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Tech and Awe

Posted June 4th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

In a provocative post on America’s faith in technology, Charles Mudede took off from my recent Obscenity in Black and Blue and soared with it.

This “great belief in technology” is not secular but closely linked with a great belief in American awesomeness…

The certainty of American awesomeness that led to the war in Iraq or to the current destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, has been rooted in one, politically powerful branch of American Christianity. And what has feed much of this overrepresented group’s tireless (and often comical) resistance to the hard facts of, say, Darwinism, has been the belief that American greatness cannot be separated from divine providence, from supernatural agency.

When Charles soars, I often feel like I’m in a tiny Piper Cub straining to get off the ground, but I love that he gets back to the real meaning of awesome — not just neat or cool, but full of awe.   Awe-inspiring. that is, as well as potentially awful/awe-full.  And he’s right:  that sense of awe is essentially religious.  That is, it’s faith-based.

Our conviction that technology has the answers — in this case, to cap the burst oil well under the Gulf — is now revealed as the article of faith it has always been.  One major impulse behind religious faith is to create a sense of order in the universe, and through order, control.  We are no longer hapless, meaningless, pawns of existence.  Faith might seem to be about humility, but more often, it’s the opposite.  Through faith, in whatever god, we aggrandize ourselves.  We assure ourselves of our meaningfulness, our purpose (as in that terrifyingly mechanistic idea of “the purpose-driven life”).   Faith puts us in control, gives us the illusion that we possess the key to it all.

Of course if we really thought technology invincible, we wouldn’t need faith in it.   So to suppress that awareness, we fetishize technology — we make it into a fetish, worshipped for its magical powers.   We take applied science and turn it into an article of  faith.  We think it all-powerful, invincible.  Until it isn’t.

You read this, obviously, courtesy of technology.  But remember when the screen crashes and you feel utterly vulnerable.  TDS — technology deprivation syndrome — kicks in.  You feel bereft, helpless, cut off from the omniscience and the omnipotence of the Web.   You’ve been dropped into a void.  Your god has failed.   Examine that feeling closer and I suspect it’s close to that of an addict suddenly cut off from his or her drug — and that the flood of relief when “service is restored” is very like the first hit of a restored supply of meth or heroin.  All memory of vulnerability vanishes.  Wheeeee…. we’re flying again.   Until the next crash.

We can hardly say our faith in oil companies has been shattered (though it would be nice, if absurdly naive, to think that their faith in themselves has).  Presumably the BP engineers who insisted on riskier, less expensive blowout-prevention procedures did so in full faith that they would work.  Well, make that partial faith.  They were playing the odds, and they knew it.  Always a dangerous thing to do when gods are concerned, especially when it’s you that’s trying to play God.

Did they never hear of the Golem, or see a Frankenstein movie?   Never hear the line “the monster lives”?    Now here we are, stuck with a real-life monster movie.   Simultaneously sickened and fascinated, terrified and thrilled, we watch it with horror — and a sense of terrible awe.

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File under: Christianity, ecology, technology | Tagged: Tags: awe, awesomeness, BP, Charles Mudede, faith, Frankenstein, oil spill, technology | 1 Comment
  1. Tea-mahm says:
    June 4, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    Lesley,
    You’ve caught the flow once again… given steps to this complicated dance of assumed control and nature’s way, as hubris tries to dance with those far-away galaxies and stars – as if they were just the TV variety.

    May there be real solutions. May the-powers-that think-they-be learn deeply from this! May you keep writing for truth!
    Tamam

Obscenity in Black and Blue

Posted May 27th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

This live feed of oil belching into the Gulf is currently one of the most “popular” on the Web.

I can see why.  It has the horrible fascination of obscenity — a kind of never-ending money shot.  The relentless, black, viscous gush into the Virgin-Mary blue of the floodlit water makes for an almost perfect visual metaphor of evil:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h4yHPt7ejs]

Yes, I am aware that ‘evil’ is  a religious term.   How can a proud agnostic use such a word?  I trust my guts.  As I look at this, I am sickened.  The feeling starts in my throat, travels down to the pit of my stomach, then makes its way up again into my throat, leaving me with such a deep disgust that I feel dirty, degraded.

