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Entry: The Snare Of Progress Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_snare_of_progress#29366 Post contents: Anyone who thinks that this post has something to do with "ideological purity" needs to do some more thinking. It is hostility to abstraction that informs this entire post, as should be quite clear from one of the Lukacs quotes above. It isn't technology that is the problem, but man's attitude towards its use and the use of it in relationship to nature. Technology is neutral in itself. It is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. The error comes from the belief that progress is possible and that technical advances do not carry significant costs with them. In reality, what is possible is the sacrifice of certain things for the sake of others. The obvious point is that conservatives ought to know that there are trade-offs and ought to be wary of making trade-offs when these undermine and ruin those things that they wish to preserve. If I thought that discarding computers and the Internet was at all likely to shore up the integrity of the family, Christian tradition and a humane way of life, you'd better believe I would advocate it, but that would be to make a typically puritanical error of blaming the thing for a human failing. The real problem is the glorification of technology as the solution to virtually all problems. The glorification of technology as the answer to each new predicament is simply a way of avoiding the recognition of the costs of "progress" and pretending that we can have it all. This leads to an irresponsible and destructive attitude towards the natural world, one that I am quite familiar with because I used to hold it when I was younger, that we don't need to change our behvaiour or our habits but just invent some new technology that will allow us to keep living in the same fashion indefinitely. Sent at: 2008 12 02