The Hubris of Technology
As tool-making animals, we take our brainpower and freedoms to transform nature, which in turn transforms us. Technology, much of which we think we cannot live well without, can be a perverse conduit toward making ourselves unhappy. We are proud of these accomplishments even as we wish to free ourselves from their burdens – led by, I think, a displacement of flesh and blood bonding. Many have been skeptical of the dogma of an essentially uncritical acceptance of the goodness of such promised liberation, finding it to be a minimization of the discipline and manual work which are helps to moral virtue. Is not the perpetuation of individual life, an inherent characteristic of many modern technological projects, harmful in some way to our existence as social, sacramental beings? If culture is, among other definitions, the locus of ethics and morality, a conduit of norms to succeeding generations and embedded in the fabric of everyday life, we should talk and think about this a lot more than we do. Rod Dreher’s post today (at the risk of irony) is a good place to start. Should we view technology, especially that which distracts, as a product of hubris?
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Do you ever read any of my posts, Jonathan? I’ve done quite a bit on the issue of technology, just like the recent two part Crisis.
Well, then…..I guess I beg your pardon.
Hello,
as (kind of) a self-taught social scientist I am well aware that technology has the capacity to perpetuate radical individualism and, most especially, a loss of emotional ties through overemphasis on what is psychologically referred to as the “thinking function”.
In a free market, nations poor in mineral resources (which translate to all but a handful of nations in Australia and sub-Saharan Africa, plus the oil states of the Gulf) are consistently encouraged to adapt new technology to improve living standards. Whilst, judging by the number of “economic miracles” achieved, this can be very effective in making poor nations wealthy, the long-term consequence of this wealth is a population that is in love with machines rather than with people.
Lowest-low fertility throughout Europe and East Asia is hardly surprising if one considers that machines, by their nature, simply cannot feel like humans can. The emotional, compassionate side of life has been entirely lost from the culture of these nations, replaced by a self-centred and materialistic culture that demographically cannot sustain itself.