I think this visceral reaction is simply a human response to evil.  You don’t need religious, satanic formulations to recognize evil when you stare it in the face.   If you doubt that evil, the NYT today reported on an internal BP document which makes it clear that though there was a better way to secure the mile-deep well, BP chose a riskier and less effective way as “the best economic case.”   In the name of the Father Profit, that is.

But then I may be wrong.  Perhaps the popularity of this feed is simply due to the desperate hope to see it stop.  Or to the fascination with the pornography of oil-drilling language — “junk shots” and “top kills.”   Or to the gruesome obsession with disaster, as with the endless replaying  of the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986.  Then the pretty patterns were white on sky blue;  now they’re black on water blue.  Either way, they’re obscene.

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File under: ecology | Tagged: Tags: BP, Challenger explosion, junk shot, live feed video, oil spill, pornography, top kill | 9 Comments
  1. Nancy McClelland says:
    May 27, 2010 at 7:43 pm

    I vote “gruesome obsession with disaster”.

  2. Fnarf says:
    May 30, 2010 at 4:17 pm

    Where was your visceral disgust at this “evil” when it was happening — is still happening — in Nigeria? They’ve had worse than this every year for decades in the Niger delta. Or is it only disgusting when it happens within view of Americans?

    See today’s http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 30, 2010 at 4:56 pm

      Thanks for sending the link to that excellent piece of reporting. We need more like this. But — still tougher a question — would it even have made the pages of The Guardian without the blowout in the Gulf?

  3. Uplift says:
    May 31, 2010 at 9:19 am

    Yes, I am aware that ‘evil’ is a religious term.

    “Evil” is not a religious term. It is a moral term. “Evil” is (therefore) a religious term only to the extent that moral judgments are the exclusive domain of religion. That is, not at all.

    As a “proud agnostic”, you should consider that such rhetorical tics do not make you seem reasonable or balanced, but instead concede the whole argument to the religious folks you are implicitly addressing. Yes, they say to themselves reading your post, there is no morality without religion. She can’t even TALK about morality (“evil”) without discussing religion.

    It’s a question of framing.

    Uplift

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 31, 2010 at 9:37 am

      A question of framing? With all due deference to George Lakoff, I disagree. Morality is a relative term — what is moral in one society or group may be immoral in another, whether for social, traditional, or religious reasons. Morality is a matter of what is acceptable. Evil is an absolute term, which is why I used it — in full awareness of the dangers of absolutist thinking. An agnostic’s dilemma, perhaps.

  4. Uplift says:
    June 1, 2010 at 7:16 am

    Thanks for replying, Lesley.

    If evil is an “absolute” term or concept, and “morality” a relative one, then you need to be able to define “evil” without regard to morality at all. If you define X (“evil”) with reference to a relative term (“morality”), then X is by definition not an absolute.

    In practice, “evil” is frequently defined in direct reference to morality. E.g., Google “define: evil” and look at the top results (top three: “morally objectionable behavior; morally bad or wrong; that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune”). The former two are relative, the latter is arguably absolute. The Wikipedia page for evil (imperfect, but a good consensus statement on popular understanding) references morality directly.

    So if you claim that evil is an absolute, then it falls to you to define it, in absolute terms, without reference to anything subjective including morality. And then it falls to you to defend that definition as predominant in society.

    I am not snarking when I say that I’d be happy to hear what you have in that regard; however, I think you’re fighting an uphill battle here.

    —

    I think it gets tangled in that religious people define evil at least partly in terms of morality, and define morality in absolute terms (god said so). It seems to me that you’re rejecting the premise (morality is absolute) without rejecting the consequence (evil, a quality of morality, is absolute).

    Moreover, my feeling is: use the word evil, and be an agnostic, and _don’t apologize_. Apologizing seems to contradict the idea that you’re a “proud” agnostic.

    Or, if you must caveat your usage, note that the word “evil” is an absolute term; not that it is a “religious” term. When you talk to religious people and concede that “evil” is a religious term, you are essentially conceding that morality is also religious. Thus, you reinforce the idea that there is no morality without religion.

