Confession of a Luddite Sympathist

 
It seems to me that if you are going to tell the world that modern technology and specifically social media type technology makes you uneasy, and you are going to say it on your blog, then you had better frame the statement as a confession. So here it is:

I confess - technological development makes me uneasy and I have a constant sort of background nervousness about what social media is doing to our ability to relate to one another in healthy ways.

And now for disclaimers: I do not actually disapprove of technology, I try hard to stay on top of technological development and I think that it offers great opportunities for good. My confession is one of inclination not of decision so while there is a little worried knot in my stomach every time some new device of website catches on, I go ahead and try to learn the tech and see what can be made of it.

Technology is essentially power. In fact it is an expression of power which is almost unique to humans (I think I remember that there are certain monkeys which do stuff with sticks and I heard somewhere that sea otters will hold on to especially useful "shellfish cracking" rocks). It is the manifestation of the power of thought, imagination and innovation and as such it really sort of deserves to be celebrated - all things are indeed glorious for being themselves.

I believe C.S. Lewis J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton each pointed out that the desire to develop technology is a manifestation of the same desire which leads people to try magic (Lewis has some really great things to say about this in The Abolition of Man). The technologist and the alchemist are the right and left hands of the same impetus. In fact when you get right down to brass tacks definitions it becomes surprisingly difficult to differentiate between the two. The major difference is that technology has worked while magic hasn't.

The problem is that technology is power - and exponentially increasing power at that - in the hands of a species with questionable moral character. Power only increases an individual's ability to do what they want to do, to "enacting their will on the world" as the philosopher would say. It is a good thing for a good person to enact their will on the world, but conversely it is a bad thing for a bad person to enact their will. And technology itself does not discriminate between good and bad, it simply amplifies. Technology makes bad people more able to do worse things and good people more able to do good things.

I think that Facebook gives a useful example. Facebook (together with other social media) has enable people to organize and topple repressive regimes. I take this to be a good thing, although I have not always been pleased with the "new boss", but that is another post. At the same time, I believe that Facebook (again together with other social media) has enabled people to create illusory relationships which save them from the difficulty and ultimate satisfaction of forging real relationships. It allows for someone to become increasingly antisocial without feeling as many of the negative effects of actually being alone.

All of this is because technology essentially amoral. It is not immoral, for then it could not serve and especially not amplify the good that it is so often used for. Neither is it moral, for then it could not be used in the service of harming people as it has so often been. Technology is a catalyst, an amplifier, to stake out yet another "mushy middle" position, it is what you make of it.

But maybe things are not quite so simple as that. As Spiderman is wont to remind us, "With great power comes great responsibility". We need to ask ourselves whether we are able to handle that sort of responsibility. After all, there was a time when the worst mankind could do with its power was to kill itself off. This would have been a bad enough thing and we managed to be responsible enough not to do it. But now, with much greater power, we carry much greater responsibilities. We now have the power to reduce our entire planet to a glowing slag heap, ending nearly all life; and we are responsible for how that power is going to be used.

So the question "is technological development a good thing?" turns out to be the question "is it a good idea for beings like us to be more powerful?" and our answer will have to depend on whether or not we think that human beings ought to be trusted with this much power. And this is a hard question to answer because in reality we all clearly observe that humans, both collectively and individually, are both incredibly evil and shockingly good. We are beings of unimaginable glory and holiness who have become corrupted and evil. We are just about as paradoxical a set of beings as can be imagines, veritable gods who have become demons and still aspire to godhood what the Greek Orthodox call Theosis. We are the only species that could have produced bothe Mother Teresa and Hitler and that species tension is at work in each of us. Indeed, to go back to C.S. Lewis, one of those two must be our ultimate destiny:

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations." - The Weight of Glory

But then maybe a growth in human technological power is unavoidable, maybe whatever the answer to that question, we will still be faced with an inevitable increase in human power. So we might want to jump strait to another question: "how can we ensure that power is used responsibly? How can we keep from blowing up the world or turning the vast majority of the population into unthinking, consuming zombies?" After all, there are certainly people out there who project exponential and unavoidable technological growth over the next few years.

