"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38 - 42, New International Version)
There are two great issues in axiology concerning the nature of value. The first centers on the question: Is value objective or subjective? The subjectivist states that value is subjective, that it exists only in the mind of the subject who evaluates the object. The objectivist asserts that value is objective, that it is inherent in the object and exists quite independently of the subject. The second issue concerns the question: Is value absolute or relative? The absolutist asserts that there is only one standard of value and that it is eternally and universally valid. The relativist, of course, denies all this and states that value is relative to a group or individual at a particular time, in a particular place, and in a particular culture.
Value may be classified along a number of dimensions, two of which are important to my thesis. First, value may be intrinsic or instrumental. An object has intrinsic value if it has value in itself and serves no end other than itself. An object has instrumental (or extrinsic) value if it is but a means for obtaining something that has intrinsic value.
Second, value may be higher or lower. Given two things, one with a higher (i.e., a greater positive) value than one with a lower (i.e., lesser positive or a more negative) value, the one with the higher value is more worthy of realization than the other. The existence of higher and lower value implies a hierarchy of value leading to the summum bonum (the highest good). Though there is not a general consensus about just what that summum bonum is, there are some axiological requirements for it. First, it must have intrinsic value. Second, it must have an all-inclusive scope; that is, it must be such that all activities can lead to it. Finally, there must be the possibility for at least its partial realization, or the realization of some aspect of it.
First, Jesus’ system of value has a clearly defined hierarchy. Starting at the bottom, he taught that the non-human creation is valuable, for in his Sermon on the Mount he pointed out how God cares and provides for even seemingly insignificant birds and flowers (Matthew 6:26, 28, 29). In his hierarchy of value, people held a higher place than the rest of the creation, for in referring to the valued birds of the air, he asked his listeners "... Are you not much more valuable than they?" (Matthew 6:26). Furthermore, we can infer from what he said and did that he valued human life (Matthew 26:39), health (Luke 17:11-19), food and clothing (Matthew 6:31-32), shelter (Matthew 7:24-27), family (John 19:26-27; Luke 11:11-13), friendship and community (e.g., John 11:5; 15:15), knowledge and understanding (e.g., Luke 2:46-47) and happiness (Matthew 25:14-23).
But to Jesus, God was the summum bonum (Mark 10:17-18). Of course, we cannot realize God per se, but we can realize a certain relationship with God. Jesus began his earthly ministry with an admonition that was pre-eminent throughout it: "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15). He declared the high value of the kingdom of God (or kingdom of heaven, see Matthew 4:17) in the Sermon on the Mount: "But seek first his [i.e., God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matthew 6:33). And realizing the kingdom of God is equivalent eternal life (see Mark 10:17, 23) and to knowing God through a personal, intimate, mutually indwelling relationship, mediated by Jesus (John 17:3 and following).
So Jesus taught that the non-human creation is valuable and that people and human well-being are yet more valuable. I will refer to these as the lower good. The higher good consists of God and His kingdom.
Now all of Jesus’ teachings (including those on value) were grounded in the Old Testament (e.g., see Matthew 5:17-19). There, in reflecting on the newly-created universe, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. ..." (Genesis. 1:31, with italics added). From Jesus’ belief in the veracity of Genesis and the unequivocal statement in Genesis about the intrinsic value of the creation, it follows that Jesus taught that value is objective, that it is inherent in the created objects and not merely the result of subjective assessment. Furthermore, Jesus was an absolutist. In sending his disciples into all the world to spread the good news to all people (e.g., Matthew 28:19-20) he was claiming universal and eternal validity for his system of value. He intended for his standards to apply to all people, for all time.
