I had the pleasure of discussing the way internet technologies are shaping Christendom with the prolific John Mark Reynolds yesterday. Marcus Goodyear and Katherine Britton were also on the call.
The podcast is up at ScriptoriumDaily. Once again, it was in the middle of my day and I had to cut out at the end, but it was (as always) a provocative conversation and well worth listening to.
Don’t forget also that GodBlogCon is coming up soon. Go forth and register.
My trip to Israel this summer brought to light a number of nuances in the question of Israel and her relationships with the Palestinians, the Arab nations, and the West, not least of which is the role of the Church (American and Israeli) in the future of the Middle East. I look forward to sharing some of those issues with you over the next few days.
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Mention Israel to any evangelical American Christian age 50 or older and his or her face will most likely light up at the mention of the Promised Land, the place where Jesus walked and where all the events of the apocalyptic age will play themselves us (and rather conveniently, too; all that fire and brimstone and plagues of blood would make a mess of the retirement home golf course communities).
Mention Israel to any evangelical American Christian age 30 or younger and your are much more likely to get a furrowed brow and a look of unease, if not out right disdain, for the country that has displaced millions of Arabs and refuses to make a just peace.
Somewhere between the Billy Graham generation and Brian McLaren’s acolytes there has been a massive shift in thinking that has moved Israel from most-favored nation status to ambiguously unjust (and probably cruel) in the minds of many American Christians. What was once an easy question to answer (is Israel good?) has recently become much more murky in the minds of the faithful.
The reason for this movement might have less to do with theological deliberation (although the popularity of Reformed theology among a growing number of young men might account for a minority) and more to do with an openness to popular culture influence that never would have been accepted 50 or 60 years ago. While my grandparents tried to raise their children in line with an older Christian social code that was grounded in certain theological commitments, they were living in a time when the conservative branch of the American Church increasingly split itself between fundamentalism and a new evangelicalism. The split can be understood and traced in a variety of ways, however, one telling difference was the attitude of Christians towards their culture.
Although risking painting with too broad a brush, the fundamentalist branch moved towards isolating itself from society while the evangelicals were optimistic that the teachings of Jesus and the Scriptures could be expressed in powerful and relevant ways, ways that might shape and influence American life. Many Christian institutions of higher learning were developed by the evangelicals with a distinctive mission to offer liberal arts education that was fully informed by Christian thought—schools like Wheaton College or Biola University. On the other side, fundamentalists tended to start Bible schools, language institutes, and missionary training programs.
Without dissecting the relative merits and shortcomings of these two branches of American Christianity, it is worthwhile to keep this split in mind while examining America’s relationship with Israel, foreign policy, and our current inability to come anywhere near presenting a coherent front on Middle Eastern politics.
America’s older Christians, and the ones who currently are still holding office in state and national senates, grew up when dispensationalism was THE reigning paradigm in American churches (arguably it still is…just ask Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins) and every churchgoer was convinced that Israel belonged to the Jewish people by divine fiat. The creation and prosperity if Israel seemed to underline this interpretation of biblical prophecy and convinced many that the final days were drawing near; the threat of impending doom for all of Israel’s (and YHWH’s) enemies underlined the wisdom of fostering friendly diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv.
Furthermore, the investment in the development of Bible schools and missionary agencies had the interesting effect of exporting dispensationalism to Israel itself. Many of the evangelical congregations in Israel are heavily dispensational, as are many of the Messianic synagogues, often modifying the American dispensationalism with a strong Jewish nationalism and ethno-religious overtones. While the Christian population in Israel is still a minority, the religiously motivated pro-Israeli religious sentiments added to the Israeli nationalistic fervor and opened many Israelis to American influence in their government.
However, as later generations of evangelical Christians grew up, they were not so heavily influenced by Christian dispensationalism—or at least it was counter-balanced by the generally politically liberal and leftist views being promulgated in popular culture, by rock artists, MTV, and professors who found pupils ready to listen to a narrative detailing the destructive, imperialistic, and selfish practices of America and her closest Middle Eastern ally.
How was it that younger Christians were able to be more heavily influenced by the opinions of those outside their church doors? Again, while risking too large a generalization, one effect of the evangelical view of culture allowed Christians to enter into discussion with those outside the church and even concede that those voices might have something worthwhile (and true) to say to the world. One thing the left has done with marked success is market its political parties, views, and proposed solutions as THE parties, views, and solutions of compassion and justice. Many younger Christians are eager to have compassion and promote justice and have moved towards the political left in an attempt to see these values realized in the world.
