Technology destroys Tradition

Technology destroys Tradition
by Majid83
05 - 05 - 12

The greatest failure of conservatives has always been their inability to connect cause and effect. Conservatives throw temper tantrums against modernity and the erosion of traditional values, and seek to combat the rising tide by attacking the excesses of modernity, but their only successes consist of the delaying of bills that will inevitably pass.

As an example, conservatives will protest abortion clinics, "satanic music", genetic engineering of humans and other organisms, gay marriage and pornography, without seeking to address the causes of these new developments. Hence they are continually wasting their energy attacking symptoms of modernity without understanding the underlying causes.

They fear that gay marriage will lead to the end of the sacred character of marriage. This despite their own political leaders cheating on their partners, with the most shameful example being Newt Gingrich who divorced his wife after she was hospitalized.

Most of the fears and concerns of conservatives are fully justified. Modernity is eroding traditions and values that have existed for hundreds of years. Marriage can no longer provide the certainty it once gave us, and neither can religion, employment, family and neighborhood. All of these would once last you a lifetime, but are now as exchangeable and temporary as the cell phone in your pocket.

Many conservatives react to this widespread uncertainty by reinventing their religion, in an attempt to create an environment and a mindset that can block modernity out of their lives. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, Salafism, and Fundamentalist Baptism are modern movements without the historical tradition they claim to posses. Salafists may claim to emulate the rightly guided companions of the Prophet Muhammed, but their leaders derive their intellectual inspiration from a 20th century Egyptian man named Sayyid Qutb.

All three of these religions have in common that they have gone through a constant centuries long evolution. As their environment changed, the religion adopted. As an example, when the Jews found themselves living in Europe, their original tribal religion become a scholarly religion. Similarly, Islam evolved from its barbaric origins, obvious to anyone who is not blinded by personal ideology or belief, into a religion that incorporated an intellectual and metaphysical tradition.

However, with the dawn of the Industrial revolution, the changes demanded of religion by modernity became so large that the actual survival of many religions became threatened. As an example, almost every religion incorporates a creation myth, none of which are fully compatible with the 19th century formulation of evolution, or the scientifically established age of the earth. Similarly, the development of reliable birth control, abortion and treatment for sexually transmittable diseases meant that traditional attitudes towards sex and marriages were no longer as self evident as they were when these attitudes developed.

One logical reaction to this newfound crisis was to proclaim that the apocalypse was upon us. The newfound crisis is a test of faith, and all but the few most devout ones will lose their religion and suffer as a result of it. This leads to such apocalyptic sects as the Jehovah's witnesses, whose track record includes multiple failed predictions of the end.

Others sought to reconcile their faith with the continually increasing demands put upon it by modernity, not realizing that with every step their religion descends further into irrelevance, with their prophet turning into little more than a sockpuppet for the modern ideology of egalitarian humanism who happened to be centuries ahead of his time.

If modern society comes to the conclusion as a result of horrific genocides and the development of nuclear weapons that warfare is no longer a tolerable option, scripture can be quote-mined in search of statements preaching peace and egalitarianism.

The religious concede that God did not create humans 6000 years, but "guided" evolution. Scientists encourage them into this pathway by telling them that religion and evolution are compatible and many Christians believe in Evolution. Eventually, these same Christians who bought the first step are required to profess that organism did not evolve through guided evolution or "intelligent design", but came about by naturalistic Darwinian selection as a result of mutations that were random as opposed to guided. Eventually those same Christians are forced to concede that the first cell was the result of a series of chemical reaction that favored the development of increasingly longer self-replicating molecules that can spontaneously arise, given the right conditions, which existed in many different places in the universe.

They are then forced to concede that humans have an imperfect design that might as well be fixed by scientists in the coming decades through gene-therapy and pre-implantation embryo selection. They went from "Homosexuality is a sin" to "Homosexuality can be treated" to "Homosexuality is an impulse that can can be resisted" to "Gays should not marry" to "Gays should not adopt children". In the coming decades, they will be forced to step over to "Gays should not be allowed to use genetic technology to create a child that has two biological fathers".

Intelligent and honest Christians look ahead, see that the end of the line is Naturalistic Atheism, drop out and intellectually shield themselves from the modern world. Intelligent but dishonest Christians try to remain vague about their religious beliefs to themselves and anyone who questions them about them. Their religious faith is a pillar of certainty that they hold on to, that they do not seek to destabilize by defining it and hence exposing it to scrutiny. It goes without saying that the certainty this pillar delivers is continually shrinking as well. What defines modern Christianity is the continual struggle against personal disbelief, which is an element that played a negligible role until recent times, and hence, technology changes the very nature of what it means to be religious.

Those same conservatives who choose to oppose the concessions demanded of them by modernity have a habit of feeding the very machine that demands these concessions of them. They profess a faith in unlimited economic and technological growth, without ever questioning whether economic and technological growth create the very conditions that erode the values and traditions that they seek to maintain.

As some examples, the car, much favored by modern conservatives, allows people to drive to the supermarket. Hence, local stores receive too few customers to maintain themselves, forcing them to close. Hence, more people are forced to go to the supermarket, and hence, more local stores close. Youth who used to drink in their own local bar now prefer to go to the larger café in the city. Hence, they disappear out of sight of their neighbors, who don't know the local youth anymore and feel threatened by them.

The television leads to neighbors who do not know each other, with the computer going a step further and leading to family members that don't know each other. Conservatives see their marriages fall apart and conclude that a ban on gay marriage may help to turn the rising tide.

