Technological fundamentalism and the god of growth
September 2nd, 2008 by Jim JustRobert Jensen at Countercurrents accuses the media of failing in their duty to question technological fundamentalism – the notion that the increasing use of increasingly more sophisticated high-energy advanced technology is always a good thing.
“If the central role of journalism is to raise the difficult questions that citizens should confront in a democratic society, journalists are not doing their jobs.”
It’s hardly surprising that journalists fail to question technology or the dogma of progress and growth. After all, journalists are as much a part of our culture and are as blind to its underlying ideology as any other occupational group. It’s rare that anyone questions the core assumptions of their society, at any time. Why would we expect today’s journalists to be any different?
Jensen cites the example of automobiles and the burning of petroleum in internal-combustion engines. While our car-based transportation system has given us the ability to travel considerable distances, this technology also has given us traffic jams and road rage, strip malls and the interstate highway system, horrific carnage and death as a routine and unremarked fact of life. Our high-energy lifestyle has contributed to unprecedented global warming which threatens to destabilize Earth’s climate and unravel Earth’s ecosystems, of which human economies are but a fragile and dependent part.
Jensen argues that the “common response” to the social and ecological pathology of the car culture has not been to rethink the reasons and ways we transport ourselves, but rather to figure out how to replace petroleum so we can continue to drive, leading to the manic quest for “alternative fuels.” But we don’t see the car culture as pathological. In fact, we don’t see the car culture as a “culture” at all. It’s like the air we breath. We are so immersed in it that we take it for granted. It’s simply the world in which we live. We can’t imagine it any other way.
Peak oil threatens to unravel the very fabric of our reality. And it’s our response to peak oil that’s pathological. Rather than change our ways, we try to keep the car culture going at any and all cost.
Our faith in technology is just one element of our broader devotion to economic growth. We have defined the good life as synonymous with consumption and the ability to acquire more and more of increasingly sophisticated technology. So we continue to pursue progress and economic growth. We cannot see, we refuse to see, that this path leads to death and destruction.
Jensen points out that those who challenge this dogma are routinely ignored or dismissed as naïve. But, Jensen asks, who is really being naïve?
“Naïve, perhaps, but not as naïve as the belief that unsustainable systems can be sustained indefinitely, which is at the heart of the technological fundamentalists’ delusional belief system.”