So Jesus’ system of value meets the meets the criteria of a clearly defined hierarchy and absolutism established above. It is also valid. Jesus made some remarkable claims about himself. He claimed to have authority to make judgments of value in general and of moral value in particular (John 5:27), to forgive sin (Matthew 9:6), and to grant eternal life (John 17:2). He claimed to be the sole mediator between God and man (John 14:6, 20). He claimed to be the son of God (e.g., Luke 17:20), to be indwelt by God (e.g., John 10:38, John 14:10), and, most significantly, to be God himself (John 10:30-33). Either he was a lunatic or he was who he said he was. It is inconceivable that a mere human could have inspired a faith and commissioned a church that have flourished through two millennia (often in the face of bitter persecution), expanded over the entire globe, and had such a profound effect on humanity. Jesus’ system of value is valid. And that validity qualifies his hierarchy of value as a standard for judging all things, including technology.
But technology is also instrumental in realizing the bad. Agricultural, transportation, materials processing, and manufacturing technologies pollute soil, water, and air. Medical technology has been used to kill more than 35 million unborn children in this country since 1973 and adverse reactions to medicinal drugs ranks fourth to sixth in cause of death overall. In 1994 alone, transportation accidents in the US killed more than 41,000 people and injured more than 3,000,000. And the same technologies that are instrumental in realizing the higher good play equivalent roles in realizing the greatest evil: separation from God. Transportation, communication, and computer technologies are instrumental in promoting faiths and philosophies that deny God or declare Him irrelevant: atheism, humanism, and even those branches of 'Christianity' that trivialize and distort the gospel and deny the authority of the scriptures and the church.
These few examples serve to illustrate three important points. First, technologies and technological objects are instrumental in realizing both good and bad, and therefore have both positive and negative instrumental value. Second, it is not possible to make any net judgments of technology based on this kind of evidence alone. There is simply no value metric that allows us to compare across categories to say that the good it yields outweighs its bad consequences. Third, every technology or technological object has both good and bad consequences. We cannot develop and adopt a new technology to realize some good without the certainty that some bad will result from its use.
More subtly and perhaps more significantly, technology distracts us individually and collectively from realizing the higher good. Activities directed to the higher good include those directed to seeking the kingdom of God and spreading the good news of the kingdom. Activities directed to the lower good are those promoting the non-spiritual well-being of people and exercising good stewardship over the creation. Any activity requires time to think and to act, and we are all acutely aware of the many demands on our time. But, just as important, activity requires attention. Attention is conscious, effortful thought focused on a relatively small subset of all the stimuli, information, and knowledge (both external and internal) available to conscious thought at any given time. And activities directed toward the higher good typically require sustained, focused attention. Seeking God’s kingdom is not a routine and mechanical effort. Study, meditation, prayer, and praise are especially vulnerable to distraction and interruption.
But technology promotes distraction and interruption. One way it does so is by creating many opportunities to realize the good, which gives rise to many activities directed to the good that require our time and attention. With respect to the lower good, transportation and material processing technologies make it possible for us to recycle used materials to reduce our impact on the natural environment, so some of us spend part of each day cleaning, sorting, and preparing for pick-up used containers and other items we would otherwise simply discard. Communication, transportation, and other technologies enable us to participate in the activities of conservation organizations that promote and work for environmental causes.
Medical technology provides opportunities for better health and longer life, so we visit doctors for diagnoses of our ailments, go to pharmacies to obtain medicines, and go to hospitals for treatments. Agricultural technology provides us with food in great abundance and variety, so we use our kitchen appliances to preserve and prepare it and to clean up after meals. Textile technology brings us clothing that must be cleaned and maintained with the help of washers, dryers, irons, and other appliances. Construction technology provides shelter for us and we value cleanliness, so we keep our houses and apartments clean with vacuum cleaners, brooms, mops, and cleaning chemicals. Communication technology makes it possible to transmit valuable information over great distances, so we talk on the telephone, listen to the radio, and watch television. With transportation technology we can quickly be where we want to be to engage in activities directed toward the good, so we spend a good deal of time planning, arranging for, and engaging in travel.
With respect to the higher good, printing and publishing technology provide Bibles and other literature concerning the kingdom of God, so we can distribute those materials, with the help of transportation technology. Communication technology facilitates spreading the good news of the kingdom of God, so we can take the time and effort to financially support radio and television evangelism or even use the Internet ourselves to communicate the Gospel. Musical instruments and sound systems are useful for worshipping God through music, so we rehearse, sing, play, and listen.
