Paul, you may have heard of the children's book writer/storyteller Bob Hartman, who lives in Wiltshire. He's an old friend of mine, and I've passed this info along to him in hopes that the two of you might meet up at some point.
Paul, are you aware of any Orthodox authors who seriously criticize technology? All I have found is the corpus of Philip Sherrard and scattered bits in pieces in a few writers, particularly Vladimir Solovyov. There are plenty of writers that criticize modernity, such as Seraphim Rose, but not technology as such. I do hope you can point me in the right direction, as it would be a shocking lack if no one, other than Sherrard, tackled the topic seriously. Certainly there is a strong group of anti-technology, anti-Machine Catholics, such as Georges Bernanos, Thomas Merton, Max Picard, and Ivan Illich just to name a few, but I am hoping to find a particularly Orthodox perspective.
Christianity is a great religion, but I have the feeling there are only a few hundred Christians in the world today. Christianity would solve many of the world's problems; it is truly radical in the mathematical sense of the term, but who is willing to pick up the cross and live in a truly Christian manner? I think most people would prefer to keep their televisions, phones, and leave their Christianity to occasional Sunday masses and painting eggs on Easter. Real Christianity, if we heeded its call would change everything. Just look to the example of the desert fathers: 'We seek any convenient excuse to break off and give up the difficult task. But in these Verba Seniorum we read of Abbot Ammonas, who spent fourteen years praying to overcome anger, or rather, more significantly, to be delivered from it. We read of Abbot Serapion, who sold his last book, a copy of the Gospels, and gave the money to the poor, thus selling “the very words which told him to sell all and give to the poor.”' Can even a few of us become like Abbot Serapion? As for me, I am a universalist, and feel similar to Simone Weil in many respects. So, I am not a Christian, but love Christ, and hope that even when I run away from Christianity in the name of Truth, that I run into Christ's loving hands, or as Weil writes: "For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms."
Hebrews 10:31 states "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," but as Lawrence adds "But it is a much more fearful thing to fall out of them." ... "Save me from that, O God! / Let me never know myself apart from the living God!" ALL moderns have fallen out of the hands of the living God. The question is whether or not each of us is willing to make the sacrifices needed to come back into those loving hands.
I've found there are relatively few writers of any kind who criticize technology in and of itself. One thing I see so many people miss, which seems crucial, is the distinction drawn by Lewis Mumford between democratic and authoritarian "technics". Essentially, there is a major distinction between something more or less anyone could make and something only possible in a modern society. A passive solar system, for example, made by facing a window towards the afternoon sun, is a democratic technic. Solar panels and smartphones, on the other hand, are authoritarian technics, as no one can make these on their own sans the infrastructure of industrial modernity.
You will always see proponents of technology erase this line and draw a smooth curve from hand-axe to iPhone. It's a very revealing and conspicuous sleight of hand once you know to look for it, and most people—even skeptics of technology— fall for it. There is also that other common, related, falsehood: "technology is politically neutral". This one seems superficially reasonable to most people. After all, both "good guys" and "bad guys" can use smartphones. The politics, however, the authoritarianism, has been smuggled in before either good or bad guys have even gotten hold of the gadget.
The result of these pervasive and largely effective bits of pro-(authoritarian)tech propaganda is most are made to feel silly or hypocritical or sheepish about expressing any of their sense of disquiet about technology. You've got to have brains and guts and next-level resistance to propaganda to even begin to think and speak and write critically about technology in this culture.
Mumford's criticism of technology is spot-on in many ways, and I often refer people who don't have the inclination to read Mumford towards Wendell Berry's essay on why he doesn't use a computer. But, Mumford's critiques are severely hampered by the lack of a consistent ontology. This is where Heidegger's critiques are more profound. But, Heidegger doesn't base his critiques on any sort of lived relation to the Absolute. This is where the criticisms of Frithjof Schuon and the Catholics come in. They couldn't care a hooey about democracy, and rightly so, stating that the very nature of modern technology is that it molds man to machine, rather than machine to man, and hence lowers man's status from homo adorans (man the worshipper) to a status beneath the rest of creation. Through humankind's free will, and its desire to become like unto God, it has sunk beneath the worm.
Resistance to anything needs some sort of belief, and help from a supernatural power. Look to the earliest Christians: they gave up all of this world for the sake of their souls. Simply telling people to save the planet won't be enough. People need to be willing to sacrifice everything.
"the very nature of modern technology is that it molds man to machine, rather than machine to man, and hence lowers man's status from homo adorans (man the worshipper) to a status beneath the rest of creation"
I can think of at least one kind of exception to this, which are those using —hijacking, really— technology for purposes of exalting the soul. I'm thinking here of figures like Tarkovsky and Robert Bresson. The latter of whom said:
"There is the feeling that God is everywhere, and the more I live, the more I see that in nature, in the country. When I see a tree, I see that God exists. I try to catch and to convey the idea that we have a soul and that the soul is in contact with God. That's the first thing I want to get in my films."
Is the price humanity pays for the technology that allows films like 'Au Hasard Balthazar' and 'Mouchette' to exist and to find audiences worth it? Almost certainly not, but I've always thought it perfectly justifiable to use technology to undermine its agenda. In a sense that's precisely what Paul is doing right here at the Abbey.
I agree that so long as technology is here, that if we are extremely careful, we may use it judiciously to undermine it. A prime example of that is Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy. I also think of Kurusawa's 'Dersu Uzala', and the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Some people are so mired in the technological worldview that they won't even read a book, so films and online writing may be helpful. But, these are exceptions that prove the rule, and in a post-technological society I would be much happier to see films disappear entirely but have the resurgence of various traditional crafts. Rather than films about Andrei Rublev, let's have thousands of gifted iconographers all working their magic, or even shoemakers happily at work making shoes, and possibly finding God, as did Jakob Boehme.
