And while we are on the topic of technology and the sacred, I would like to pass on a short article from the most recent edition of First Things about "Marshall MacLuhan on How the Mic Transformed the Mass."
The article doesn't offer a definitive stance on whether microphones are good or bad for the Mass, but is rather an invitation to consider a phenomenon we normally ignore or are not even aware of. The article is sure to be met with glib objections by some (exhibit #1), but Professor White does a good job of pointing out why the change in the way Mass is celebrated was so momentous. For a religion such as Latin-rite Catholicism to go from observing the most solemn moment of the Mass in silence through clouds of incense to listening a man read the text from the Missal out loud is a huge change, which might not even have been considered in the 1960's.
And while we are on this topic, I should close with an even more shocking quotation from Ernst Jünger: "Where it identifies the dominion of technology with the dominion of Satan, the priesthood possesses a deeper instinct than where it places a microphone next to the Body of Christ."
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Ernst Jünger on Technology (2)
In The Worker Jünger makes three key points about technology. Before going any further, however, I should add that while I disagree with Jünger’s positive evaluation of technology, I do agree in many respects with his analysis of technology.
The first point is the key to understanding Jünger’s analysis of technology: technology is “not a neutral power” (keine neutrale Macht). In most discussions of technology today, however, the key premise is exactly the opposite: technology is neutral, and everything depends on what use one makes of it. Indeed, this common starting-point makes some intuitive sense. Most people tacitly define technology as a machine or tool that gives us a method for doing X in the quickest, most effective way. Technology is simply a means to an end. Everybody wants to achieve their own ends, and they want to do so as soon as possible. If the same technology can be used to achieve two opposed ends, then the technology itself is neutral. By this view, the two opposing armies in a war have distinct ends, but both armies use guns. The guns themselves are neutral. It is the goodness, or evil, of the goal of the war which makes the guns either good or evil.
The best way to understand why technology is not neutral is through an analogy. On at least one occasion Jünger compares self-identification with technology to “mastering the language of the worker.” The idea is that technology pervades and shapes how we view the world, just as language does. This was certainly the case in Nazi Germany. Both Eric Voegelin and Josef Pieper laid great emphasis on the fact of the Nazis’ perversion of everyday language in the Third Reich. The importance of language should be obvious to any American who observes how PC language has penetrated into politics and academia in this country. Certain words that were in common use fifty years ago are now banned from polite conversation and neologisms deployed to change public opinion. When, for instance, was the last time a prominent politician or academic characterized sex acts between two members of the same sex as “sodomy”? Removing that term from the public vocabulary normalizes same-sex sex acts, as well as eliminates one more vestige of Christianity in our culture. (The exception proves the rule: One summer, while working on petitions for the involuntary commitment of sexually violent persons, I was struck by the number of times I came across the term “deviate sex” in the psychological reports.)
This does not mean that if technology is bad, then every discrete act that employs technology is necessarily bad. To take the analogy of language one step further, even if a language has become corrupted it is not evil to use that language at times. Or, to use a different analogy, even if a government has been thoroughly corrupted, not every action it takes is necessarily bad, though a government has tremendous power to shape its citizens’ worldviews and to implicate them in its crimes. And that is the important point for Jünger: technology is not neutral because it has a worldview of its own and shapes worldviews.
Second, technology has the power to shape worldviews because, as Jünger says, it has a “seductive logic” of its own, which is not a “pure” logic (keine Logik an sich)but one which leads to specific ends. The logic of technology alters our relationship to the world and to ourselves. For Jünger, the purpose of technology is to “mobilize matter.” (Note the similarity to Descartes’ desire to use science to make men “masters and possessors of nature.”) Matter becomes something that is to be put at the service of man or, for Jünger, the new man, the worker, so that the worker can attain power. The technological worldview demands submission of nature to man. The process of submitting nature to the worker’s rule does not end until the distinction between technology and nature is eliminated, until technology becomes our second nature. Technology must become something that seems obvious (a Selbstverständlichkeit) for the ordinary man. Indeed, Jünger goes one step further and says that the logic of technology will ultimately lead to the merger of man and machine.
