S1E9: Thinking about Economics

Techumanpurpose · S1E9 - Considering Economics

Economics and technology

Looking back in history we can see epochs of particular dominant technologies. However, globally the classification is messy, with not all societies going through the same transitions roughly simultaneously - obviously.

Also the transitions are periods of time and  different classifications focus on different phenomena. 

• The "stone age" for example extends well into the time of agriculture and early metallurgy.
• Bronze age full production agriculture, writing ending around 1100-1200 BC
• Iron age

During the long period post Jesus we have the end of the Roman Empire, the so called Dark Ages which were not so dark - although the Black Death had a huge impact on Europe. We could just as easily focus on Feudalism. In the rest of the world agriculture and city development was continuing develop in many parts of the world. 

• Then we hit the European Scientific and Industrial revolutions we we could think as short  transition, or on going. 

Today are we in another revolution digital, energy (fossil to renewables)?

Regardless I think from a macro point of view there is something interesting going on. In the past economist have thought themselves to be studying the system they call an economy … unchanging platonic system. Now it is clearer that economists are actually not physicists studying eternal laws or biologists studying plant biology but agents in the system economy and technology and economies are so intertwined as to be inseparable. If you know some economics and squint hard enough you can convince yourself that the old rules apply in new circumstances such as digital. On the other hand the economics of stone age were different to the bronze age or the iron age. Why today would the systems shift in unexpected ways.

Traditional economics proper tends to ignore technology, even still. This is getting harder and harder. Famously, it built the idea that what mattered were – land (natural resources and literally land) labour and capital. Technology was a given. It fell from the gods and was outside their system.

If you god back and look at an Economist issue from the 1980 and 1990s technology only makes surprise mentions. Today, an given issue is filled with discussions of technologies because hundreds of technologies not only change what consumers buy but how things are made or transported.


Economics and Christianity.

This topic matters not just because it matters to the topic of technology and Christianity – it matters to me because I spent years trying to understand how economics and Christianity might come together.

A few broad observations

• A lot of what I have read starts with contemporary economic questions and tries to find answers in the Bible (a long favourite of bad Bible reading).
• 
  
• One example – one book used the 10 commandments rule to not steal to suggest that the Bible supports private Property and thus is against communism. A 1980s question read back into the Bible. The commandments to help the poor etc was not a big part of the book (written in the USA).

• Lots of the work discusses the role of Old Testament Law – because it can’t pass anybody’s attention that the Old Testament has lots to say about Economics. ... and then goes on to say the New Testament is different.
• My observation across hundreds of articles there is no no compass for the topic – every article starts somewhere different

By considering the Torah and law as we would consider LAW that is written statues the question then must arise how they apply in a different era and context – a people without land and modern rather than ancient. You end up picking and choosing of course – some say it is LAW others say well it is for ancient Israel, it doesn’t mean much.

In the second situation – we have stripped all the political and economic meaning out of the New Testament and spiritualised it.

Jesus riding into Jerusalem like a Caesar except he is on a donkey, Paul saying there is no slave or Greek or Jew Male and Female – this had real economic meaning. Or Paul asking that Slaves be treated like family.

See what did my head in for years was the innovativeness of the early Christian – charities, hospitals for the public etc versus the staticness of the rest of society and later Christians.

So how has Christian economics been thought of… I think this excerpt from 
Kim Hawtrey – who I respect and have met several times does justice to many of the existing views when this was a hot subject in 80s and 90s and less so now from my observations. 

 

https://www.worldcat.org/title/economics-and-religion/oclc/464998320

Creation, Fall and Redemption the traditional Evangelical Triad. We have come such a long way. Hear how N T Wright now describes what Paul was doing.  

 

N T Wright. "What was the Apostle Paul trying to do: he was founding and maintaining communities - worship based, educational, egalitarian, philanthropic, fictive kinship groups" (non biological kinship I suspect - kinship of the imagination).

I would now put forward the idea that it is possible to have a compass. 

