I have long had an idea in my mind about the the cultural phenomenon of disparaging past cultural systems of belief because of technological advancement. I asked myself, What is it about technology that makes us feel so superior to past cultures? What does technology give us? When I use the term technology I am thinking about scientific discovery and the development of electro/mechanical tools. The Emperors New Clothes Technology on its face is phenomenal. When I think of the majesty of technology, I think of hover boards, lazer guns, and 44 inch paper thin televisions. On a serious note, we have as a society received tremendous aid from medical advances and mechanical advances that have the potential to increase physical well being. Part of the rub - if we are merely material beings, sans soul and spirit, than it might seem like the increase in a societal standing of basic physical health would be a good thing. Even from the materialistic view, when we loose the ability to commune and continue as a multi-generational family unit, we loose life. But what if science could fix that? I recently read Outliers, the famous Malcom Gladwell book. In it he cited a study of a city in Pennsylvania that had a less than 1% rate of cancer. The crux of the story was that the community was living together, and sharing life as a multi-generational conglomerate of some sort. The message was human love and interaction heals the body. It was a wonderful story and I was euphoric after reading it, realizing that fat italians who smoke and drink can be in amazing health if they learn to live with and love each other on a regular daily basis. But what if medicine can fix that, what if we can take pills that dispel all our diseases, what if we left humans with everything they wanted - a big TV, ordering take out every night and watching the new season of some new show. Would we spend our lives watching other people live theirs? What is soft tyranny? Why is the Roman appeasement of bread and circus so reviling? Does technology actually create the temperate condition for soft-tyranny to flourish? The point of this book is to show the dangers of technology and the implications those dangers leave us with. The primary generation is separation from our fathers. I mean historically, but it is also pretty amazing that we actually let or fathers and mothers rot in nursing homes. That technology gives us a sense of empowerment by knowledge. The Bible says knowledge puffs up. That it does, and that puffing–the sense of pride that is fostered–makes us feel like our moral decisions are superior to the decisions made by our ancestors. First we must ask what does technology give us. I do not mean in species, but in genus. Not in the specific manifestations of technology but the category of human profit. I think technology is primarily beneficial in two ways: speed and preservation. Think about the greatest inventions: the plow; the wheel; the printing press; refrigeration; the telephone; the steam engine; automobiles; lightbulbs; computers; the internet; medical sciences breakthroughs. These species of the genus technology can be tied to [I think technology would be family, these would be genus, and kind of light bulb would be species, but whatever] speed and preservation. To start with the plow, a man can till a field by hand, but when he ties a plow to a horse, the field is tilled at a much faster rate. The wheel obviously increases the speed of going from point a to point b. The printing press increases the speed of copying documents. What about odd things like glass, I guess an answer is the purpose of glass is to let light into rooms, for increased productivity inside of a house: pre-lightbulbs. But there are technological advances that are aesthetic, that is they exist to bring pleasure not because of speed or preservation, in fact the reason we love these items is because they cause us to be filled with a sense of awe. Take for example, the invention of stained glass. Now we see it as boring and sometimes done well. But when the light comes through the glass the light changes its character and turns colored, it was as close to a lazer-light show as the medieval folks would come. Speed and preservation are great but they are essentially a-moral, without morality. A professor and I had a long discussion about the morality of a hammer. He said that we know that hammers have morality because they are good or bad. I said that they do not have morality, they have functionality, a thing can function better than another thing, but that does not mean we apply moral right to it. But it is more complicated than that, because from a large scale perspective we can say, shouldn't things function the best they can. This might be a reduced kind of benthemic perspective that we can find the utility value of a transaction and gauge happiness based upon that transaction. So, where do we find morality? Well I think one of the places is from our ancestors. How did they do life, and marriage and family, and whether I should leave the world and live in a fake existence, and why? Head in the clouds. What exactly is wrong with living life in the clouds? Well it certainly breathes a kind of dreaminess. The danger is that it is not real. But what if it is real. What if I'm dreaming of becoming a writer and I do write. But what if I live in a chemically induced cloud where I can behave in any method, like not forgiving a despised enemy or being narcissistic. What if my cloud takes my natural biological response of pain or depression and makes me able to deny what my own corpus recognizes as right. That I should be depressed if I am living with hatred and lonliness, But I drug myself to make the feelings go away. What if technology is to powerful for us? Or what if it only gives us speed and preservation. What if we have merely created faster ways to destroy ourselves. While it may have taken the Roman empire 250 years to fall, it may take us 25.