The effect of all this is a growing discomfiture among American Christians with Israel, our support of its hawkish policies with regard to the Palestinians, and the way America has involved itself in Middle Eastern politics. Events like the September 11th tragedy help move us closer to Israel in our stand against terror, but as those events fade to a dim memory American sympathies slide towards the underdog and find it increasingly hard to view Israel as an underdog when we receive constant reports of Israeli troops retaliating against terror attacks by destroying the homes of the wives and children of terrorists or supporting settlers who raid nearby Arab villages with the goal only of terrorizing school children and old men and women.
The future of Israel and Palestine (and so the Middle East) remains veiled but what once seemed a certainty (unwavering American support of Israel) now seems a bit more questionable. The day when American involvement in the Middle East mirrors that of most European nations is still a long way off; however, the seeds have been planted that might quite easily produce a harvest radically different from the one envisioned by so many children of the Greatest Generation.
(No small bit of reading, but) check out Scott Thumma’s dissertation research on Megachurches.
A nice factoid: “Megachurches are a new phenomenon. This is not to say that very large congregations were absent from the history of the Christian Church (See Vaughan 1993:17-28). Yet at any historical period there were no more than a dozen or so of these massive congregations around the world…
Nearly all current megachurches were founded after 1955. The explosive growth experienced by these congregations, however, did not begin in earnest until the decade of the eighties (Vaughan 1993:50-51). The 1990’s have not slowed this growth. Data collected in 1992 revealed over 350 such congregations (Thumma 1993b). Vaughan estimates that the number of megachurches grows by 5 percent each year (1993:40-41). Given this rate over two million persons will be weekly attendees of megachurches in the United States by the start of the new millennium.”
-Scott Thumma, PhD, Exploring the Megachurch Phenomena: Their characteristics and cultural context
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Now I grew up in the Anaheim Vineyard, a megachurch in its own right (at its peak about 5000 regular members, currently about 2000). The experience is one thing. There are sensible benefits and detriments of a church community the size of a Greek polis. I could argue for or against the many obvious and existential features of a megachurch. But lets think for a moment about the idea itself, the metaphysical infrastructure of the megachurch.
The very concept seems to be inherently post-industrial. Without large buildings (steel) uniformly decorated with purple carpet and folding chairs (mass production) and loud speakers (electrified technology) the whole production wouldn’t get off the ground. Without a wide variety of people traveling from miles away (cars) the three-thousand seat auditorium couldn’t be filled.
It also seems inextricably tied to the Protestant traditions, for without the emphasis resting on preaching rather than spiritual direction the pastor could not tend such a flock (Reformed/Evangelical non-liturgical services); without millions of dollars worth of artwork, paintings, sculptures, and ornate woodwork, ancient/medieval Christians would not have built a cathedral-sized warehouse building only to fill it with white walls (post-7th council iconoclasm); and without a painless, easy (or non-existent) process of admitting new church members, who’s to say that the seats would all be filled in time to collect enough tithes to pay the mortgage?
These are observations, not critiques. My only criticism I will state tentatively, in accord with my current level of conviction: Much of modern “progress” has actually been regress. With the exceptions of medical technology and expedited communication, much of our innovation has worked against our overall happiness. Depression has gone up by frightening percentages in the last century. We know more and more about the world and less and less about ourselves. “We know more about science and less about scientists” to quote Walker Percy. So it is likely that at least some of the megachurch phenomenon, while not entirely bad, suffers from some particularly recent ills.
Question for Discussion #1: How much of modern life has been more human and more conducive to “the life above nature,” the life in service to the God of love, and how much has been less human and less conducive? If megachurches are (as I have suggested) inherently modern post-Reformation phenomena, and popular only as recently as the 50’s, what new goods must we preserve, and what new ills must we cut out?
Compare with John 16:7 (KJV): “Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”
Question for Discussion #2: Why didn’t Jesus stay bodily on earth? He could have retained the pastorship, appointed apostles and assistant pastors, ministered, and performed sacramental ceremonies. But then again his popularity would have risen, and who would attend measly ol’ Paul the Apostle’s Church when you could go to the First Congregational Church of Jesus Christ? Why didn’t Jesus stay earth and serve? Perhaps because he would have had to start a megachurch.
I’ll be watching the Saddleback Civil Forum closely tonight along with many other folks. It is the first time since the primaries ended that Barack Obama and John McCain will be talking in the same room about the same issues.