This merger of man and machine no longer sounds as fantastic as it did when Jünger wrote The Worker. The manipulation of genes, the implantation of computer chips into the nervous system, the cloning of entire human beings—all of these may very possibly be realized within our lifetimes. And yet technology’s seductive logic has been at work among us for much longer with technologies that are much more familiar and that seem innocuous in comparison to modern biotechnology. For instance, mechanical clocks have been around for centuries. They were used in the Middle Ages primarily to help monks say the canonical hours at the correct time. However, clocks have ceased to be a tool which we use to measure time and are now machines that shape how we experience time in ways that are contrary to nature, such as standardized time zones and daylight savings time. Another example of the power of technology to make men conform to their machines is urban planning in the wake of the automobile. Most cities in the 20th century were laid out on the assumption that its inhabitants would be driving, rather than walking, through their streets. For those who live in big cities with rush hour traffic jams, the conception of how much time it will take to go somewhere depends on what hour one is leaving one’s house—the “distance” to one’s destination is further at rush hour.
Third, for Jünger technology is anti-Christian because it possesses its own “cultic origin” (kultischer Ursprung). Before dismissing this as mere hyperbole, one should at least consider an example of the cult of technology: Apple products. Apple’s laptops and phones are immediately identifiable because of their minimalistic, futuristic aesthetic. These devices have become objects of devotion among the masses of loyal Apple customers, much of whose success is due to the fact that they keep the modern worker connected to his job at all times. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was practically canonized after his early death from cancer. (Part of this is due to the cult of the entrepreneur in America.)
But, even if it is true that technology has acquired certain cultic features in contemporary America, the question still remains: What exactly does it mean to say that technology has a “cultic origin”? The answer lies in the essence of religion. If technology has a “seductive logic,” and is a system capable of changing our relation to nature and to ourselves, it has a totalizing worldview. Just as Marxism is often characterized as a religion despite its atheism, so too the “technological way of thinking” can be called a religion because it subsumes widely varied areas of human activity under a general worldview.
If technology is a new cult, it necessarily sets itself at odds with Christianity. Jünger says that the orthodox Christian views technology as the “dominion of Satan.” And Jünger’s statement, while extreme, is defensible when we keep in mind that technology tries to eliminate nature or reconfigure it so that it changes in its very essence. When viewed this way, technology is another form of Gnosticism (as used in a broader way by Eric Voegelin): a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with creation that leads to the hubristic attempt to refashion the world.
Jünger in The Worker got many things wrong, and was in favor of many things a Christian should oppose. But, in some instances—and technology was one of them—his analysis should force us to consider some of our basic presuppositions about the modern world.
The first point is the key to understanding Jünger’s analysis of technology: technology is “not a neutral power” (keine neutrale Macht). In most discussions of technology today, however, the key premise is exactly the opposite: technology is neutral, and everything depends on what use one makes of it. Indeed, this common starting-point makes some intuitive sense. Most people tacitly define technology as a machine or tool that gives us a method for doing X in the quickest, most effective way. Technology is simply a means to an end. Everybody wants to achieve their own ends, and they want to do so as soon as possible. If the same technology can be used to achieve two opposed ends, then the technology itself is neutral. By this view, the two opposing armies in a war have distinct ends, but both armies use guns. The guns themselves are neutral. It is the goodness, or evil, of the goal of the war which makes the guns either good or evil.
The best way to understand why technology is not neutral is through an analogy. On at least one occasion Jünger compares self-identification with technology to “mastering the language of the worker.” The idea is that technology pervades and shapes how we view the world, just as language does. This was certainly the case in Nazi Germany. Both Eric Voegelin and Josef Pieper laid great emphasis on the fact of the Nazis’ perversion of everyday language in the Third Reich. The importance of language should be obvious to any American who observes how PC language has penetrated into politics and academia in this country. Certain words that were in common use fifty years ago are now banned from polite conversation and neologisms deployed to change public opinion. When, for instance, was the last time a prominent politician or academic characterized sex acts between two members of the same sex as “sodomy”? Removing that term from the public vocabulary normalizes same-sex sex acts, as well as eliminates one more vestige of Christianity in our culture. (The exception proves the rule: One summer, while working on petitions for the involuntary commitment of sexually violent persons, I was struck by the number of times I came across the term “deviate sex” in the psychological reports.)
This does not mean that if technology is bad, then every discrete act that employs technology is necessarily bad. To take the analogy of language one step further, even if a language has become corrupted it is not evil to use that language at times. Or, to use a different analogy, even if a government has been thoroughly corrupted, not every action it takes is necessarily bad, though a government has tremendous power to shape its citizens’ worldviews and to implicate them in its crimes. And that is the important point for Jünger: technology is not neutral because it has a worldview of its own and shapes worldviews.
