The "Amish Problem" - Some Personal Thoughts on Technology and the Modern Project

The Modern Project

An honest question for you, dear reader: Do you think the "modern project" been successful in bringing humanity to a happier being than was had in the Middle Ages? 

Those interested in Modern philosophy will be familiar with the phrase often characterizing Modernity's historical emergence: It is the famous "turn toward the subject." The focus of much of Modern Philosophy is on the subjective individual rather than on any grand metaphysical systems of the past. But along with this focus on the individual is also a seemingly impenetrable roadblock in the equating what exists with what I am subjectively certain of. This equating may seem logical on its face to us children of Materialism, but dig a little deeper and you realize that this idea has missed a very important concern ... What if what is most certain to me as a human knower is actually the least-real in terms of all that exists? Well, that would mean that modern man has become only familiar with reality in its lowest and most ephemeral form. 

A student of mine summarized this distinction perfectly in a short essay this semester: 

"The issue here is that we use 'real' to mean two different things. When we say that something is most real to us, we mean that it is most knowable to our senses or mind. So when we see a physical chair, this is most real to us because we can clearly perceive it. However, when we say that something is most real in itself, we mean that which is most perfect, most simple, and most universal. Thus, we say that the forms are most real in themselves because they are the perfection of the things and concepts we perceive on earth. Thus, we see that that which is most real to me corresponds to the order of knowing, whereas what is most real in itself corresponds to the order of being." 

(Student CG) 

All Physics and No Metaphysics

All of this, I think, can be seen in the trajectory of the last 400 years of equating "progress" with the understanding and preservation of man's physical body. If I had to summarize it, the modern project has been a project set on harnessing the physical world to aid man's physical body. In a word, the modern project is τέχνη, technology. 

My father, Paul Cole Beach, wrote in 1970: 

"The modern world is one of unparalleled abundance, vital potential, and technological sophistication. Never before have so many men enjoyed the necessary precondition to a fully humane existence: leisure. Yet life is widely experienced as being without purpose or creative inspiration. The time is one when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to make. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself. He is lost in his own wealth. With bitter paradox, wealth has bred a spiritual aridity from which the masses are everywhere rising estranged, lawless, violent." 

(Beach, Paul Cole: Catholicity and Revolution. Social Justice Review. April 1970) 

He had no idea, in 1970, the absolute revolution that the computer, internet, smart phone, social media, and artificial intelligence all would have on the world. He did intuit, though, that these technological advances, absent the higher teleology of metaphysical narratives, would bring a type of nihilism for modern man. We can do all of these amazing things ... but what are we supposed to do? If there is no real ultimate purpose for my life, do I just spend my life chasing the never ending stream of short term gratification: junk food, entertainment, drugs, gambling, pornography, hookups, social media, etc? The Modern Project's rejection of metaphysics and the wholesale adoption of technology has created a situation in which modern man has every indulgence for his body, but is starving to death in his soul. Is this meta-awareness of my own existential incompleteness the actual problem? Is the solution to the human problem to eliminate conscious thought and reflection, to return to an animalistic state? Both Rousseau and Nietzsche were willing to admit that they thought so.

The Amish Problem

As Catholics, though, we know that it is our consciousness that makes us like God -- intellect and will give us the divine image -- and so we cannot let ourselves descend back into a type of animalistic slavery. How then should we live in the world which has put all its eggs into the one singular basket of τέχνη?

Herein lies the heart of what I am calling the "Amish Problem". At what point does technology so change the nature of the human experience that we must stop any further advancement? The Amish have obviously chosen a period in time when they see that be the case. But what about us Catholics? Can we continue to adapt to the changing landscapes of the contemporary world and its discoveries and still keep our "adequate anthropology," as JPII said, intact? This is indeed a problem. If we answer in the negative, then we are certainly going to find it difficult to function in the modern world. It also raises the question as to what slice of time we should try to live in. Should we be the Amish of the future? If we answer in the affirmative, then are we not in danger of letting the world dictate our lives with its seductive τέχνη? 

Consider this excerpt from The End of the Tour about David Foster Wallace. 

"DAVID 

Because it’s like, I don’t have a diagnosis, a system of prescriptions.  You know?  Like, why are we - and by “we” I mean people like you and me: mostly white, upper middle class, obscenely well-educated, doing really interesting jobs, sitting in really expensive chairs, watching the best, most sophisticated electronic equipment money can buy - why do we feel empty and unhappy?  

LIPSKY 

Kinda like Hamlet. With channel surfing. 

DAVID 

I’m not saying TV is bad or a waste of your time. Any more than, you know, masturbation is bad or a waste of your time. It's a pleasurable way to spend a few minutes. But if you're doing it twenty times a day, if your primary sexual relationship is with your own hand, then there's something wrong.

LIPSKY       

23. At least with masturbation, some action has been performed, though, right? 

DAVID 

All right, you could make me look like a real dick if you print this: Yes, you're performing muscular movements with your hand as you're jerking off. But what you're doing is running a movie in your head, and having a fantasy relationship with somebody who isn't real, in order to stimulate a purely neurological response. Look: as the Internet grows in the next ten, fifteen years, and virtual reality pornography becomes a reality, we're gonna have to develop some machinery, inside our guts, to help us turn off pure, unalloyed pleasure.  Otherwise, I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna have to leave the planet. 

LIPSKY (smiles uncertainly)  

Why? 

DAVID 

Because the technology is just gonna get better and better. And it's gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is fine. In low doses. But if that's the basic main staple of your diet?  You're gonna die. In a meaningful way, you're going to die."

What is the Actual Purpose of Technology?

All of this, in my mind at least, raises the question: What is the actual purpose of developing technology at all? 

One might respond that the purpose of technology is to help eliminate suffering in the world by making life easier. Indeed, the elimination of suffering is a good and noble thing. But if we extrapolate out into the not so distant future, it is not crazy to envision a world in which all suffering is either eliminated or aimed at being eliminated: from sicknesses to aging, to any type of servile work. 

The elimination of all suffering, far from being desirable, actually seems dystopian. Human beings ultimately need to suffer. If we are honest, isn't bodily suffering what produces growth and meaning in the soul, in the ties that bind relationships together through sacrificial love? 

Maybe the answer is that it could be ideal to eliminate any suffering that we don't choose for ourselves? I hesitate to agree with this, though it sounds better than eliminating suffering altogether. 

Conclusion

While I do not have an answer to this paradox, it seems to me that technology (and the elimination of suffering that comes with it) must be placed back in its proper place in the hierarchy of being. The body is the lowest part of reality, with the mind and soul transcending it, and so ultimately I think technology has to once again be understood as subservient to these realities. That is the only way forward, and if the Modern Project does not come to realize this then it is doomed to fail and has indeed failed. 

Dear reader, what do you think, are we happier than our ancestors? 

... I honestly don't think so.