I’m an engineer. Let’s be very clear about that. Nobody can validly accuse me of devaluing material things, technology, processes, and techniques. I’ve put years of learning – and years of teaching, too – into these things.
But let’s also be clear. It is painful to see the extent to which people are attached to these things in which I have a part – such as petroleum products and personal care products, to name two industries with which I have personal experience. That is not what things are for. Things are made for the sake of human beings, not human beings for the sake of things. Matter is made to be directed to the spirit, not the other way around. There’s an upward movement inherent in the nature of things. Making it spiral downward is just plain backwards.
Addicted to petroleum? Willing to war for it? Willing to let a country like Nigeria or Libya suffer for it? Not thinking about that? Not thinking about the relationship between things, money, and your neighbours? Not mindful of what you’re doing and using? Attached to image and the use of care products like creams and gels?
Not on my watch. Sorry. That’s not what I teach for, and that’s not what engineers rightly help you for.
The same goes for those engineered and designed things that I, personally, don’t have a part in but which are also good: the internet, tablets, mobile phones, and everything else.
Prosperity and attachment combined are bad news. We’re supposed to become detached. When I was a young engineering student, I was looking for a motto on this issue. The motto I found is Jacques Maritain’s:
Material techniques of themselves should have prepared the way for a life much more completely freed of matter, but in virtue of man’s fault they actually tend to oppress spirituality. Does that mean technique must be forsaken? That has never been our view. But in this case, reason has to impose its human regulation.
If the computer monitor, phone screen, television, or petroleum-using machine has chemicals pounding through your brain so that you cannot recollect yourself, you’re attached. Things are your master – not you, theirs. In internet lingo, it’s a “fail”. You got it backwards.
If we want to be contemplative or apostolic in our life, we have to be willing to let God detach us from everything. Technology is no exception. In many ways, next to the things of concupiscence – to which the pulsing chemicals of technological attachment are linked – this is, today, one of the largest attachments blocking the dark nights and the mountain peaks of contemplation.
You heard it from an engineer.
Some related posts:
Contemplative in the Mud 