Second, technology has the power to shape worldviews because, as Jünger says, it has a “seductive logic” of its own, which is not a “pure” logic (keine Logik an sich)but one which leads to specific ends. The logic of technology alters our relationship to the world and to ourselves. For Jünger, the purpose of technology is to “mobilize matter.” (Note the similarity to Descartes’ desire to use science to make men “masters and possessors of nature.”) Matter becomes something that is to be put at the service of man or, for Jünger, the new man, the worker, so that the worker can attain power. The technological worldview demands submission of nature to man. The process of submitting nature to the worker’s rule does not end until the distinction between technology and nature is eliminated, until technology becomes our second nature. Technology must become something that seems obvious (a Selbstverständlichkeit) for the ordinary man. Indeed, Jünger goes one step further and says that the logic of technology will ultimately lead to the merger of man and machine.
This merger of man and machine no longer sounds as fantastic as it did when Jünger wrote The Worker. The manipulation of genes, the implantation of computer chips into the nervous system, the cloning of entire human beings—all of these may very possibly be realized within our lifetimes. And yet technology’s seductive logic has been at work among us for much longer with technologies that are much more familiar and that seem innocuous in comparison to modern biotechnology. For instance, mechanical clocks have been around for centuries. They were used in the Middle Ages primarily to help monks say the canonical hours at the correct time. However, clocks have ceased to be a tool which we use to measure time and are now machines that shape how we experience time in ways that are contrary to nature, such as standardized time zones and daylight savings time. Another example of the power of technology to make men conform to their machines is urban planning in the wake of the automobile. Most cities in the 20th century were laid out on the assumption that its inhabitants would be driving, rather than walking, through their streets. For those who live in big cities with rush hour traffic jams, the conception of how much time it will take to go somewhere depends on what hour one is leaving one’s house—the “distance” to one’s destination is further at rush hour.
Third, for Jünger technology is anti-Christian because it possesses its own “cultic origin” (kultischer Ursprung). Before dismissing this as mere hyperbole, one should at least consider an example of the cult of technology: Apple products. Apple’s laptops and phones are immediately identifiable because of their minimalistic, futuristic aesthetic. These devices have become objects of devotion among the masses of loyal Apple customers, much of whose success is due to the fact that they keep the modern worker connected to his job at all times. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was practically canonized after his early death from cancer. (Part of this is due to the cult of the entrepreneur in America.)
But, even if it is true that technology has acquired certain cultic features in contemporary America, the question still remains: What exactly does it mean to say that technology has a “cultic origin”? The answer lies in the essence of religion. If technology has a “seductive logic,” and is a system capable of changing our relation to nature and to ourselves, it has a totalizing worldview. Just as Marxism is often characterized as a religion despite its atheism, so too the “technological way of thinking” can be called a religion because it subsumes widely varied areas of human activity under a general worldview.
If technology is a new cult, it necessarily sets itself at odds with Christianity. Jünger says that the orthodox Christian views technology as the “dominion of Satan.” And Jünger’s statement, while extreme, is defensible when we keep in mind that technology tries to eliminate nature or reconfigure it so that it changes in its very essence. When viewed this way, technology is another form of Gnosticism (as used in a broader way by Eric Voegelin): a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with creation that leads to the hubristic attempt to refashion the world.
Jünger in The Worker got many things wrong, and was in favor of many things a Christian should oppose. But, in some instances—and technology was one of them—his analysis should force us to consider some of our basic presuppositions about the modern world.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Ernst Jünger on Technology (1)
It is impossible to discuss the life and thought of Ernst Jünger briefly. Nearly 103 years old when he died in 1998, Jünger led an eventful life: he served with distinction as an officer in the German army in both world wars. He became known as a writer after World War I when he published his journals, In Storms of Steel. In the 1920’s he studied zoology, and in later life become an avid entomologist. He earned his living as a journalist until World War II, when he spent much of his time stationed in Paris. After the war, he moved to Wilflingen, but also continued to travel, often to Africa and Asia. Throughout his life he wrote about his varied experiences. Besides his wartime journals, Jünger also published an account of his early experiments with LSD, as well as a series of futuristic novels, most notably Eumeswil.
