A few weeks ago, the Internet celebrated CS Lewis’ birthday, posthumously. In the digital hubbub, I read a quote of Lewis’ that I’d read many times and loved greatly:
“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
I’m not always the best at following this “good rule,” but I agree whole-heartedly with it.
It seems to me that thinking like this flies in the face some of the major elements of our current techno-culture. Technists/futurists believe that our hope lies in the future, in the inevitable progression of technology, etc. And while part of me wants to believe that “things are getting better,” part of me just can’t go along with that assertion. Part of me is constantly wondering, “In all of this ‘progress,’ have we lost something? Something important and old?”
The Forgotten Knowledge of Past Plumbing
I was listening to a podcast (Hardcore History with Dan Carlin, if you’re nosey) and the host was talking about the philosophical climate before the outset of World War I. As technology was rapidly increasing at the beginning of the twentieth century, many were beginning to ask questions about kind of war might be fought with such weapons and what kind of results might be from a prolonged, destructed war. They were concerned about the destruction of their civilization, of being “bombed back to the Stone Age.” This is not an irrational concern. As the host points out, this had happened before as the “uncivilized” Germanic tribes viewed the crumbling architecture and infrastructure of former Roman Empire with wonder and confusion. Aqueducts were mentioned specifically in this podcast, and I think it’s an amazing point. These ancient engineering marvels made some areas livable when they wouldn’t have been so otherwise. What happens to those areas when the plumbing quits and the “plumber” and his whole civilization are gone?
Think about that for a minute—a people who were living after the Romans were not as technologically sophisticated as the Romans. The host compared this to the “Statue of Liberty in the sand scene” from the original Planet of the Apes. Terrifying, right? Imagine if that happened today, if our tech saturated society was somehow wiped, by some aspect of our technology, if you like irony, and we were replaced by some a group of people who had no idea how to use what we left behind.
So much for the inevitable progression of humanity.
Of course, such a scenario isn’t as likely today, and I have drifted a bit from my topic. Let me draw some thoughts together.
If the Germans, the “future people,” could be living after the Romans, the “past people,” and not understand their technology, we would say that society as a whole had lost something, correct? What if this has happened to us? No, surely not in a technological sense. I don’t think the ancient Maya had anything on the Konami code—they weren’t even that good at making calendars. No, my point is more directly related to the fields of literature, humanities, art, and religion—all fields that technology is rapidly infiltrating, however, and therein, the problem may lie.
Learning from the Ancients…Or At Least The Very Old
I love technology. No, really, I do. I don’t see any reason to throw away all of our lovely gadgets and gizmos. However, I do wonder what we are trading away as we allow more and more of our lives to be controlled by technology. To that end, I’d like to offer some Lewisian advice, if I may:
Sometimes, it’s ok to take a step backward technologically. Do things the “old way.”
I’m not talking about traveling back in time simply for the sake of novelty. I honestly believe that we can gain something by going backward. I’m trying to do this a bit in my own life.
I recently took a different position at my church that has me preaching more often in our adult services and teaching a different adult class every two or three months. To prepare for this increase in preaching and teaching, I purchased a bunch of small, forty-page notebooks. I dedicated one to sermon ideas, prayers, and the like while the others are dedicated, one each, to the classes I’m developing. I’m being very intentional about this. I’m outlining classes, jotting down ideas, crossing stuff out, and leaving half of the notebooks blank so that I can come back to them in a few years and pick up where I left off, remember what I did, and do it again, better. Now, couldn’t I keep track of all of this in Evernote, the very app in which I am writing this post? (Wow! Post-ception, right there.) Sure, I could do that, but I’m getting tired of typing. I type all of the time, so much that my fingers hurt somethings. And as I get older, I’m finding that my penmanship is worsening, and it wasn’t that good to start with. I don’t want to be in my forties and have to ask myself how to form print letters like I already have to do, sometimes, with cursive. Besides, if you can’t find some beauty, some poetry in the scratching sounds of ball point on paper, then…God help you.
I’ve also begun a small question into monasticism. No, I’m not going to take up vows. I am married, after all. No, I’m feeling a bit like a man without a country, you see. My denomination is relatively young, so I’m looking back to the saints of old, to learn how they entered into God’s presence without the assistance of worship playlists, YouVersion, etc. I’ve been thinking this way for a long time, having read Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God about a dozen times, but this is the first time I’ve branched out into other sources. Recently, I just read a book by Dennis Okholm on the practices of Benedictine monks, and so I’m preparing to read The Rule of Saint Benedict, the basis for this monastic order. While I haven’t really made in changes in my life, yet, due to this quest, I am enjoying the fresh perspective I’m gaining on life and faith. It’s a perspective that will surely bring about some changes down the road.
We may know a great deal more than out ancestors did regarding technology, but I think it’s the height of arrogance to assume that we have nothing to learn from them, that we’ve retained all the pertinent and important knowledge from throughout human history. We have surely lost some of it, and we would do well to go back and relearn it.
What are you doing or what could you do to “keep it old school” and learn more from those that have gone before us?
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