To my mind, the answer to these latter questions (I don't think that technological progress is something which can be effectively fought) is twofold: First we have to find a way to make people better - in spiritual terms we have to really focus on bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth, we have to begin to really care about things like sanctification, maybe we need to go back and read James and Hebrews again. And secondly we need to never cease in doing good to the best of our own ability - and this must include the acquisition of the technological expertise which will enable us to become more effective peacemakers, more efficiently generous, more aware of the suffering that we are to be forever healing. After all, Spiderman works backwards as well: "With great responsibility comes the providence of great power" at least it must God was serious when He promised to provide everything necessary for the doing of His will.

The Third Love...

I was recently asked whether or not I have a “safe person” in my life. I do. In fact I have several – my wife, my siblings and parents, and quite a few of my friends.  As the conversation went on though I caught on to a couple of things: that “safe person” meant something more specific than “someone you feel safe around”, and that friend doesn’t mean much anymore.  As it turns out, “safe person” in this context meant what I mean when I deliberately use the word friend. Those of you who talk to me on a regular basis may have noticed that I prefer to use semi-synonymous titles like “buddy”, “acquaintance” or the rather awkward “a guy/woman I know” when talking about someone I like and have a relationship with but with whom I am not friends.

Let me say at the outset (granted the outset of my second paragraph) that this post will not get into the question of Facebook friending, it’s a fascinating topic but “beyond the scope of this paper”. I will also not be concerning myself with talking about whether men and women can be simply friends (though that may make a worthwhile topic for another post). What I do want to talk about it what friendship is supposed to be and what it isn’t, I probably won’t be able to restrain myself from a few thoughts on how things have gotten this way as well.

The Turkish word for “friend” is “arkadash” which essentially means “someone who has your back” or more literally “supports from behind”. In contrast, our word, according to my online etymology source, comes from a Proto-Germanic word “to love”.  And then the famous four loves of the Greeks included “phileo” which was essentially non-sexual love. If I have been at all correct in my previous posts in claiming that we are essentially social creatures, then friendship has to be something more profound than a long-term playmate.

 
And that begins to get at what I am looking for with friendships. When I think, talk or write about friendship I am looking for something that gets beyond “acquaintance whom I really enjoy being around”; I am looking for something to which words like “honor”, “loyalty”, “commitment” and “love” come naturally and for which words like “like”, “enjoy”, “pal” and “nice” feel too weak.

  Friendship is supposed to be a relationship you can rely on. Bill Cosby tells the story of a friend of his whom he could call at 2 am on a rainy night who would drive 70 miles to pick him up if he had a break down because that man is his friend. In college I had a professor who defined a friend as “that guy who would give you $500.00 just because you told him you need it.” C.S. Lewis suggests in The Four Loves that friendship grows out of a discovery that you share a fundamental passion with someone. Friendship happens when you have a connection with someone that first reminds you that you are not alone in the cosmos and then lets you know that someone else is on your side.  It is not an accident that soldiers form some of the deepest friendships we know of, theirs is an experience which demands and proves interdependence.

To my mind the archetypal friend would be Sam Gamgee, though there are others though out history and literature. David and Jonathan, Achilles and Patroclus, heck Bert and Ernie are all encouraging, moving friendships. There isn't much bad that can be said about Sam, but if there is any one trait he is most famous for it would have to be his loyalty. Sam had Frodo's back. End of story. To quote Shakespeare, Sam's love "carries it out, even to the edge of doom" Mt. Doom in Sam's case.

In fact hardship works this way. One of the great things about hardship (it has many bad aspects as well) is that it brings people together. I have written about interdependence in the past; hardship creates interdependence which, itself, creates one of the best opportunities for friendship. I would be fascinated to find out if there is a correlation between the experience of hardship and the occurrence of real friendship. I expect that there is a strong one and if there is, that would suggest one more reason for the depression and apathy which is so prevalent in our materialist society.  I certainly know that the last several years of financial difficulty have created and strengthened several of my friendships.

