Have you ever considered the cost of technology? No, I don't mean that it costs money? I mean the hidden costs. We spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out what effect drugs will have on human beings. We don't spend any time thinking about what effect technology will have on human beings.
Think about it. When you grab that iPod and stick those buds in your ear, do you think about what will happen if you plug that music directly into your head? I'm not talking about physical effects. I'm talking about the mental consequences. Or how about sitting down in front of that television set? What will the effects be from that? We just don't contemplate those things, do we?
For millennia, technological progress was achingly slow. Transportation, education, entertainment, farming, industry, it was all basically the same. A small advance here and a slight modification there, but little real change. Someone invents iron working and it makes a splash for a short time until everyone figures it out. Someone comes up with the idea of a chariot and it makes a difference for awhile, but then it's absorbed. Someone figures out how to print and the impact on education is large, but over time it is just normal. Fast forward to our time, and it seems as if technology is changing before we can assimilate the latest change. Computers are room size until, suddenly, they're able to fit on a desk top, and in less than a decade they're small enough to carry around. The time from shared telephone lines to a cellphone in every pocket is tiny. The way we listen to music has rapidly shifted from live to broadcast to recorded to digitized in no time at all. Entertainment was live only yesterday and in a half century it went to movie to TV to tape to disk. What was new to us yesterday is unheard of to kids today. Does anyone think about the effects of these technologies?
Look at television. In the 50's, when it first came out, the morality of the day was that divorce was bad and sex was for marriage. Enter television. As the "boob tube" gained viewers, Hollywood gained a voice. We thought of it as entertainment, but it cannot be denied that it was and continues to be propaganda. In less than a generation this electronic viewing machine has become a ubiquitous (Look that word up; it's everywhere) presence that has convinced nearly everyone that sex is a recreational pastime that has nothing to do with marriage and divorce is a given. The impact of the medium of television on children under the age of 5 is only now being discovered, negatively impacting their mental and physical development. It's true that television, by itself, isn't evil, but since Man is, by nature, hostile to God, it is just a fact that it will be used by humans to go against His desires. And we invite that into our homes.
How about music? It used to be that you had to have bulky equipment to listen to music. Technology miniaturized that and made it portable. Then they shrunk it further allowing you more and more music until you can now carry all you want in a pocket-sized container and you can listen non-stop. Our music, pumped directly into our ears without a break, tells us the world's morality. Listen enough and we just buy into it without even thinking about it. "Oh, no," you assure yourself, "I listen to a lot of Christian music." So ... do you ever evaluate that music? Or do you pump it in without thinking about it and assume that, because it's "Christian" it's good for you?
Then there are computers. There is little doubt that computer technology has shifted radically in an amazingly short time. And how good is that? It's a labor saver ... right? Perhaps. But studies indicate that American workers waste more time at work playing on their computers than they spend working. Then there is the problem of things like pornography. Someone came up with the idea of real-time video over the Internet, and it was a good idea, right? Sure, it's nice to be able to see friends and family who are far away. It's convenient for businesses to be able to use this technology in conferences. But now it's the favored way for women to perform sex acts in front of paying customers and for couples to "hook up for sex".
Technology is generally amoral. Unfortunately, in the hands of sinful humans, it will often be used for immoral means. Beyond morality, it seems as if we aren't too concerned about any long-term effects from the technology that we invite into our homes. Most of the changes in our society in the last 50 years are due to technology. We are more mobile, so families don't stay together like they used to. We have televisions so families don't have game night anymore. We have cell phones so, amazingly, families don't spend much time together anymore. In the words of a recent commercial, we suffer from "moral depletion" largely because our world is so much smaller. Everything has costs. Some of them are known. I think it's unwise to ignore costs because they're hidden. Technology is full of hidden costs.
4 comments:
Long time no read! I was catching up some on your blog this morning. And your post here is a bit convicting to me. Just another part of my "message" for this week. Ouch. LOL!
Good to see you and pray all is blessed with your family. Blessings to you and yours, Julianne
Hey, Julianne, I'm here most every day. Stop by more often, and I'll see if I can provide more convicting. (Oh, I guess that's not much of a motivation to stop by, is it?) :)
Hey Stan, thanks for good thoughts as usual. Also, I appreciated your On Hell post from a few months ago, definitely some references I'll need to check through on that.
Just wanted to say a thing about TV changing our morality, in particular our opinions on sex. I have to disclaim myself first because I definitely was not around for any of the relevant decades I'll talk about . . . and so this is may be wildly uncredible conjecture. But here goes.
My guess is that TV's contemporary portrayal of sex is a reflection of our culture, and NOT the opposite. From what I know, conservative TV in the 1950s stayed quite conservative at least into the 60s, and probably a little while longer from there. Meanwhile, there was big change happening in the culture--namely the free love movement, right? From what I know this was not just an isolated hippy thing but an idea that cross-pollinated all over the place in the years that followed.
And not to mention, there was probably a good deal of influence from much more liberal Europe, and the musico-cultural invasion from around the same time.
In short, I would say the concept of recreational sex propagated through our culture without TV, and long before it was reflected on TV (see disclaimer).
Having grown up in the 60's, I have a slightly different perspective. What I saw was a media that reflected a particular part of our culture that I wouldn't have seen. I think there is something to your idea that the media reflects the culture, but I think it reflects the part of culture it likes and promotes. Reflecting that part of culture serves to magnify that part of culture. Showing that as normal tends to make us think it's normal. As we buy into the idea that it is normal, it becomes the accepted norm.
It used to be that art imitated life. Art now has the power to urge life to imitate it. Or, as Hitler said, if you tell a lie big enough and long enough, people begin to believe it.
On the other hand, I'm absolutely certain that you're correct in asserting that the media is not the only reason for our changing cultural morality. As an example, it seems that what parents allow in moderation their children indulge in excess. So a little recreational drug use for one generation becomes an epidemic problem to the next. And that's just one of the factors.
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