The Bible’s own native motif is not so much sin but ‘new creation’. Sin is actually taken for granted the call is to live better. To be a New Creation.

if New Creation is the more dominant language of the Bible.

If the world is already going and Adam and Eve are called like Israel to be transforming agents and they fail …. NT Wright.

The story starts to look a lot like Israel and perhaps that is the point…..

This make more sense of all the language in the Old testament  to treat human better. Indeed, treat them like other cultures thought they needed to treat the gods.- This what we read in a previous blog. 

 

Watts 2002. 

There is lots to ponder about that.

And indeed much to apply  to how we think of technology.

 

My draft compass 

That is just a place to start no an end place.

Hope that is helpful.

S1E8: In the footnotes Defining Technology Part 3 - the visual guide

Techumanpurpose · S1E8: In the footnotes - defining technology part III

 

So in the first two footnotes episodes I took a run through both some of the existing Christian thought on technology in brief terms. In the second episode we had a brief look at Brian Arthur's three fold view of what technology actually is. But that is still not as helpful as you might think technology is really really complex. It spins off in my directions, and here I am not talking the ideological, philosophical, moral, politics or economics. No, I am just talking what it is.

Biological systems

Start with a tree

Humans form interesting cultural attachments to both the natural world and the technological world. Listen to this on Oak Trees.

But that is very English. People from the tropics are very fond of mango trees, Although these do not seem to have the deep multi-layered associations as some tree types in Northern Latitudes.

A tree and then a ecosystem...

Bentwood box

Technology

Start with an object

1929 Movie from Russia

This is Russia in 1929 - from the perspective of someone where pro-industrialisation of a very poor country. Sit back and watch it is fascinating.

1939 General Motors Promotional Video and Model

Note the vision of technology but the language is a bit jarring - apparently - exploring and new horizons are just for men.

and now the 1964 World Fair.

S1E7: Biblical Anthropology

 S1E7:  Biblical Anthropology

Techumanpurpose · S1E7 Biblical Anthropology

It matters what you think of humans, but it is a very mixed history.

From the 10 Commandments we read: 

And God spoke all these words verse 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.


3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.


From which we rightly derive that we should not make and image or sculpture or likeness or representation of Yahweh.

Curiously because they were very expensive items we do not have any (probably) Ancient Near Eastern temple images. p158 Hundley, M.B. Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East) 2013

But wait there is a problem back in Genesis 1. There where humans are declared the image and likeness of God we get a different meaning of the term entirely.

The three invented meanings of image Gen 1.

• Morality – sense of good and evil
• Relational (with each other and God)
• Reason / rationality / wisdom

Why does image (object / drawing etc) mean image in one place and human qualities in another place?

Perhaps because we don’t read the Bible as a complex narrative.

Further and more problematically, the morality, relational and reason rationality concepts have been used to research and design AI.

But what if the text means exactly the same thing.

Watts 2002.

Read this way the whole of Israel's Scripture and the New Testament make a whole lot more sense.

The command not to make an image in the commandments is because Yahweh already has an image - every single human being. 

Go love your neighbour.

The point is  most of Israel's laws are not about serving God - most are actually about how to serve other human beings.

This then is the test of every technology. How does it fit within the narrative of humans being Yahweh image - his representatives within his Temple Cosmos.

What was Paul doing:

"What was the Apostle Paul trying to do: he was founding and maintaining communities - worship based, educational, egalitarian, philanthropic, fictive kinship groups" (non biological kinship I suspect - kinship of the imagination). N T Wright.

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S1 Bonus What does it mean to be saved

 

Bonus: What does it mean to be saved

It is only by understanding what it means to be saved do we understand human purpose 

Techumanpurpose · Bonus: Salvation and how it matters

Rikk Watts

"It began to dawn on me that we were using a word that really doesn’t mean what

it meant in Roman times. ‘Saviour’ was a well-known political term. There’s a

famous inscription which speaks of Caesar Augustus - ‘it seemed good to the

Greeks of Asia and in the opinion of the High Priest to say the following - Since

Providence which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set

in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he

might benefit mankind - sending him a saviour, both for us and for our descendants,

that he might end war and arrange all things.’