The event is being hosted by Rick Warren, who has caused no little amount of anxiety on the Right for his decision to put Barack Obama on the same stage as John McCain. The consensus opinion is that Warren is going to water down difficult issues for Obama that many evangelicals disagree with him about, and that Obama is going to come out ahead with evangelical voters as a result.
This is, of course, plausible. It would be tempting to avoid the discomfort of asking Barack Obama pointed questions about why he voted against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act during his tenure as an Illinois State Senator. It would be tempting to eschew honest inquiry and direct questioning for being perceived as nice, generous, and big-hearted.
But he won’t.
Expect direct questions on difficult issues for both candidates. Expect Rick Warren to be level-headed, fair, and reasonable. Expect Barack Obama to struggle to coherently explain his position.
And when it happens, expect me to be commenting on it. See you again tonight.
Update #1: Barack Obama has just finished. We got a few of the pointed questions that I predicted on the issue of abortion. Warren didn’t pull any punches, going straight to the heart of the matter at the very beginning, asking, ” At what point does a baby get human rights?”
Obama’s answer was, well, uninspiring. He punted, claiming that scientifically and theologically the question was “above [his] pay grade.” He claimed that there are “moral and ethical elements” to the issue, but declined to specify what they are, and then claimed that he supported Roe v. Wade because “women do not make those decisions lightly.” When asked whether he had ever vote to limit abortion, Obama said he was opposed to late-term abortions if there were exceptions for the life of the mother, but again did not answer the question directly. (Update: see the important correction from Craig Hendricks.)
Obama’s overall performance was as uninspiring as his answers on these questions. He stuttered a lot and didn’t seem comfortable answering Rick Warren’s questions, even when he was on friendly territory. He didn’t say much that was new, though when talking about faith-based organizations he acknowledged that he worked with churches in South Chicago during the early days of his political career, which was a startling reminder to the careful listener of Jeremiah Wright and a surprising introduction by Obama.
Will evangelicals be persuaded? Doubtful. He didn’t display the charm and charisma that he is famous for, and he obfuscated on key issues that nearly many evangelicals are concerned about. The performance won’t hurt him, but it’s not going to win anyone over.
Update #2: McCain’s performance tonight was masterful. He was marvelously comfortable on stage and remarkably humorous. The most likable guy on stage tonight was not Barack Obama, and it wasn’t Rick Warren.
Most importantly, he was direct and forthright on nearly all the questions. He was eloquent in a way that Barack Obama wasn’t, and he showed a decision making ability and confidence that was striking in contrast to Obama’s reticence to say things without nuancing them repeatedly.
When asked what his greatest failing was, McCain was honest in naming his first failed marriage. When asked when babies get human rights, he didn’t skip a beat in responding, “at conception.” On stem cells, he acknowledged his support for embryonic stem cell research while expressing his hope for skin cell research.
Rick Warren, of course, was the big winner tonight. He was (as I predicted) fair, engaging, and reasonably difficult in his questioning. But McCain comes in at a close second. Policy aside–and such events are never about policy–McCain was more personable, more affable, and significantly more Presidential than his counterpart.
The irony of the Obama’s night is that he has taken up the mantle of a “new politics” for himself, but yet played politics by attempting to couch his answers in such a way that his audience would like them. The American public has not yet seen McCain and Obama in such close context, but the more they see them together, the more they will gravitate toward McCain. Obama’s hope to court evangelicals hasn’t died yet, but tonight it took a beating.
McCain detractors will point out that he didn’t elaborate much on his perspectives or his answers, but this wasn’t a policy discussion–it was a fireside chat, and people who were unfamiliar with McCain or had only heard about how angry he is will be stunned by his affability and his levelheadedness.
Tonight, John McCain made long strides toward putting stories about his inability to court evangelicals and social conservatives to an end.
Update #3: Little Green Footballs on what we learned about Obama:
In our first thread, we learned that Barack Obama is pro-choice but anti-abortion, pro-military but anti-war, opposed to evil, against torture (especially evil torture), against Clarence Thomas, against prostitution and human trafficking, against designing embryos for stem cell research and human cloning, pro-international community but in favor of the Bosnia intervention. Very, very pro-empathy, over all.
I was honored to be a part of a Q&A session with the pre-eminent emerging church blogger Andrew Jones. Jones is extremely thoughtful, especially on issues pertaining to the future of Christianity and culture.
The conversation is here. I only asked one question and held off on the follow-up because I was still thinking about how I wanted to frame my questions. It was the middle of the workday for me, so thinking about the future of blogging, etc. was a startling juxtaposition.
