Wednesday, May 14, 2008
folding, part ii
This is a continuation of the previous post, in which I talked mostly about the mechanics of the Folding@Home project. But my excitement about folding has to do with a lot more than just the technical aspects of the project, or even the feel-good factor of having contributed to some tangible good. There are a lot of important and challenging implications to Folding@Home and the principles behind it that I've been forced to consider seriously in the short while that I've been involved with it.
It's first of all true that the whole notion of doing good through technology is, in fact, counterintuitive for a lot of us. I'm not at this point arguing that Folding@Home accomplishes "good" (although I think it does); but it certainly has the potential or the capacity for good, and this in itself is for some of us a stretch. Think about it: when do we ever really talk positively about technology? At most we describe it in morally neutral language, like when we acknowledge the convenience of a particular thing. Most of the time, though, we're talking about how we really shouldn't be watching TV, or using so much gas, or wasting so much time online.
Granted, these examples are all tied to other issues (e.g. laziness, vs. the desire to be active), but they nonetheless breed a sort of instinctive moral aversion toward technology. Consequently, when our thoughts about technology move beyond indifference, we almost always adopt a language and conscience of guilt. Sometimes this antipathy is warranted, like when technology is used to harm or oppress or kill others. I think, though, that a lot of the time it arises moreso out of the sort of ingrained cultural paranoia that I've (briefly) described, and that it in fact isn't the necessary or even the appropriate response.
Of course, in order to make the claim that this sort of moral aversion is in fact an inappropriate response, we'd have to first establish that technology actually does achieve moral goods. It's not exactly an easy point to make, though: even in the case of a technology like Folding@Home, there are moral "pros" (the advancement of medical knowledge, or even the advancement of knowledge in general) and "cons" (the hardware and equipment used to fold and the energy required to power them, both of which might have adverse ecological effects).
In fact, it's a point I'm not even really going to try to make, since I haven't exactly thought up a rational proof for the moral merit of technology in general, or of Folding@Home in particular (although, on a slight tangent, I've recently become convinced that morality can't be determined by reason alone). I will say, in the particular context of this discussion, that I believe there are some ends that energy or natural resources should be consumed for, in the same way that animals consume resources for their own benefit (and yes, I understand that animals give back in order to integrate seamlessly with their ecosystems -- ideally, we would, too). I'll leave the question of morality open-ended, though, since I'm primarily interested not in its solution, but in how people perceive the question in the first place.
I've also been considering how the issue of technology and morality relates to our appraisals of culture. For a lot of us, the words "human culture" set off any number of alarms and red lights; this is particularly true of Evangelical Christians, who tend to see human culture in direct opposition to God's authority.
Here's a bit of a history lesson: for a while now, and against the centuries-old Christian paradigm of the sinfulness of humanity, people have been talking about the inherent goodness or merit of the human race. This school of thought, aptly called humanism, might be said to generally affirm that "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras). In the latter stages of the European Enlightenment, Protestant Christianity started picking up on threads of humanistic thought; the result was the abomination that we usually call liberal Protestantism. Suffice it to say that in the aftermath of the Second World War, a lot of Christians realised that liberal Protestantism, and its tendency to view human culture in a positive light, had contributed a great deal to the rise and subsequent horrors of Nazism. Modern "Evangelical" Protestantism reacted strongly against humanism as a result, and it's in the midst of this reaction that we've come to develop such a pessimistic language about culture and its creations (such as technology).
Of course, the polemic against culture existed in other forms before the rise of liberal Protestantism, but I think this is where the modern push, driven by the likes of Barth, originates (although this origin has since been forgotten). The polemic against technology has also found a lot of different expressions throughout Christian and even pre-Christian history, but generally speaking, when Christians look for a doctrinal basis for these sorts of beliefs, they adopt a view that's parallel with the objections made against liberal Protestantism (human insufficiency vs. God's power or authority), and thus I've decided to find a correlation between the two.
But is human culture actually so evil? I think that in order to answer the question, we'd first have to consider Protagoras' aforementioned maxim. If Man isn't the measure of all things -- if there exist layers of experience that aren't contained within human experience -- then there's the possibility of a higher (e.g. divine) existential mandate. If, on the other hand, Man is the measure of all things, then human existence can only be dictated by human experience.
This brings us back to a discussion (or was it more of a pitched battle?) that took place on this blog a while back, in which questions of subjectivity and objectivity came up. In short: we all think and feel and know and remember through the lens of our perceptive faculties (and these, of course, aren't limited to sensory faculties). Everything we experience and claim to know passes through this lens. In other words, we're subjective beings, and have no actual understanding (beyond a purely conceptual one) of what objectivity even is or means. For this reason it's completely nonsensical for us to claim access to "other" layers of experience, regardless of whether or not they even exist, because even if they do, they couldn't be known directly -- again, they would be coloured by the lens of our own experience.
