'The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking . . . the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.'
-Albert Einstein
I have trouble breaking things into 'units'; I see wholes and even complexities in the individual 'units', and so I strive to not over-simplify the units while also bearing true testimony to the interconnectedness. For example:
Even in a universe of nebulae and RNA, the machine gun is a complex device unto itself. There are chambres, inter-related mechanisms that depend upon one another, and of course the ammunition which consists of uniform but individual shells; some machine guns incorporate a gas piston while others operate on direct impingement. And so on, ad nauseum. Each individual element could clink away harmlessly unto itself, but in the context of the whole, each element almost mystically comes together in an efficient whole.
In World War I, the machine gun set the tone for military 'engagements.' Human beings would cross large plains - 'no man's land' - in the hope of crossing before the machine gun nests could/would mow them down; such charges were largely unsuccessful though mechanically necessary. The machine gun and the tank foreshadowed the bright future of human warfare.
The machine gun did not appear out of thin air, clinking away harmlessly unto itself; the machine gun is one mechanism in a whole that almost mystically operates within the systemme of a whole. It arose out of numerous technological advances, but more basically out of theologies/philosophies and social movements that allowed certain actions and restricted others and participated in large and invisible realities. Simply put, the machine gun is the fruit of a tree, a node of a larger organism that is embodied in the node of humanity who in fact is a node of, interacts with, and participates in larger organisms.
The same philosophies in the Enlightenment that ultimately contributed to the advent of the Industrial Revolution fueled the philosophy of utilitarianism and efficiency-as-good that produced the machine gun, the assembly line, and the German/British soldier in the trenches at the helm of the machine gun nest mowing down others. The protestant rejection of the Real Presence contributed to the socio-political reality of Europe/America that led to the Enlightenment which led to the machine gun. The univocity of being in Dun Scotus and the theological wordings of the 'neo-Franciscans' contributed to and largely set much of the tone for the Renaissance which coincided with in some sense and fueled the protestant Reformation. The rejection of the Real Presence reintroduced a potent version of the understanding of the 'spiritual' divorced from the 'physical' which contributed to the neo-Gnosticism of the Enlightenment which in turn led to the reinterpretation of 'secularity' which in turn led to the Industrial Revolution which led to the machine gun which led to the secular government's military spending diverted toward weapons research in the machine gun among many other technologies. . . .Ends-justifies-the-means emerges in a culture where virtue can/has collapse(d) as a discourse, which in this case relates to the divorce in protestantism and the secular culture it birthed, which leads to the choice to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, killing myriads of human beings including the majority of the Catholic population who had been evangelising the island nation.
. . .We now have the ability to do so much and know so much and (we say) be so much. We have clean nuclear energy and electronic social networks and better machine guns and advanced medical procedures that save lives who would be lost in previous ages and new philosophies that feed from the old philosophies. But I perceive a confusion and a continuation of the chains that have been mystically feeding upon themselves, in recent centuries but new forms of the old human condition: we drink organic green tea for our health and then take birth control pills; we donate money to charities and then continue living in sin. A teenager commits suicide because of an oppressive reality that participates in the hopelessness that comes with the gradual deconstruction of modernity that historically needed to happen but still affects a life.
Here, I am not concerned with expressing the 'opposite', which is the continuing reality and 'solution.' -That is, the Incarnation and Real Presence of our God who is our salvation. Good is the Being in everything; evil is not an ontological reality. But an evil action will still murder your mother - and that will effect your life dramatically. In the same way, Christ's in-breaking into the world was, is still, and will be the continuing evidence of God's loving Sovereignty, yet we live in what is often called a 'post-Christian' era.
Here, we deal with things like this: Is it stupid to say that all our life-extensions and purchasing powers and technological leaps are distending humanity? On the other hand, is it 'witchcraft' or heresy to perform a heart surgery that saves a human's life? What is Babel? Where did it begin, where does it break into being? How do we speak about Babel? How do we engage ourselves in the Reality of Christ our Lord, who reveals the paper-thin claims of sovereignty that Babel makes for itself?
But, primarily, here is where I run into trouble in articulation. I see Babel. I can taste it and see it everywhere. And I can see God's judgment presently and in its eventual coming, its particular wrath against our culture. Yet how do we, with human eyes and hearts and minds, describe the invisible and demonic principalities and powers? Where do we draw the lines on the manifestations, around the manifestations? are all these things amoral or good or evil? In some sense, all technology is humanity's response to God's curse of labour; but is all technology therefore evil/sinister?
Technology is only one among many things at work within the aims of the invisible principalities; but it is something tangible that I can address . . . I think.
-r