The conversation is the first in a series of conversations with speakers from GodBlogCon, which is coming up very quickly and which looks to be the best conference yet. It pains me to miss it this year.
Longtime readers know that I have been quite connected with the conference and will doubtlessly write my opinion off as a result. However, for those who are new, I say that few things have helped my blogging like GodBlogCon. The likelihood that I will read your blog regularly increases a thousandfold if we have met and discussed important issues, and there are few conferences where Christian bloggers are able to gather to do so. GodBlogCon is one of them.
Registration prices increase August 22nd, so register now. If you need an incentive, listen in to the conversation and get a taste of what is much, much better in person.
In September of 2006, Family Research Council Action hosted the first “Values Voter Summit.” In 2007, it had 2500 attendees and launched Mike Huckabee’s campaign into the national spotlight. It was influential enough to momentarily quell talk of the declining influence of social conservatives.
Since then, “values voters” has become the designator of choice for social conservatives. A quick Lexis-Nexis search lists some 415 references to the phrase since July of 2006, with only 319 references the entire six years prior. That the phrase has penetrated our political vocabulary so deeply is a tribute to the influence of the Family Research Council.
My concern is that the cooption of “values” by social conservatives indicates a lack of a coherent, clearly articulated philosophical framework for the movement’s political discourse and behavior.
The shift in our ethical language from virtues to values is commonly cited as one instance of the death of modernity. David Wells writes:
”The first major shift in this period was the replacement of Virtue by values. It was the practice of the virtues, those aspects of the Good that were the same for all people in all places and were what endured, that gave life its structure and meaning. The belief in Virtue, however, was slowly replaced in the wider culture by that in values, and values could be nothing more than personal preferences which are not normative for all people.”
Before him, Allan Bloom had written:
“Values are not discovered by reason, and it is fruitless to seek them or to find the truth or the good life. The quest begun by Odysseus and continued over three millennia has come to an end with the observation that there is nothing to seek. This alleged fact was announced by Nietzsche just over a century ago when he said, “God is dead.” Good and evil now for the first time appeared as values, of which there have been a thousand and one, none rationally or objectively preferable to any other.”
If Wells and Bloom (among others) are right, then the irony of “values voters” is that they have co-opted the language of the very ideology that has lead to the cultural situation they so detest. Not only that, but “values voters” have ceded the very principles upon which their civic engagement ought to depend. By exchanging social mores for “values,” we have internalized and subjectivized the principles upon which a healthy functioning society depends, and in so doing lost the authority to speak clearly and persuasively on moral issues.
This, of course, is a strawman. There are numerous social conservatives who embrace the clarity of “right and wrong.” My concern is that the appellation filled a void by giving social conservatives a sense of identity within the broader Republican Party, but in so doing betrayed the principles upon which social conservatism depends.
C Michael Patton carefully observes the (increasingly common) trend of people becoming doubtful, disillusioned, and eventually departing from Christ.
David Sanford observes, “Any business that is losing 31 million of its customers is going out of business.” Check out his book “If God Disappears: 9 Faith Wreckers and What to Do About Them”
*Update: Link fixed.
I spent the last two months reading and thinking about the Phaedrus. What a fascinating little book of Plato’s.
I’d like to present four theoretical problems with writing itself. I do this for a) for people who (like me) never before considered that there were any theoretical problems with writing, b) for people who would like to accept and admit these problems, tackle them, and come to the defense of writing, and c) for people who would like to deconstruct the problems, showing that they are not indeed problems at all.
Here’s some pertinent sections of the Phaedrus, copied and pasted off the Internet.
Socrates tells the story of Theuth and Thamus, the Egyptian gods. Theuth invites writing, but Thamus must judge its worth. “Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to remembering, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
Here are the first two problems.
1. Writing helps people remember, but does not help them develop the power of memory.
2. Writing makes many thoughts, opinions, beliefs, accessible to many people, but does not ensure that everyone who reads and “hears” will have adequate understanding of what they read.
2a. Writing makes many seemingly ‘deep thoughts,’ accessible to many people, but when they have read it and convinced themselves that they understand it, they will annoyingly overestimate their own level of education.
Another quotation:
Soc. I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves. “
Two more problems:
3. Writing seems to communicate intelligently, but when you ask it for clarification, it responds like a dumb man or a dead man — with silence.