Farasha- Have you read A Canticle for Leibowitz? It always seems to come up for me. It is a profound meditation on the nature of civilization and why we build up our technological utopias and then destroy them when they always prove inadequate. I see A Canticle for Leibowitz as essentially Biblical in its vision.
The answer is to seek the Way of return to the Original Harmony. To consider the Ravens and the lillies. It's all there in the gospels, if only we had eyes to see. It is quite radical. As in the Desert Fathers, as you say.
At this point, we may need help from the Taoists and Buddhist, etc., and in Orthodoxy to purify our hearts to read scripture aright.
Also, I will recommend, Christ the Eternal Tao. Though it doesn’t critique technology as such it is a radical account of the path of return to simplicity.
Jack, I have read A Canticle for Leibowitz. It is one of the books, along with William Morris' News from Nowhere and Blake's prophetic poems that set me off on the path I am on over twenty years ago now.
I agree, it is all there in the Gospels. Revelation 7:3 is powerful, but unheeded: "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees". Some of the best writings on the birds of the air and lilies of the field come from Kierkegaard, who was quite anti-technological-progress for his day. Have you read Kierkegaard's The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air? It is quite good.
As for Taoism and Buddhism, there is a lot of wonderful doctrine that can inspire a person. On the other hand, one must separate ideal from reality, as born Buddhists tend to be just as far from their tradition as birth Christians are from theirs. Also, one needs to be exceedingly careful about Western appropriations of Eastern religions. As I have seen firsthand and as Slavoj Žižek makes clear, Western Buddhism is a perfect companion to late capitalism. Syncretism is another danger. I have seen Sufi and other groups completely destroyed through syncretic tendencies. So, One should choose a tradition and live it to its fullest, but also feel free to learn from all other traditions, so long as his or her ego isn't mixing and mashing into some sort of new-age amalgamation.
I have not read Hieromonk Damascene's Christ the Eternal Tao, but I will put it on my to-read list. I did read Fr. Damascene's biography of Seraphim Rose and enjoyed it.
A conundrum is where to draw the line on the “smooth curve”. The glass in a passive solar system is an industrial product, as is the steel in an ax head, the various parts of a bicycle, the copper wire in the pre smart phone rotary phone or the telegraph, the technology to provide the wooden lumber for the Amish communal barn raising, shall we do without hypodermic needles? light bulbs? aspirin? dentistry? Though I do say, being 69 - “I have reached the age where I have seen the future and I am not impressed!” Yes, technological progress has reached the point of diminishing returns or actually negative returns. Sigh.
I think it is really rather easy to draw an ideal line: that would be similar to what Wendell Berry describes in his essay on why he doesn't use a computer. If a single person can understand it, make it, and repair it, then it is probably ok. A single skilled person can build a house, forge a knife, weave cloth and sew clothes. A single skilled person can procure food in nature, as well as medicines, dyes, and really all that is needed for life. There is more life in a single, traditionally carved African statue than all of modern art combined. So, the ideal is easy. The problem is that we all have so royally screwed up the world by overpopulating the planet, fostering reliance on new technologies, destroying natural abundance, and sowing poisons in all places, that sometimes the ideal is no longer ideal. I hope we can return to the ideal someday, but the important thing to do now is to stop where we are and to have a few moments of collective reflection, so that we may show some discernment about how to move forward. I am as critical of modern medicine as Ivan Illich, but the Machine generates many poisons and many diseases, so in the name of compassion, sometimes, in limited circumstances, a modern cure may be needed for a modern disease, particularly since we have lost knowledge of traditional cures.
"If a single person can understand it, make it, and repair it, then it is probably ok."
This. Also, the "smooth curve" is a complete fiction. What actually exists is a fundamental bifurcation between tools and techniques under personal control versus tools and techniques under impersonal control. The second category should be regarded with deep skepticism, and despite any superficial utility, people should learn to first consider and ask what autonomy (and privacy and dignity and dependability and natural spaces etc) they are surrendering by allowing such a technology to be part of their lives.
This way of looking at the world can and should extend to what (if any) institutions we agree to let act and speak on our behalf.
Leave these things unchecked, and you'll end up with hydrogen bombs controlled by people claiming to speak for you who do not value your life or interests at all. That could never happen, could it?
Who said this window had glass? What's wrong with shutters? Anything that requires mining is an obvious red flag, as essentially no one would choose to go into a mine unless forced to at economic gunpoint, and at that stage things are already far gone.
"shall we do without hypodermic needles? light bulbs? aspirin? dentistry?"
You can have those things or you can have a livable ecology. Most choose the former, and thus are far along the process of losing the latter.
No mining and therefore no metal objects? not even hand saws? - even the Native Americans mined copper deposits and traded it across the continent along with other minerals.
Hey, if you know how to mine and refine copper and shape it into hand saws and arrowheads for your own use that's a democratic technic and no harm no foul. If you enslave a bunch of people in order to churn out a thousand copper-tipped arrowheads a day, you're crossing the line into an authoritarian technic, as the sheer volume of copper arrowheads becomes a form of impersonal technic others might become reliant upon while having no understanding of how they are made.
That copper mining was also a complex story, and went on for a long while before inexplicably stopping (https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-native-americans-were-among-world-s-first-coppersmiths). As far as I can see there isn't much at all known about the real economics of it. I would be very curious to know if there was ever essentially a specialized class of Native American copper miners, and if so, what percentage were essentially traders/"entrepreneurs" versus enslaved, or if the entire thing was more or less just another part of the culture of a few tribes around the Great Lakes.
