Two Things 4/11/24
Two Things 4/11/24
Analog mandates. Atheist Christians. Plus museum mischief, online obits, and ecumenism.
Coffee this Friday, April 12, at the usual time (6:30 am) and place (Loyal North).
(1) Make America Analog Again: I’m returning from a conference in Orlando on artificial intelligence, so technology is on my mind. At National Affairs, Brad Littlejohn and Clare Morell lament the “soft tyranny” of the smartphone, document how increasingly ubiquitous and nearly mandatory it is, and suggest public-policy solutions:
Left to itself, the market will always pursue the most efficient outcome. Yet this is not necessarily the most humane outcome, or the one that consumers themselves would choose. The smartphone is indeed a powerful and valuable tool, and it is clearly not going away. But that doesn’t mean we should allow this tool to become a tyrant. We should not accept a world in which consumers and parents have no choice but to own one; we must push back.
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To protect the most vulnerable in our society — notably the elderly (who may not be tech-savvy) and the under age (whom it would be wise to safeguard from smartphone saturation) — federal officials should adopt laws that prevent places of public accommodation from requiring customers to use digital platforms to access analog goods and services.
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A world in which smartphones are more difficult for children to access, in which burgers and concert tickets are easier to purchase without this device, need not be a big-government dystopia. It is unlikely to come into being, however, without prudent government action. Some problems are simply too widespread, have gained too much momentum, or are too nearly inescapable for individual families, community institutions, or businesses to overcome them on their own. The soft tyranny of the smartphone is one such problem. In these situations, the state's role is to step in and protect the traditions, institutions, and values of society that new technologies threaten to erode and supplant.
(2) The unbearable lightness of “cultural Christianity”: It’s not another high-profile conversion, but it was noteworthy nonetheless when Richard Dawkins, the infamous polemical atheist, called himself a “cultural Christian” earlier this month, saying he’s happy there are fewer Christians about while admitting he enjoys cathedrals, “beautiful parish churches,” and Christmas carols. Rod Dreher wins Hot Take of the Year for sarcastically noting that Dawkins might as well have said he “greatly enjoys eating, but is also glad that farms in his country are closing and that gardens are not being planted.” Cambridge scholar Esmé Partridge deepens our historical understanding of Dawkins’ quixotic pronouncement:
That the fruits of Christianity can be saved while its roots are severed speaks to a naivety that is perhaps typical of Dawkins’s generation. Baby boomers wanted to tear down the conventions of traditional society and yet, at the same time, overwhelmingly benefitted from them. They championed the sexual revolution, for example, but have themselves enjoyed the stability of monogamous marriage. Dawkins’s belief that it is possible to reap the cultural benefits of Christianity while publicly undermining its legitimacy is perhaps an expression of this generational mentality.
But it is also a belief — and a naivety — that goes back to the European Enlightenment. Though Dawkins’s embrace of “the Christian ethos” might seem surprising given the extremity of his anti-religious polemics, his position is remarkably similar to that of modernity’s founding fathers. Like him, the liberals of the 17th and 18th centuries believed it was possible to renounce the truth claims of Christianity while still upholding its social and cultural mores.
Partridge goes on to cite Locke and Montesquieu as examples, but calls them, like Dawkins, naive. “Without public religion, their legacy has mutated into something very different: anarchic systems of self-interest which undermine the virtues upon which liberalism was originally premised.”
Other Things
Denver Art Museum keeps its indigenous art collection, rebuffs tribal claims for repatriation. (Its own website admits it has “benefited from … the removal and historical misrepresentation of [indigenous] arts,” causing “deep harm.”)
Death and typos: Reflections of an online obit editor