PNEUMA
II. the case against Wall-E nationalism.
surfeit.
Experiencing more technological innovation than all of history combined, the last five centuries produced levels of wealth previously unimaginable. Before this transformation, large proportions of the world’s population lived in abject poverty. If they were lucky enough to live past infancy, life consisted of toil, subjugation, and sickness. Then, the industrial revolution and its technological outgrowths exponentially eradicated much of the world’s material deficiency. Mortality rates inverted, crop yields multiplied, and capital compounded. Millions, and then billions, of people were delivered out of ubiquitous economic squalor.
The technological uprising gained humanity godlike power over nature. Be that as it may, all revolutions are not without some casualties. In as much as we have triumphed, we have also sacrificed, yet many of these losses have gone unnoticed.
Better tools, more efficient processes, and sophisticated algorithms are continuing to replace traditional means for securing material needs. By reducing costs and minimizing the required amount of labor, technocapital has eliminated virtually all manpower needed for producing food and shelter. The industrial revolution began with mechanized cotton spinning, which increased the output of a textile worker by a factor of 500, then the power loom multiplied these yields by another 40x, and the cotton gin by 50x more. The magnitude and velocity of productivity rates are nearly incomprehensible. Next, the printing press, then the steam turbine, and suddenly we start dividing labor and expanding trade. Our feudal system turns into capital and the fundamental order of society changes. Machine tools, roads, assembly lines, shipping containers, spaceflight, and then the internet altered how humans interact with the world.
For most Americans, the most basic needs are essentially guaranteed. In theory, these conveniences would lead to greater levels of actualization. Yet look around and we find profound loneliness1, isolation2, atomization3, alienation4, and despair5. Could it be that technological progress is at odds with social well being? Have we traded our physical problems for spiritual ones?
unbundling.
Sarah Perry (by way of Dr. Alastair Roberts) brought my attention to the tendency of technology to disintegrate function from meaning in her blogpost, A Bad Carver6. She refers to this phenomenon as 'de-condensation' which suggests that technological innovations "abstract a particular function away from an object, a person, or an institution, and allow it to grow separately from all the things it used to be connected to." I’ll be using the term ‘unbundle’ to describe this effect.
Written word unbundles talking. Face to face encounters are no longer required in communication. Clocks unbundle the passing of time away from the sun and the changing seasons. Contriving 24 hour days dissociates the rising and setting of the sun from the daily cycles of work and rest. Similarly, electric lighting decouples the sun from light and dark. Bikes, cars, and airplanes unbundle transportation away from exercise. Technology tends to abstract away the versatile capacities of things traditionally bundled into specialized solutions with only a singular purpose.
Technology provides more efficiency, better functionality, and higher yields. That which was previously a brutal reality of life becomes merely an innocuous disruption in your day (ie, access to food and water). Completely unimaginable things (ie, remote work via Zoom), now redefine our relationship with the material world. Inhabiting these new planes of existence, people begin to reformulate their relationships with the changing world and displace traditional ways of life. Classic customs and rites are replaced or—more frequently—completely abandoned, and tear the social fabric asunder. These substitutions, or lack thereof, jettison communities, stir existential doubts, and hollow out the significance of our formerly integrated life. The dynamics of preternatural technology naturalize its subjects into citizens of the Modern World, yet it is as if 99% of the residents are unable to assimilate.
the hearth.
It would not be difficult to drum up examples of technology supplanting traditional tools, customs, and practices. But I think our willingness to trade freedom for power is notably demonstrated by the ‘upgrade’ and removal of the hearth.
Before the advent of modern appliances, the hearth was not only the literal center of the household but its symbolic heart. The hearth was the place for preparing food and heating the home—the place where the most critical functions for survival were performed. You may be familiar with the phrase “hearth and home” which grew out of the universal importance of its functions and the deep meaning it held to people. The hearth was a place of profound significance within the family's life. The very word hearth is a metonymy, a stand in for ‘mother’—who is the heart of the family—the place from which life comes. Much like the mother, the hearth’s gravitational pull tethered the entire family together. Nearly every facet of each family member’s life was stitched around the maintenance, duties, and activities of its central and life sustaining functions.