The short answer, as Steven says below, is that such critiques are rare everywhere - not that I need to tell you this. In Orthodoxy, in my experience, you are broadly right - there is little understanding of this on any widespread level. I think this is true throughout the Christian world, just as it is throughout the world in general: most people don't understand or think about technology in any serious way, or even if they do they are caught up in it anyway, given the speed and direction of things. I've met many Orthodox monks with smartphones. You may be right that there is more thinking about this in the Western Christian tradition, probably because Western Christians have had to engage with modernity for much longer.
There are some smart exceptions though, and I think there will be more. I have had good discussions with Orthodox people about this, and there are in fact some contemporary saints (Saint Paisios perhaps above all) who warned about what the Machine was. There are also some people online who are worth engaging with - for example, Hieromonk Gabriel:
There are others too. Broadly though, as you say, living a full Christian life makes the Machine impossible. The cross is the antidote. We need to realise this.
I think some of Alexander Schmemann's writings could be helpful. He doesn't take the critique far enough, but the way he criticizes Western, particularly American Orthodoxy for falling into the same trap as American Protestantism is right on. He terms it religionless religion. The ancient patristic writers are also always helpful, as are the writings of Saint Silouan, but I still wish there was more.
I was not aware that Saint Paisios warned about the Machine. Do you happen to have any sources for that? One of his biographies, or the collections of his homilies perhaps?
Thank you for the links.
One of the very pernicious events I have noticed post-Covid is the live-streaming of the Divine Liturgy. The Liturgy cannot be celebrated at home, alone, behind a screen. I do feel that Orthodoxy has the roots needed to stave off the present crisis, but if something isn't done fast to cut off the rot that has monks and priests using smartphones, for instance, then Orthodoxy could wither and die just like so many other traditions. I think it is time for a renewal of orthodox Orthodoxy, a renewal just like happened after the tragedy of the iconoclasts, and after Palamas put to end the hesychast controversy.
I don't know if this is how you're thinking or not as I am not inside your head, but I want to caution against identifying particular technologies as things that mark one out as "on the wrong side" if one uses them. Your comment about monks with smartphones is a useful observation about the insidiousness of the machine, but tells us very little about whether those monks have a robust resistance to the machine. As far as I know, you have a car and a laptop, and have written elsewhere about why you have them. You are not wrong to have them. It doesn't make them any less evil. The monks may not be wrong to have a smartphone. It doesn't make the smartphone any less evil, but depending on his circumstance, the monk may end up doing great damage to people around him by getting rid of his smartphone. Building communities free of the machine is not something we can make happen by snapping our fingers. People will still send us emails whether we like it or not.
It's not a question of being on 'the wrong side' in that simple sense - but there is a line I think, and we all have to identify it and then decide whether we cross it. To my mind those of us 'in the world' are not in the same place as those who choose to leave it. This is key. Also key though is that the line is contsantly moving.
In Romania I was invited to give a talk in a monastery about technology and Orthodoxy. Many monks in that place have phones, and are quite aware of the issues - which is why I was invited to talk there. Some have been doing some serious research on the direction of the Machine, and are thinking hard about its implications. But they still have phones. What does this mean and how long can it last?
We had some good conversations amongst the diverse audience about the direction of the Machine. The general agreement was that question is always 'where should the line be drawn?' People there could see the direction of travel. One thing I emphasised was that phones, for example, are a bridging technology. In ten years time, if all goes to plan, we'll be carrying subcuteaneous microchips, which will make phones unnecessary. Where then will the Christian stand? Personally I hate smartphones but I can see how people use and can justifiy and sometimes need them, and I can see how their use can be minimised too. I don't think we will be able to apply the same argument to internal microchips. But this is where we're going. So we need to be thinking hard now about where the red lines are.
As I say, I think those who have 'left the world' have more opportunity to apply those lines rigorously, and more obligation too. Having said that, I also think that my decision to have internet access and to use this screen regularly might be increasingly questionable as we move forward as well. I think that soon the choice will become very clear: become, literally, a physical part of the Machine, or opt out and incur penalties. To some degree now we are in a middle ground which is shrinking fast.
I agree with everything you said, though I would claim that smartphones have already passed the bridge technology state and are dangerously altering people's minds. I would also state that priests and monks are and should be shining beacons for us and for the entire world, so they should lead by example. If a congregation sees their priest using new media, social networking, and owning the latest phone, they will assume it is okay for them as well. I have said it before and I will say it again, we need a re-invigoration of the ascetic path. All of the contemporary criticisms of modernity, including my own, would be null and void if people would simply look to the example of the ascetics and Saints from all times and places. A litmus test is asking myself whether one of the great Saints appearing out of nowhere in this world would be accepting or horrified. I think most saints would be horrified seeing people hunched over their phones, descending to a state that is below the archetypal human station.
You're probably right. I'm likely going to end up as a priest in the next few years, and I still have a smartphone. I have had to ditch the computer already since it had firmly enslaved me. I am very aware that if I ditch the smartphone it's going to cause a lot of immediate complaints since so much is done by email these days. I will probably need to though if I'm going to stand against the machine with any degree of credibility. Bollocks.
Congratulations on the calling. I hope you do. I can only say as a layman, who sees phones creeping mostly unquestioned into every crevice of the church, that it would be both inspiring and empowering to see a priest taking such a stand, and explaining this everyday technology to people in these terms. It would undoubtedly irritate some people, but it may inspire others, and it would make everyone think.
Jean-Claude Larchet, an Orthodox philosopher and patristics scholar from France, has written a good little book on the subject titled "The New Media Epidemic.' Although dealing mostly with internet issues and concerns, the book does deal with technology by extension.
I also understand that Berdyaev discussed the subject in some of his works but I'm not sure which ones. 'The End of Our Time' and 'The Fate of Man in the Modern World' might seem the most likely.
