This post was written by Patrick Rist on September 25, 2006
In an earlier Antecedents entry (found here) I mused on the trivialization that technologies bring into our lives. One reader (well, it was Randy Newman, one of the AI staff) suggested that I give some examples of the three types of resistance I suggested that Christians model.
First, Models of Remembrance – What I have in mind here is merely remembering that the “The Way We Live Now” (to cite Trollope) is not the way we have always lived. The technologies and mores that characterize us now have not always been with us, and in some cases, we are (not were) the poorer for it.
When I was a boy, in the rural setting in which I was raised, friends and neighbors often just showed up at one’s house for a visit – unannounced. If the hosts were involved in something crucial or urgent, the visitors did not stay or pitched in to help. But most of the time, the hosts just postponed whatever they were doing and chatted with the folks who had dropped by, thus tacitly acknowledging the honor being paid to them by the visit.
This sort of thing is practically inconceivable in today’s world. To show up at someone’s home without at first calling at least would be considered at best rude, but possibly even bizarre and inexplicable. But I think it is important to remember that things have not always been thus.
Memory can be passive – how to return home from work, for example. Memory can also be intentional; an act, a decision. In citing an example like this one, I’m not suggesting that we necessarily emulate mores of the past, but rather we engage in the act of memory and describing the memory to others as a way of keeping it alive.
This would be open to the accusation of “mere nostalgia.” But there can be wisdom in nostalgia, as well as the revelation of longing and grief.
As a more accessible (and prosaic) example, sometimes we need to remember that apparently thousands of years of learning has taken place without the aid of PowerPoint. Yes, and verily, it can still happen!
The other day I left home without my cell phone, remembering it at a point that was too far in my commute to return for it. Some choices were denied me that day. But I wager that most of my readers can still remember when there were no cell phones. Were we really worse off?
Models of Intentionality: Here I have in mind the possibility that our use of technology can be disciplined or even discipled.
All my griping about technologies and modernity is tempered by the realization that my daughter, who is now eight, but was born two months premature, probably wouldn’t have survived infancy had she been born 20 to 30 years earlier. It does not follow, however, that I should spring for cosmetic surgery when she’s 17. Or given the acceleration of the technology now present, that she should undergo gene therapy for acne if that becomes available.
A friend of mine recently purchased a Blackberry in order to have a PDA and a phone together in one device. He has baulked, and wisely so, at shelling out $40 a month to have email access on the thing. “Coolness” does not constitute a need – especially for someone over 14 years old.
We need to ask similar questions about the options on cars or the size of our TVs (what does it say about what we value when our TV is the largest single object in our home?).
Models of Excellent Difference: How can we bring texture and beauty back into a mass-produced, homogenized world? How can we stand out as examples, not of weirdness or eccentricity, but of people committed to doing things in the “old school” way that is actually better?
For the most part, the tradition of handwritten thank-you cards still persists. We need to continue it. This is my personal opinion (like everything else in this entry), but I think the “e” in “e-card” stands for “excrement.”
We would all probably benefit from growing something, especially something we can eat. For most, this would exclude flowers and hamsters.
For all the recent trendy emphasis on cuisine, eating at home is increasingly counter-cultural. For that matter, so is staying at home – instead of running around “for the sake of the children.” We (and our kids) need to understand that our lives do not consist of our possessions – or our experiences.
Finally and this really borders on whining: handwriting – in legible cursive. Most young people, students, no longer write in cursive. With the advent of word processing, handwriting took a nosedive. Today, when students use pens at all, most print or use a form of cursive that is really printing. This is done at the insistence of teachers who insisted on legibility. But it looks infantile. Grownups (doctors notwithstanding) write, they don’t print.
What does any of this have to do with academia specifically? Possibly nothing. But as those intellectually engaged for a living, those of us who work in academe may want to ponder the possibilities of demonstrating a different way to live to our fellow Christians and to the watching world.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on September 13, 2006
Many commentators and social critics have observed that we live in a time of increased “weightlessness” – in which the acceleration of our daily experience tends to empty out our lives of substance and meaning. The constant press of the next thing we have to do — the next meeting we have to attend — the next place we have to be — the next appointment in our Treo – all seem to detract from our ability to see any of it having any particular meaning. It seems to be merely the “price of admission” into modern existence.
I’ve recently been reading Orthodoxy by CK Chesterton, written in 1908. It was only an aside, but it was ironic to read Chesterton’s abhorrence of the busyness of the England of his day, almost a century ago. So this impression has been with us for a while.
And yet one wonders if the particular kinds of activities that occupy us today are unique and especially potent in flattening out our world. There have been several articles in the news about “Blackberry Thumb” – the malady that comes from punching in too many messages on the PDA/phone device. My point is not the ailment, but the mania about email that causes the ailment.
Email, which I use every day like everyone else, is a careless, almost substance-less form of expression. If you received a written letter with the same punctuation, spelling and sentence structure as the typical email message, you’d think you were corresponding with an imbecile. I’m not advocating that we construct our email with the precision of a legal document or the style of Dr. Johnson; I’m merely raising the possibility that the use of this media has the effect of downgrading language and language’s attendant meaning.
The internet as a whole probably has the same effect – and the irony that I’m writing this for a website does not escape me here. But I don’t think that it is possible to overestimate the impact that the Web has had on our perception of knowledge and information. Along with the hyper-abundance, there has been a corresponding downgrading of the importance and meaning of individual units of knowledge. How does one examine an individual raindrop in a hurricane?
These phenomena, or perhaps the uncritical embrace of these phenomena, constitute what might be the unique worldliness of our age. Not all Christians throughout the centuries have been learned. Perhaps only a minority could have been accurately called contemplative – either by nature or profession. But never has the regnant world system and its practices been so aggressively set against either learning or contemplation.
And at the height of irony, one sees the modern research university perpetuating the same mindset. In its emphasis on production and achievement, the University merely reflects the culture of business and busyness that we see all around us.
Well, what can be done? Sad to say, there’s no known cure. But, by the grace of God – and let us never regard that phrase as a cliché – I believe that we can be agents of resistance.
We can be models of remembrance – mindful that there are other ways of living, other ways of thinking, other ways of ordering our lives that are not beholden to the latest and greatest technology or trend.
We can be models of intentionality – using discernment and wisdom in the choices we make, utilizing technologies when appropriate and taking a pass on them when not.
And we can be models of excellent difference – choosing, for example, to use proper English, even if no one else is; choosing to read actual books, or even [GASP!] write actual letters.
These are all profoundly conservative activities, but they are not conservative in the political sense. They are conservative in the same way that monks copying classical texts in the Dark Ages were conservative. Who knows – future generations may call us blessed in the same way.
These different “models” are probably worth exploring further — with examples and rationales. We’ll try to revisit these topics in later Antecedents.
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