The family’s youngest boy may have the task of gathering, stockpiling, and ordering firewood to keep the hearth ablaze. His responsibilities are not overly difficult but vital for everyone’s health. If he fails to fulfill his responsibilities, the whole family would face consequences—like losing a meal or enduring a bitterly cold night. The consequential nature of his duties inherently imputes his identity with dignity and worth. A concept completely foreign today, the hearth demanded a child’s integration into the work and life of the family. A boy of antiquity existed for far more than just consumption, as opposed to the modern child.
The mother would typically assume the role of preparing meals. This is a sizable undertaking, lasting all day, and requires a great breadth of skill. The hearth is her mission control. A daughter might be assigned as an assistant. Her tasks of gathering ingredients, chopping vegetables, and measuring proportions centralize around the hearth. Again, the child is performing a critical function within the life of the family which naturally dignifies herself within it. As she ages, she will be given more responsibility. These duties create opportunities for her to absorb the traditions and recipes passed down through the generations, intrinsically rooting her into a sense of belonging with a particular heritage and culture. As her skills increase so will her independence, she will be free to exercise her creativity and industriousness by experimenting and improving on her mother’s methods. The legitimate stakes of contributing towards the survival of the family sharpen her abilities and build the virtues of cooperation, courtesy, and thrift. Before long she will be prepared to start a family of her own.
A similar process takes place in the field with the father and older son. Helping set the plow, pulling calves, or bailing hay, he grows into a farmer of his own. Yet still, the hearth is integral to his development. Periodically, the son will need to return from the field and deliver various grains or meats to his mother. She undoubtedly will be close to the hearth along with all his sisters and younger siblings. These encounters give space for him to interact, build relationships, and perhaps an opportunity to help his youngest brother struggling with his multiplication at the kitchen table. And then back out to the field to clear the brush off the trail.
About the time the younger children finish school, everyone inside pitches in to wash dishes, from which the hearth provides the warm water. The younger children have a task that corresponds with their ability and have space to learn from the older. In the evenings, the family gathers at the table in front of the fire—which is supplied by the hearth—to eat dinner and socialize. Later to keep warm, all circle around the hearth while mom might be knitting and dad reading aloud.
The hearth is the sun the entire family orbits. Demanding the attention of everybody, it created a network of interdependence between mom, dad, and the children. Each member had a role and contributed to the life of the family. These were the foundations on which healthy families were forged.
The hearth was made obsolete by more efficient pieces of technology. The convection oven replaced the majority of the work required to cook. The electric stove and Hamburger Helper eliminate any help mom may need from her daughter to prepare meals, so it’s easier just to let her stay in their room. Central heating transplanted fire as the main source of warmth, depriving the young son of any responsibility to serve the family. With every part of the house warm, the impulse to gather around the fireplace is removed—further peeling away at layers of organic community. The dishwasher breaks up the daily pattern around when dishes are done, limits the number of people who are involved, and robs the occasion for domestic teamwork.
All these technological advances certainly perform their tasks in a superior way, but the secondary purposes of traditional tools are often overlooked, forgotten, or abandoned. The replacement of the hearth is an excellent example of how functions, purposes, and meanings are being unbundled by more specialized technology. We often lament the prolonged adolescence of every subsequent generation, but it is fairly obvious why it happens. Each ensuing innovation further trims away kids' responsibility. Houses may still be equipped with fireplaces but they are merely vestiges—symbols of luxury and nostalgia, not places of work and formation.
ontological.
The only solution is to go full Unabomber, right? Technology is inherently corrosive and only hollows out the soul of man. Machines are inexorably gutting the spirit of humanity. Well, like all things, it depends. Certain technologies are fundamentally different from others. Much of technology tends to unbundle, but some tools are much more pro-human. The goal should be to master technology not have it master us.
Imagine you are an American frontiersman, pioneering the west, and you find yourself a nice plot of land, stake your claim, and set up a homestead. It’s just you, your wife and kids, a plow, and maybe 2 horses. Your plow and horse make a nice little piece of technology, more tilling, fewer people, more crop, less time—that’s technology. This is a gain of freedom on the part of your young farmer self. If you have two horses and a pasture you basically have infinite horses (the original solar power). If you’re a mediocre metalworker it won’t be all that difficult to keep that plow running for a long time. This tool certainly increases productivity but more importantly, it develops a higher degree of freedom.