It's my experience in 25+ years as an Orthodox that Anglophone Orthodoxy does not do this sort of cultural criticism very well, unfortunately. I'd put this down to its seeming overall lack of interest in philosophy, a trait which is not nearly as common in European and Slavic Orthodoxy.
Thank you. Much appreciated. I am aware of the works of Berdyaev, and while they are helpful, they largely use Western concepts and philosophical categories to perform the critiques rather than basing the critiques off of the rich tradition to be found within Orthodoxy itself.
Perhaps, it simply comes to the fact that the Catholics and Protestants were exposed to the disease of modernity sooner, so some of them were able to see things clearly, and come up with profound criticisms, Blake for instance.
True, but one wonders why it's taking us Orthodox so long to catch up, given those "Western" examples, and the fact that modernity has hit us hard as well. Given that we have both Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn as philosophical forbears, there's really no reason to react to modernity in a "don't know what hit us" fashion, at least at this late stage in the game.
True. I think Orthodoxy had a rough 20th century, but it should be an impetus to think creatively again. Who will be the Bulgakov, Rozanov, or Solovyov of today?
I think the groundwork is being put together. Here, for example. Perhaps converts will bring with them some of the deeper critiques of modernism and technology into the Orthodox Church.
The Orthodox Church has a strong claim to being the Ancient Church (or so I think). But without building up the antibodies to modernism and technotopian thinking and action, it will be eaten alive.
On the other hand, converts can unwittingly bring the disease with them into the Church. All the more reason to build up antibodies, intellectual and otherwise.
Ideally, it should not matter whether one is born into a family practicing a religion or is a convert, but it sometimes matters today. Many people born into traditions are only nominally part of those traditions throughout their lives. Traditionally, children would be raised within a family and culture that took the religion and tradition seriously, but except for a few outlying exceptions that is no longer the case today.
Certainly, converts can bring in both good and bad things. The hope is that converts will bring in ideas, experiences, and criticisms that can help, but sometimes the opposite happens. I highly recommend this https://theoaesthetics.ru/david-bentley-hart-the-theologian-is-a-quiet-rioter.html long interview with David Bentley Hart. Orthodoxy can be helped by people like Paul and David, but if Protestants or atheists convert and try to mold Orthodoxy to their categories it can be a disaster.
American Protestantism is just ridiculous, but American Catholicism has been corrupted to a terrifying extent. Far too many American Catholics will identify the Catholic doctrines with American capitalism, turning the religion on its head and making the American Church into an arm of the Antichrist. Orthodoxy so far has been mostly immune from that, but we are also witnessing a turn from the great Patristic scholars of the 60s to some modern Orthodox theologians who, if they become influential enough, would seriously degrade the faith. All of this is in the Hart article.
More and more I have been drawn to Orthodoxy, but I am a big believer in a real, living, vibrant theology. I, personally, like Origen, and I think Solovyov, Bulgakov, Seymon Frank, and to a lesser extent Florensky, are extremely necessary thinkers. When Protestant fundamentalists enter the Orthodox church and start accusing everyone and their brother of heresy, then I have a huge problem with that. I have even witnessed first hand a group of former Protestant converts refusing to read Saint Isaac the Syrian because he may or may not have been a Nestorian. So what: none of those people who are tainting beautiful Orthodoxy with their fundamentalism would be fit to even pass the shadow of Saint Isaac.
I am concerned. We no longer have Schmemann and other great theologians. We have David Bentley Hart, who has done so much to save Orthodox theology, but there is a war by protestant-thinking Orthodox against his very sensible, beautiful, and sane writings.
So, I don't know where the future will lead. We are at a turning point now. But, for those who think, we still have a rich tradition of theology, and the Liturgy is still a living life-line with the Fathers.
I don't know if he was particularly orthodox, but I have a sense that C.S. Lewis made a crucially important grouping between technology, magic, science and religion.
There is something which unites magic and applied science [=technology] while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men; the solution is a technique. --C. S. Lewis
The event with Martin Shaw sounds intriguing. It would be nice to have a bit of it up on youtube at some point. I dearly hope that one day you can make it over here to the "New Country"....or what's left of it. Things are starting to get interesting right about now.
I so hope to hear more about the Wild Christian legacy!!! I live in the US so I couldn’t attend that event, but I would if I could!! That sounds amazing to learn more about that history.
I feel like a sports team fanatic when I see Paul's essays on UnHerd... Hooray for the good team! So gratified to read in the comments how many people appreciate the good sense in his essay.
Coincidentally I made last week more or less the same kind of travel like you did. I visited my Romanian brother-in-law who lives in a city in the north of Romania. We have spend a few days walking in the rural landscapes of Transylvania. The villages, although modernising and depopulating relative quickly, still are very beautiful. Wooden churches, orchards, haystacks, friendly people, forests, and so on. Although changing quickly, one can still find here a beauty, calmness, a link with nature which in my country (Netherlands) is much harder to find. Paul, I would really like to see you writing something about your trip to Romania. I will be waiting for this. Thanks in advance.
What about a Wild Christianity that can live and flourish in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria or Silicon Valley or anywhere at all? A Wild Christianity based on this - “Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” John 7:37-39
Paul, you may have heard of the children's book writer/storyteller Bob Hartman, who lives in Wiltshire. He's an old friend of mine, and I've passed this info along to him in hopes that the two of you might meet up at some point.
Forgot to mention that Bob is also a friend of the fellow who moderated your discussion with Rowan Williams.