So if human beings are subjective beings, and if our perceptive faculties are the lens through which all experience is filtered, then Man really is the measure of all things, as far as we can be concerned or ever know. Again, I'm not saying that God doesn't exist, in the same way that I'm not disavowing the existence of trees or birds or water or even other people. I'm simply saying that our knowledge of this and all other existence is contained within experience, whether we admit to it or not.
(Am I going to conclude that human culture should be glorified above God? No, and if this is where you thought I was going, you honestly need to give me a little more credit than that. Then again, what I am going to suggest might be an even more abhorrent train of thought.)
I think the very fact that all experience is subjective (and by extension that all knowledge of existence is contained within experience) precludes any real distinction between human culture and God's authority. If "human culture" loosely describes the expression of human experience, and if our understanding of God's law is contained (as all other knowledge is) in experience, so that the implementation of God's law could be said to ultimately be a form of such expression, then to deny the merit of culture is to deny the merit of the divine law. To deny the merit of human culture, in fact, is then to deny the merit of experience as such. I don't know about you, but I can't really conceive of a merit-less experience of life.
I hope that all made sense, and I hope it isn't perceived as an attack on some fundamental values. I actually think it's entirely in tune with our experience (at least when we're honest with ourselves), and that it doesn't undermine the importance of faith at all; I just happen to be using a lot of words that are taboo or already laden with negative connotations in the Christian context.
I'll just skip ahead to the most foreseeable and obvious objection to what I've said here before I end this post: no, I'm not saying that we should just be wishy-washy liberals who cave to the social/cultural fads of the day (and again, if you were thinking along these lines, you need to give me a little more credit). I've only argued that experience in general has merit, and not that "therefore everything that proceeds from experience has merit." The aim here was to object to the dismissal of all culture (still used here in my definition as the expression of human experience) as fundamentally corrupted, which I don't think it is -- although there are certainly such things as particular cultural forms that are wrong or evil.
I don't think Christianity loses its subversive, counter-cultural element in such an understanding of experience, either. There are quite obviously a lot of things wrong about culture, and Christianity and other creeds are right to oppose them. What I'm saying is that the polemic against culture as such, as if culture by its very nature is evil or in opposition to God, needs to be reconsidered. For the most part, I'm convinced that few Christians actually feel this way anyway, and that this sort of extreme, all-encompassing polemic emerges only when people start to look for a theoretical or doctrinal ground to tie their many counter-cultural convictions together.
In closing, I'll note that the Folding@Home project is again a perfect example of a cultural form -- of an expression of experience -- that doesn't fit into a fundamentally negative view of culture. Its specific merits aside (we left the question of its "net morality" open-ended), it does do some good, which already challenges a view that human culture and all its forms are essentially evil. At least, that's what I think -- I might be wrong, and in light of the possibility (as well as the fact that I just like to talk about these things) I'm more than open to discussion.
It's first of all true that the whole notion of doing good through technology is, in fact, counterintuitive for a lot of us. I'm not at this point arguing that Folding@Home accomplishes "good" (although I think it does); but it certainly has the potential or the capacity for good, and this in itself is for some of us a stretch. Think about it: when do we ever really talk positively about technology? At most we describe it in morally neutral language, like when we acknowledge the convenience of a particular thing. Most of the time, though, we're talking about how we really shouldn't be watching TV, or using so much gas, or wasting so much time online.
Granted, these examples are all tied to other issues (e.g. laziness, vs. the desire to be active), but they nonetheless breed a sort of instinctive moral aversion toward technology. Consequently, when our thoughts about technology move beyond indifference, we almost always adopt a language and conscience of guilt. Sometimes this antipathy is warranted, like when technology is used to harm or oppress or kill others. I think, though, that a lot of the time it arises moreso out of the sort of ingrained cultural paranoia that I've (briefly) described, and that it in fact isn't the necessary or even the appropriate response.
Of course, in order to make the claim that this sort of moral aversion is in fact an inappropriate response, we'd have to first establish that technology actually does achieve moral goods. It's not exactly an easy point to make, though: even in the case of a technology like Folding@Home, there are moral "pros" (the advancement of medical knowledge, or even the advancement of knowledge in general) and "cons" (the hardware and equipment used to fold and the energy required to power them, both of which might have adverse ecological effects).
In fact, it's a point I'm not even really going to try to make, since I haven't exactly thought up a rational proof for the moral merit of technology in general, or of Folding@Home in particular (although, on a slight tangent, I've recently become convinced that morality can't be determined by reason alone). I will say, in the particular context of this discussion, that I believe there are some ends that energy or natural resources should be consumed for, in the same way that animals consume resources for their own benefit (and yes, I understand that animals give back in order to integrate seamlessly with their ecosystems -- ideally, we would, too). I'll leave the question of morality open-ended, though, since I'm primarily interested not in its solution, but in how people perceive the question in the first place.
I've also been considering how the issue of technology and morality relates to our appraisals of culture. For a lot of us, the words "human culture" set off any number of alarms and red lights; this is particularly true of Evangelical Christians, who tend to see human culture in direct opposition to God's authority.