4. Writing is permanent enough to go anywhere and say what it says to anybody, but there are times when it should not say certain things to certain people, and without a person there to censor it, it will go on speaking.
4a. If someone ‘abuses’ or mistreats a text, then the text cannot defend itself against attack.
These are the 4+ theoretical problems with writing that I see in the Phaedrus, that I am wrestling with. I will refrain from providing my preliminary defense/deconstruction, for now. Any takers?
***
If these are real problems, then I see two more corollary problems:
C1. Books in foreign languages avoid these four problems. Is the translation of text then an extension of the same problems into ever widening spheres of influence?
C2. The Holy Bible is the ‘best-selling book of all time.’ Is it subject to the same four problems? Does its unique character trump these problems, or aggravate them to an extreme degree?
For non-tech content providers, at least.
The success of Politico actually seems like an incredibly discouraging sign for the media. Here you have this forward-thinking, primarily virtual venture to create a political news organization that marries old-school reporting values to the speed and the immediacy of the web and it actually works. A year-and-a-half after launch, it’s getting 3.5 million unique visitors per month and 25 million page views. And yet not only is it unprofitable, but 60 percent of its revenues come from advertising in the 27,000 circulation print version. In other words: Politico got the online readership it dreamed of, but it hasn’t come even close to figuring out how to monetize it. So they’re reliant on the Congress-section of their print paper, which can extract huge rates from lobbying organizations and pressure groups. Were they actually web only, they’d be losing catastrophic amounts of money. If The Politico was an experiment to see if people would read more stuff about politics, it was a success. But insofar as it sought a new business model that would bring economic viability to online reportage, it’s as adrift as everyone else.
Klein’s point is really not surprising. Numerous online successes have failed to translate to real world profits.
The Huffington Post, which has become the dominant lefty news outlet on the web, only became profitable recently, even though it isn’t paying its writers. The NY Times tried to charge for content, but was forced to open up the archives.
Then there are the tv and movie marketing attempts. Quarterlife, which admittedly didn’t do very well on the web, was a historic failure when it hit the silver screen and Snakes on a Plane, which was an internet sensation, failed to make a significant showing at the box office.
It’s not impossible for content providers to make money online. But such stories should be a cautionary tale for those with content who are looking to the web to distribute it–you’re probably better off giving it away and keeping your day job.
All this brings us to three particular features of tomorrow’s world which stand out particularly and call for a biblical engagement that as we take forward our God-given mission. I am here summarizing the Noble Lectures I was privileged to give at Harvard University two years ago, which are yet to be published. The three features are gnosticism, empire and postmodernity, which fit together in fascinating ways and which provide a grid of cultural and personal worldviews within which a great many of our contemporaries live today. I speak particularly of the western world, and I regret that I am not qualified to do more of a ‘world tour’. But I remind all of us that, whether we like it or not, when the West sneezes everyone else catches a cold, so that cultural trends in the Europe and North America will affect the whole world. (I notice that, though the current American election will affect everybody on the face of the earth for good or ill, only Americans get to vote. This strikes me as odd, though of course we British were in the same position for long enough and didn’t seem to mind at the time.)
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the throwaway line. Is he suggesting everyone in the world is entitled to a vote this November?
“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
So opens Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology, a densely illuminating treatise on the nature of political authority. And for Schmitt, that authority is revealed when an extreme emergency arises that is not anticipated by the laws of a nation. In such an instance, “The most guidance the constitution can provide is to indicate who can act in such a case.”
Such a position leads Schmitt to reject the “rule of law” in any meaningful sense.
The law gives authority, said Locke, and he consciously used the word law antithetically to commissio, which means the personal command of the monarch. But he did not recognize that the law does not designate to whom it gives authority. It cannot be just anybody who can execute and realize every desired legal prescription. The legal prescription, as the norm of decision, only designates how decisions should be made, not who should decide. In the absence of a pivotal authority, anybody can refer to the correctness of the content. But the pivotal authority is not derived from the norm of decision. Accordingly, the question is that of competence, a question that cannot be raised by and much less answered from the content of the legal quality of a maxim.
More to the point, he writes, “What matters for the reality of legal life is who decides. Alongside the question of substantive correctness is th question competence.”
Food for thought this political season.
Technology makes anything possible; it doesn’t make everything good. One of the many reasons I like Wall-E, more and more each time I see it (three so far), is that it doesn’t picture technology as good or technology as bad; it pictures technology as a means to an end, made good or bad by the goodness or badness of that end. It was Huxley I believe who observed that the “triumph of science” has merely been to ”improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.”