Paul, are you aware of any Orthodox authors who seriously criticize technology? All I have found is the corpus of Philip Sherrard and scattered bits in pieces in a few writers, particularly Vladimir Solovyov. There are plenty of writers that criticize modernity, such as Seraphim Rose, but not technology as such. I do hope you can point me in the right direction, as it would be a shocking lack if no one, other than Sherrard, tackled the topic seriously. Certainly there is a strong group of anti-technology, anti-Machine Catholics, such as Georges Bernanos, Thomas Merton, Max Picard, and Ivan Illich just to name a few, but I am hoping to find a particularly Orthodox perspective.
Christianity is a great religion, but I have the feeling there are only a few hundred Christians in the world today. Christianity would solve many of the world's problems; it is truly radical in the mathematical sense of the term, but who is willing to pick up the cross and live in a truly Christian manner? I think most people would prefer to keep their televisions, phones, and leave their Christianity to occasional Sunday masses and painting eggs on Easter. Real Christianity, if we heeded its call would change everything. Just look to the example of the desert fathers: 'We seek any convenient excuse to break off and give up the difficult task. But in these Verba Seniorum we read of Abbot Ammonas, who spent fourteen years praying to overcome anger, or rather, more significantly, to be delivered from it. We read of Abbot Serapion, who sold his last book, a copy of the Gospels, and gave the money to the poor, thus selling “the very words which told him to sell all and give to the poor.”' Can even a few of us become like Abbot Serapion? As for me, I am a universalist, and feel similar to Simone Weil in many respects. So, I am not a Christian, but love Christ, and hope that even when I run away from Christianity in the name of Truth, that I run into Christ's loving hands, or as Weil writes: "For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms."
Hebrews 10:31 states "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," but as Lawrence adds "But it is a much more fearful thing to fall out of them." ... "Save me from that, O God! / Let me never know myself apart from the living God!" ALL moderns have fallen out of the hands of the living God. The question is whether or not each of us is willing to make the sacrifices needed to come back into those loving hands.
I've found there are relatively few writers of any kind who criticize technology in and of itself. One thing I see so many people miss, which seems crucial, is the distinction drawn by Lewis Mumford between democratic and authoritarian "technics". Essentially, there is a major distinction between something more or less anyone could make and something only possible in a modern society. A passive solar system, for example, made by facing a window towards the afternoon sun, is a democratic technic. Solar panels and smartphones, on the other hand, are authoritarian technics, as no one can make these on their own sans the infrastructure of industrial modernity.
You will always see proponents of technology erase this line and draw a smooth curve from hand-axe to iPhone. It's a very revealing and conspicuous sleight of hand once you know to look for it, and most people—even skeptics of technology— fall for it. There is also that other common, related, falsehood: "technology is politically neutral". This one seems superficially reasonable to most people. After all, both "good guys" and "bad guys" can use smartphones. The politics, however, the authoritarianism, has been smuggled in before either good or bad guys have even gotten hold of the gadget.
The result of these pervasive and largely effective bits of pro-(authoritarian)tech propaganda is most are made to feel silly or hypocritical or sheepish about expressing any of their sense of disquiet about technology. You've got to have brains and guts and next-level resistance to propaganda to even begin to think and speak and write critically about technology in this culture.
Mumford's criticism of technology is spot-on in many ways, and I often refer people who don't have the inclination to read Mumford towards Wendell Berry's essay on why he doesn't use a computer. But, Mumford's critiques are severely hampered by the lack of a consistent ontology. This is where Heidegger's critiques are more profound. But, Heidegger doesn't base his critiques on any sort of lived relation to the Absolute. This is where the criticisms of Frithjof Schuon and the Catholics come in. They couldn't care a hooey about democracy, and rightly so, stating that the very nature of modern technology is that it molds man to machine, rather than machine to man, and hence lowers man's status from homo adorans (man the worshipper) to a status beneath the rest of creation. Through humankind's free will, and its desire to become like unto God, it has sunk beneath the worm.
Resistance to anything needs some sort of belief, and help from a supernatural power. Look to the earliest Christians: they gave up all of this world for the sake of their souls. Simply telling people to save the planet won't be enough. People need to be willing to sacrifice everything.
"the very nature of modern technology is that it molds man to machine, rather than machine to man, and hence lowers man's status from homo adorans (man the worshipper) to a status beneath the rest of creation"
I can think of at least one kind of exception to this, which are those using —hijacking, really— technology for purposes of exalting the soul. I'm thinking here of figures like Tarkovsky and Robert Bresson. The latter of whom said:
"There is the feeling that God is everywhere, and the more I live, the more I see that in nature, in the country. When I see a tree, I see that God exists. I try to catch and to convey the idea that we have a soul and that the soul is in contact with God. That's the first thing I want to get in my films."
Is the price humanity pays for the technology that allows films like 'Au Hasard Balthazar' and 'Mouchette' to exist and to find audiences worth it? Almost certainly not, but I've always thought it perfectly justifiable to use technology to undermine its agenda. In a sense that's precisely what Paul is doing right here at the Abbey.
I agree that so long as technology is here, that if we are extremely careful, we may use it judiciously to undermine it. A prime example of that is Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy. I also think of Kurusawa's 'Dersu Uzala', and the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Some people are so mired in the technological worldview that they won't even read a book, so films and online writing may be helpful. But, these are exceptions that prove the rule, and in a post-technological society I would be much happier to see films disappear entirely but have the resurgence of various traditional crafts. Rather than films about Andrei Rublev, let's have thousands of gifted iconographers all working their magic, or even shoemakers happily at work making shoes, and possibly finding God, as did Jakob Boehme.
Farasha- Have you read A Canticle for Leibowitz? It always seems to come up for me. It is a profound meditation on the nature of civilization and why we build up our technological utopias and then destroy them when they always prove inadequate. I see A Canticle for Leibowitz as essentially Biblical in its vision.