Pay attention to the language here. No one is talking about going to heaven, about

sins forgiven. The term ‘saviour’ here has to do with concrete changes in the lives

and the world in which people of the first century lived,worked, and sought to

bring up their families. This was real life stuff.

There’s nothing here about somewhere beyond the blue. Being saved by a saviour

had a well-known economic and political meaning. It was a word from everyday

life. Augustus was considered the people’s Saviour because he’d restored peace to

the empire. He was their benefactor."

The point then is that Jesus is the one that brings and shows what Yahweh's good order looks like.
We need to reflect the good order that Jesus reveals.

ORDER

Indeed order probably pervades the whole Bible.

1.

2.

Salvation

S1E6: In the Footnotes - Defining Technology Part 2

 S1E6: In the Footnotes - Defining Technology Part 2

Some more resources on Brian Arthur.

http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/index.html

Page 28.

“I will give technology three definitions that we will use throughout the book.

The first and most basic one is that a technology is a means to fulfill a human purpose. For some technologies-oil refining-the purpose is explicit. For others- the computer-the purpose may be hazy, multiple, and changing. As a means, a technology may be a method or process or device: a particular speech recognition algorithm, or a filtration process in chemical engineering, or a diesel engine. it may be simple: a roller bearing. Or it may be complicated: a wavelength division multiplexer. It may be material: an electrical generator. Or it may be non-material: a digital compression algorithm. Whichever it is, it is always a means to carry out a human purpose.

The second definition I will allow is a plural one: technology as an assemblage of practices and components. This covers technologies such as electronics or biotechnology that are collections or toolboxes of individual technologies and practices. Strictly speaking, we should call these bodies of technology. But this plural usage is widespread, so I will allow it here.

I will also allow a third meaning. This is technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture. Here we are back to the Oxford's collection of mechanical arts, or as Webster's puts it, "The totality of the means employed by a people to provide itself with the objects of material culture." We use this collective meaning when we blame "technology" for speeding up our lives, or talk of "technology" as a hope for mankind. Sometimes this meaning shades off into technology as a collective activity, as in "technology is what Silicon Valley is all about." I will allow this too as a variant of technology's collective meaning. The technology thinker Kevin Kelly calls this totality the "technium," and I like this word. But in this book I prefer to simply use "technology" for this because that reflects common use.

The reason we need three meanings is that each points to technology in a different sense, a different category, from the others. Each category comes into being differently and evolves differently. A technology-singular-the steam engine-originates as a new concept and develops by modifying its internal parts. A technology-plural-electronics-comes into being by building around certain phenomena and components and develops by changing its parts and practices. And technology-general, the whole collection of all technologies that have ever existed past and present, originates from the use of natural phenomena and builds up organically with new elements forming by combination from old ones.”

― W. Brian Arthur, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves

Technologies 'fill' needs and 'create' needs. Once we started down the path of agriculture humans have need motive power to plough and to crush the grain at a bare minimum. Oxen power for both was good enough to start but eventually that led to the water wheel for crushing which eventually gave way to steam power for crushing and ploughing. 

Technologies evolve - change over time even when the purpose stays relatively the same. Look at how musical instruments change as people prefer different sounds. Sometimes, with say the flute, the changes are very minimal.

Technologies increasingly, are combinations of previous technologies and complex combination of existing technologies. Look at the number of technologies - just about anything that exists in your home combines.

Arthur, "allows' a third meaning - technology as the totality. This is an interesting concept and one that I will come back to at some point. However, the introduction of the word culture does give a different point of departure - on that has been emphasised over and over again. Technology a cultural artefact is culturally embedded and culturally constructed. Science and Technology Studies as an academic discipline takes this as a given an although it has in the past too often ignore the actual long process of birthing new things, this has been gradually diminishing in recent years.

