Talking Tuesday: Americans, Hierarchy, and Technology

Via

Peter Augustine Lawler writes in the New Atlantic that Americans are completely in thrall to technology, having lost whatever small philosophical or theological basis for society that existed at its founding. He notes that religion and politics in America are completely intertwined (the technical separation of church and state notwithstanding) and that the pervasive American faith in technology and progress has irrevocably changed both. Americans have no experience of pre-modern living, he notes, and therefore, no experience of long term close-knit premodern villages and churches such as much of the rest of the world.  As a person who deeply values hierarchy and tradition, but also struggles with it on some level, I found his observations well-timed to a Lenten journey.

“If, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn claimed, it is characteristic of the modern West to have ceased to see the purpose’ that should be the foundation of human life, it is perhaps in America that the lonely and demoralizing consequences of modern emptiness are most advanced. Beneath our therapeutic happy-talk and technologically optimistic pragmatism, a critic like Solzhenitsyn can hear the howl of existentialism. Americans have 'nothing’ — nothing but inarticulate anxiety — with which to resist the ‘something’ — the measurable effects — of technological progress.”

* * *

“The wasteland of emptiness grows in America, most of all, because of our lack of a culture or tradition to keep it in check. Certainly there never was a pre-modern America. Americans have no experience of living in close-knit communities like the medieval village or the classical polis that Alasdair MacIntyre finds indispensable for human flourishing. 

* * *

"[America] is all about doubting personal authority. If I defer to your word, then I let you rule me. That is true of all personal authority — from princes to priests to parents and even or especially the personal God. Nobody is better than me, and so nobody knows better than me. I methodically doubt my way to that democratic opinion. I have no reason to privilege anyone’s opinion over my own."

~Peter Augustine Lawler, The New Atlantic, "Modernity and Our American Heresies", Summer/Fall 2014 issue.

F.Vasilyev: Village, 1869

I think that last line is an important observation--it is hard to give up our own wishes and desires, to subvert our will for the common good. To take hardship so that others may have some comfort. I know it is difficult for me to do hard things without grumbling about it. It is hard for me to graciously submit my will, my time, and myself to the needs of others. 

What I don't know (and continue to think about) is where we go from here--how do we build traditions and close-knit premodern communities in a world awash with faceless technology? How do we return to something of which we have no collective memory or experience? And, perhaps most importantly, why do these things matter so much? (and I think they do, but I'm still articulating to myself all the reasons why they matter). I remain intrigued by Rod Dreher's Benedict Option, about which he has written at length, but it does seem that there are no easy answers, particularly in a diverse urban setting.

Things to ponder.