The answer is to seek the Way of return to the Original Harmony. To consider the Ravens and the lillies. It's all there in the gospels, if only we had eyes to see. It is quite radical. As in the Desert Fathers, as you say.
At this point, we may need help from the Taoists and Buddhist, etc., and in Orthodoxy to purify our hearts to read scripture aright.
Also, I will recommend, Christ the Eternal Tao. Though it doesn’t critique technology as such it is a radical account of the path of return to simplicity.
For what it is worth. -Jack
Jack, I have read A Canticle for Leibowitz. It is one of the books, along with William Morris' News from Nowhere and Blake's prophetic poems that set me off on the path I am on over twenty years ago now.
I agree, it is all there in the Gospels. Revelation 7:3 is powerful, but unheeded: "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees". Some of the best writings on the birds of the air and lilies of the field come from Kierkegaard, who was quite anti-technological-progress for his day. Have you read Kierkegaard's The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air? It is quite good.
As for Taoism and Buddhism, there is a lot of wonderful doctrine that can inspire a person. On the other hand, one must separate ideal from reality, as born Buddhists tend to be just as far from their tradition as birth Christians are from theirs. Also, one needs to be exceedingly careful about Western appropriations of Eastern religions. As I have seen firsthand and as Slavoj Žižek makes clear, Western Buddhism is a perfect companion to late capitalism. Syncretism is another danger. I have seen Sufi and other groups completely destroyed through syncretic tendencies. So, One should choose a tradition and live it to its fullest, but also feel free to learn from all other traditions, so long as his or her ego isn't mixing and mashing into some sort of new-age amalgamation.
I have not read Hieromonk Damascene's Christ the Eternal Tao, but I will put it on my to-read list. I did read Fr. Damascene's biography of Seraphim Rose and enjoyed it.
A conundrum is where to draw the line on the “smooth curve”. The glass in a passive solar system is an industrial product, as is the steel in an ax head, the various parts of a bicycle, the copper wire in the pre smart phone rotary phone or the telegraph, the technology to provide the wooden lumber for the Amish communal barn raising, shall we do without hypodermic needles? light bulbs? aspirin? dentistry? Though I do say, being 69 - “I have reached the age where I have seen the future and I am not impressed!” Yes, technological progress has reached the point of diminishing returns or actually negative returns. Sigh.
I think it is really rather easy to draw an ideal line: that would be similar to what Wendell Berry describes in his essay on why he doesn't use a computer. If a single person can understand it, make it, and repair it, then it is probably ok. A single skilled person can build a house, forge a knife, weave cloth and sew clothes. A single skilled person can procure food in nature, as well as medicines, dyes, and really all that is needed for life. There is more life in a single, traditionally carved African statue than all of modern art combined. So, the ideal is easy. The problem is that we all have so royally screwed up the world by overpopulating the planet, fostering reliance on new technologies, destroying natural abundance, and sowing poisons in all places, that sometimes the ideal is no longer ideal. I hope we can return to the ideal someday, but the important thing to do now is to stop where we are and to have a few moments of collective reflection, so that we may show some discernment about how to move forward. I am as critical of modern medicine as Ivan Illich, but the Machine generates many poisons and many diseases, so in the name of compassion, sometimes, in limited circumstances, a modern cure may be needed for a modern disease, particularly since we have lost knowledge of traditional cures.
"If a single person can understand it, make it, and repair it, then it is probably ok."
This. Also, the "smooth curve" is a complete fiction. What actually exists is a fundamental bifurcation between tools and techniques under personal control versus tools and techniques under impersonal control. The second category should be regarded with deep skepticism, and despite any superficial utility, people should learn to first consider and ask what autonomy (and privacy and dignity and dependability and natural spaces etc) they are surrendering by allowing such a technology to be part of their lives.
This way of looking at the world can and should extend to what (if any) institutions we agree to let act and speak on our behalf.
Leave these things unchecked, and you'll end up with hydrogen bombs controlled by people claiming to speak for you who do not value your life or interests at all. That could never happen, could it?
Who said this window had glass? What's wrong with shutters? Anything that requires mining is an obvious red flag, as essentially no one would choose to go into a mine unless forced to at economic gunpoint, and at that stage things are already far gone.
"shall we do without hypodermic needles? light bulbs? aspirin? dentistry?"
You can have those things or you can have a livable ecology. Most choose the former, and thus are far along the process of losing the latter.
No mining and therefore no metal objects? not even hand saws? - even the Native Americans mined copper deposits and traded it across the continent along with other minerals.
Hey, if you know how to mine and refine copper and shape it into hand saws and arrowheads for your own use that's a democratic technic and no harm no foul. If you enslave a bunch of people in order to churn out a thousand copper-tipped arrowheads a day, you're crossing the line into an authoritarian technic, as the sheer volume of copper arrowheads becomes a form of impersonal technic others might become reliant upon while having no understanding of how they are made.
That copper mining was also a complex story, and went on for a long while before inexplicably stopping (https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-native-americans-were-among-world-s-first-coppersmiths). As far as I can see there isn't much at all known about the real economics of it. I would be very curious to know if there was ever essentially a specialized class of Native American copper miners, and if so, what percentage were essentially traders/"entrepreneurs" versus enslaved, or if the entire thing was more or less just another part of the culture of a few tribes around the Great Lakes.
Interesting about all the lead poisoning it created too (https://eos.org/articles/miners-left-pollution-trail-great-lakes-6000-years-ago).
The short answer, as Steven says below, is that such critiques are rare everywhere - not that I need to tell you this. In Orthodoxy, in my experience, you are broadly right - there is little understanding of this on any widespread level. I think this is true throughout the Christian world, just as it is throughout the world in general: most people don't understand or think about technology in any serious way, or even if they do they are caught up in it anyway, given the speed and direction of things. I've met many Orthodox monks with smartphones. You may be right that there is more thinking about this in the Western Christian tradition, probably because Western Christians have had to engage with modernity for much longer.