The technological objects that enable all of these activities themselves demand time and attention. We engage in activities to learn about them, to acquire them, to learn to use them, to use them, to pay for them, to instruct others in their use, to deal with their undesirable consequences, to maintain them, and to dispose of them when we are done with them.
The result of all this is technological busyness, a condition brought on by all of the instrumentally valuable technological objects around us in which too many activities directed to the good (both lower and higher) compete for our time and attention. We become frustrated and upset when we realize that there is not enough time to realize all the good we could, or at least to realize it as fully as we would like to. This condition not only leads to unhappiness, but also quite likely has negative effects on our health. But, more significantly, technological busyness sets the stage for technological distraction: we lack the capacity to attend to all the activities that merit our attention, and technological objects tend to draw our attention away from activities directed to the higher good to activities directed to the lower good.
Although certain repetitive, overlearned activities, like walking or even driving, can be done concurrently with other activities, when it comes to activities requiring focused, conscious, effortful thought, we can really only do one thing at a time. Attention, then, represents a limited resource that must be allocated among competing activities based on some set of criteria. Ideally, our allocation of attention would be guided largely by the relative values of the goods toward which they were directed. We should attend first to those activities directed to the higher good, as Jesus told his followers in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:33) and Martha in her home (Luke 10:41 - 42). It is appropriate to attend to the lower good when its realization is instrumental in the realization of the higher good and when progress toward the higher good is satisfactory. We must, after all, eat to pray, and most of us must work to eat. But unfortunately, there are at least two other factors not directly related to value that tend to draw attention away from the higher good to activities directed to the lower good: the salience of sensory stimuli related to those activities and their perceived urgency.
Technological objects produce salient stimuli that draw our attention to activities directed to the lower good. The salience of a stimulus (e.g., a sight or a sound) is its conspicuity, its ability to trigger a mental response. It is the ability of a stimulus to catch one’s attention and draw it away from the activity one is currently engaged in. The very presence of technological objects in our environment is a source of such stimuli. We are surrounded by technological objects -- whereas once humans lived in a largely natural environment, we now live in a technological environment. The sight of one’s car, for example, parked in the driveway, is a reminder of its need of washing and perhaps other maintenance activities. A basket full of dirty clothes calls one’s attention to laundry duties. The computer on one’s desk at work is a conspicuous reminder of e-mail to read, documents to write, and spreadsheets to build. Everywhere we look there is some technological object that draws our attention to some activity to use it for, or some activity associated with its acquisition, use, or maintenance.
Besides the stimuli provided by the mere, passive presence of technological objects, many objects are designed to generate salient stimuli specifically intended to catch our attention. Telephones ringers are extremely effective in interrupting us. The advertisements in newspapers and magazines use salient images to draw attention to the acquisition and use of products and services. Billboards and other signs present salient images to draw our attention from driving to products, services, and social issues. Similarly radio and television sounds and images are crafted to be so salient and ear- and eye-catching that we are almost compelled to attend to programs and especially commercials. Women’s clothing, jewelry, and cosmetics are designed to create visual and olfactory stimuli that distract men from the task at hand. Computers can be configured to beep annoyingly to announce events like the arrival of e-mail.
But the kingdom of God (or the kingdom of heaven) is not the source of salient stimuli. For example, Jesus said "... ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed ...’" (Mat. 13:31) and "...’The kingdom of heaven is like yeast ...’" (Mat. 13:33), and these natural objects are not particularly salient. Furthermore, when asked about the coming of the kingdom of God, he replied "... ‘The kingdom of God does not come visibly ...’" (Luke 17:20). Even though the kingdom can be represented materially through technology, such representations often cheapen and trivialize it. Of course, some of the salient stimuli generated by technological objects can call attention to activities directed to the higher good. A ringing telephone can call one to a conversation with a friend about the kingdom of God, for example. But in fact only a small fraction of the thousands of stimuli originating from technological objects sensed every hour are related even remotely to the higher good.