 
I want to end by clarifying something: I am not saying that there is anything wrong with being an acquaintance. As a matter of fact I think that at least part of the problem is that we have begun to take it as an insult to hear that someone we like is not a friend. It shouldn’t be. There is nothing wrong with being a buddy or an acquaintance. It is simply a different thing, not a worse thing.

 
So what do y’all think? Do you have friends? If not, have you felt the lack? If so, what is the benefit?

If you Can't Play Nicely Then None of you Get the Toy

 Big warning, I think that this is the most political and potentially divisive post I have written. Or maybe not. It's certainly on a topic for which I have little to no awareness of public opinion. To wrap up the waffling and prevaricating, I have no idea what you will think of this.
 
While I was growing up I was in the habit of getting into fights with my siblings, especially my younger brother. Many of those fights were over who would get to play with some much coveted toy. I am reasonably certain that at least once, my parents resolved the situation by confiscating the toy and informing us that if we couldn't play nicely with it then we wouldn't get to play with it at all. If that didn't actually happen to me then it did happen to so many friends and TV characters that I have adopted it into my own experience. Before anyone throws my parents (or some now-nameless TV parents) under the bus for this atrocity, let me suggest that it worked pretty well. I have very clear memories of making efforts to resolve fights over various toys before they escalated to the point that my parents would take a hand.

Yeah this was pretty much
me

I want to suggest that we take the same approach with marriage in this country. For quite a few years now, we have been fighting over who has the right to get married. The conservative crowd wants the government to define the word in such a way as to exclude certain times of lifetime monogamous commitment and the liberal crowd wants the government to step in and guarantee everyone the right to call their relationship marriage (and thereby receive the important social and legal benefits that married couples enjoy). So as a starting point I want to suggest that the kids have been fighting over this too long and it is time for us to take marriage away from the conservative and liberal politicians.
 
But that is really just a starting point. As I reflected on it, I realized that I don't think the politicians have any real right to claim power over the term in the first place. Historically it looks as though marriage first became an important legal term to the government (state governments I believe) when they decided to write bigamy laws. After that the federal government got involved with the income tax. Various child welfare and adoption laws joined the mix at some point as well. But all of this, with the interesting exception of bigamy which I am not going to touch, worked without any technical definition. A marriage was what everyone knew a marriage to be. No point in defining it.
 
Now we have various political interest groups trying to get their representatives to define a word in one way or another. Which is really silly. Can you imagine a campaign to define a chair as a "tool for sitting involving no more or less than four legs and a back"? The stool lobby would be up in arms. Why should the government have the right to define a marriage? The only answer I can come up with is that it is an important term in several tax and legal codes. But surely those codes would work just as well with the phrase "committed-cohabiting couple" substituted for marriage.

I like this document

And on further reflection, doesn't the idea that the government has the right to define marriage violate the free exercise clause of the first amendment? Historically, marriage is a religious concept. At least in western civilization, we hold that God makes or at least recognizes a marriage between two people (possibly more if you are an old school Muslim but again - not going there). And if that's the case then aren't my fellow religious people out there a little offended that our government has even thought about giving itself the power to define one of the sacraments - even if they want to define it in a way you like? After all, if they get to claim that power today what assurance do you have that they will use it well tomorrow. Today they define marriage as only between a man and a woman, tomorrow they define the Eucharist as the ceremonial partaking of cotton candy and soda pop.


Now it certainly is the government's job to protect contracts (see my earlier two posts on capitalism) and if Uncle Sam wants to give tax breaks and extend insurance benefits to people who commit to act as one unit for the rest of their lives, I say let him (I am generally in favor of tax breaks and insurance benefits for people who care about each other and are willing to make life-long commitments to one another, in addition to visitation rights and other basic rights of attorney and so forth). So my "solution" is to replace the legal concept of marriage with a number of standard domestic partnership agreements. Then those people who are legal domestic partners can go to the religious (or non-religious) institution of their choice and take part in whatever ceremony they think will create a spiritual union between them, and call their union whatever it is that they want to call it - probably marriage.

