing not to focus our energy on something more important. The ability to distract is the hidden danger of both luxury and technology.

Modern technology’s ability to distract is well known. YouTube, Hulu, and all the other video-sharing websites out there are easy ways to waste time. And, of course, before there was YouTube there was the boob tube. But even when we try to read a serious article on the Internet, something about the web makes it difficult to concentrate on the article for very long.

And, luxury—the ability to spend money and to indulge our desires—is famously distracting and enervating. To mention one more ancient example, public opinion in Rome turned against Mark Antony after he took up with Cleopatra, since she was renowned for her Oriental dissipation. The Romans felt that Antony was forgetting his destiny and losing his manhood. Luxury destroyed the very ground of Antony’s existence.

But, Zerstreuung, as I said, means we are not concentrating on something more important. What is it that is more important? The first things and the last things; right and wrong; the true, the good, the beautiful.

But for those of us who flatter ourselves that we are intellectuals and are above such vulgar Zerstreuung (and I’ll admit I’m one of them sometimes), there is another, much more subtle danger: we often become proud of our own intellectual ability. In other words, because of our self-regard, we can turn our interest in the things that are supposed to lead us to ask and answer the most important questions in life—about theology and philosophy, art and literature, mathematics and science—into a reason to feel superior to everybody else.

And that is truly perverse. The old maxim holds true: Corruptio optimi pessima. These intellectual pursuits are not important because they allow us to puff up our pride, or even necessarily for their own sake. They are important because they teach us about reality and give us the courage to face reality honestly:

A truthful, austere intellectual life grabs out of our hands art, literature, and the sciences, in order to prepare us to confront fate all alone. (Nicolás Gómez Dávila)

This confrontation with fate, which is supposed to be the goal of our intellectual life, is also the goal of all asceticism. The life of the intellect must be lived within the larger context of the life of asceticism.

Why, then, are so many people uneasy with luxury and technology? Luxury and technology make it easier to distract ourselves from the asceticism essential to a good life. Whether consciously or not, we know that we use luxury and technology to avoid our destiny.

In the end, though, living a good life does not come down, strictly speaking, to getting rid of all luxury and technology. Getting rid of luxury and technology will not get rid of all distractions. What matters most is the pursuit of the ascetic life, no matter what conditions we live under.

Luxury & Technology (Part I)

What is it about luxury and technology that makes us so uneasy?

Nowadays, whenever a certain technology becomes widespread, it always seems to come under attack from self-appointed guardians of public morality preaching a new gospel of the good old days when everything was somehow "simpler." Just as modern life seems better than ever, these would-be traditionalists inevitably arise to denounce everything that makes modern life so much better. At the same time, though, even these critics of the new technology have become dependent on it themselves. As a result, they come off as a bunch of hypocrites who demand a return to the good old days, yet are incapable of living out their message themselves.

Examples abound today. We have “green” celebrities who jet around the world warning us that we have to reduce the air pollution which contributes to global warming. We have bloggers warning us that blogging leads to a lack of reverence for words. (One blogger with a sense of humor, "Fr. Gassalasca Jape," even warns us that blogging kills.) Back in the 1930s we had city-dwelling university professors (the Southern Agrarians) warning us that we needed to return to the land.

This yearning for the simpler ways of the past probably seems like a quintessentially modern problem. Ever since the Industrial Revolution made technology and luxury available to the masses, the world has been filled with Romantics yearning for a simpler life but never completely able to lead a simple life themselves.

However, this Romantic yearning is actually nothing new. There was an analogous phenomenon in ancient Rome of “traditionalist” denunciations of contemporary life. These ancient traditionalists, though, focused not so much on technology as on luxury. Interestingly enough, these denunciations of luxury were probably at their strongest when the Roman Empire had attained the height of its power in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D.

A good illustration of the Romans’ uneasiness with luxury can be found in Tacitus’ Annals. In Book III, Tacitus tells us that many Romans urged Tiberius to enact stricter sumptuary laws. The wealthy were building villas that were obscenely large; they were keeping virtual armies of slaves; they were holding extravagant dinner parties, and importing expensive delicacies from every corner of the Mediterranean. Luxury was simply out of control. But, where did people talk about the need for sumptuary laws to control these wild dinner parties? At those very same dinner parties, of course!

Tiberius, in a speech before the Roman Senate, declined to enact stricter sumptuary laws, for a number of reasons. One reason he gave was that he did not desire the thankless task of enforcing unpopular laws:

If there is a magistrate who can promise the requisite energy and severity, I give him my praises and confess my responsibilities lightened. But if it is the way of reformers to be zealous in denouncing corruption, and later, after reaping the credit of their denunciation, to create enmities and bequeath them to myself, then believe me, Conscript Fathers, I too am not eager to incur animosities. (Tr. by John Jackson)

On the face of it, this seems like a very pragmatic reason, perfect for a politician like Tiberius. However, it points to a more serious problem: most members of the patrician class who demanded stricter laws could not live up to them. For this reason, Tiberius responded that “the remedy must be within our own breasts; let improvement come to you and me from self-respect, to the poor from necessity, to the rich from satiety.” In other words, the reformers needed to reform themselves first.

Were these reformers really just a bunch of hypocrites?