(We here resume our discussion of technological development as a moral issue)
In our most recently published essay, we compared the Amish regard for the Sabbath with the cavalier attitude of American “society” in general. Today we’ll continue this contrast in a much larger and spiritually deeper context, as it provides a most valuable heuristic for understanding (as I hope to demonstrate) the error of the “developed” world which dictates the dominant narrative of our current social order. We have touched on this question of Technique as the true god of the modern West, but let’s take a closer look to see whether this is so.
What really concerns all of us, I hope, is the question of social progress. Just about everyone agrees that social progress is something devoutly to be wished, but in order to better identify the benchmarks which would allow us to gauge it, we first need to break down this ideal into its constituent parts, namely “society” and “progress.” There can be no doubt that the Amish constitute a unique society...every hallmark of a unique society is on display at all times. But what about “our” society? The Amish contradistinguish our “society” from theirs with the somewhat pejorative appellation of “English” for ours. (Once upon a time there was a real linguistic division between the German-speaking Amish and the English-speaking world that constituted the larger American population.) Amish society (and it must be said that Amish leaders are consummate sociologists, though not in the sense in which “we” normally use the term) is fairly homogeneous, and this is by design. Do we find the same unity in our “English” society. We most certainly do not! The values consensus which characterizes the Amish is nowhere to be found in non-Amish American “society,” which is pluriform and in many ways self-contradictory. These contradictions have in fact taken center stage in American political life, so that we have every manner of tendency seeking the spotlight: Some advocate vociferously for “transgendering,” others find it unconscionable; some advocate for global military intervention, some for peace; some advocate for public health authorities to dictate our daily lives with mask mandates, “vaccine” mandates, social distancing, lockdowns and other draconian measures, others advocate for medical freedom; some advocate for a “Green agenda” of solely renewable energy sources, others pooh-pooh the global warming scare as unscientific propaganda...on and on we could go, but all of the aforementioned controversies have come about as the result of technological advance in its larger sense. There is no value set which these various parties can turn to for their underlying ground of unity, though there does seem to be and underlying premise that serves as the flywheel of this social order (or disorder, if you prefer) and that is the belief that technical progress is always a good thing, and the solution to the problems of modern life, largely the result of the introduction of advanced technology and continuing, unbridled scientific research, will come from technological innovation. Technology creates problems but then it solves them (creating new problems) – a kind of materialist dialectic, probably not unrelated to the one introduced by Karl Marx. We in the West have tended to measure our social progress by our technical proficiency; no idea could be more foreign to the Amish – they are the living repudiation of this principle. The developed world consists of a mad scramble to outdo everyone else in technical prowess, but to what end? The materialism which threatens to inundate us insists there is no end to be sought, there is only technical progress which is self-defining and theoretically illimitable. But surely this is madness!
As this series of essays is primarily written for a Christian readership, let’s take a look back at the Gospel to see what Jesus has to say about this:
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles strive after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of Godg and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.1
First, let us note that Jesus does not “invent” the Kingdom of God, as some have suggested, but rather he reveals it. He invites us to redis-cover it in ourselves, and live according to our true nature, from our hearts as our Creator intended. God is love! But the idea of divine providence so often articulated by Jesus lies at the core of Christian belief; the “gentiles” are engaged in a mad scramble to dominate each other and to aggregate material wealth, Christians rely on God to provide them pathways to obtain what they need (as God knows best), and seek nothing beyond that. Thus, the “one thing necessary” is love of God and our fellow humans, and if we keep that first, everything else finds its proper place.
This is precisely what the Amish do; in considering the introduction of any technology into their society they calculate ifs effect on their relationships with God and each other. If it promotes this, then it can be accepted. If it in any way detracts from it, then it is rejected, and prohibited. This is all very rational, and the only reason we outsiders find it peculiar or overly restrictive is that we do not share this Christian consensus which animates Amish social life. We asked in our very first essay whether America is Christian nation. Here again we see that by and large we are not, because if we were, we would be emulating the Amish in considering the social impact of new technologies before adopting them, but we have no correlative critical process to restrain technological development and assure that it is serving our higher purpose (to which we give lip service at best) and so technology continues to “advance” itself, gathering more and more momentum and rushing us headlong into a dystopian technocratic future. One thing the technocratic oligarchs have in common is that they are fundamentally godless: their god is technology itself.
But it should be clear to all of us by now, after the “plandemic” and the lethal results of the misnamed “Covid vaccines,” from the evidence of chemtrails in our skies, from Bill Gates’ open plan to blot out the sun with airborne particulates, from the murderous protocols employed in hospitals to “treat” patients with deadly Remdesivir and intubation….with all this evidence we must recognize that technology and scientism are not only false gods, but genocidal gods. Worship of them (which means acceding to them uncritically) does not lead to prosperity, but to an early grave.
(to be continued)