Update: Same sex marriage is now legal throughout the United States, a situation I thoroughly support (though I would not be sad to see the implementation of my recommendations above). You can read my series in support of LGB folks within the church starting HERE.

And Here Comes Capitalism - Take Two.

  For those of you who are keeping score or who are possibly trying to make a convert out of me (love and appreciate the attempt by the way, if you think you are right about something, the nicest thing you can do is try to show me the truth you have found), the mission is not yet a success. I am still a pretty hard-core free market capitalist. A big part of that is probably the fact that I haven't yet heard (or read) a response to my "it is immoral to force people to spend their own money in a particular way" objection. Still waiting on one -really- so that I can at least be in dialogue with someone about it.
  In the mean time I though it might be worth recording some of musings on the strengths of free market capitalism in a modern liberal society and why it is that I think more and more good people find themselves against capitalism these days. I have been re reading The Abolition of Man recently and it occurred to me that we (the western world in a terrible over-generalization) used to combat the major flaws of capitalism in a way that is, at best, only minimally effective in modern culture. It used to be that the average westerner held two particular views in regards to the use of their financial (and material) resources: A) that their stuff was their stuff; only they have a right to decide how to spend it so that if anyone else tried to force them to use it in a certain way they would be justified in being offended, outraged etc... B) that they ought to be generous with their resources, help those less fortunate than themselves (especially their friends, family and neighbors) so that generosity and concern for people in need was a basic part of being a decent person.
  The result was a worldview which protected societies (in theory and at least sometimes in practice) from the worst impacts of a purely free market system. If people view charity (in the middle-old sense, "giving resources to the poor") as each persons duty, then the poor will generally be kept from starving.
  But we can't teach that any more. Back in the day, this moral obligation to help the poor was taught as just that, a moral obligation - usually a religious moral obligation. Today we don't teach children that they have any moral obligations other than tolerance (and something akin to but not quite the same as non-violence). We tell them that everyone has a right to their opinion and then we tell them that all statements of ought or moral sentiment are statements of opinion. And once we have taught them this moral subjectivism, a lesson they pick up with alarming speed, they are almost perfectly defended against any appeals we make to some duty of charity. We have already told them that they have a right to define their own moral code, thus we lose all right (in their minds) to tell them what that moral code ought to look like. So charity becomes a matter, not of moral obligation, but of pragmatic utilitarianism.
  This, by the way, is why I think so many older movies are popular as left-leaning films simply because they contain the message that the rich ought to be generous with their wealth. But that is not a socialist message, that is a capitalist message. It is the capitalist who says "the rich have a right to their riches and a responsibility to do the right thing with them. The truly evil man is the miser who has great wealth and does not use it for the good of his neighbors". The socialist thinks of the rich man as un-deserving of his treasure and insists that it be stolen from him and used to make the middle class feel better about the suffering of the poor.

  Now, the average schoolchild's reaction to poverty is not "I had better do something about that" but "that makes me feel bad so some thing ought to be done about it". Do you see the difference? In the first case, the problem demands concrete action (generosity) on the part of the individual. In the second it demands action on the part of "society".
  That is why I see it as only natural that good people, people who happen to care about the poor, the mistreated, the abused, are trending more and more towards socialism (not all have gotten there and I see no great shame in being a socialist - though I think that it is a very bad economic and political system). These are the people who want the problem fixed and have noticed that nobody is standing up to fix it. In short, socialism is on the rise because the free market capitalists have forgotten their moral duty.

  I believe that being truly moral (something I would still like to be) means not breaking either of two principles. I must not let other people suffer if I can do anything about it and I must not steal, even from those who can afford it, to alleviate the suffering I see around me. Being a free market capitalist means taking responsibility for my fellow man, not because the government forces me to but because it is the right thing to do. A socialist society is a society which does not provide it's citizens with as much of an opportunity to learn to be good; because it is a society with less freedom, it is a society for rule breakers (in Blue Ocean terms - socialism is a good system for a stage 1 society which needs rules and the threat of violence to make it be good). A capitalist society is an audacious experiment in free will. A wager that given the necessity, the rich will voluntarily give of themselves to feed the poor. Let us pray that the experiment does not fail.

