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Sanctification in the Technopolis

Since I’m not writing much these days, here’s a link to a talk I gave recently on the subjection of technology in relation to Christian sanctification. If you’ve been around the blog for a while you’ve seen me write on this a good bit. This is the first time I’ve condensed much of this information down into a talk.

You can listen HERE or watch below:

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Recent Reading: Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

Reading this book turned out to be a happy occurrence of providence. I had never even heard of the book when I happened to stumble upon a copy for 25 cents at a thrift store during my vacation last month. I grabbed it, along with some other books, packed it in my bags, and forgot about it for a couple of weeks. I wasn’t sure if I was going to read it right away. For me, it takes a good deal of desire, with my schedule as it is, to commit to reading a decent size work of fiction (especially quality fiction, which I find harder to read in some ways than academic books).

I decided to read the first couple of pages before deciding whether I would take the time to read the rest, and here is what I read on the first page:

‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the princple on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principles on which I bring up these children. Stick to the Facts, sir!’

These are the words of Thomas Gradrind, the schoolmaster in Coketown.

I knew immediately that I was dealing with a story about Scientism (in some way, shape, or form), and I was hooked.

Dickens summarizes this ‘just the Facts’ approach:

Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder (Book 1, chapter 8).

He then describes life in the Gradrind household:

…Life at the Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery which discouraged human interference (1:9).

This sort of mechanical life had enveloped the entire town and had created a miserable working class dominated my the culture of the mechanical:

So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions. There is no mystery in it; there is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, forever (1:11).

Mr. Gradrind’s son, Tom, becomes especially victimized by this mechanical culture. He falls upon hard times as bad as, or worse than, the rest. Early on,

Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby’s Band, made him an inmate of Bounderby’s house, necessitated the purchase of his first razor, and exercised him diligently in his calculations relative to number one (1:14).

Thinking ‘relative to number one’ dominated the thinking of those in power in Coketown:

Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing that little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it? (2:1).

As for Tom, his ‘scientific’ education yielded surprising results:

It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom (2:3).

So I have set the atmosphere. I will not give the plot away. Now I only offer a few reflections:

The book is, in some ways, a romance. That is, it displays what the innocence and love of one simple circus girl can do for a world in which love has been suffocated by school and machines. The redemption of Louisa Grandgrind-Bounderby, and the redemption of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind through her, is wondrous to behold. It moved me as much as any book has ever moved me.

The book is reminiscent of three books that I have read: Brave New World, That Hideous Strength, and The Abolition of Man. It is superior to the first two because of the realistic picture it paints. It is not so much dystopia as it is the ideas of those dystopias enfleshed in a real-looking society. And it goes beyond The Abolition of Man for the same reason – enfleshing. It takes the same principles and draws them out with masterful storytelling and complex characters.

Louisa Gradgrind returns home to visit her dying mother:

The dreams of childhood – its airy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then the least of them among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children of Adam that they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise – what had she to do with these?…

Her remembrances of home and childhood, were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilization of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles (3:9).

As Mrs. Gradgrind lay on her deathbed with her daughter Louisa close at hand, and her husband away on political business, she says,

‘You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all kinds, from morning to night. If there is any Ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name…But there is something – not an Ology at all – that your father has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don’t know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to find our for God’s sake what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen’ (3:9).

Mr. Grandgrind finds what he had missed, or forgotten – it is the glory of humanity – that is, the glory of love.

I can’t recommend this book too highly. I think it serves much the same purpose as Brave New World as a subversive narrative against the culture of cold Scientism, but it paints its picture with much more empathy and realism. It shows, in beautiful (though ugly) pictures, what happens to man when he has become the tool of science and technology and what redemption from that captivity might look like.

The Inward Compulsion to Stand

In [commitment] a person asserts his rational independence by obeying the dictates of his own conscience, that is, of obligations laid down for himself by himself. Luther defined the situation by declaring, ‘Here I stand and cannot otherwise.’ These words could have been uttered by a Galileo, a Harvey or an Elliotson, and they are equally implied in the stand made by any pioneer of art, thought, action or faith. Any devotion entails an act of self-compulsion’…

…The freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to do as he must.

