{"id":104387,"date":"2018-06-19T00:43:40","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T07:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=104387"},"modified":"2018-06-15T19:59:53","modified_gmt":"2018-06-16T02:59:53","slug":"is-technology-morally-neutral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/06\/is-technology-morally-neutral.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Technology Morally Neutral?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Over at The Catholic Weekly<\/em>, I noodle a claim that is taken for granted whenever the subject of guns comes up\u2013and which is then immediately contradicted by the Gun Cult itself: the idea that technology is \u201cmorally neutral\u201d. Check out the argument and let me know what you think. Here\u2019s a taste<\/a>, but please read the whole thing:<\/p>\n

One common theme heard, especially in the gun-besotted United States, is the old saw, \u201cGuns don\u2019t kill people.\u00a0 People kill people.\u201d\u00a0 Prescinding from the obvious reply\u2013which the enlightened country of Australia was able to figure out without much trouble twenty years ago\u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to shoot five hundred people\u2014or even one\u2013if you don\u2019t have a gun\u201d I want to focus elsewhere and interrogate a bit of philosophy that lies behind that mantra.<\/p>\n

It is this claim:\u00a0 \u201cTechnology is morally neutral.\u201d\u00a0 You know: Spoons don\u2019t make you fat.\u00a0 Pencils don\u2019t make spelling errors.\u00a0 Cars don\u2019t drive drunk. Etc.<\/p>\n

The idea is that technology is a just a thing sitting there.\u00a0 We do things to and with technology, but it is not\u00a0doing<\/em>\u00a0anything to us.<\/p>\n

I think that, the moment you actually say that out loud, the absurdity of this claim is manifest.\u00a0 Technology exerts enormous pressure on us and changes us in thousands of ways.\u00a0 And when the Gun Cult in the US is not repeating its mantras to defend their guns, even they constantly acknowledge this.<\/p>\n

So, for instance, zealous Gun Cult advocate Roseanne Barr\u2013the actress who blew up her career recently by tweeting racist slurs<\/a>\u2013blamed her actions, in part,\u00a0on the technology called \u201cAmbien\u201d she was taking<\/a>.\u00a0 Her argument boils down to the claim that part of the story behind her behavior is that the drugs she takes (she suffered from a traumatic brain injury when she was young) influenced her.\u00a0 Of course, this does not relieve her of responsibility.\u00a0 But does anybody doubt for a moment that drugs do, in fact, change how we behave?<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Gun Cult in the United States eagerly talks out of both sides of its mouth on this all the time, insisting that guns, like all technology, are allegedly \u201cmorally neutral\u201d and then immediately turning around to finger such things as\u00a0abortion technology, violent video game technology<\/a>,\u00a0internet porn technology<\/a>,\u00a0Ritalin technology, media technology, and (most absurdly) door technology<\/a>\u00a0as the real culprits.\u00a0 In short, the moment the Gun Cult stops lying that gun technology is morally neutral is the moment it starts saying that every other form of technology it can think of is not morally neutral.<\/p>\n

Now the thing is, the Gun Cult is not entirely wrong here when they start pointing the finger at these technologies.\u00a0 Who in their right mind, for instance, thinks a video game called\u00a0Active Shooter<\/em><\/a>, in which the player roams the halls of a school gunning down classmates and cops, is \u201cmorally neutral\u201d and should be handed to their kid?<\/p>\n

Who in their right mind believes that a piece of technology called \u201ca pub\u201d is morally neutral when a visit to it is pressed upon a recovering alcoholic?<\/p>\n

Who in their right mind believes that the technology called \u201cinternet porn\u201d\u2014especially violent and sadistic porn\u2013is morally neutral and does not exert immense pressure on people with sex and violence addictions?<\/p>\n

Who in their right mind does not think that surrounding whole populations with money, toys, TV, video games, junk food, easy access to internet porn and couches will not\u2014almost inevitably\u2014result in spoiled, obese, sexually disordered populations?<\/p>\n

And so, back to weaponry.\u00a0 A common trope in our American Gun Cult is that \u201cCain killed Abel with a rock. It\u2019s a heart problem, not a gun problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who in their right mind thinks that handing nuclear weaponry to a Kim Jong Un or ISIS and then praying for God to change their hearts is a good idea?\u00a0 Who among us is unaware of the fact that such technology inevitably carries with it an\u00a0invitation<\/em>\u00a0and an intrinsic\u00a0pressure<\/em>\u00a0to use such technology that tempts and seduces human actors?<\/p>\n

Yes, of course, human beings make moral choices.\u00a0 But one of the choices they make\u00a0is to create technology<\/em>.\u00a0 And when they do that, the technology bears the stamp of the humans who make it and becomes a form of\u00a0language<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at The Catholic Weekly, I noodle a claim that is taken for granted whenever the subject of guns comes up\u2013and which is then immediately contradicted by the Gun Cult itself: the idea that technology is \u201cmorally neutral\u201d. Check out the argument and let me know what you think. Here\u2019s a taste, but please read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[836],"class_list":["post-104387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic-weekly-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Technology Morally Neutral?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Over at The Catholic Weekly, I noodle a claim that is taken for granted whenever the subject of guns comes up--and which is then immediately contradicted\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/06\/is-technology-morally-neutral.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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