Modernity cause of Godlessness?

[CHCatholic]

I’ve been doing some thinking. The more and more I listen to music form greats like Mozart, the more and more I view paintings like those of Michaelangelo, the more and more I think the cause of God being absent from our culture is the increase in technology and modernity. I think there is a direct correlation between the increase of technology and the decrease of God in society. What do you think? In the earlier years, ie. 16th-18th centuries, times were simple, people worked in quite a different way than we do now, and technology played a very small role in the lives of people. The arts played an immense role in earlier society, and such beauty and expression focused the mind on God, but technology is all man-driven, increasing individualism, and leaving God in the dust.
What do you all think? I think we ought to revert to a more simpler time if we really want to evangelize society. A simple society has more time to concentrate on God without being distracted by technology.

 

[Greg27]

Secularisation is connected closely with modernity in a lot of ways. Karen Armstrong gives a very good analysis in some of her books of how this has happened, in terms of how God as conceived in the Medieval period was gradually removed from both human life and the universe, and also public and political life.

 

[Mirdath]

Calling it a ‘cause’ is overreaching, but I’d say you’re close. The spread of non-theism is a modern phenomenon, but not directly caused by modernity. It is not because we have dishwashers, microwaves, cars, and computers that more people start rejecting religion – it’s that these advances give them the time to do that.

If you’re out working fields from sunup to sundown, fixing up the hut for a few hours, collapsing, then going back at cock-crow, you don’t have a whole lot of time to ponder the nature or existence of God. In Europe specifically, the rigorous social control the Church (and later the splinters of the Reformation) exerted until the Industrial Revolution also helped make non-theism a non-option.

Continuing with the example of Europe, literacy was also quite rare – even with the advent of the printing press, books were fairly scarce, and the masses would be hard-pressed to afford even one. Gutenberg’s invention helped, and eventually the written word became available to everyone. First the bible, of course, but then other writings. Higher literacy means more ideas getting out – and not all of those so religiously-minded.

Art and education, then, two spirits which have always walked hand in hand, take to these ideas. Theology is spun off the curricula in schools and made its own discipline, while most students concentrate in other matters. Art becomes a humanist thing, concentrating on the glory of humanity, not that of God. By the late 19th century some artistic movements are thoroughly atheist, in particular the French fin-de-siecle Decadents. Joris-Karl Huysmanns writes ‘A Rebours’ which starts the whole thing off (and, highly entertainingly, is found later by a flabbergasted Oscar Wilde to have retired and become a Trappist monk somewhere in Spain). And it more or less continues in this vein.

It is not that a ‘simpler society’ has more time to concentrate on God – it’s that it has less time to concentrate on other things! Lack of time, illiteracy, and the high visibility and control of Christianity are what was keeping Europe religious. Technology has solved the first two, and it’s not letting go – and as for the third, I think the world has had enough of theocracy.

Luddism is not the answer.

 

[diligamus]

I agree. Easy access to distractions – travel, entertainment, TV, recorded music, internet(!) – and the almost complete absence of SILENCE from our society … these are the things that draw people’s attention away from what’s really important in life.

 

[Genesis315]

I agree. Easy access to distractions – travel, entertainment, TV, recorded music, internet(!) – and the almost complete absence of SILENCE from our society … these are the things that draw people’s attention away from what’s really important in life.

Me too! People are too busy to notice the beauty anymore, especially the pinnacle of beauty, God.

Read this sad article about what happened when the best violinist in America played the best pieces on the best violin in the metro station of DC:

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721_pf.html

 

[JimG]

If one takes the “Enlightenment” era as the beginnings of modernity, one has to keep in mind that to leading figures of the Enlightenment, religion was the enemy, and made a conscious effort to rid the world of it.

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest” Dennis Diderot, 1713-1784

That still remains the case to a large degree–witness the number of recent books attacking religion and theism.

 

[John_Hiner]

I’ve been doing some thinking. The more and more I listen to music form greats like Mozart, the more and more I view paintings like those of Michaelangelo, the more and more I think the cause of God being absent from our culture is the increase in technology and modernity. I think there is a direct correlation between the increase of technology and the decrease of God in society. What do you think? In the earlier years, ie. 16th-18th centuries, times were simple, people worked in quite a different way than we do now, and technology played a very small role in the lives of people. The arts played an immense role in earlier society, and such beauty and expression focused the mind on God, but technology is all man-driven, increasing individualism, and leaving God in the dust.
What do you all think? I think we ought to revert to a more simpler time if we really want to evangelize society. A simple society has more time to concentrate on God without being distracted by technology.

Laudatur Iesus Christus.

I do not think this is correct. Perhaps the most damaging effect of “modernism” is the pride which it inculcates into people, based merely on lateness of birth. The view of the world which says that earlier eras were less dominated by technology is likely to be a mere myth (or false teaching of the modernists). Many Americans seem to be taught that ancient technologies are simple and that “we understand them.” However, this is not true in any personal sense. In fact, most people have virtually no understanding of an iPod or an oven that cooks by microwaves. If one compares these to a splitting wedge or a water-driven mill, then we are pretty much in the same position as those whose lives were taken up with chopping wood for fuel or running a mill. In fact, given the time required, these earlier lives may have been more dominated by technology.

If we put aside the modernist doctrine of superiority over the past, and consider the time it took to learn and use technology in the past, I think we will find that human engagement with technology has always been very demanding. The pagan nature of current popular “culture” is probably due to our delusion of power more than to technology – that is why popular culture is so like that of the Imperial Romans – brutal, self-focused, and despairing.

Technology has always been spread by the Church. The civilization of Europe is dominated by development encouraged by monasteries and technological improvements fostered by love of man and the desire to relieve burdens of work and hunger. The Faith of the Church embraces technology and sanctifies it by dedicating it to Christ’s purposes. To retreat from it would be to abandon innovation to the devil. We are not fighting a holding action. We are in this war to win everything for Christ. The most advanced fruits of ingenuity definitely belong among the booty.

Pax Christi nobiscum.

John Hiner