Being a father of 4 is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Navigating the massive upheaval of our times is a monumental undertaking for any one person but, trying to walk a family through it, all of different ages, personalities and needs, is...overwhelming at times. Definitely feeling the strain of charting the right course through all that’s coming our way at increasing speed. I find myself praying mainly for God to fill up all the lack and failings in my attempts to raise my children well in a world offering poison wrapped in glittering, alluring packages on all side. Lord have mercy. I appreciate the thoughts you’ve laid out here as a light on the path.
“trying to walk a family through it, all of different ages, personalities and needs, is...overwhelming at times.”
It’s definitely a challenge, with so many variables, both human and technological, in constant flux. I’ve certainly encountered my share of failures in trying to navigate this flux – at times falling into the error of trying to control too much, and at times falling into the opposite error of throwing up my hands in resignation. Leading by example, and cultivating infinite patience and trust, has always struck me as helpful.
Peter- I am in agreement with your creed. It is entirely countercultural, at least the "culture" (anti-culture) being pushed by our so-called elites.
I have to think that transhumanism is, at least in part, an attempt to reconcile the gap between meaning and technology. Or, perhaps, to render it irrelevant. They will fail, of course.
I tend to hew towards the meaning side of the meaning vs economic abundance spectrum. But that is easy to say when living on the abundance side. Despite thousands of years of thinking about it, balance eludes us still.
“Despite thousands of years of thinking about it, balance eludes us still.”
We often feel inclined to pick one side of the balance or the other, as if we could separate our need for meaning from our practical creaturely realities—the need for shelter, food, tools/technologies etc. I think the balance will always elude us, although some imbalances are worse than others.
As I have mentioned before I think it is easy to use the word "technology" in a way that obscures more than it illumines. Technology is by definition meant to achieve something, do some kind of particular work. It is never neutral. And by using any specific technology it will change us, often in ways that are difficult to foresee. What our digital technology is doing to us may not be worth the costs of using it, for example.
Can we instead develop technologies that deepen our relationships to people, place and prayer? That deepen our humanity and create an abundance with a different set of benefits and costs that are more livable? I think we can. None will be perfect of course. But the current set of technologies (and they're expected or feared future trajectories) seem to alienate us from people, place and prayer, regardless of what else they may offer us. They are born out of certain way of looking at the world. The world as mere resource for the enhancement of human power and control.
I mean somebody should write a novel about all this! :)
For example, I have been looking into various forms of growing food. I don't even rise to the level of an ignoramus in this but I do find the principles that are being used very interesting, e.g., permaculture. These seem to be a more or less low tech (as we typically conceive technology) ways of going about farming. Permaculture seeks to use ecological realities to increase yield within a relatively smaller space and without the side-effects of industrial agriculture.
Natural farming proposes and even less energetic response. It is the Tao Te Ching in action, i.e., do-nothing farming. I will leave it to others to determine the details of these approaches. But regardless, they do point to a way of conceiving our lives not on the model of ever-increasingly will to power, but on working with natural forces that enhance people, place and prayer. I think it is a promising direction.
I’m no farming expert either, although even in suburbia, in small ways, one can start to make this sort of shift (e.g., we built a chicken coop for a few hens in our yard last year). But I see both bottom-up and top-down challenges for this kind of thing to become a larger movement.
From a bottom-up level, to make a societal impact there need to be enough people doing it, as that creates energy and propels others into action. From a top-down level, the shift can only happen if the state allows it – and one can imagine several reasons why a state or corporate interests wouldn’t like the idea of people being more self-sufficient with food.
I had just finished reading the Deneen-Fukuyama-McCloskey-West discussion on liberalism, published by Harpers a couple months ago, before this post. They largely avoided the subject of technology, but it was striking how much the fear of losing economic abundance, and the autonomy it affords (or perhaps the other way around?), lay behind McCloskey's defense of liberalism in particular.
Since being off work with illness long term and going back, I have seen a stark change. I work in a school where the staff room used to buzz with lively conversation. Now, very often, I walk in and it's silent, while everyone taps on the screen of their phone. I'm not sure if people are losing connection or simply choosing disconnection. It's eery how quickly this has taken hold.
I also think there has been a concerted effort to confuse and destabilise the roots of our identities, cultures and nationalities (our sense of belonging, if you like). That might help the Machine to suck in more unwary souls. If you're cast adrift, perhaps you seek the easiest means of belonging (at least) somewhere.
It seems to me that technology for the sake of profit which is the technology that we have is the problem. This is true for so many aspects of our lives from health care to agriculture to art - all these in service of profit eventually sacrifice their primary aim - in effect their primary aim becomes supplanted by the demands of profit.
