Chris Carter

Acknowledging that modernity has many blessings is not an endorsement of everything that modernity does. That’s just like…basic logic, and it is my position. Neo-luddism as I have presented it is not an outright rejection of modernity or an arbitrary truncation of technological usage; it is a critical posture towards modernity in light of basic eternal truths of human nature.

Thus, even though modernity is full of blessings, it is not full of only blessings. We can logically throw out destructive and consumptive aspects of modernity that are not blessings, and still embrace the blessings. Modernity is not a monolith; modern technological advancements of the modern age are not all logically entailed in each other. Questioning whether we should really be carrying around these addictive mobile phones with us is not the same thing as questioning the use of penecillin in lieu of bloodletting.

The simple fact of the matter is that the scale and speed of modernity are the ultimate tests of a man’s ability to enjoy God’s world in moderation. You can get almost anything you want in a near infinite quantity for more cheaply than ever. You can perpetually feed vices and sins if you aren’t careful, and many people do.

Take chess, for example. I took up online chess a few months ago, on a popular chess website. It was fun, even though I wasn’t very good, but it soon became a problem in my life. I was playing a lot, and the stress of playing was even noticeably impacting my day, to the point where my wife made several comments about it. I quit last week.

What makes online chess different from classical “over the board” chess is scale. You might be able to play a handful of games of chess at a time with your family, or maybe several games at a time if you join a chess club, but you won’t be able to play hundreds of games like you can with online chess. On chess.com, you can create an account and spin up games all day and play with people all around the world. That kind of scale is unprecedented; it’s very cool that you can do that, but also very bad if you become addicted to playing, which I was. The same issue is at play with social media and YouTube; it’s fun to talk to people online or watch a video, but the scale of these systems is so huge that you can literally lose yourself in them for hours.

The task of the modern man who is concerned about how he maintains moderation in his consumption is to guard against the addictiveness of modernity. Online chess is designed to be addictive. Social media is designed to be addictive. YouTube is designed to be addictive. Your phone is designed to be addictive. Processed food is designed to be additive. And yes, I don’t care how “good for you” nicotine is; Zyns are designed to be addictive for you too.

The typical American consumer chases trends, not needs. Most of the time, these trends are couched in the language of progress and innovation, but they really just play into the base desires and vices of man. The iPhone was a trend, but it has proven to be one of the most addictive consumer items ever made. Facebook was a trend, but it was shown to be nothing more than a data farm for users. Zyns are the new trend, couched in the language of health and improved productivity and focus, but my experience is that many Zyn users need to keep upping their dosage in order to keep getting the same “hit” as before. That’s dependence and addiction 101.