A feature of conservative thought that I’ve never entirely understood is its persistent anti-technology theme. If the roots of left-wing anti-technology views are probably with Rousseau, where can we find the roots of similar right-wing views? In this essay, Russell Hittinger locates a surprising source: the writings of Christopher Dawson. He argues that this is the dominant theme in all of Dawson’s work: “From his first published work Progress and Religion (1929), to the lectures given during the twilight of his career in America, he was emphatic in the judgment that the chief enemy of culture is not liberalism or the other secular religions of progress, but technology.”
Hittinger offers a mild criticism of Dawson’s view but he remains largely sympathetic. Of course we are given the usual claims that technology dehumanizes us, distracts us, and makes us dependent—criticisms that seem to offer more flourish than substance. It is not until you reach the end that you find the core reason for the worry about technology. “The core of a culture is found once we locate the thing that the culture would never relinquish, or even imagine itself relinquishing. I submit that in our case it is not individual liberty, or sex, and certainly not religion. It is not even the machine. Rather, it is the machine insofar as it promises an activity superior to the human act.”
So it is because we are unwilling to give up our iPods, laptops, dishwashers, indoor heating, computers, refrigerators, anesthesia, electricity, airline trips, paypal—and we must add here inexpensive food, clothing, shelter, and books, since it is technology that has made them accessible to the masses—that means we are ruled and dominated and spiritually tormented by them. Why do they torment us? Because they attempt to go beyond what is merely human and realize a kind of progress on earth that a robust faith in God should prohibit.
What is the mistake here? Having puzzled over this problem for years, I think the Hittinger piece here brings it into sharp relief: the mistaken view that technology is a force imposed exogenously upon society rather than the fulfillment of the desire on the part of people to live better lives, that is to say, technology is the result of human action to better one’s material lot, and nothing more than that. It is not “unnatural” or “external” to human action; technological progress is merely the material expression of the inner drive to adjust one’s surroundings in a manner that achieves our ends. It is what results when rationality is permitted the freedom to innovate in the service of humanity. It is not foreign or external to the nature of man but integral. To say that we should be willing to give it up is saying nothing other than that we ought to act in ways that diminish our well being. There are times when doing so is heroic, to be sure. But can or should we expect this as a social propensity in normal times? Surely not.
Not having read Dawson in years, I’m guessing that his work might have benefited from greater economic understanding. The same could be said of most of the British Right, who decided a couple hundred years ago that the economists were apologists for the revolution they hated the most: the Industrial Revolution, that severed the relationship between state power and land ownership, and transfered cultural influence from the entrenched aristocratic elites to the new entrepreneurial class, and, moreover, empowered the common man with new tools to live well, speak out, and influence history. Some elements of the Right have never really adjusted to this reality.
It is particularly fascinating that this relentless bemoaning of the modern age is done in the name of Christianity. A feature of Jesus’s life that is particularly compelling is that he never reminisced of the glories of the days gone by. He didn’t express regret that he was born in 1A.D. instead of 300B.C.. He never drew attention to an economic advance of his time and said: this tool has corrupted us! No, he took it as a given that he was born in his time for a reason. His parables employed metaphors drawn from the technology of his time. And he never doubted that the job he had to do was for now and for the future.