This is really fascinating and thoughtfully written; I enjoyed it a lot. There does seem to be some connection between suffering, or at least a particular kind of suffering, and feeling like one's life is meaningful. I would make a distinction between conscious suffering, which is usually undertaken for some personal reason or to some kind of end, and the kind of suffering which is imposed unconsciously on a person by the culture they live in, which circles around and around and never goes anywhere.
An absolutely wonderful read. The idea of putting pen to paper and fleshing out a family creed is alluring to say the least.
Once again, your writing encourages me to seek more purposeful ways of leading my growing family and to make sure I'm paying acute attention to what is going on in the world around me. It's not enough simply to distance ourselves from the grip of the machine but we also need to be aware of its impact on us, even in "indirect" ways.
Thank you for this. I am and Orthodox Christian seminarian, son of immigrant parents from a very similar part of the world you describe who also moved to Detroit, albeit more recently. My fellow seminarians and I are certainly having conversations that are moving in this direction. What role do you think we, as future priests, can play in helping people reclaim their humanity? Many immigrant Orthodox Christians in America are very wealthy and happy with the way things are.
Thanks for your question. As I am not a member of the clergy, and have no formal theological training, I offer my thoughts tentatively:
1. Being able to reclaim one’s humanity presupposes an idea of what it means to be human. In the creed I provided, the basic premises are all things that can be drawn from basic biblical teaching. I think that is probably a place to begin.
2. Relatedly, I would give a bit more emphasis to biblical literacy. This is an area of weakness that I have noticed at the parishioner level. The result is sometimes people who have a high level of loyalty/allegiance to the church, but who might struggle to clearly verbally articulate core Christian theology and how it practically connects to life and their decision-making.
3. Within the Orthodox Church, there is sometimes a high level of emphasis on monasticism, which can (mistakenly) lead to the idea that we must primarily cultivate our prayer lives and let God do the rest. Without giving up that emphasis, I would encourage people to think about how to engage their faith practically, in marriage, with children, at work, with society, and of course with technology.
4. Within the immigrant community, there can sometimes be a feeling that the parishioner is a spiritual consumer and the priest’s job is to dispense “the goods”. Of course the priest does “do” things, but I would try to break people out of their passivity and to take ownership of their Christian faith.
Anyway, I hope I haven’t said anything to offend, or completely missed the mark (you can certainly let me know if I have!).
Being a father of 4 is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Navigating the massive upheaval of our times is a monumental undertaking for any one person but, trying to walk a family through it, all of different ages, personalities and needs, is...overwhelming at times. Definitely feeling the strain of charting the right course through all that’s coming our way at increasing speed. I find myself praying mainly for God to fill up all the lack and failings in my attempts to raise my children well in a world offering poison wrapped in glittering, alluring packages on all side. Lord have mercy. I appreciate the thoughts you’ve laid out here as a light on the path.
“trying to walk a family through it, all of different ages, personalities and needs, is...overwhelming at times.”
It’s definitely a challenge, with so many variables, both human and technological, in constant flux. I’ve certainly encountered my share of failures in trying to navigate this flux – at times falling into the error of trying to control too much, and at times falling into the opposite error of throwing up my hands in resignation. Leading by example, and cultivating infinite patience and trust, has always struck me as helpful.
Peter- I am in agreement with your creed. It is entirely countercultural, at least the "culture" (anti-culture) being pushed by our so-called elites.
I have to think that transhumanism is, at least in part, an attempt to reconcile the gap between meaning and technology. Or, perhaps, to render it irrelevant. They will fail, of course.
I tend to hew towards the meaning side of the meaning vs economic abundance spectrum. But that is easy to say when living on the abundance side. Despite thousands of years of thinking about it, balance eludes us still.
Excellent article. I hope all is well. -Jack
“Despite thousands of years of thinking about it, balance eludes us still.”
We often feel inclined to pick one side of the balance or the other, as if we could separate our need for meaning from our practical creaturely realities—the need for shelter, food, tools/technologies etc. I think the balance will always elude us, although some imbalances are worse than others.
As I have mentioned before I think it is easy to use the word "technology" in a way that obscures more than it illumines. Technology is by definition meant to achieve something, do some kind of particular work. It is never neutral. And by using any specific technology it will change us, often in ways that are difficult to foresee. What our digital technology is doing to us may not be worth the costs of using it, for example.
Can we instead develop technologies that deepen our relationships to people, place and prayer? That deepen our humanity and create an abundance with a different set of benefits and costs that are more livable? I think we can. None will be perfect of course. But the current set of technologies (and they're expected or feared future trajectories) seem to alienate us from people, place and prayer, regardless of what else they may offer us. They are born out of certain way of looking at the world. The world as mere resource for the enhancement of human power and control.