S1E5: The Biblical Seas

 

What's with the seas in the Bible? From Chapter 1 to end of The Book of Revelation - what is with this obsesssion?

Let's go back a step.

In Ancient Mesopotamia Tiamat was the gooddess of salt water and is associated with primordial chaos. In order for land to appear she had to be defeated by either by Anu or Marduk depending on the story.

In Egypt the chaos monster was Apep / Apophis who would fight the sun god each day. But they also had the story of the early mountains /land rising out of the seas.

Here we can see a 'lake' outside of the  Temple of Karnak / Luxor.

In the Biblical narrative mountains Yahweh just commands the land to appear - no conflict - no chaos and the seas are good!

Aah but you might say that was before the FALL. Well what Christians today think of the Fall is not really a category in ancient Israel. Indeed, inside Solomon's Temple there was the Bronze Sea.

It is valuable to remeber that "perfection" as we tend to think about is a Greek idea, for the Bible - good means functional.

I think if you let all this sit with you you will begin to ponder what a world that is problematic means for life. Technology then is just a part of wrestling with  a world that is open to be what it wants to be. 

Perhaps, unhelpfully, the Bible changes its metaphor from Daniel onwards. From there on seas is a stand in for Human Empires and evil not chaos gods. Its almost the inversion of the original concept.

S1E4: "In the footnotes" Defining Technology Part 1

In this brief episode of defining technology I note two of the common approaches to technology amongst Christians. The first, is Heidegger noted approach that there was a shift at some point between techne (art) and modern technology. Embedded with Heidegger's view is the notion that we have enframed the world with technology.

I really am quite at a loss to understand the attraction of either of these perspectives.

1. The past was different.

A number of authors have picked this up and use different points.  Ursula Franklin in her book The Real World of Technology adopts similar concepts as well as any number of other authors. 

It was 'better some other time' idea I actually find funny. It plays out in any number of ways across time. In this case we see it as declinism. As The Economist recently pointed out there is a long history of this kind of belief structure. Their focus was working life. 

Yet the belief that something has gone wrong with labour markets has a history of turning out wrong. Since the dawn of capitalism people have lamented the world of work, always believing that the past was better than the present and that the workers of the day were uniquely badly treated. Adam Smith argued that the burgeoning industrial sector of late-18th-century Scotland had the potential to make workmen “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become”. Emile Durkheim reckoned that in a glorious past in France, people had enjoyed work because they controlled it, were good at it, and did it in the bosoms of their community—but that capitalism had stolen all of this.

Labour Gains p3. in Special Report: The Future of Work, The Economist April 10 2021

To be fair, the early factory system and early industrialised mining were horrific and to use the appropriate term 'Dickensian'. However factory reform acts and changing technologies started making things better surprisingly quick.  I am not making the argument that it was great and that I would like to have worked in those conditions, but that period made for our period. You can't jump, as it were, life goes the long way around.

2. Enframement

This is even more historically difficult. While it is true that one of the lens' with which have enframed the world is technology it is by no means the only one and it is not of the highest order.

If we go back even to the first century AD we see Jewish amulets for healing. I can not find a specific reference to the example I have read about but if I ever do then I will write an updates blog. 

In the rest of the world the goal was to keep the gods happy. Mesopotamian myths had cities being founded as places of residence for the gods - not humans. 

Order not technology is humanity oldest and highest level of enframement perspective. 

Some significant contours should be evident. For the ancients the very order and coherence of the natural world implied some kind of personal agency. There is not a hint of the idea that the ordered world emerged from chaos by purely natural means. My point here is that no one wrote these texts to argue for the existence of the gods. That much was simply assumed. On this basis, Genesis 1 is unlikely to offer much succour for those who want to argue against Darwin. It was never designed to do so. More probably it was designed to answer the question: which god's ordered and filled the heavens and the earth?

Rikk Watts. On The Edge of the Millennium: Making Sense of Genesis 1 (2001).