There are some smart exceptions though, and I think there will be more. I have had good discussions with Orthodox people about this, and there are in fact some contemporary saints (Saint Paisios perhaps above all) who warned about what the Machine was. There are also some people online who are worth engaging with - for example, Hieromonk Gabriel:
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/rememberingsion/2021/12/08/the-metaverse-and-the-garden-of-eden/
And Fr Stephen Freeman:
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2022/02/03/modernity-and-the-temptations-of-christ/
There are others too. Broadly though, as you say, living a full Christian life makes the Machine impossible. The cross is the antidote. We need to realise this.
I think some of Alexander Schmemann's writings could be helpful. He doesn't take the critique far enough, but the way he criticizes Western, particularly American Orthodoxy for falling into the same trap as American Protestantism is right on. He terms it religionless religion. The ancient patristic writers are also always helpful, as are the writings of Saint Silouan, but I still wish there was more.
I was not aware that Saint Paisios warned about the Machine. Do you happen to have any sources for that? One of his biographies, or the collections of his homilies perhaps?
Thank you for the links.
One of the very pernicious events I have noticed post-Covid is the live-streaming of the Divine Liturgy. The Liturgy cannot be celebrated at home, alone, behind a screen. I do feel that Orthodoxy has the roots needed to stave off the present crisis, but if something isn't done fast to cut off the rot that has monks and priests using smartphones, for instance, then Orthodoxy could wither and die just like so many other traditions. I think it is time for a renewal of orthodox Orthodoxy, a renewal just like happened after the tragedy of the iconoclasts, and after Palamas put to end the hesychast controversy.
I don't know if this is how you're thinking or not as I am not inside your head, but I want to caution against identifying particular technologies as things that mark one out as "on the wrong side" if one uses them. Your comment about monks with smartphones is a useful observation about the insidiousness of the machine, but tells us very little about whether those monks have a robust resistance to the machine. As far as I know, you have a car and a laptop, and have written elsewhere about why you have them. You are not wrong to have them. It doesn't make them any less evil. The monks may not be wrong to have a smartphone. It doesn't make the smartphone any less evil, but depending on his circumstance, the monk may end up doing great damage to people around him by getting rid of his smartphone. Building communities free of the machine is not something we can make happen by snapping our fingers. People will still send us emails whether we like it or not.
It's not a question of being on 'the wrong side' in that simple sense - but there is a line I think, and we all have to identify it and then decide whether we cross it. To my mind those of us 'in the world' are not in the same place as those who choose to leave it. This is key. Also key though is that the line is contsantly moving.
In Romania I was invited to give a talk in a monastery about technology and Orthodoxy. Many monks in that place have phones, and are quite aware of the issues - which is why I was invited to talk there. Some have been doing some serious research on the direction of the Machine, and are thinking hard about its implications. But they still have phones. What does this mean and how long can it last?
We had some good conversations amongst the diverse audience about the direction of the Machine. The general agreement was that question is always 'where should the line be drawn?' People there could see the direction of travel. One thing I emphasised was that phones, for example, are a bridging technology. In ten years time, if all goes to plan, we'll be carrying subcuteaneous microchips, which will make phones unnecessary. Where then will the Christian stand? Personally I hate smartphones but I can see how people use and can justifiy and sometimes need them, and I can see how their use can be minimised too. I don't think we will be able to apply the same argument to internal microchips. But this is where we're going. So we need to be thinking hard now about where the red lines are.
As I say, I think those who have 'left the world' have more opportunity to apply those lines rigorously, and more obligation too. Having said that, I also think that my decision to have internet access and to use this screen regularly might be increasingly questionable as we move forward as well. I think that soon the choice will become very clear: become, literally, a physical part of the Machine, or opt out and incur penalties. To some degree now we are in a middle ground which is shrinking fast.
I agree with everything you said, though I would claim that smartphones have already passed the bridge technology state and are dangerously altering people's minds. I would also state that priests and monks are and should be shining beacons for us and for the entire world, so they should lead by example. If a congregation sees their priest using new media, social networking, and owning the latest phone, they will assume it is okay for them as well. I have said it before and I will say it again, we need a re-invigoration of the ascetic path. All of the contemporary criticisms of modernity, including my own, would be null and void if people would simply look to the example of the ascetics and Saints from all times and places. A litmus test is asking myself whether one of the great Saints appearing out of nowhere in this world would be accepting or horrified. I think most saints would be horrified seeing people hunched over their phones, descending to a state that is below the archetypal human station.
Spot on.
You're probably right. I'm likely going to end up as a priest in the next few years, and I still have a smartphone. I have had to ditch the computer already since it had firmly enslaved me. I am very aware that if I ditch the smartphone it's going to cause a lot of immediate complaints since so much is done by email these days. I will probably need to though if I'm going to stand against the machine with any degree of credibility. Bollocks.
Congratulations on the calling. I hope you do. I can only say as a layman, who sees phones creeping mostly unquestioned into every crevice of the church, that it would be both inspiring and empowering to see a priest taking such a stand, and explaining this everyday technology to people in these terms. It would undoubtedly irritate some people, but it may inspire others, and it would make everyone think.
Jean-Claude Larchet, an Orthodox philosopher and patristics scholar from France, has written a good little book on the subject titled "The New Media Epidemic.' Although dealing mostly with internet issues and concerns, the book does deal with technology by extension.
I also understand that Berdyaev discussed the subject in some of his works but I'm not sure which ones. 'The End of Our Time' and 'The Fate of Man in the Modern World' might seem the most likely.