I mean somebody should write a novel about all this! :)
For example, I have been looking into various forms of growing food. I don't even rise to the level of an ignoramus in this but I do find the principles that are being used very interesting, e.g., permaculture. These seem to be a more or less low tech (as we typically conceive technology) ways of going about farming. Permaculture seeks to use ecological realities to increase yield within a relatively smaller space and without the side-effects of industrial agriculture.
Natural farming proposes and even less energetic response. It is the Tao Te Ching in action, i.e., do-nothing farming. I will leave it to others to determine the details of these approaches. But regardless, they do point to a way of conceiving our lives not on the model of ever-increasingly will to power, but on working with natural forces that enhance people, place and prayer. I think it is a promising direction.
I’m no farming expert either, although even in suburbia, in small ways, one can start to make this sort of shift (e.g., we built a chicken coop for a few hens in our yard last year). But I see both bottom-up and top-down challenges for this kind of thing to become a larger movement.
From a bottom-up level, to make a societal impact there need to be enough people doing it, as that creates energy and propels others into action. From a top-down level, the shift can only happen if the state allows it – and one can imagine several reasons why a state or corporate interests wouldn’t like the idea of people being more self-sufficient with food.
I had just finished reading the Deneen-Fukuyama-McCloskey-West discussion on liberalism, published by Harpers a couple months ago, before this post. They largely avoided the subject of technology, but it was striking how much the fear of losing economic abundance, and the autonomy it affords (or perhaps the other way around?), lay behind McCloskey's defense of liberalism in particular.
Since being off work with illness long term and going back, I have seen a stark change. I work in a school where the staff room used to buzz with lively conversation. Now, very often, I walk in and it's silent, while everyone taps on the screen of their phone. I'm not sure if people are losing connection or simply choosing disconnection. It's eery how quickly this has taken hold.
I also think there has been a concerted effort to confuse and destabilise the roots of our identities, cultures and nationalities (our sense of belonging, if you like). That might help the Machine to suck in more unwary souls. If you're cast adrift, perhaps you seek the easiest means of belonging (at least) somewhere.
Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I cried reading this. Thank you.
It seems to me that technology for the sake of profit which is the technology that we have is the problem. This is true for so many aspects of our lives from health care to agriculture to art - all these in service of profit eventually sacrifice their primary aim - in effect their primary aim becomes supplanted by the demands of profit.
This is really fascinating and thoughtfully written; I enjoyed it a lot. There does seem to be some connection between suffering, or at least a particular kind of suffering, and feeling like one's life is meaningful. I would make a distinction between conscious suffering, which is usually undertaken for some personal reason or to some kind of end, and the kind of suffering which is imposed unconsciously on a person by the culture they live in, which circles around and around and never goes anywhere.
An absolutely wonderful read. The idea of putting pen to paper and fleshing out a family creed is alluring to say the least.
Once again, your writing encourages me to seek more purposeful ways of leading my growing family and to make sure I'm paying acute attention to what is going on in the world around me. It's not enough simply to distance ourselves from the grip of the machine but we also need to be aware of its impact on us, even in "indirect" ways.
Thank you for this. I am and Orthodox Christian seminarian, son of immigrant parents from a very similar part of the world you describe who also moved to Detroit, albeit more recently. My fellow seminarians and I are certainly having conversations that are moving in this direction. What role do you think we, as future priests, can play in helping people reclaim their humanity? Many immigrant Orthodox Christians in America are very wealthy and happy with the way things are.
Thanks for your question. As I am not a member of the clergy, and have no formal theological training, I offer my thoughts tentatively:
1. Being able to reclaim one’s humanity presupposes an idea of what it means to be human. In the creed I provided, the basic premises are all things that can be drawn from basic biblical teaching. I think that is probably a place to begin.
2. Relatedly, I would give a bit more emphasis to biblical literacy. This is an area of weakness that I have noticed at the parishioner level. The result is sometimes people who have a high level of loyalty/allegiance to the church, but who might struggle to clearly verbally articulate core Christian theology and how it practically connects to life and their decision-making.
3. Within the Orthodox Church, there is sometimes a high level of emphasis on monasticism, which can (mistakenly) lead to the idea that we must primarily cultivate our prayer lives and let God do the rest. Without giving up that emphasis, I would encourage people to think about how to engage their faith practically, in marriage, with children, at work, with society, and of course with technology.
4. Within the immigrant community, there can sometimes be a feeling that the parishioner is a spiritual consumer and the priest’s job is to dispense “the goods”. Of course the priest does “do” things, but I would try to break people out of their passivity and to take ownership of their Christian faith.
Anyway, I hope I haven’t said anything to offend, or completely missed the mark (you can certainly let me know if I have!).
Peco, Well done! D
An excellent piece.
Technology is a tool. A spade is a tool. Would you let a spade rule your life?
Or what about a hammer?