Jünger is a controversial figure because of his political views (as well as the delight he often takes in describing violence). Always a man of the right, he was a staunch opponent of the Weimar Republic. Today he is often grouped among the leaders of that amorphous movement in interwar German called the “Conservative Revolution,” who opposed the new democratic ethos and parliamentary system of government. One of his more ardent admirers in the 1920’s was Hitler, but after 1933 Jünger found polite ways to decline the dictator’s advances. The novel he published in 1939, On the Marble Cliffs, is usually interpreted as a disguised call to resistance against the Nazis. After World War II, he refused to fill out the British occupation authorities’ questionnaires about his political activities under Nazi rule and was therefore forbidden to publish. He moved to Wilflingen, in the French zone, to escape the British censors. After the war, he continued to oppose democracy. In his 1951 essay, Der Waldgang, Jünger develops a theory of resistance, implying that the Federal Republic of Germany needed to be resisted, just as the Nazis should have been resisted.
For most of his life Jünger elaborated his positions from a secular viewpoint. It was simply assumed that Christianity was dead and was merely of historical interest; any resistance to democracy must come from elsewhere. (This changed only late in his life—he converted to Catholicism when he was 101.) Jünger’s “conservative revolution” was essentially an anti-Christian conservatism, which he tried to elaborate in a few books, particularly The Worker, published in 1932.
The Worker is a difficult book to summarize because of its vagueness. (A decent summary of the main idea, though, can be found here.) Jünger sometimes explicitly refuses to give concrete examples of the social phenomena he is describing, instead giving tautological definitions and telling his readers that they must be blind not to see what he is pointing out. Of course, things which may have been clear to a German in 1932 are not necessarily clear to an American in 2012, especially when it requires plowing through pages of dense German prose. Essentially, Jünger is trying to give an outline of the new social form (Gestalt), the new type of man, he saw rising to predominance. The worker he describes is not a member of Marx’s proletariat or simply even a working man. Rather, he is a man for whom work is his form of existence, who lives in a “total work world.” (Incidentally, some of the phrases which Jünger employs in a positive sense are later used in a pejorative sense by Josef Pieper in Leisure the Basis of Culture.) Most importantly for this post, this new man, the worker, identifies with technology. For a significant portion of the book (§§ 44-57), then, Jünger tries to define technology as the way in which this new man realizes himself in history. What will follow soon are a few reflections on what Jünger had to say about technology, or rather reflections on technology occasioned by a reading of The Worker, since I make no guarantee that I have understood this book perfectly.
Jünger is a controversial figure because of his political views (as well as the delight he often takes in describing violence). Always a man of the right, he was a staunch opponent of the Weimar Republic. Today he is often grouped among the leaders of that amorphous movement in interwar German called the “Conservative Revolution,” who opposed the new democratic ethos and parliamentary system of government. One of his more ardent admirers in the 1920’s was Hitler, but after 1933 Jünger found polite ways to decline the dictator’s advances. The novel he published in 1939, On the Marble Cliffs, is usually interpreted as a disguised call to resistance against the Nazis. After World War II, he refused to fill out the British occupation authorities’ questionnaires about his political activities under Nazi rule and was therefore forbidden to publish. He moved to Wilflingen, in the French zone, to escape the British censors. After the war, he continued to oppose democracy. In his 1951 essay, Der Waldgang, Jünger develops a theory of resistance, implying that the Federal Republic of Germany needed to be resisted, just as the Nazis should have been resisted.
For most of his life Jünger elaborated his positions from a secular viewpoint. It was simply assumed that Christianity was dead and was merely of historical interest; any resistance to democracy must come from elsewhere. (This changed only late in his life—he converted to Catholicism when he was 101.) Jünger’s “conservative revolution” was essentially an anti-Christian conservatism, which he tried to elaborate in a few books, particularly The Worker, published in 1932.
The Worker is a difficult book to summarize because of its vagueness. (A decent summary of the main idea, though, can be found here.) Jünger sometimes explicitly refuses to give concrete examples of the social phenomena he is describing, instead giving tautological definitions and telling his readers that they must be blind not to see what he is pointing out. Of course, things which may have been clear to a German in 1932 are not necessarily clear to an American in 2012, especially when it requires plowing through pages of dense German prose. Essentially, Jünger is trying to give an outline of the new social form (Gestalt), the new type of man, he saw rising to predominance. The worker he describes is not a member of Marx’s proletariat or simply even a working man. Rather, he is a man for whom work is his form of existence, who lives in a “total work world.” (Incidentally, some of the phrases which Jünger employs in a positive sense are later used in a pejorative sense by Josef Pieper in Leisure the Basis of Culture.) Most importantly for this post, this new man, the worker, identifies with technology. For a significant portion of the book (§§ 44-57), then, Jünger tries to define technology as the way in which this new man realizes himself in history. What will follow soon are a few reflections on what Jünger had to say about technology, or rather reflections on technology occasioned by a reading of The Worker, since I make no guarantee that I have understood this book perfectly.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Announcement: Al Gore and Russell Kirk Agree on Something!