Here's a bit of a history lesson: for a while now, and against the centuries-old Christian paradigm of the sinfulness of humanity, people have been talking about the inherent goodness or merit of the human race. This school of thought, aptly called humanism, might be said to generally affirm that "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras). In the latter stages of the European Enlightenment, Protestant Christianity started picking up on threads of humanistic thought; the result was the abomination that we usually call liberal Protestantism. Suffice it to say that in the aftermath of the Second World War, a lot of Christians realised that liberal Protestantism, and its tendency to view human culture in a positive light, had contributed a great deal to the rise and subsequent horrors of Nazism. Modern "Evangelical" Protestantism reacted strongly against humanism as a result, and it's in the midst of this reaction that we've come to develop such a pessimistic language about culture and its creations (such as technology).
Of course, the polemic against culture existed in other forms before the rise of liberal Protestantism, but I think this is where the modern push, driven by the likes of Barth, originates (although this origin has since been forgotten). The polemic against technology has also found a lot of different expressions throughout Christian and even pre-Christian history, but generally speaking, when Christians look for a doctrinal basis for these sorts of beliefs, they adopt a view that's parallel with the objections made against liberal Protestantism (human insufficiency vs. God's power or authority), and thus I've decided to find a correlation between the two.
But is human culture actually so evil? I think that in order to answer the question, we'd first have to consider Protagoras' aforementioned maxim. If Man isn't the measure of all things -- if there exist layers of experience that aren't contained within human experience -- then there's the possibility of a higher (e.g. divine) existential mandate. If, on the other hand, Man is the measure of all things, then human existence can only be dictated by human experience.
This brings us back to a discussion (or was it more of a pitched battle?) that took place on this blog a while back, in which questions of subjectivity and objectivity came up. In short: we all think and feel and know and remember through the lens of our perceptive faculties (and these, of course, aren't limited to sensory faculties). Everything we experience and claim to know passes through this lens. In other words, we're subjective beings, and have no actual understanding (beyond a purely conceptual one) of what objectivity even is or means. For this reason it's completely nonsensical for us to claim access to "other" layers of experience, regardless of whether or not they even exist, because even if they do, they couldn't be known directly -- again, they would be coloured by the lens of our own experience.
So if human beings are subjective beings, and if our perceptive faculties are the lens through which all experience is filtered, then Man really is the measure of all things, as far as we can be concerned or ever know. Again, I'm not saying that God doesn't exist, in the same way that I'm not disavowing the existence of trees or birds or water or even other people. I'm simply saying that our knowledge of this and all other existence is contained within experience, whether we admit to it or not.
(Am I going to conclude that human culture should be glorified above God? No, and if this is where you thought I was going, you honestly need to give me a little more credit than that. Then again, what I am going to suggest might be an even more abhorrent train of thought.)
I think the very fact that all experience is subjective (and by extension that all knowledge of existence is contained within experience) precludes any real distinction between human culture and God's authority. If "human culture" loosely describes the expression of human experience, and if our understanding of God's law is contained (as all other knowledge is) in experience, so that the implementation of God's law could be said to ultimately be a form of such expression, then to deny the merit of culture is to deny the merit of the divine law. To deny the merit of human culture, in fact, is then to deny the merit of experience as such. I don't know about you, but I can't really conceive of a merit-less experience of life.
I hope that all made sense, and I hope it isn't perceived as an attack on some fundamental values. I actually think it's entirely in tune with our experience (at least when we're honest with ourselves), and that it doesn't undermine the importance of faith at all; I just happen to be using a lot of words that are taboo or already laden with negative connotations in the Christian context.
I'll just skip ahead to the most foreseeable and obvious objection to what I've said here before I end this post: no, I'm not saying that we should just be wishy-washy liberals who cave to the social/cultural fads of the day (and again, if you were thinking along these lines, you need to give me a little more credit). I've only argued that experience in general has merit, and not that "therefore everything that proceeds from experience has merit." The aim here was to object to the dismissal of all culture (still used here in my definition as the expression of human experience) as fundamentally corrupted, which I don't think it is -- although there are certainly such things as particular cultural forms that are wrong or evil.
I don't think Christianity loses its subversive, counter-cultural element in such an understanding of experience, either. There are quite obviously a lot of things wrong about culture, and Christianity and other creeds are right to oppose them. What I'm saying is that the polemic against culture as such, as if culture by its very nature is evil or in opposition to God, needs to be reconsidered. For the most part, I'm convinced that few Christians actually feel this way anyway, and that this sort of extreme, all-encompassing polemic emerges only when people start to look for a theoretical or doctrinal ground to tie their many counter-cultural convictions together.
In closing, I'll note that the Folding@Home project is again a perfect example of a cultural form -- of an expression of experience -- that doesn't fit into a fundamentally negative view of culture. Its specific merits aside (we left the question of its "net morality" open-ended), it does do some good, which already challenges a view that human culture and all its forms are essentially evil. At least, that's what I think -- I might be wrong, and in light of the possibility (as well as the fact that I just like to talk about these things) I'm more than open to discussion.
Ren | | # | 