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, pp. 308, 309

It is not merely objective, detached reasoning that produces beliefs or convictions. The point is that it is inward compulsion, not external pressure, that causes people to take stands.

 

Man’s Chief End in Technopoly

Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology…Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity’s supreme achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved.

-Neil Postman, Technopoly, p. 71

Notice a a few things here:

First, Postman’s idea of the deification of technology (the making of technology into an idol) entails finding authority, satisfaction, and law. Satisfaction is sandwiched in between two terms relating to submission. I do not know whether Postman had this in mind, but this is an exact perversion of true Deity:

Romans 11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

From is authority, through is satisfaction, and to is obedience.

Technopoly, the culture surrendered to technology to the point of idolatry, finds its grounding in technology; it finds authority, satisfaction, and law. It is from, through, and to technology. Man’s chief end in Technopoly is to glorify technology, and to enjoy it forever. The great problem is that, glorify it as we may, the satisfaction and joy that it offers is fleeting at best – like pixels on a screen – though it may appear for a moment as an angel of light.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can use technology without deifying it; but this is becoming increasingly difficult with Technopoly so deeply imbedded into our culture.

Next, Postman’s point about technical progress is well-taken. It would do us good, very often, to consider our own opinions here. How do we define progress? Have we truly ‘progressed’ ahead of our grandparents because we have digital technology? Perhaps we are more comfortable in some ways, but I doubt that many people would say we were better. The ‘greatest generation’ didn’t even have televisions at the time. But they had more resolution. Beware of ‘chronological snobbery.’

The Narrative of Scientist as Hero

Since I have been writing a good deal about technology lately, I thought I would share this.

As I was driving to church Sunday morning, I was listening to Weekend Edition on NPR. One story particularly caught my attention. Here’s the summary from the website:

Several new TV shows this year revolve around the idea of a deadly virus that grips the world, destroying much of the population. Enthusiasm for these shows is downright infectious.

From The Walking Dead and beyond, it seems that television and movies are tapping into modern man’s great fear – the loss of health and life (which amounts to a loss of control or sovereignty). As fictional mankind (on the screen) suffers from uncontrollable diseases and random zombie bites, and real mankind lives in fear that these things might actually happen, it seems that a new hero has arisen to save mankind from its plight – the Scientist.

Superheroes are still big, but a new hero is moving into the cultural narrative – and boy was the scientist they interviewed happy about it. Listen to the short segment from Weekend Edition HERE.

AI, Bionics, Technopoly, and the Gospel

I tend to shy away from posting on current events; I talk about them often in my sermons, but it is not my purpose on this blog. But this one ties into my reading from not only this past week, but really the past month.

I came across Stephen Hawking’s op-ed (HERE) from a couple of weeks ago on the subject of Artificial Intelligence. I actually agree with his main point in the column: we need to start considering the future ramifications of our technological tinkering. This is really the main point that Neil Postman was trying to make in Technopoly as well. From Postman’s perspective, which he wrote 20 years ago, Americans, at that time, needed to start asking important questions about technology: What is it replacing? What will it cause to become obsolete? He proposes many questions that we should have been asking then. But few were asking them. Perhaps someone with the alleged credibility of Hawking will actually cause some folks to ask questions they haven’t been asking.

Hawking makes the point that our technologies may have more of a dangerous potential than we typically envision. Maybe some of the Sci-Fi movies and books may actually prove prophetic. Perhaps The Matrix isn’t so far removed from potential reality. But he also makes the point that technology, especially Artificial Intelligence, provides glorious possibilities; In his own words, “we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools that AI may provide, but the eradication of war, disease, and poverty would be high on anyone’s list. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history.”

There is a bigger event that has already happened (2000 years ago); but I digress.