Variations on a Theme by Shakespeare, Lewis and Kreeft

2019 Update: I am still wrestling with the core concepts I explored in this piece. If you want to read more about my thoughts on post modernism, modernism, and pre modernism you can find some of that HERE.

I was playing with different topics today and it occurred to me that I have not yet explained this blog's title. I have hinted at it and I think I may have even used it somewhere (though I can't find the post off hand) but I haven't ever posted on why I call it "Heaven and Earth Questions". In Hamlet when Horatio sees the ghost he is confounded more because ghosts don't fit into his understanding of the world, than because of any normal fear of ghosts. Hamlet responds with : "There are more things in heaven and earth. Horatio, than are dreamt of in  your philosophies." I read Hamlet quite a few times with out ever noticing that line. In fact, the line was pointed out to me by Dr. Kreeft in one of his lectures (he uses the line quite a bit and at this point I have no idea which lecture I heard it in first so let me just give him general credit).

Dr. Kreeft's point, building off of C.S. Lewis' work on the character and weaknesses of modernism as well as his own work, is that there are really only three possible relationships between an individuals epistemology (the study of what is know and how it can be know) and ontology (the study of being or of what is). Either there are more things in heaven and earth (in reality) than are dreamt of in their philosophy (their epistemology), there are the same number of things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy, or there are fewer things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy. Crudely speaking - and I am already anticipating a few grumpy notes from post-modernists out there- the post-modernist holds that there are fewer things; the modernist, that there are the same number of things; and the pre-modernist, that there are more things in heaven and earth. 

For the post-modern, reality is a really tricky concept (and possibly an entirely meaningless word) to begin with. The post-modern approach tends to downplay reality as unknowable and therefore unreal. For many, many reasons, they have abandoned anything like a correspondence theory of truth (truth is when a proposition corresponds to reality) and then operate out of a desire to establish ones own "working" reality which they seem to simultaneously think must also be a fundamental illusion. However it plays out it will work out to a belief that reality, to the extent that it is a meaningful word, is smaller than the conceptions of each individual.


The modernist holds on to that initially exciting yet ultimately deadening idea that human achievement will one day be able to explain absolutely every aspect of reality and offer something like a scientific proof to verify those explanations. You hear lines like "if science can't prove it then it doesn't exist" from them. Here in America we have a very common religious form of this modernism which claims instead "if the Bible doesn't prove or affirm it then it isn't real". Both are modernist by this model. The claim boils down to the belief that human reason is capable of explaining or describing every aspect of being; that there are exactly as many things in heaven and earth as are dreamed of in philosophy. Thus prior to meeting the ghost, Horatio is a sort of proto-modernist.


But the pre-modern believes that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy; that reason works but isn't comprehensive. The pre-modern believes there is more to the world than what we can figure our. This does not mean (as I find many athiest apologists have construed it) that the pre-modernist gives up on trying to understand or that they believe that reality can't be known. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." (KJV) Instead, the pre-modernist believes that there is always going to be more to know, that reality is fuller, more complex, more meaningful, more beautiful than we can comprehend - there will always be more to discover.

That is why I named the blog "More things in Heaven and on Earth". By now you must know that I am, or at least am trying to become, a pre-modern. Thus the title reflects my belief in infinite depth and breadth of the universe, of reality, of the cosmos, of the question and of the answers. There is bottomless joy in the search for truth because the truth is always being found and will never be exhausted.

And the Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

About three quarters of the way through one of my notebooks is a reminder that "science fiction and philosophy would be a good blog post". I remembered to write this without it.


I am completely and unrepentantly partisan in favor or genre fiction. A friend asked me the other day why genre fiction gets such a bad rap in literary circles and as I launched into an answering diatribe it occurred to me that I am not precisely balanced on the subject. And I am alright with that. There are enough people out there fighting for the sanctity of "realist prose", and enough of them still occupy positions of power in various prestigious universities that I am able to feel as though I am still supporting the underdog in my defense of genre. Granted we are seeing more and more "sci-fi and fantasy" courses in English departments and I even know - oh frabjous day -  an instructor at the Naval Academy who was teaching a course on modern graphic novels (these are really long comic books like Watchmen and Persepolis for those of you who are not quite as immersed in geek culture).