This post is entirely for personal history.
I haven't had a good life-directional dream in a while. I don't know if it's law school that is draining my dream life but on the eve of this spring break a had a significant dream. I
I was sitting in the front of a class, Civil Procedure perhaps, at least it was that class room, as I was sitting there, something frustrated me, I'm not sure what, and I got up to move to another seat. When I had originally entered the class it was empty, as far as the seating (maybe 5-10 people). When I got up to move seats this time, the class was full and there was only one seat left at the top. I walked to the back of the class and took my seat, and to my amazement a friend (that I haven't talked to for a couple of years), was sitting in the seat beside me. I was excited to see him, in the area of his gifting he is the most naturally creative and skillful people I have ever met. If this guy would have ever attempted to discipline / develop his skill he could easily be a professional artist. In real life he has very straight and normal teeth. In the dream his teeth were yellow, crooked, and one or two missing. He smelled like a cigarette butt and looked disheveled. But there was still this recognition of latent genius or at least latent brilliance. I said what are you doing here? He started to come up with a story and then said, c'mon you know why I'm here. Then he said soooooooooooooo. I knew he meant he wanted to move in. I said, of course you can move in but there are a few things you need to do. I don't remember the list but it consisted of things like, going to church, being involved with people that weren't drunks and bums, going back to school, developing his gift, etc etc. He kind of brushed it off and said naahh, I can still move in without doing that stuff. I was about to turn to him and tell him there was no option, it was a take it or leave it situation. At that moment, chapel started, in class. Chapel started with a standard five piece rock and roll worship team, someone turned to me and asked if this was normal, and I said year the worship was pretty white here, My friend was standing next to me. When I looked down, there was suddenly a new worship team. An African American choir was now standing on stage and began to sing. I thought that it was interesting but I liked the soul they brought. My friend sat down and the person beside me left at the sight of the black choir.
I woke up and knew what it meant. Earlier, I had a conversation with a friend and he told me it was not common for people like me to exist in law school. Artistic and intelligent/ successful law student. In fact when I though about it I realized there was not anyone with the same gift set in my law school. While that is nice it is challenging. I think my tendency in this season is to move to the side of my nature that is: wild, undisciplined, artistic, and essentially lost, homeless and stained.
That is a dangerous placement.
Logical Directions,
If I have the correct Logical framework and plug in plausible axioms I can reach various conclusions. The standard deductive framework, of course is, 'Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal.' But our problem today is not so much the framework but rather the axioms. The 'self-evident truths' we plug into those frameworks that get us into trouble.
The issue then is what are self evident truths. Let's take a moral axiom like, don't hurt anyone. for instance. Let's plug it into the framework. When we hurt people its bad, David hurt someone, therefore David acted bad(ly). But logic is simply a tool. So when we say it logically follows or doesn't follow. What axioms are we saying that according to. Who's oughts are we using?
I need to think about this more...
Smart people aren't happy, well it seems that's what we're to believe. Rich people aren't happy, funny people are generally tragically sad, Howie Mandell? I was listening to Howie on the radio a couple of months ago and wanted to cry because his life is so decimated. The other place people aren't happy is bars. I have been to many said establishments over my tenure as a non-minor, and with the exclusion of, in some places, the common warmth one finds with a friend, bars are cold, sad places, again there are exceptions, I'm speaking of the general local bar... just give it a try drive into a random town on a tuesday night and tell me how happy the people are?
Sad is an indicator.
I was thinking about wilted trees, in the heat of summer, they don't look appealing, they look tired and sick. I was thinking about the evidence of happiness as evidence to the right kind of life. Even in the most secular sense, the neo-marxist is pursuing happiness through his ideology, not necessarily cement-block housing. Wall street protesting believing that if they, or "the people" had more money they would be happy.
I had a dream last night where someone said, I just get hung up on the technicalities of the faith and it shuts down the whole thing. I responded, "the older I get the more I recognize the wonder and fulfillment of the simple elements and am drawn away from the complexities of the faith."
