HuffPo Energy Still Going Strong
Amy is still pumped today, about the HuffPo thread from yesterday and started up a new one, same issue, today. Today’s specific focus was the uniformed presumption that the buffoons on the HuffPo thread were making that the Church was anti-science (modern sense of the term). She then provided a litany of evidence that the Church embraces science and dared anyone to say otherwise in the face of the evidence. Well, that is where Ian rushes in ahead of the Angels I am afraid. Well, poor Ian got piled on to with this one, 80 posts strong and still going, and as far as I can tell he was hammered on almost all of them. Ole Ian did not give up though. He is still holding onto his off base assertions. I provided my own thoughts over there for those who might want to take a look, but here I would like to mention something that Marco intuited from Ian’s musings.
Marco found that Ian seemed to embrace a very unhealthy enthusiasm for the good of “science†to the public welfare. I for one am not ready to give up my heated waterbed but still, there are cautions about our interaction with technological advances that have to be considered. Marco does a good job of pointing them out. There is an article in Reuters today that seems to bear out some of the negative ramifications that an unreflective assimilation of technological advances can have on a society. It seems that in our advanced society in the U.S., where even the poorest among us are well off by much of the world’s standards, almost 10% of teenagers suffer from major depression. O.k., I cannot prove that it is directly related to the affects of technological advances on society. In fact, I would guess it has a lot to do with what is happening to the family. However, we can show that much of the dissolution of the nuclear family does have an indirect correlation to unreflective embracing of technology. Any way, it does show that it takes more than a highly technologically advanced society to make people happy. When we try to fill up the emptiness with material things, our momentary satiation in inevitably replaced with an even greater barrenness. What’s the answer? St. Augustine said it: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, O’ Lord.â€
Well, I’m off to Dayton for the weekend. Tricia’s dad is still in ICU, will probably be there for another day or so at least. Kidneys are not coming along very well yet but he did finally get off the respirator. Thanks to those who have sent kind words and especially prayers. They are, and will continue to be, very much appreciated.
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I think that Marco was pointing out something along these lines: Contemporary science is allied to huge expenditures stemming from big-business and big-government. These expenditures are its life-blood. Without them, it could not exist with the scope that it does. It could not have the Ecclesiastical status that it does. Its practicioners could not be the high-priests of the culture that they are. That such vast resources are given to it stems, primarily, from the social conviction that two ultimate ends can and must be attained from science: 1) technology must be advanced for the service of the good of the material welfare of the state, and 2) technology must be advanced for the development of a more efficient and far-reaching exchange of goods and services.
This alliance of science, business and government is founded on the assumption that these two goals are absolute goods. Everything in our society is oriented toward these goods and they are never questioned (except, possibly, in certain environmentalist circles, which have their own decreationist malformations). Our educational system has as its express purpose the formation and orientation of individuals toward these two goals and these goals alone.
Marco seems to be questioning whether these two goals are, in fact, ultimate goods. Ian presumes, quite unreflectively, that they are. He does not ask the question of whether, for instance, it might not be better for the state to make the primary purpose of its educational system the inculcation of character formation. Perhaps technology, while important, is of secondary importance to this.
Moreover, Marco might want to ask, in regard to business and science, if science does not, indeed, have a hand in the vulgar consumerism of the age.
Marco’s seems to be saying, in sum, that it is Ian’s tendency to absolutize technological society that is problematic. As the Patriarch of Athens said last year, to paraphrase, “We in Greece may not have the fine roads and technological niceties that Americans have, but we don’t consider technology to be the sign of civilization. Rather, it is charity that marks a civilization and it is that which we strive for.”
Of course, the globalization that Ian unwittingly supports will eventually run like a corrosive acid over Greece just as it has everywhere else. If it hasn’t already…
Comment by Hierothee — December 29, 2005 @ 9:32 pm