Technology, Libertarianism, Relationships, Religion
While examining human motivation at ConVocation, which I blogged about this weekend, I turned the microscope on my own views of the world, religious, relational, and political. The techno-progressive Dale Carrico, with whom I had what might count as my first political debate last week over the connection between technology and libertarianism, sparked some thought on broader connections.
I can talk your ear off about secularism but I'm not very political. When I'm asked in a poll or a voting booth to think about broad social policies, I just extrapolate from personal relationships. I used to be a very compliant and trusting child, a dutiful husband, and a devout follower of Jesus of Nazareth. Those arrangements were all bad and I'll never again get into relationships of parent/child, till-death-do-us-part, or worshiper/worshipee. I have no policy statistics, I've never paid much attention to laws and their outcomes, I don't claim to be an expert in society or governance, so I cannot be looked to for anything more specific on politics than a treatise of first principles. I merely have life experiences that teach me hyper-individualism, which manifests as suspicion of all authority and an aversion to entitlement. By entitlement, I mean home, family, church, government, and other communal relationships in which people basically feel like they can have free run to abuse each other and praise it as "self-sacrifice." So when I found libertarianism and technological culture, they fit like a hand in a glove. God, marriage, parents, government, nature, it's all of a piece. Technology attempts to break the wheel of nature, that we are in relationship with, and which governs us.
I wonder if left-liberals and moral-majority-conservatives have more trust, or are comfortable in interdependent relationships, whether it be with their parents or spouse or religion or children, or their DNA for that matter, which carries over to government. In the "perfect idealistic world" of my imagination there would be none of those. But I acknowledge a world of all adults, a world of artificial intelligences who can just self-modify whenever they don't like their own nature, is not where we are right now, and I have no good reason to expect it to become that way.
I can talk your ear off about secularism but I'm not very political. When I'm asked in a poll or a voting booth to think about broad social policies, I just extrapolate from personal relationships. I used to be a very compliant and trusting child, a dutiful husband, and a devout follower of Jesus of Nazareth. Those arrangements were all bad and I'll never again get into relationships of parent/child, till-death-do-us-part, or worshiper/worshipee. I have no policy statistics, I've never paid much attention to laws and their outcomes, I don't claim to be an expert in society or governance, so I cannot be looked to for anything more specific on politics than a treatise of first principles. I merely have life experiences that teach me hyper-individualism, which manifests as suspicion of all authority and an aversion to entitlement. By entitlement, I mean home, family, church, government, and other communal relationships in which people basically feel like they can have free run to abuse each other and praise it as "self-sacrifice." So when I found libertarianism and technological culture, they fit like a hand in a glove. God, marriage, parents, government, nature, it's all of a piece. Technology attempts to break the wheel of nature, that we are in relationship with, and which governs us.
I wonder if left-liberals and moral-majority-conservatives have more trust, or are comfortable in interdependent relationships, whether it be with their parents or spouse or religion or children, or their DNA for that matter, which carries over to government. In the "perfect idealistic world" of my imagination there would be none of those. But I acknowledge a world of all adults, a world of artificial intelligences who can just self-modify whenever they don't like their own nature, is not where we are right now, and I have no good reason to expect it to become that way.