The nice grandma in the little church who is happy, is evidence that she is doing something right. Not just morally right but right according to her very nature and the way she was ultimately designed. It's funny, she is kind of like a tree planted by streams in living water that yields it's fruit in season, who's leaf does not wither in the fever heat of summer.
We live in the fever heat and should so expect the world to be wilted or rather conducive to wilting. We point to lots of factors, like rulers and religion, collateral people and coercive pressures or whatever.
I am thinking about a friend that doesn't love Jesus any more, and thinking about our last conversation, his soul as a hedonistic disaster, rabidly seeking pleasure to make him happy. I remember not too long ago when he was happy, pursuing the things of God. Aquinas said one of the ways we know 'God's way' and 'law' is good, is because it makes us happy. The great lie of the enemy is that God's way makes us sad and is really a ***shabby rip-off of real life. enter snake stage left.
But I guess that's only for old ladies.
Recently, in class, I read a quote by Paul Butler from a '95 Yale law review article; he stated, "The fullness of time allows us to judge..." Then he went into his current judgments of past cases, based upon his current enlightened state by the supposed manifestation of a new and wonderful theory; the theory was an offspring of Critical Legal Theory. That may sound boring, it really isn't; but my point is not about either critical race or any other legal theory but rather about the foundational belief that we are as a culture could discover a more perfect way to live.
The word "progressive" impresses upon our minds a kind of journey to "the Good" or at least "the Better." Most Neo-Marxists would tell you that we are progressing to a new and better system of governance, or non-governance that will free us to be our good and wonderful selves, freed from the chains of oppressive, dust-dry, lifeless, morality. In contrast, the problem with being a "Conservative" is it, as Chesterton says, forces us into a stagnancy; a kind of hat tipping to current social ailments.
I think the answer is neither to be morally progressive nor morally conservative but morally regressive. There was this one guy who lived a couple of millennia ago who had some really great ideas. Really, if we were morally regressive, that is regressing chronologically to the standard that Christ laid out for us, or regressing internally to the law written on our hearts, given solidification and direction by God's Word; we would be doing the right kind of regressing.
I heard a technocrat* scientist on TV the other day saying they found a place in the Brain that fired a certain way when people saw pictures of a babies. In contrast when people saw ugly people their brains fired in a different way. They induced, by regional firing, people think Baby's are cute. From that premise they said, "Our brains recognize cuteness so... we can take care of Babies! we see babies as cute and want to take care of them."
I was like holy craaaaaaaaaaapppp......... They've Discovered cuteness!!! Yeaaaaa!!! Honey... Get in here..... they've discovered Babies are cute!!!! Finally, Cuteness is scientifically validated, we can now know it's real and it's morally ok to think babies are cute, get Leon out of the closet! Wooooo-hoooooooooooooooo!
Our moral behavior is not validated or invalidated by Science nor is it validated or invalidated by, as Professor Butler believes, the "fulness of time." Morality is based upon God's standard and although the technocrats rage against it and the progressives plot a vain thing, the God-Man who came for a visit still is the representation of that unchanging standard.
*Technocrat: The moral ruling class whose ideological validation comes not from a "religious" system of belief but from technological validation and or scientific discovery. (this is my first time trying to actually define this term; this is an approximation)
Psalm 2
1 Why do the nations conspire[a]and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the LORD and against his anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.” 4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
There are clear Biblical statements prohibiting such intentions of the heart. Jesus said if you want to become great be a servant and he may have said something about not punching people in the face. There is also an element of good biblical competition; Paul said he runs the race to win the prize. Paul also talks about training and not beating your fists at nothing.
So I am competitive, did I mention that? But something I get excited about is confrontation with someone huge, mammoth, nay even gargantuan. I recognize that I will likely loose, but there is a feeling of redemption in merely rising to the challenge. I wonder if that's how King David felt? "Man this Giant is about to crush me but I'm going to try and plunge one of these rocks into his skull as he's running toward me, and if I die everyone will think I'm awesome." I would think that.
So one of the pressures is to be the best or leave the game, let's say that's an inappropriate pressure but the other pressure is good; I want to do the best I can and try to kill this thing, I probably can't but I'll take a crazy, consistent, aggressive swing and hope that God backs me up. Here's hoping-