In response to Prompt 3:
Mitchell Irby
March 31st, 2021
Upon reading Kevin’s recommendation, Technology, Culture, and Virtue by Patrick J. Deneen, I was deeply confronted with my own misunderstanding of Culture and of its necessary tie to nature. I wrote the prompt with the notion that “culture” is that which is formed through our innate creative works.
After reading Deneen, it appears that the distinction between the two is that Deneen’s understanding of ‘culture’ is the generationally practiced methods of life. That they, the customs, are innately local and are necessary for survival and social acceptance within a community. I immediately took survival for granted. In the nuclear fallout scenario, I wanted to think past the Walking Dead-like survival fantasies to focus on what kind of communities we would rebuild. I want to address that mistake up front.
Nothing, we trust, will take us back to square one; remember the rainbow. Whatever tragedies occur in this fantastic war, much of what is left will be recognizable, especially rural areas and the undeveloped areas of the world. In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin makes the case that societal doom is not an impossible outcome, especially given the destructive technologies we play with. He describes accounts of several other civilizations who have been knocked a few steps back in their technological capabilities. This would undoubtedly be the case in our post-apocalyptic scenario. However, it doesn’t mean the peoples of the new world would lose the knowledge of our time. Let’s take sustenance out of the question for the surviving population, who most likely already live by their own labors, being the farthest from industrial centers. Though the first few generations of people would need to navigate the new rules of fallout survival, the education of children will soon come to the focus to rebuild the most important infrastructure: localized power generation, roads to critical resources, medical care, pumps and piping for water, and value systems.
I would argue that education is the most important good for the future people. The following argument for this idea comes from my own experience realizing I could be the top of my class and have a very poor education1.
The understanding of our age is that knowledge comes from provable facts which are determined or supported by specialists. That concept allows for a narrow view of reality as that which repeatably affects us2. Knowledge is treated as the ultimate good and inexhaustible resource to free humanity from itself. Each materialist, when posed questions about the future, expresses the same mantra expectantly, “Once we make this next breakthrough…….”
We mistakenly view all things through the lens of mechanics, that the universe is made of logic-driven, closed systems. As an engineer, I know the beauty of systems; their controllability, predictability, and reliability. However, life is not just a matter of the functioning systems. Life is the remembered genetic sequence of the very breath of God3. God, being the outflowing source of all life, love, and legitimacy, is remembered and revered in his creation. That chaotic4abundance of life (nature) that we contend with is the reflection of our very struggle with God. The transcendentalists (romantic) and the materialists (enlightenment) both exhibit the reverence and brutality of our relationship to God and the natural environment in their work5. So, where are we at today, and where ought we aim in this apocalyptic community?
I say it is best to place our theological thermometers into the center of our culture to determine its tendencies toward atrocity. How do we treat knowledge? Is it respected, or do people try to command respect with it? Is it dispersed or hoarded? Do we base morality on a coherent school of thought? Is the education of children used for building up individuals or straightening out the outliers?
Can anyone agree that math, reading, grammar, and science are the fundamental skills for a human being6? That is the occupation of our children; forty hours a week, nine months a year, for thirteen years! Would there not be a better avenue to train individuals to hone their interests and gifts toward societal benefit? I think the attitude comes from the value we put on each life. With a fraction of the population, and the massive amount of work to be done to rebuild this new world, there isn’t the slack to account for eighteen plus years of aimless adolescence. I imagine a culture in this scenario will build around the creative energy of productive people. That is the traditional way of building culture, rather than our commercially incentivized content pool.
What ought the children learn?
Let them know their birthright! Discuss what it means to be human7. A focus on the education of our humanity may fuel new understandings of our relationship with knowledge, with technology, with nature, with hierarchies, and with ourselves.
It is hard to guess what the remembrance of such a crisis would be. Whether the new peoples would remember the individual sufferings or memorialize the statistics of billions of deaths. That is the sadistic truth of Stalin’s infamous line “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” Just as the twentieth century validated the strength of the idea of individual sovereignty (or the institutions that defended it), I imagine this cataclysm would be a brutal reminder that logic is not a moral instrument as much as a mathematical one.
Notes
- I don’t hold any disdain or disrespect for the educators in my life, only a deep concern of the long term consequences of poor critical thinking skills across a society. Sanctification is such a redeeming force! I am occasionally reintroduced to people from my past that my prejudices never gave a chance. You probably all know, or could understand my attitude about self educating; that I am shamelessly asking all the questions I don’t know to feel around for any big lessons I feel I’ve missed.
- “Us” being the term for decisions made by and for the group making the decision. Many are made in favor of a group at the cost of another. Many more are made for people at the cost of the untouched environment. The repeatability of science is what makes it such a potent candidate for ultimate truth. On the decline among many of the scientific elite who actually know the questions sciences can answer and ones they cannot.
- Hopefully we can get into this in future discussions.
- From our perspective.
- Nancy Pearcey, 2010, Saving Leonardo
- Yes, I intentionally left out history from my list of core primary school subjects. It would take a strong argument to convince me history is actually being taught in public schools.
- I listen to several podcasts with people who seem pretty smart: Scientists, philosophers, psychologists, economists, writers, musicians, etc. I am yet to stumble onto a single person outside the faith who can provide an argument for the value of human life. Some will try to tie it to consciousness, which quickly diverts to the plethora of information we don’t know about that. I am still astounded at how crucial the Christian value system is to the substructure of our global society.
To follow this pattern would reshape society into the inverse of God’s curse on man from the garden; to strip us of the innate blessings of sleep, communion with God, and even death from this Earth.
As to this question, I would like to discuss further the topic of convenience, which Luke Lesslie has introduced to me in a personal conversation.