It's my experience in 25+ years as an Orthodox that Anglophone Orthodoxy does not do this sort of cultural criticism very well, unfortunately. I'd put this down to its seeming overall lack of interest in philosophy, a trait which is not nearly as common in European and Slavic Orthodoxy.
Thank you. Much appreciated. I am aware of the works of Berdyaev, and while they are helpful, they largely use Western concepts and philosophical categories to perform the critiques rather than basing the critiques off of the rich tradition to be found within Orthodoxy itself.
Perhaps, it simply comes to the fact that the Catholics and Protestants were exposed to the disease of modernity sooner, so some of them were able to see things clearly, and come up with profound criticisms, Blake for instance.
True, but one wonders why it's taking us Orthodox so long to catch up, given those "Western" examples, and the fact that modernity has hit us hard as well. Given that we have both Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn as philosophical forbears, there's really no reason to react to modernity in a "don't know what hit us" fashion, at least at this late stage in the game.
True. I think Orthodoxy had a rough 20th century, but it should be an impetus to think creatively again. Who will be the Bulgakov, Rozanov, or Solovyov of today?
I think the groundwork is being put together. Here, for example. Perhaps converts will bring with them some of the deeper critiques of modernism and technology into the Orthodox Church.
The Orthodox Church has a strong claim to being the Ancient Church (or so I think). But without building up the antibodies to modernism and technotopian thinking and action, it will be eaten alive.
On the other hand, converts can unwittingly bring the disease with them into the Church. All the more reason to build up antibodies, intellectual and otherwise.
Ideally, it should not matter whether one is born into a family practicing a religion or is a convert, but it sometimes matters today. Many people born into traditions are only nominally part of those traditions throughout their lives. Traditionally, children would be raised within a family and culture that took the religion and tradition seriously, but except for a few outlying exceptions that is no longer the case today.
Certainly, converts can bring in both good and bad things. The hope is that converts will bring in ideas, experiences, and criticisms that can help, but sometimes the opposite happens. I highly recommend this https://theoaesthetics.ru/david-bentley-hart-the-theologian-is-a-quiet-rioter.html long interview with David Bentley Hart. Orthodoxy can be helped by people like Paul and David, but if Protestants or atheists convert and try to mold Orthodoxy to their categories it can be a disaster.
American Protestantism is just ridiculous, but American Catholicism has been corrupted to a terrifying extent. Far too many American Catholics will identify the Catholic doctrines with American capitalism, turning the religion on its head and making the American Church into an arm of the Antichrist. Orthodoxy so far has been mostly immune from that, but we are also witnessing a turn from the great Patristic scholars of the 60s to some modern Orthodox theologians who, if they become influential enough, would seriously degrade the faith. All of this is in the Hart article.
More and more I have been drawn to Orthodoxy, but I am a big believer in a real, living, vibrant theology. I, personally, like Origen, and I think Solovyov, Bulgakov, Seymon Frank, and to a lesser extent Florensky, are extremely necessary thinkers. When Protestant fundamentalists enter the Orthodox church and start accusing everyone and their brother of heresy, then I have a huge problem with that. I have even witnessed first hand a group of former Protestant converts refusing to read Saint Isaac the Syrian because he may or may not have been a Nestorian. So what: none of those people who are tainting beautiful Orthodoxy with their fundamentalism would be fit to even pass the shadow of Saint Isaac.
I am concerned. We no longer have Schmemann and other great theologians. We have David Bentley Hart, who has done so much to save Orthodox theology, but there is a war by protestant-thinking Orthodox against his very sensible, beautiful, and sane writings.
So, I don't know where the future will lead. We are at a turning point now. But, for those who think, we still have a rich tradition of theology, and the Liturgy is still a living life-line with the Fathers.
I don't know if he was particularly orthodox, but I have a sense that C.S. Lewis made a crucially important grouping between technology, magic, science and religion.
There is something which unites magic and applied science [=technology] while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men; the solution is a technique. --C. S. Lewis
I discuss this idea here: https://mdcbowen.substack.com/p/the-axis-of-magic?r=7br8e&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The event with Martin Shaw sounds intriguing. It would be nice to have a bit of it up on youtube at some point. I dearly hope that one day you can make it over here to the "New Country"....or what's left of it. Things are starting to get interesting right about now.
Welcome back!
Please come to big horrible London some time!
There are rumours of an event this coming autumn. I'll keep you posted.
I so hope to hear more about the Wild Christian legacy!!! I live in the US so I couldn’t attend that event, but I would if I could!! That sounds amazing to learn more about that history.
I feel like a sports team fanatic when I see Paul's essays on UnHerd... Hooray for the good team! So gratified to read in the comments how many people appreciate the good sense in his essay.
https://unherd.com/2022/07/how-the-left-fell-for-capitalism/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=93be2996dd&mc_eid=786ee8ec87
Looking forward to hearing you give your talk at the Llangwm Lit Fest Paul. :)
Coincidentally I made last week more or less the same kind of travel like you did. I visited my Romanian brother-in-law who lives in a city in the north of Romania. We have spend a few days walking in the rural landscapes of Transylvania. The villages, although modernising and depopulating relative quickly, still are very beautiful. Wooden churches, orchards, haystacks, friendly people, forests, and so on. Although changing quickly, one can still find here a beauty, calmness, a link with nature which in my country (Netherlands) is much harder to find. Paul, I would really like to see you writing something about your trip to Romania. I will be waiting for this. Thanks in advance.
Will the Benburb Priory event be on Zoom / teleconference? I couldn’t quite tell from reading the event page.
What about a Wild Christianity that can live and flourish in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria or Silicon Valley or anywhere at all? A Wild Christianity based on this - “Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” John 7:37-39
Booked for November and excited to attend. Prayers for the event.