    Best.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 1, 2010 at 8:12 am

      Wonderful reply and challenge. No, am not taking you as snarking — what you’re doing is demanding, quite legitimately and interestingly, that I be more rigorous in my thinking. Rigor takes time for me, though, so bear with me while I ponder on this. Sooner or later — when oil spills and naval assaults let go of my mind — I’ll post at hopefully greater depth on evil. True, I may indeed be fighting an uphill battle, but that’s no reaosn not to enter the fray. Thanks, and do stay tuned.

      • Uplift says:
        June 1, 2010 at 10:08 am

        Thanks so much! I look forward to it! Best.

  5. Tech and Awe « The Accidental Theologist says:
    June 4, 2010 at 10:33 am

    […] Obscenity in Black and Blue […]

Oil Worship

Posted May 18th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Interesting things happen when you stop thinking of oil as a resource and start seeing it as a religion.   How else explain the non-rational, all-encompassing human devotion to the stuff?

Charles Mudede brings a gently sardonic brilliance to bear on this on Slog, the blog of Seattle’s alt-hip weekly The Stranger.  On offshore drilling platforms:

They are magnificent, they are the descendants of Our Lady of Chartres, they are the cathedrals of the oil industry. Indeed, recognition of this connection will add to our understanding of why it is that Christians on the right side of politics so deeply admire offshore drilling—they can’t help but be impressed by the almost Gothic severity of an offshore platform, out there in the sea like a cathedral on a mountain.

Face to face with the industrial sublime —  the energy-producing, distance-defeating, plasticizing miracle of oil, as essential to modern society as the sun was to ancient ones — what can a mere human do but submit and worship?   Simply by living as we do, we are all followers of the cult of oil, all members of a church that far surpasses any other in size and wealth.   Helplessly dependent on it in every aspect of our daily lives — give us this day our daily oil — we abjectly acknowledge its power to sustain us.  And panic as we realize the other side of its power, which is to destroy us.

It all gets very biblical:   like ancient Israelites who had the temerity to worship other gods than Yahweh, we tremble as the divine wrath turns on us, and with such sublime irony:   the current Flood is not just oil instead of water, but oil into water.

See Charles Mudede’s  full post here.  And lest anyone accuse me of losing perspective, check out this earlier Slog post by Dominic Holden, superimposing the current outline of the Gulf oil spill on a map of western Washington state.   Do the same superimposition over a 400-mile-long  swathe of your area, and experience awe.

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File under: Christianity, ecology, Judaism | Tagged: Tags: cathedrals, industrial sublime, offshore drilling platforms, oil spill | 2 Comments
  1. Nancy McClelland says:
    May 25, 2010 at 11:26 pm

    I like the perspective, although I’m not sure it’s the oil itself that is worshiped, but what it affords us. As Bernadette Peters whines in “The Jerk”, “it’s not the money I’m gonna miss… it’s all the stuff.”

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 26, 2010 at 9:24 am

      I am immensely tempted by the idea of physically prostrating ourselves before a gulf-full of viscous, oozing, stinking, black gunk, then immersing ourselves in it until we “become one” with it. But yes, you’re right: Bernadette Peters nails it. .

On the Beach

Posted May 13th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Posed?  Unposed?  Shades of the end of Kubrick’s ‘2001’?   Is there some special irony in the fact that part of Nevil Shute’s post-nuclear-apocalypse novel ‘On the Beach‘ took place in an abandoned oil refinery near Seattle?

Here:  oil-spill clean-up workers suited up  yesterday at Dauphin Island, Alabama.

Photo:  Michael Appleton, New York Times

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File under: ecology | Tagged: Tags: clean-up, oil spill, Stanley Kubrick | 2 Comments
  1. Pietra says:
    May 14, 2010 at 7:18 am

    New York Times? Posed? “Wag the Dog”? I’ll never forget the “bread line in Russia” photo. I couldn’t stop staring at it and finally getting out my magnifying glass. Every single person in that line was wearing fur and/or well-tailored clothing.

  2. Kathleen says:
    May 14, 2010 at 11:05 am

    Wow! The photo came out great! And the built-in links, plus meta tags for later topic-searching… you are really making this site interesting, Leslie!

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