Customer Reviews

The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity Can Save Modernity from Itself (Christian Practice of Everyday Life, The)

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This book deserves to be read for its provocative and at times exhilarating analysis of contemporary consumerist culture, even if at times Jardine's claims seem to outstrip the supporting evidence he provides. Jardine's basic argument is that the social and political outlooks that have guided Western society have consistently underestimated human creativity. Consequently, the dominant way of thinking has left society ill equipped to deal with the moral, social and economic challenges posed by the astounding human abilities to produce goods and services, change social structures, re-order our environment, and even shape our own minds and bodies and what it means to be human. Jardine blames, at least in part, the influence of Greek philosophy (as well as typical pagan mythology) for this underestimation of human creativity. Greek and pagan mythology employ fertility as the basic metaphor to describe the origin and source of the universe, suggesting that the order of the world is cyclical and static. Corresponding to this, Greek philosophy assumes that all things have static "natures," and that each thing (and each type of person) have a set role and place within a static order.

The Judeo-Christian worldview differs dramatically from this, according to Jardine. According to this worldview, the universe was spoken into existence by a creative God, not birthed by some natural process according to a predetermined form. Moreover, humans are created in the image of God -- thus rather than seeing human beings as predetermined creatures within a static order, men and women are conceived as creative "speakers" who mirror God's creative activity. Thus, it is understood that people have the ability to dramatically shape and change their world and themselves in creative ways. This alternative perspective, however, did not win the day in Christian theology. Jardine argues that especially in its medieval form, Christian theology (and thus the dominant outlook of Western culture) was more Greek than Christian in its views of anthropology and society (hence the aristocratic mindset that justified set social structures like feudalism).

Liberalism, according to Jardine, represented an advance in the estimation of human capacity and creativity. Liberalism brought a more egalitarian spirit, an increased belief in the human capacity for material production, and the belief that social structures could be changed. But classical liberalism supposed that any potential moral threats posed by new experimentation with democratic and capitalist social structures could be contained by appeals to natural law and religiously neutral conceptions of justice. Jardine documents how liberalist ethics failed to achieve religious neutrality (which he deems to be impossible), and also how the liberalist ethos has, through its various stages of evolution, continued to be at a loss as to how to deal with human creativity. Classical liberalism supposed creative excess could be constrained by a set of rationally-derived laws, whereas neo-classical liberalism has largely given up on the task of justifying moral restraints in a religiously-neutral language, and has consequently resulted in an individualist, consumerist culture obsessed with aesthetic expressionism. Classical liberalism, despite its advances beyond the medieval mindset, continued to underestimate human creativity by believing a set of static laws could guide all human activity. Static laws, however, are ill-suited for a context that is ever changing in the face of human creative advances. Neo-classical liberalism, on the other hand, has resigned to human creativity and given up the hope of significant moral regulation altogether. The failure of the classical attempt to smuggle Protestant morality under the cloak of "natural law" has thus resulted in today's nihilism.

This summary greatly oversimplifies Jardine's winding discussion of the evolution of liberalism, which possesses many gems. Perhaps one of the most interesting points he makes is how the Protestant work ethic, which values both industriousness and moderation of consumption, is ultimately self-defeating. A society of industrious people produces so much "stuff" that must be consumed by someone; such an economy cannot be supported by a people who are thrifty and do not buy more than they need. Consequently, overproduction leads to a marketing based economy which convinces people that they need all this stuff being made, thereby undermining any moderation that may have characterized the society. For a new Protestant work ethic to be workable, it must be less materialistic and value other kinds of work besides the production of goods to be consumed. It must value community interaction, engaging leisure, poetry, artistic creation, ritual and worship, and contemplation as activities that constitute the good life as much as the industrious production of consumption goods. In short, it must adopt the biblical view that speech itself is a kind of praxis (and poeisis) that is to be valued.

It is to the Christian worldview, then, that Jardine suggests society must turn if it is to squarely face human creativity and the ever changing contexts (social, economic, environmental, bodily) that result from this creativity. When released from its Greek-influenced interpreters, Jardine believes that Christianity adequately depicts human creativity and also provides a non-rule based ethic (the ethic of trust, hope, and love) which can successfully guide and shape the use of our creative powers. In the conclusion, Jardine suggests changes in urban planning, in the workplace, and in our approach to the elderly and dying that exemplify how such an ethic might be put into practice in a pluralistic technological society.

This is not a perfect book. In particular, when Jardine ventures into explicitly theological discussions, his presentation of the historical facts are sometimes misleading and his theological conclusions are occasionally hastily made. Also, often Jardine delivers a provocative point but does not do enough to convince the circumspect reader. For example, Jardine makes much of the shift from an oral culture to a literate/visual culture, suggesting how this shift has led to limitations in our ability to conceive of the world in more dynamic and fluid ways. It is a fascinating suggestion, but there does not seem to be sufficient evidence to support these claims.

These and other flaws, though, should not stop you from reading this book. I believe even someone who does not share Jardine's Christian commitments will be challenged to view our contemporary society in new ways. At a minimum, Jardine forcefully presents a an urgent and fascinating question: What, or Who, should guide us in a disorienting world where human beings can not only shape and remake our society and our environment, but even our very selves?