Technology and Sub-Creation
Can a Luddite Mindset Be Dehumanizing?
Question: Can a Luddite mindset be dehumanizing?
I am not a Luddite—at least not as the term is commonly used to describe someone who either resists all technology reflexively or, as a matter of principle, approaches every innovation with a hermeneutic of doubt. I openly celebrate many of the fruits of modern civilization. While I am a romantic at heart, I believe I was thoroughly cured of any lapse into idealizing Nature after sitting in a bed of chiggers as a child (camping in Texas in the summer is not for the faint of heart). I do, however, sympathize with the Luddite impulse in certain areas, such as social media, where technology has cheapened and coarsened the nature of how we relate to our neighbors.
Nevertheless, I prefer the harder road when it comes to approaching technological advances to the one paved by the Luddite. Rather than viewing each new technology as a cog in a nebulous abstraction called “the machine,” we should consider it in and of itself, working to determine if it is dehumanizing or dominating in its specific application. Granted, the harder road is the more complicated task by far. The problem with the former approach is that it is too vague; it can too easily become a mirror for one’s own anxieties or personal dislikes. The metaphor is too Rorschach-like in that sense.
I find myself more concerned by the romantics who whitewash the world outside modern civilization. They scrub the “fallenness” from Creation and pretend as if life were wonderful without the technological advances we enjoy. There is often a disturbing oversimplification of Nature and the past in their approach. Of course, one could argue that the techno-optimists—who view all progress as inherently neutral or good—are more terrifying. They also possess an oversimplified view of the past and Nature, especially human nature (especially their own human nature!). Oddly enough, both groups are too romantic in their approach to the complexities of modern civilization.
I want to argue that creating technology—machines—is a supremely human endeavor. Tolkien’s idea of humans as “sub-creators” is quite applicable here. We have also been given the task of subduing a world beset with thorns and thistles. Many times, this struggle is where ideas for technology are born, from the plow to the processor. Some of our greatest creations emerge from problem-solving. Indeed, combining the gift of sub-creation with problem-solving is exceedingly human.
Can it then be dehumanizing to resist the machine?
Of course, we must all resist the “Saruman impulse” to use our sub-creations to dominate and destroy. One’s worldview matters greatly here; I suspect this is truly at the heart of the amorphous “machine” metaphor. If the universe is nothing but matter and energy, and there are no objective moral boundaries hemming us in with immutable categories of good or bad, then truly anything goes. We could then manipulate matter in our acts of sub-creation in any way we like. That is the mindset behind the alarming techno-optimists.
Likewise, it is entirely possible to engage in the very humanizing act of creating something that ultimately dehumanizes by accident. The mindset might be right, but the consequences unforeseen. Some technologies may have this potential more than others, and every technology may contain a bit of both “marble and mud,” depending upon one’s view of what makes us human and one’s definition of domination. Unfortunately, there is often no simple, elegant equation to apply to each new sub-creation as a test. More often than not, “There is no closed-form solution to this problem,” as my mathematician father would say. The path forward is complicated.
Consider gene-editing: it is profoundly humane to want to relieve the suffering of those with cystic fibrosis or sickle-cell anemia, yet the same technology can be harnessed for eugenics. IVF is already being used to “select” for the “most fit” among human beings in the embryonic stage. The first impulse to heal is humane; the second is horrifying.
In the end, there is no easy way out of the responsibility to think critically and deeply about each new technology. The easiest path would be to resist all technology, but I am convinced that would be a rejection of something fundamental to our nature. It is true that resistance is a more immediately gratifying path, as it is always more emotionally cathartic in the short term to react; it is far more boring to slow down and analyze. Yet that slower, more disciplined analysis is exactly what the task of sub-creation requires.
We should seek to sanctify the machine rather than automatically destroy it. The machine is not the problem; it’s the machine-maker. As Christians, we understand there are limits to our ability to foresee consequences, and boundaries that technology must not transgress lest it lead to domination. We also know that our moral compass is, more often than not, broken.
Immense humility is the way forward, then, not a flight from modern civilization.