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal ran a review by Nick Schulz, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, of Vaclav Smil's new book Prime Movers of Globalization. Smil's book is, as the subtitle puts it, a study of the "history and impact of diesel engines and gas turbines." The book would appear to be of interest to a history and economics buff who has a mechanical bent and a desire to learn more about the technical innovations that have driven globalization forward in the past two centuries. Besides explaining the role these devices have played in making it easier to travel long distances and transport great loads quickly, though, Smil also acknowledges that there are environmental drawbacks to these devices. Smil himself, according to the review, does his best to maintain a balanced perspective.
The review, on the other hand, is anything but balanced and can only be termed disingenuous. Schulz's rhetorical strategy is to frame his summary of Smil's book in a denunciation of environmentalism. He begins with Al Gore's utopian call (in Earth in the Balance) for the elimination of internal combustion engines by 2017. Then, at the end of the review, Schulz mentions that Smil addresses some of the environmental damage caused by diesel engines and gas turbines as well as "social disruption that their inventors could not have imagined." But if the "creative destruction caused by global trade" is so extensive, why then has Schulz just penned an ode to the internal combustion engine? How can he simply shrug off these problems? A hint comes in his final line, a variation on Irving Kristol's well-known quip about neoconservatives, saying that Smil, as opposed to environmentalists, "has been mugged by the reality of physics and engineering."
This phrase "mugged by reality" is obviously meant to show that Schulz is a realist, not a deluded "hard-line environmentalist." But what the last paragraph of the review really shows is that Schulz is dismissing out of hand concerns about social upheaval on a previously unimagined scale because they are not part of his reality, the "reality of physics and engineering." Since when, though, did any environmentalist deny the reality of the internal combustion engine, or of global trade? Do environmentalists believe that physics is an illusion?
Obviously not. Why, then, does Schulz resort to such dishonest rhetoric when discussing environmentalism? Schulz names Al Gore as the archetypal environmentalist because he can show that Gore's proposed cure would be just as bad as the disease. By holding up one prominent environmentalist for ridicule, Schulz can then sidestep the serious questions posed by Gore and others concerning the environment, such as: Is it possible that humans cannot be trusted to use internal combustion engines responsibly? Would it have been better if they had never been invented if the risk of serious damage to the environment is so great?
Schulz also resorts to dishonest rhetoric so that he can studiously avoid, while pretending to acknowledge, the social disruption caused by the internal combustion engine. But it is precisely this allegation of social disruption that forms the heart of the complaint against the internal combustion engine that Schulz refuses to answer. This allegation was leveled by at least one conservative thinker strongly opposed to all utopian fantasies: Russell Kirk, who famously called automobiles "mechanical Jacobins" on account of their revolutionary effect on society. If Schulz honestly faced Kirk's critique, he would have to ask himself more uncomfortable questions, such as: Is commercial prosperity perhaps bad for society because it chips away at solidarity among people? Is the decrease in social cohesion caused by modern modes of transport actually more harmful than the benefit of unrestricted mobility?
As strange as it may sound, Al Gore and Russell Kirk actually share common concerns about technical progress, though Kirk very likely would have rejected Gore's solution to the problem. This strange agreement should at least give Schulz pause to consider the morality of technology in addition to its creative power. But by ignoring Gore's and Kirk's questions Schulz shows that his ultimate fault is that he willfully equates what is technologically possible with what is morally good.
That anyone should make this mistake after the 20th century is sad indeed. The reality of the 20th century should have mugged Schulz and jolted him out of his complacent faith in technical progress. What, then, could prevent him from seeing that technical progress often poses difficult moral questions? Schulz, apparently a neoconservative, would likely answer that the "creative destruction caused by global trade" maximizes freedom through the increased production of wealth. But freedom and wealth are not ends in themselves, and neither is technology.
Friday, February 5, 2010
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.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
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?
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