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David Richardson's avatar

Thank you, again, Sarah, for your insight. Science historian, James Burke, revealed in the first episode of his landmark, BBC science documentary, Connections, that the modern world had created technology traps. That is, the technology that most people do not understand and could not replicate dominate and even control our lives. If this technology were to fail, people would struggle even to survive, and most would not succeed. That was 1978, and his observations are even more true today. The explosion of knowledge and technology since the 19th century has placed far beyond the grasp of any one person the technical knowledge that characterizes our current age. The ideal of the Renaissance Man was not so impossible in the 18th century. A gifted scholar at that time could have a significant mastery of almost all that was known in the arts and sciences. The 15th century prodigious polymath, Leon Battista Alberti (humanist, artist, author, philosopher, architect, and cleric) described the ideal in this way: "a man who can do all things if he wills." That age is long past.

We are tempted to look at previous ages with rose-colored glasses. The tempestuous motion of our own times makes us long for a simpler, more sedate world. But the history we hold in our minds is mostly an illusion. Perhaps it was slower, but death was closer at hand. Family was more central, but family was an economic necessity required for managing subsistence survival. Infant morality was high, and giving birth put women in mortal danger. As the 19th century dawned, average life expectancy had risen to about 40 years, a number that would decrease somewhat during the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, medicine was helpless before many diseases; in fact, medical treatment, which lacked an understanding of the bacterial and viral causes of most disease, often made matters worse for the patient.

Of course, this does not dismiss the desire many have for a respite from the problems we see today. We have lost a sense of community. That is most regrettably true. And the social forces that drive our lives in this or that direction seem to defy individual or local control. I know that many Christians are tempted to despair in the face of what appears to be a social embrace of iniquity and the attempt to portray what is twisted as normal and healthy. But though our society in many respects is qualitatively different from other societies in history, we have actually seen analogous times.

For example, St. Augustine contemplated the fall of civilization as he wrote The City of God; for as he wrote, Vandal armies had laid siege to Hippo, and pagan intellectuals had accused the Christian faith of causing the Empire's reversals. I am sure he sought respite, too. Christ would soon call him Home, and Hippo would fall. Yet The City of God remains for us, the first philosophy of history in Western intellectual history. So, we are not alone in our feelings. Brothers and sisters in the Faith have shared them in times past. We should take strength from that--no matter what the future holds. And Christ has not forsaken us. He is with us as he was with St. Augustine. As Christ promised, "In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”

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