Now, let's check in with another farmer, one with some ‘better’ technology. This farmer need no draft animal, he’s got him a John Deere. This will surely provide significantly more leverage. But unlike the plow, this tool comes with a few strings attached. This machinery increases dependencies on networks outside of the farmer’s control. He must rely on a stable source of gasoline, which is dependent on the inconsistencies of Big Oil, which is subject to whichever President is in office and is ultimately subordinate to the whims of some Saudi Prince. If anything breaks down on the tractor, he’s legally bound to call an expert and not fix it himself. To afford this hyper-engineered piece of metal the farmer must take out a substantial loan. Debt typically doesn’t give people warm fuzzies of self-sovereignty. On its face, the big green tractor seems like more freedom, as it enables you to do more things. Unfortunately, the trade is much more complex. For all that efficiency you have to accept a good deal of dependence on factors outside of your control. While it does give you more power as a farmer, it doesn’t make you more free.
There are inherently different natures in certain kinds of technologies. And the problem tends to be that you have to sacrifice too much freedom, too much existence, and too much life to get the goods that machines, computers, and technology enable you to have. The plow and the hearth are pieces of technology but what differentiates them from the tractor and microwave? The plow and hearth lend themselves toward freedom, a minimization of dependency rather than a maximizing power. A simple heuristic to tell the difference between the two types of technology is whether or not they are still coming out with upgrades. No one is waiting for the acoustic guitar 2.0, you only need one baseball glove for your entire life, your grandpa’s hammer works just as well as any new one, these are the kinds of timeless technologies that are so human they don’t even feel like tech. The goal is not to pretend that we can all live in some neo-Shire, or achieve some stable post-technological society, the genie will not go back into the bottle. While I may seem to wade into these waters, it should not be our end. Technology can be bad and technology can be good. We want the kinds of technology that make you free.
the magician’s bargain.
People have this innate perception where they desire their activity in the world to be visibly connected helping people they know and love. Humans long for encounters where they see the light in another’s eye as a result of the work of their own two hands. Motherhood is the quintessential case, moms naturally understand the value, worth, and significance of building a household and raising children. The explosion of homesteading, where men and women opt out of the modern market in favor of relying on personal enterprise for survival, is another fine example. We see it in smaller initiatives, backyard chicken coops, and suburban home gardens. The proliferation of “side hustles” is an attempt at recovering some sense of agency within a highly ‘owned’ world. I see it in my father and grandfather who are drawn to the hobby of woodworking, where they can exercise a certain amount of will and creativity on physical matter. The superstructure of the age is seemingly architected to prevent us from fulfilling this deeply rooted impulse.
We may not go without food, but we are starving for belonging, kinship, agency, stewardship, purpose, and meaning. Modern technology has freed us from problems of scarcity, but now abundance is vexing us—the malaise of post-industrial ennui. We are no longer required to perform the tasks which ensure our existence yet these were the very things giving us the feeling of a life worth living. The tether between securing lower level needs was once firmly tied with our higher level needs in a neat bow. Technology is slowly severing this cord.
Tightly bundled ways of life offer a means of fulfilling lower and higher needs in tandem. The integration of work and purpose leads to a higher sense of control over your own life. Bundled work typically incentivizes higher stakes in the future, it necessitates community, and it externalizes your human spirit into something tangible. Before we merrily abandon a traditional way of life because of its ostensible burden, we should reflect on what it is unbundling—and remember not all conveniences are ultimately healthy. Why does the recipient of a handwritten letter experience a greater feeling of pleasure? The added effort to produce the note is proportionate to the payoff. Low threshold, low reward. Greater threshold, greater reward.
I’ll leave us with a verse from the Orange Catholic Bible, “Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.” — Frank Herbert
// Butlerian
coda.
Again, I want to credit Dr. Alastair Roberts for originally introducing me to many of these ideas and direct everyone to his article The De-Condensation of Humanity from which I borrow criminally too much. I recommend reading it and then rereading it.
A Bad Carver // Sarah Perry