Why I don’t mind a bit of technology

I recently read Mark Boyle’s inspirational memoir, The Way Home.  Boyle wrote a previous book about his 12 month experiment of living without money.  With the proceeds he bought a smallholding in Ireland to live without technology…  He gets his water from the local spring, his heating from his own hand-cut seasoned logs and his food from the garden, local lakes and rivers and roadkill.  He’s happy to use basic technology – knives, scythes and wheelbarrows, but he’s wary of anything that ties him into the global industrial-technological growth machine...  including his well-used push bike. 

I’m working from home today.  Paracetamol, jumpers, and central heating are keeping the symptoms of a heavy cold at bay.  The internet and phone mean I can research, plan and communicate at close to the rate to which I am accustomed.    This afternoon I needed to fetch a book from my office at church.  Knowing that a raised heart rate would result in uncontrollable coughing, I wheeled out the e-bike.

Despite being the least used bicycle in the shed (it passed the 4000 mile mark today after 4 years in the family), I am fond of the e-bike.  It makes cycling possible when it would not otherwise happen.  I can ride up a hill wearing a suit to a funeral on a hot day and arrive looking fresh.  My dad can come on family bike rides with his grandkids.  I can carry the kind of luggage I could carry easily on a bike in my 20s.  My non-cycling wife even used it to ride up the highest tarmac climb in the UK on a family ride a couple of years ago.  It’s a great piece of technology & it got me up to work and back without incident today.   

Boyle’s rebellion against the system is admirable, and he’s clearly not afraid of hardship in the pursuit of righteousness, but I found his unease with the use of his bicycle jarring.  On further pondering, I don’t think this is just because he’s uneasy with one of my favourite things.    I have a Judaeo-Christian ethic of technology and progress.  I believe the remit of humans is to fill the earth and subdue it, like it says in Genesis.  The resources of the world are there to be harnessed.  The remit has clear boundaries: the mistreatment of our fellow humans is disallowed and we will be held accountable for greedy over-consumption by the creator.  This is not a carte blanche for abuse and degradation.  However this worldview is a spur to invention and ingenuity in the harnessing of the earth’s potential.  Andrew Marr and Andrew Wilson’s popular histories have reminded me in recent years of the contribution of the Christian (and specifically protestant work) ethic to the accelerated technological development of the West.

So today, I took the pills and rode the ebike up to church with thankfulness in my heart to God for all the industrialists, chemists, engineers and other geniuses that made them. None of us need the very latest things we’re being oversold, but I don’t think taking up the mandate to subdue the earth (or indeed the later one to take up my cross) necessarily means laying down my ebike right now.