Technologically Challenged

February 24, 2023

Technology is going to solve all our problems. Well, maybe not all. But technology has changed our world, and your reading this is living proof. Since the time human beings first picked up a stick to use as a lever or a club, they have been designing and utilizing tools to change things, to do things, to make things better for themselves. Or, sometimes, worse. 

I have been told that ancient Chaldean civilizations may have crumbled due to extensive irrigation technology which, at first, provided abundant food, but resulted in raising soil salinity to the point that food would not grow. We have it on good authority that military technology is such that, under the right circumstances, the threat of complete annihilation of the human species is real. DDT was supposed to help produce food but ended up poisoning it. Energy from fossil fuels was supposed to help us do things more efficiently using much less bodily energy. Now, however, we are learning the importance of bodily exercise for proper health, while in many places we are cautioned about intense physical exertion due to health issues arising from air pollution. Apparently in our eagerness to eliminate useful labour using nonrenewable resources, we have created a host of related problems that seem to consume most of the leisure we thought to gain: obesity, high incidence of cancer and cardiovascular disease, air pollution, water pollution, tremendous volumes of consumer waste, and unhealthy food.

At Pilgrim Husbandry, we believe we must renew a healthy sense of stewardship, of husbandry. This world is not ours. Every funeral makes this point abundantly clear. We can use it, but must not abuse it. Technology can be useful, but it should always be analyzed primarily on the basis of whether or not it will be an aid to our task of positive earth stewardship. Any technology that is not very useful or is, indeed, harmful to the stewardship objective should be actively reduced and ultimately eliminated.