John Walton. https://www.gospelconversations.com/talks/why-order-not-sin-frames-genesis

John Walton. https://www.gospelconversations.com/talks/why-order-not-sin-frames-genesis-part-2

This is an ordered functional world but it isn't an easy life without technology, the pandemic shows even modern technology it can be challenging.. Disease, disability, farming etc etc have always been hard. Pretending otherwise is just myth making and not Biblical story telling.

S1E3 - Two Pivotal Stories: Joseph & Solomon's Temple

Techumanpurpose · S1E3 Two Pivotal Stories - Joseph and Solomon's Temple

My attempt at explaining Temples within the context of a small study series I put together for my church. In recent years the Bible, particularly Israel's Scriptures (the OT) has come alive to me in powerful new ways. This has been due to a range of authors exploring more carefully the ancient world as a setting for the Bible. So many terms that people have argued over for generations actually have specific meaning in Egypt and Mesopotamia. I've done my best at researching this series but I am sure I don't always get it right. The inspiration for this talk was when I heard a lecture by N. T. Wright where he mentioned temples. That clicked into place for me a pile of readings that revolve around temples but do not explicitly unpack the meaning. Go to this reference for a really fascinating read on ancient temples and images of gods. The details on the daily treatment of the images of gods comes from here. Hundley M. B. 2013 "Gods in Dwellings- Temples and Divine Presence" SBL. Beal, G. K. (2008) "We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry", IVP. is pretty interesting.

S1E2 - Early in Genesis

Techumanpurpose · S1E2 THP Early in Genesis

In terms of references, this is a good short video by John Walton on Babel.

 

S1E1 - Introductions

Techumanpurpose · Introductions

 

Nick and I introduce ourselves. If I think of some material to add I will update this blog.

S1E0 Technology and the Human Purpose - Trailer

Techumanpurpose · S1E0 Trailer

 

In this first episode Brian made a note that in the Bible cities and temples are intimately linked. This is obvious but overlooked. Curiously Iain Provan makes it a podcast and then forgets about it when writing. An example of the difference of speaking to an audience and writing. 

https://www.gospelconversations.com/talks/the-ancient-near-eastern-context

If you want to just start with the cities bit it begins at 26 mins. But listen to the whole talk to get into the ancient world view.

Babylon in it's time was a temple complex and centre for government administration. Indeed what was the founding myth of Babylon.

....
"in order to settle the gods in the dwelling of [their] hearts' delight,
He created mankind"(1).

In other words humans are the slave class for building a city for the dwelling of the gods.

Egypt had its own massive temples.

 What are Temples, amongst other things they are the presence of the gods.

Later in the Bible, we see the link between Jerusalem and Yahweh's Temple. Finally at the very end of the Bible we again see this combination between Temple imagery and city imagery. 

If we go beyond the Bible and the Ancient Near East (ANE) we still see the link between cities and temples, think about meso and south America (2).

(1) p1. Leick, G. (2001) Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. Penguin Books. 

(2) McClellan III, J. E.  and Dorn, H. (2006) Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore.

Podcast is on iTunes

 

Find our new podcast on Apple iTunes. There are two episodes already.

New Podcast coming

Over the years this blog has been a repository for my rather random thinking as I learn and think about technology within the Biblical narrative. It has been a challenging road to sort out what I know about technology, then compare it with how Christians often talk about the subject. Then being forced as I listen to scholars with emerging ways of altering how we think about the text reframe what we thought about the text. People like Professors John Walton and Rikk Watts and Iain Provan have been doing what N T Wright did for New Testament scholarship. Deeply contextualising the scriptures in a particular time and place actually liberates it to shape lives today in ways that I believe are more powerful than the well worn approaches of the past. 

As I begin to develop more solid thoughts on technology within a Biblical narrative, this is advance notice that a podcast is coming.

Hope you get the chance to tune in.

Technology and the Human Purpose.

So for the foreseeable future I will be giving this blog over to information regarding each episode.

Watch for the logo.

Brian.