A second factor, besides value, affecting attention allocation is the relative urgency of competing activities. It is often the case that when the opportunity to realize some good arises, if the good is not realized by a certain time, the opportunity is lost, possibly forever. The perceived urgency of the activity directed toward the realization of that good is related to the perceived time remaining to realize the good and our estimate of the time required to complete the activity to realize it. Urgent activities, regardless of the values of the goods toward which they are directed, tend to receive our attention.
There are many technological objects that contribute to the urgency of activities and many ways in which they do that. Calendars and clocks, both technological objects and both representing long-standing technologies, provide the basis for urgency. The concept of time and the loss of opportunity as it passes, of course, do not depend on either of these, but it is hard to imagine urgency in the way most of us understand it today without these technological objects.
Most technological objects, as noted above, create opportunities to fill our lives with activities (most with deadlines) directed to one good or another, but there are several technologies that especially contribute to urgency. Telephones in general and cellular phones in particular, FAX machines, e-mail, and overnight delivery services are touted to remedy short deadlines and, it is true that they do. The problem though, is that they induce us to set even closer deadlines or to procrastinate, or both. The net result is that urgency is increased. Partly as a result of this, many of us have turned to time management systems, ranging from simple to-do lists to elaborate personal planners to help cope with our busy lives. They are clearly effective in that regard -- up to a point. But like FAX machines and e-mail, they give us a false sense of mastery over time and activity. As a result, we can and do schedule more and more activities over smaller and smaller intervals, compounding the urgency of our lives.
Together, these and other technological objects virtually guarantee that our lives are full of urgency. Hardly an hour passes when there isn’t something scheduled or something due, and since we have been busy with other things before, or we have procrastinated because of a technology-induced complacency, we are not adequately prepared for those appointments or the things we have promised are not quite ready. And the urgent gets our attention.
Of course, activity directed to the higher good also can be urgent. To attend a worship service requires that one be at church at a scheduled time, opportunities to share knowledge about the kingdom of God with friends may slip away, and the days of each of us are numbered. But the vast majority of urgent activities have very little to do with the kingdom of God. Also, while we correctly perceive the lower good to be transient, by contrast, there is little perceived urgency associated with seeking God or His kingdom. Questioned about his second coming, Jesus responded "‘No one knows about that day or hour ...’" (Mat. 24:36). In spite of his subsequent admonition to be ready for the reckoning associated with his return, the fact that no date or time was given seems to have led some of us to a sense of complacency about the kingdom of God. It is unfortunately often the case that activity directed to the higher good simply cannot compete with the technology-induced urgency of activities directed to the lower good.
Technology then, in all its senses, has both positive and negative instrumental value. While it is impossible to judge technology’s net value in that regard, it is clear that technology has a subtler and more significant effect on how we behave. Technology creates many opportunities and gives rise to many activities to realize good, and technological objects themselves demand activities to acquire, maintain, and use them, and these activities add up to give us very busy lives. But the crux of the matter is that technological objects so amplify the salience of stimuli and urgency of activities directed toward the lower good, that we are often incapable of directing our attention to the higher good. Technology is a profound distraction. It diverts us from our highest calling, realizing the kingdom of God.
First comes awareness. We must be aware that technology, in all its forms, yields bad as well as good. More specifically, we must acknowledge that the good we will realize through the acquisition and use of a new technological object will certainly be accompanied by some bad consequences. The technological object will likely lead to more activities directed to the lower good than to the higher good. It will require still more activities directed solely to its acquisition, use, maintenance, and disposal. And it will almost certainly distract us from activities directed to the higher good by the salience of stimuli it creates and the urgency it imparts to activities directed to the lower good.
Second comes action. We can reduce the number of technological objects in our lives, getting rid of the second car or the cellular phone, for example. We can limit the use of existing technological objects, such as foregoing the viewing of broadcast television. We can also isolate technological objects in time and space, for instance, using the Internet only at work, or turning the telephone ringer off for a portion of the day.