As I read that line for the first time, in my mind, I began to hear the voice of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preaching about modern man, the bomb, Man coming into his own, Educationism, and Scientism. If you are somewhat familiar with him, you could probably imagine him in a pulpit today saying something like this:

Modern man thinks that he is unstoppable. He has his technology. He has his computer – it is the answer to everything: ‘We don’t need your Christianity for answers,’ he says. ‘We have internet search engines that are omniscient.’ ‘We don’t need your resurrection; give Google 20 years and they will cure death,’ he says. ‘A few more years and we will eradicate war and poverty and disease.’ Modern man says, ‘We don’t need your God, we have Bionics. We can make the lame to walk and the blind to see with our technology.’

And then I can hear the Doctor, in my mind, saying, ‘But they are all fools; the fool saith in his heart there is no God. Have they not read the story of Babel? Have they not read the psalmist speaking of the raging of the heathen? The God who sits in the heavens laughs. “Let us tear their chords apart and burst their bands asunder!” says the fool; and the living God laughs at their notions of power.’

Now, back to my own voice. I watched a TED Talk on the subject of Bionics recently. It’s worth the 20 minutes it takes to watch it (HERE). It chronicles the development of Bionics as scientists and engineers are seeking to create prosthetic appendages that will work with the neurological systems of human bodies (the recent FDA approval of the ‘Luke Skywalker Arm’ is an example of this). The invention itself looks magnificent; the problem comes in when the creators of such devices say things like this: “I reasoned that a human being can never be broken; technology is broken; technology is inadequate.” That is the logic of Technopoly in a nutshell. We’re fine; there’s nothing wrong with us; we have unlimited potential; we just need the right technology.

We have no idea what our future has in store. In many ways we should be thankful for the advances we are making in Bionics and other technological fields.When we cause the lame to walk, we are, in a sense, imitating the work of Christ. But if, in their new ability to stand, they rise up on those magic legs (to quote Forrest Gump), beat their breast, and pronounce their own deity, then we have a great problem. And this is my great fear. In the words of Joy Davidman,

…Perhaps our remote ancestors had no sooner invented the slingshot than they reared back on their hind legs and proclaimed that their technical progress had now enabled them to do without religion.

Let me end by going back to Dr. Lloyd-Jones. He was fond of saying that the great problem with humanity is that we tend, at one and the same time, to think too highly of ourselves and too lowly of ourselves. We think too highly of ourselves because we think that we can do without God, or indeed, that we are gods; we may not be perfect, but certainly we have no categories for sin. Yet we think too lowly of ourselves because we believe that we are simply evolved animals upon whom Heaven has no bearing. We think that Heaven, if there is such a place, is wholly indifferent to our actions (or at least this is what we prefer). Psalm 8 is our great corrective.

We in the West are back, philosophically, where we were before the World Wars. We think that we can somehow eradicate war and poverty because we have no conception of sin. We see nothing but progress in our future. Hawking wants us to consider the possibility of negative effects, yet also boasts of a technological future without war and pain and hunger. As Christians, we must be mindful that the sinful nature of Man will continue to play a role in all he does, and it will infect all he creates. This does not mean that the future is a lost cause. Rather, it means that repentance and wisdom are necessary. Yet repentance is no longer in the modern vocabulary and wisdom has been wholly removed from any relation to God.

We are now obsessed, as a culture, with creating artificial life; all the while, God calls us to genuine life (see John 3). We are obsessed with progress; all the while, God calls us to re-dig the old wells (see Genesis 26) and return to Paradise (see 2 Corinthians 5 and Revelation 21-22). We are obsessed with making the lame walk and the blind see; all the while, we will not heed the call of Jesus Christ:

He speaks, and, listening to His voice,
New life the dead receive,
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice,
The humble poor believe.

Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Savior come,
And leap, ye lame, for joy.

Charles Wesley captured it beautifully. I am a simple country preacher, but I would dare say that we desperately need to sound this note, especially in our urban pulpits. Hawking is right; we need to think about the ramifications of what we are doing. And it is the Christian’s job to be at the forefront in that thinking as we call humanity away from making idols of technology, and themselves, and declare the gospel of the great Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.