Currently reading: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel đ
James Wood, in a strange article on evangelical preferential treatment of those on the left, repeats the common misinterpretation of James Davison Hunter’s book:
In To Change the World, sociologist James Davison Hunter argued that broad social change is driven by elites. Since that group was overwhelmingly left-liberal at the time of the bookâs publication, it is easy to see how many evangelicals concluded they must show evangelistic deference toward the left. This made sense in the neutral world context. Today, however, those on the left are especially hardened to Christian teachings, and evangelicalsâ overtures yield radically decreasing dividends. In the negative world, preferential treatment of the woke is less a strategy for changing the world than for signaling oneâs obeisance to power.
I cite it here because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this (mis)interpretation offered. It only “made sense” to prioritize elites on the left if you put down Hunter’s book before the end, which I’m quite sure Wood did not…so I’m left to scratch my head. If cultural change happens, as Davison argues, not by changing individual hearts and minds “from the bottom up” but through overlapping networks of elites operating at the centers of cultural power and influence, then the obvious strategy (for those wishing to change the world) would be to “infiltrate” those sectors with Christian elite who could guide the culture in their preferred direction. The problem with this reading is that Davison does not offer this strategyâand, in fact, counsels Christians away from such a strategy. The final part of the book is his alternative: appropriately titled “faithful presence.” It is miles away from encouraging strategic targeting of “elites,” whatever their political leanings. Perhaps we ought to return to his proposal afresh; we seem to have missed it on the first go around.
One way of defining Technopoly…is to say it is what happens to society when the defenses against information glut have broken down. It is what happens when institutional life becomes inadequate to cope with too much information. It is what happens when a culture, overcome by information generated by technology, tries to employ technology itself as a means of providing clear direction and human purpose. The effort is mostly doomed to failure.
Neil Postman, on the new worldâthe “improbable world”âcalled into being by Technopoly:
It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.
The milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose.
Neil Postman, describing the Founders' vision of the public square (implied in the First Amendment), in which a literate populace could make productive use of information in reasoning together about the common good and in judging the merits of arguments (and the evidence on which they’re based):
There is not a single line written by Jefferson, Adams, Paine, Hamilton, or Franklin that does not take for granted that when information is made available to citizens they are capable of managing it. This is not to say that the Founding Fathers believed information could not be false, misleading, or irrelevant. But they believed that the marketplace of information and ideas was sufficiently ordered so that citizens could make sense of what they read and heard and, through reason, judge its usefulness to their lives. Jefferson’s proposals for education, Paine’s arguments for self-governance, Franklin’s arrangements for community affairs assume coherent, commonly shared principles that allow us to debate such questions as: What are the responsibilities of citizens? What is the nature of education? What constitutes human progress? What are the limitations of social structures?
What purchase does this First Amendment vision have in a nation as far down the road to Technopoly as America? The key line seems to be this one: “They believed that the marketplace of information and ideas was sufficiently ordered so that citizens could make sense of what they read and heard and, through reason, judge its usefulness to their lives.” I don’t know anyone who would claim that “the marketplace of information” is properly ordered for these kinds of substantive discussions. The question seems to be: What are the cultural/material/technological/institutional/social conditions needed for enabling the genuine exercise of these First Amendment freedoms? And how has the American Technopoly eroded these conditions as the relationship between technology and culture has been transformed?
Neil Postman, on what results when traditional controls on information break down:
One way of defining a Technopoly is to say that its information immune system is inoperable…. This is why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words “A study has shown…” or “Scientists now tell us that…” More important, it is why in a Technopoly there can be no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, no cultural coherence. Information is dangerous when it has no place to go, when there is no theory to which it applies, no pattern in which it fits, when there is no higher purpose that is serves. Alfred North Whitehead called such information “inert,” but that metaphor is too passive. Information without regulation can be lethal.
The fact is, there are very few political, social, and especially personal problems that arise because of insufficient information. Nonetheless, as incomprehensible problems mount, as the concept of progress fades, as meaning itself becomes suspect, the Technopolist stands firm in believing that what the world needs is yet more information. It is like the joke about the man who complains that the food he is being served in a restaurant is inedible and also that the portions are too small. But, of course, what we are dealing with here is no joke. Attend any conference on telecommunications or computer technology, and you will be attending a celebration of innovative machinery that generates, stores, and distributes more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before. To the question “What problem does the information solve?” the answer is usually “How to generate, store, and distribute more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before.” This is the elevation of information to a metaphysical status: information as both the means and end of human creativity. In Technopoly, we are driven to fill our lives with the quest to “access” information. For what purpose or with what limitations, it is not for us to ask; and we are not accustomed to asking, since the problem is unprecedented. The world has never before been confronted with information glut and has hardly had time to reflect on its consequences.