Nevertheless, the wizened guardians of the literary canon are still debating The Lord of the Rings and Asimov's Foundation series. Let them bicker, history is on our side (well, mine anyway). But just in case it isn't; or in case I haven't made enough grumpy retorts to a nebulous literati, let me explain why and how I think that science fiction is the most philosophical of all genres (including realistic fiction).


Philosophers are huge fans of hypotheticals. Generally there is some attempt to make a hypothetical sound more impressive or intellectually worthy by calling it a "thought experiment" - this might also help with funding humanities departments - but ultimately the game is to imagine an unreal situation with it's own sets of rules for the purpose of playing out a theory to see how it might work in the absence of real world complications. And I think that this is a wonderful thing; hypotheticals give us all the opportunity to test something without having to worry about irrelevant details. A while ago I mentioned an ethical dilemma involving a train and several groups of people. The point is to imagine a situation in which someone's morality comes to the fore in a clear way. It does not matter that the situation is incredibly improbable, what matters is that it is a test case for at least two different ethical systems.


In science fiction, the author gets to do the same thing. What better way to explore philosophical anthropology than to imagine a world in which artificial intelligence is on a par with or even surpasses our own (Aasimov's Robot books)? If you want to expound a pre-modern cosmology in a way that modern thinkers will be able to understand how could you improve on a contemporary professor being shanghaied into a trip to mars (C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet)? Is there a more effective laboratory for investigation into the implications of a  perfect signifier-signified relationship than a novel wherein the enemy alien's doomsday device is an entirely accurate language (Samuel R. Delaney's Babel 17)? And how could there be a more thorough thought experiment into the cosmological implications if Plato's theory of the forms and their impact on multi-verse theory than a book about intellectual monks under attack from a world more distantly emanated the good (Neal  Stephenson's Anathem)? I could go on; and on and on and on.

 

Science fiction gives a writer the ability to imagine the specific set of circumstances which would most clearly demonstrate their own innate philosophies and world views. Of course when that is all they use the novel for (in fact when anyone uses a novel for much of anything other than as a medium for good story), they tend not to write very good books. But what if the author is a philosopher? What if they are writing not in order to preach a philosophy but to tell the excellent stories their philosophies inevitably produce? Some authors certainly are mere preachers - though sometimes they preach well - and some are tremendous story tellers and not very good philosophers (I would but Heinlein into this category). But some authors are genuinely both. Philosophers with a knack for recognizing a good story and the skill and craft to tell it well. It is probably going too far to call them philosopher poets but that would point in the right direction. That is why I find science fiction so intriguing, beguiling, thrilling and ecstatic.

Also laser guns, robots, space ships and aliens.

The Golden Mask

So this post is one of those "being vulnerable because I am doing something I don't do well" deals. Having a friend who actually is an excellent poet and a circle of friends who write this stuff on a semi regular basis turns out not to have made my brief attempts in the arena any easier. Ah well, I'd better just take the plunge:

The Golden Mask


I tell a tale to turn from unknown truth; too long known
and seek instead a kindergarten color wheel.
Your palette is too subtle; your pastels strained my eye
I never could connect with grays and browns
and purples faded, washed in detail, tassels, minutia,
death.

Instead I long for fairy queens and war,
for melodies, trombones and marching bands.
The cross, the stone, the bread, the cup, the fish
smother my soul with a nuanced earthquake devoid of Flame.

But quiet winds, drifted from English pipes
to children's minds are lightning from the sun,
and dragons and ships and warriors and crowns.
a whispered wardrobe starts a carousel.

Such simple themes must overwhelm my eyes
with red and blue and brassy green and gold
And that fierce name by which I loved Him first
is Love and Death and Joy without renoun.

"My King is coming, riding on a fawn;
I could not love Thee till I loved Aslan"

By - me

Be gentle.