Seeing the uncertainty brought about by the end of social class, conservatives encourage their children to go to college in an attempt to secure a higher place in the modern meritocracy. Being highly educated, the children become unwilling to carry out the jobs that society is capable of offering them, as they were promised they could do something they wanted by parents who were desperate to climb the social ladder. Easy communication with the homeland and rapid transportation mean that immigrants can now come in to fulfill the jobs that were once carried out by working class people who are now shoved into offices.

Conservatives see crime rates rise as their neighborhoods become "multicultural". They decide to feed into the machine by demanding stronger law enforcement. Disputes that would once be solved by families now become solved by police, as even loud music or a ball kicked through a window now require the intervention of law enforcement. As a result, loyalty to any family members outside of the direct nuclear family serves no genuine purpose anymore, as families are no longer reliant upon themselves for protection.

Similarly, a demand to an end of nepotism and political dynasties in favor of the merciless competition of the individualist meritocracy helps to eliminate loyalty between family members. Uncles can no longer carry out mutually beneficial favors to their nephews by inviting them into a corporate hierarchy.

Technology is the anathema to everything that is sacred. It is capable of dismantling religion by shredding those very elements of human existence of the transcendental mystery that once made us bow down before a power that is greater than us. Through sex education, birth control, pregnancy tests, hospital births, prenatal ultrasounds, in vitro fertilization and soon "designer babies", it manages to desecrate the miracle of human birth. Through evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, biology, pedagogy and behavioral techniques it is rapidly desecrating the miracle of the human mind.










Is it any wonder that the only people who have managed to keep traditional values intact are those who have kept their traditional lifestyle intact?

The question that conservatives should ask themselves is what price they are willing to pay to maintain the values and traditions that they hold in such high esteem. If you value monogamy and life-long pairing, would you be willing to accept a few cases of syphilitic insanity and disfigurement as the cost to maintain such a life style, or would you prefer to eliminate the "punishments" that promiscuity inflicts? If you value strong family ties, are you willing to keep your children home instead of sending them to elementary school? Are you willing to accept family feuds and nepotism?

The conservatives that realize the difficulty of issues such as these tend to choose for a middle of the road solution, one which is reasonable, although inevitably requiring new concessions on the side of the conservative. Consider for example, the bioconservatives. Bioconservatives oppose the genetic modification in any of the organisms present on our planet.

 It is now possible e to screen fertilized eggs for certain genetic variations before their are implanted into the womb. This would allow us to eliminate serious genetic problems from our children, but can just as easily be used to choose characteristics such as hair color, skin colors or facial appearance. Bioconservatives tend to oppose all such procedures.

On some issues, the bioconservative can easily expect majority support of the people. As an example, a bioconservative who opposes allowing parents to choose to have a white skinned child through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis would receive majority support. Bioconservatives who oppose allowing parents to use such procedures to only have children of normal intelligence would have it a little more difficult. Finally, bioconservatives who oppose allowing parents to use such procedures to only have children free of deadly genetic mutations (such as an inherited risk of breast cancer), stand no chance in the public debate.

Yet, every genetic variation that the bioconservative allows parents to consciously choose in their children, inevitably increases demand to allow more genetic tinkering. As an example, if severe intellectual disability (Down syndrome for example) can be eliminated, there will be greater pressure on people whose children suffer mild intellectual disability to prevent their children from being born. Similarly, if Huntington's disease can be eliminated, those with a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease will feel a greater pressure to eliminate those genes from their offspring as well.

Reasons for this increasing pressure include the fact that a spouse with a disposition to Huntington's disease might now be considered the worst possible option for a lifelong relationship. However, when Huntington's disease has been eliminated, those with a genetic disposition to Alzheimer's disease might become the new "worst possible option" for a lifelong relationship.


Similarly, through genetic modification of plants, scientists will be able to announce that they could save millions of lives worldwide, if only it weren't for those "bioluddites" who oppose genetic engineering. Hence, all that the modernists will have to do is shout an increasingly greater death toll which is blamed on those who oppose modernity. This is what happens to be the case with the Trojan Horse of Golden Rice. Bioconservatives are fooled into destroying their own credibility by using the wrong type of arguments when first confronted with Golden Rice, by claiming that Golden Rice is ineffective as it produces too little of the newly introduced nutrient. When the new version comes out, Bioconservatives successfully destroyed their own credibility by having to change their argument.

Although my case study, the bioconservative, is without a doubt a very special subspecies of conservative, his problem can be extrapolated to that of other conservatives as well. He isn't resisting the train of modernity. He is sticking his feet in the sand as he is being dragged along by the train, while progressives shout at him, encouraging him to climb aboard to make his trip less painful for him.

It is for this reason that the definition of a modern conservative is a person who seeks to maintain that which he has already lost.

An effective conservative has to flat out state that he opposes mankind's attempt to reshape his universe in his image. An effective conservative upholds that before humans through the Industrial revolution amplified their power over nature, a self-regulating order existed that was created by nobody (or, alternatively, God), chosen by nobody, but created a certainty and a stability to which humans and other organisms could adjust with a minimum amount of pressure. The Industrial revolution and the societal changes that grew out of it destroyed the equilibrium that existed before it and through the use of psychology and biotechnology is now preparing to wipe away the last remnants of the old order that existed before it.

Conservatives should draw the distinction between the natural spontaneously arising order in the absence of modern technology, and the man-made (though uncontrollable), self-augmenting, self-regulating order that is the product of industrial civilization. Conservatives should firmly ally with the former if they seek to maintain the value pattern and traditions that grew out of it.