Technology and the Puritan Ethic

One of the more fruitful ways to think about humans and their societies is in terms of what Karl Marx called "contradictions" and their consequences. While not formal logical contradictions, they referred to practices, tendencies or beliefs that were incompatible with each other. One of these, in my judgment, is the "contradiction" between technology and the puritan ethic, both of which hold sway in America.

The puritan ethic, sometimes called the protestant ethic, called for hard work to achieve monetary success as a sign of God's approval and, per Calvinism, election to salvation. This association of protestantism and capitalism created the work ethic that has so dominated our society. How this association developed is detailed in R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and in Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The fact that these books are both early 20th century publications indicates how long this association has been understood.

Technology is also a deeply rooted value in our society. It is a source of American pride and of a profound faith that it can save us from any unfortuitous events of the future.

However, technology produces to make life easier, so we don't have to work as hard. This obviously "contradicts" the puritan ethic of hard work. The interesting thing is what effect this contradiction has had on us.

The progressives of the 19th century saw technology as the root of progress because, among other things, it continued to reduce the labor of industry and daily life. Few asked themselves the question "what then?" Let us look at some of the consequences of this contradiction. What happens when technology requires less and less effort in a society devoted to the work ethic?

• Leisure: Progressives of the 19th century looked forward to the improvement of mankind as it was freed to develop its higher potential. Indeed, the Chautauqua series of lectures and cultural events that sprang up around the country evidenced that this was happening. However, as technology itself began to redefine leisure, this effort at self improvement gave way to motion pictures, then television, then the computer as an entertainment device. The profound impact of this transformation is captured in Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death. We have substituted passive visceral and emotional titillation for the thought and learning of the Chautauqua.

• Work: While the drudgery of work has been greatly alleviated, its intensity has increased. There is a profound understanding of mankind's future to be found in what our society has done with its cultural value of work. As technology freed us from physical drudgery we began to work harder at the mind-deadening repetitiveness of factories under their maximal-profit-driven regimes in which time pressure replaced muscle exertion pressure. The continual speed-up of production lines, so pointedly illustrated in Charley Chaplin's movie Modern Times, became a dominating feature of the production world as the machine replaced human muscle. As this process of substituting the mind for muscle progressed we entered a world in which there were fewer and fewer limits to work. Unlike physical labor in which the body has obvious limits (we can only lift so much weight) there were no obvious limits to mental labor. People generally believe mental labor is much less demanding then physical labor. Also what constitutes mental labor is less determinable than what constitutes physical labor. It is rather easy for humans to distinguish between the recreational expenditure of physical energy and the work expenditure of that same energy. The difference between mental work and play is less determinable for society. The result of this amorphousness in the world of mental work, known as the knowledge industry, is that people are worked harder and harder. The idea is that you can't overwork the mind. It is one thing for labor unions to object to production line speed-up, and rightly so, it is another thing to make the same charge stick if a middle manager is overloaded with assignments and deadlines. These are some of the processes by which we have surrendered the increase in human improvement that so may saw in technology to the idiocy of making ourselves work even harder. Such is the insidiousness of the puritan work ethic.

• Abandonment and retribution: There are two sides, at least, to every ethic; the good and the bad. If in the puritan ethic, hard work and a rewarding wealth are evidences of God's approval and the achiever's salvation, then the absence of hard work and wealth is an evidence of sin and God's displeasure. This plays out in our time when we justify neglecting the needs of the unemployed by calling them "losers." We can imprison thousands of young men because their lack of jobs and our cultural proclivity to blame them for this state of affairs, which leaves them little alternative but crime if they are to have a life even remotely like those on the other side of town.

• Politics: American politics is where this dichotomy in American culture has probably found its greatest impact. Any cultural contradiction of this sort will always play a prominent role in a culture's political life. Political parties in their effort to control a society love nothing better than a fundamentally divisive element in the national culture. In the case of America the welfare of the society has been repeatedly hampered by the appeal to personal responsibility. This is derived from the Puritan ethic and is often used by the affluent to hold onto or expand their wealth at the expense of the poor. It is a not too subtle a way of saying the wealthy deserve their wealth as the (sinful) poor deserve the consequences of their implied indolence. I am reminded of those financiers of our current economic debacle, for which they are significantly responsible, decrying the demand that they give up their $1 million bonuses. As one of them said "he had worked his ass off for that bonus."

• Population: In no other area has technology had so dramatic an impact on the human species as it has had on their sheer numbers. Prior to the advent of science and its offspring technology humans had lived close to nature and nature's products. Their life span was considerably shorter than it is now. One source I read many years ago said the average life span in ancient Greece was 35 years due substantially to the high death rate in childbirth and the first few years of life. As science improved our understanding of human health and sanitary measures were introduced, e.g. Louis Pasteur's work on pasteurization, more humans survived their early years and they began to live longer. In 1850, twelve years before Pasteur invented milk and wine pasteurization, the world population was 1 billion 262 million. Today it is 6.9 billion and projected to reach 9 billion by 2050.

What are the consequences of the puritan ethic for a population of this density? Can we reasonably believe that an ethic of individual responsibility can prevent the catastrophes that the resource shortages, inflamed ethnic differences and the presence of nuclear weaponry present? So far the puritan ethic has been used to justify the rights of the wealthy to control humanity. The bottom line is that the puritan ethic has induced us to treat social problems as personal moral problems, usually of character.

• An ethic for our times: We badly need an ethic that will avoid the catastrophes the puritan ethic has and will continue to breed. This new ethic must be, I believe, an ethic of the common good. I would point out that any ethic, being at root a moral system with all the arbitrariness that implies, is not above its own form of abuse. Ayn Rand made much of this in her book Atlas Shrugged, a bible of sorts for libertarians. Obviously the majority, e.g. the common, can crush the individual. However, understanding how easily the cult of the individual has been manipulated for the benefit of the wealthy and their crushing of the poor and how irrelevant such an ethic is to the needs of billions of people, we do need an ethic that accepts the problems of the many as its focus, else our species perishes. An ethic of the common good focused, as Jefferson understood, on insuring that each individual realizes her or his potential, remains the best hope of humankind.

Bob Newhard