In the last credits of Wall-E, after the plot has run its course, we see an optimistic vision of the future played out via still images (or simple animations). It is a sort of art history spin on the re-construction of society after humans return to earth. One of the striking images we see is robots serving man while man works. The awesomeness of this image cannot be overstated. The Pixar people could have said, “Look, no more robots! We learned our lesson, technology is bad,” and put in only people re-constructing society. They could have said, “Look, we learned our lesson, technology is supposed to do X instead of Y,” and had the robots all re-constructing society with the help of man. Instead they chose the middle way, the right path, the intelligent and humanizing path, where man is using even the most sophisticated technology as a tool to accomplish things worth accomplishing.
In one brief featurette, they are building a brick building, and the men are laying the morter. The robots deliver the bricks, and the men lay them. Notice that laying bricks takes work! The men are sweating! They are losing the considerable weight they had gained in space, but at the expense of blood, sweat, and tears! Their bones ache! They can only work for part of the day, and then must rest! All of this mess is completely unnecessary if we let the robots do the work for us.
But the men who return from earth in Wall-E have learned the lost value of restraint. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you ought.” Restraint is the ability to be able to do something, and refrain from doing it, because it is better not to. It may not even be bad to allow robots to build our buildings, or type our blog posts, or calculate our algebra problems, but is there a better good?
If you have a choice between a good and a better good, then take the better good. If writing an email is good, and if writing a letter, which is relatively long, and relatively unpleasant, is better, then forgo the electronic shortcut, and do it yourself.
Merely suggesting this will probably make me sound like a backwards anti-technology advocate. No! I love technology and I think it has improved humanity especially in the areas of medicine, food production/distribution, and communication. It has made us more human, more capable to fulfill our God-given design. It has the potential (in the hands of the wise) to make us more so. But I am afraid of the simple human tendency to choose the path of least resistance, and so damn ourselves. Technology does not put this tendency into us, nor does it really exacerbate it; it makes giving into it more and more dangerous.
In many dozens of hours of conversation with friends and students on the question, “How ought technology be used well?” there are four practical suggestions that come up time and time again to help us develop the virtue of restraint:
1. Do what’s worth doing. If you wouldn’t do it if it were hard, why are you doing it because it’s easy? Many times I have surfed the internet to “learn about some topic” only because doing so is convenient and mildly interesting. But if you stopped me and asked, “What is the point of that knowledge?” I would say, “I don’t know.” If you asked me, “Why do you care? What else could you be learning about that is more important, meaningful, everlasting, and good?” I would say, “there is plenty I could be learning that is more important, but that would be harder.” I had gotten the ends mixed up with the means. I thought, “Learn this easily” meant “learning something worth learning.” It’s the other way around: “Learning something worth learning” means “do whatever it takes, hard or easy.”
2. Use your “No muscle” at least once a day. The trick is that the virtue of restraint requires not that we give up bad things for the sake of good ones, but that we give up good things for the sake of better ones. Rather than saying, “Calling my family is bad,” say, “Calling my family is good, and seeing my family in person is better. This week I am going to decline to call them, but will visit in person those that I want to see.” And for those we cannot see because they are so far away, spend a week just missing them. The pain of missing somebody is not evil, maybe it’s even healthy. Then call them and tell them about your experiment.
3. Ask Who am I? not What do I do? Another trick is to realize that just because I am accomplishing a lot does not mean I am becoming a good person. Just because I have multi-vitamins, organic foods, and exercise daily does not mean I have the knowledge and self-discipline of a doctor. Rather I am relying deeply on the ease of access of these things, which meet me at my present level of virtue. If easy health products became scarce, would I be disciplined enough to stay as healthy as I am now? If the gym closed, would I still find a way to exercise? The point here is to focus on developing one’s own virtues (restraint, courage, speed, clarity) in acting rather than on the end product of one’s actions, which may have been assisted by many outside forces.
4. Imagine that electronic technology didn’t exist; would you still be able to do what you want to? When I realized that my handwriting was slipping because I do so much typing I did this exercise. I realized that I still want to be able to write (on paper). If keyboards stopped existing, I imagined not being able to write anymore, and it was terrible. So now I practice my written handwriting in proportion to my typing, to keep both vital and fresh. If the grocery store stopped selling fresh produce, would you know how to pick up the slack? Could you grow your own vegetables, for a week, a month, a year? If not, are you OK with how deeply dependent you are on semi-trucks and super-markets?
