Read also earlier posts »Intro: About Naturalism »Part 1: A New Faith, Born Of Lockdown »Part 2: The Need For Naturalism »Part 3: The Equivalence Of God And Nature »Part 4: The Special Role Of Science In Naturalism
I concluded Part 4 by mentioning that the distinction between science and technology is important in Naturalism. To recap, science is a means for discovering nature, and in Naturalism, nature is equivalent to God. Science is therefore a way to know God better, and is a good practice (unless of course it is done falsely). Technology—in contrast—is the application of science to produce physical goods or services, and it can be wrong or right, worse or better, depending on it’s relation to nature.
Naturalism is a new religion, and therefore is under construction, but in this Part 5, I hope to set forth a basic draft framework for “right technology”, in order to judge technology for its effects on nature. No promises that the details of this will not be changed in response to further exploration of this topic!
The word “right” implies something upstanding. In physical terms, it means something situated upright, like a pole or beam at exactly 90 degrees to the level ground. In the real world, it’s impossible to erect a pole perfectly upright. If you measure the angle closely enough, you’ll find that the pole will be very slightly leaning one way or another. But if the pole looks satisfyingly upright, then it works. A flagpole that is visibly leaning a bit can be disappointing, especially if you look at it too much or think about it too much. You might decide to live with such a pole, or you might seek to repair it. A flagpole that is very obviously leaning just doesn’t make sense. It’s just wrong.
“Right” in the moral sense is similar. It implies an abstract goal of perfect moral uprightness. But if we are to judge the rightness of a particular technology in the real world, then we should understand that no technology is completely right, just like no flagpole is perfectly at 90 degrees. On the other hand, it is possible to see if a technology is satisfyingly right. It’s also possible to compare two technologies, judging one to be righter than another, just as you might compare two flagpoles, one fairly straight and the other with an annoying tilt. If a technology tilts unsatisfyingly far from right, it would be wrong.
Perhaps the main benefit that Naturalism offers for the modern world is that it can provide an ethical framework for judging the rightness of technology. Neither churches nor universities are currently offering an ethical framework that addresses the speed and type of technological advances that are being made. Things like nuclear weapons, genetically engineered viruses, smart phones, and artificially intelligent computers have led civilization in recent years to increasingly precarious points, and our traditional ethics is not speaking directly to this precarity or helping to avoid it.
Scientific establishments, government, and industry all simply recklessly pursue new technology whenever they see a benefit for themselves, unchecked. We’ve seen the results time and time again in such things as nuclear accidents, chemical injuries, and even lab releases of engineered viruses.
The concept of “right technology” is a bit borrowed from the Buddhist concept of “right livelihood”. One directive in Buddhism is to pursue jobs that do not cause harm. Harm is interpreted as either physical harm or spiritual harm to the worker or to others. Spiritual harm would be done, for example, by any job that required dishonesty. One job can be better or worse than another job. Some jobs can be very wrong, and others very close to right, depending on how much harm they cause.
When considering the rightness of technology, a particular type of tech can similarly be judged better or worse than another type of tech, depending on how much it harms, degrades or meddles with nature. Harm could be physical, but also psychological. Since people are part of nature, part of the judgement of technology should regard how it affects human health.
The “payback” benefits of the tech are not considered in this judgment, similar to how the pay of a job is not considered in Buddhist right livelihood. In Buddhism, higher pay for a wrong job doesn’t make it right, and in Naturalism any benefits from a wrong technology don’t make it right, either. Rightness is not a utilitarian equation of benefits vs. costs. It’s a question of morality.
Judging the harms of a form of technology can be done by asking these four questions:
Does the technology, as typically and responsibly produced and used, cause harm to the maker or the user of it?
Does the technology, as typically and responsibly produced and used, cause harm to others, or to the environment?
Does the technology cause little harm when first used, but have a potential to expand to widespread use in a way that could cause greater harm?
Does the technology, in its production or use, cause or risk harm through the fundamental alteration of nature?
Let’s apply these questions to some sample pieces of technology.
First, let’s consider a hand shovel. I’ll address the four questions in order.
The hand shovel is an iron-age technology that is still with us today. Certainly a shovel can be used to injure others, but that is not its typical, responsible use. 2.
As for the second question, a shovel has a very small environmental impact in its production, and it is generally very durable, having a long life span. It moves dirt around for human benefit, but it would be a stretch to call this a harmful activity. In nature, dirt is moved by all sorts of animals, most notably in a massive scale by the world’s tiny ants, so there’s obviously no reason that humans shouldn’t move it around too. Dirt is a malleable part of nature, used by most terrestrial life.
Regarding the third question, it’s possible to imagine that shovels, if widely, methodically, and persistently used in an area, could result in problems such as local deforestation. Probably something like that has happened many times in world history, for thousands of years already. After all, shovels and related plows and hoes account for the historical shift thousands of years ago of converting “wild” areas to farmland. Looking at history since then, I’m going to make an educated guess that the total percent of the earth’s land used for iron-age agriculture was pretty small until the beginning of mechanized farming a couple centuries ago, so I doubt that any widespread harms done by massive-scale agriculture should be blamed on the simple shovel. That means the shovel probably passes the third question fine, too.
The fourth question simply doesn’t apply to the shovel. Shoveled dirt is still dirt, though it is turned over. Worms can burrow easily later the same day.
In conclusion, the shovel, for me, is an example of a satisfyingly right technology, though I’ll emphasize the “likely” because I’m making a few assumptions.
In making serious judgements about anything, people should be honest, ethical, and open to considering new evidence. If further study of the environmental impact of shovels called into question their rightness, then I should be willing to change my above opinion on them. For the time being, I don’t think that anyone should feel moral compunction about using a shovel for typical purposes. It would be silly to feel so!
Next, let’s look at some tech from the industrial age: bikes and cars. That’s an interesting combination because they are both fairly modern and used for transportation purposes. Here I will assess the current typical models, pedal bicycles and gasoline-powered cars, with the four basic questions.
Bicycles don’t cause harm to their riders when used typically and responsibly, and I assume that the factory workers who make them are generally not in harm’s way, either. There are unfortunately injuries that happen to bike riders, but that is generally due either either to rider error or to a careless car driver who didn’t see the bike.
The environmental impact of producing a bike is certainly more than for producing a shovel, and more non-natural materials are a part of a bike’s production, but still a bicycle is rather small compared to many devices we use, so I’m guessing that the environmental impact of the production of the bike is not huge. The durability of bikes, if maintained, is long, which lessens their impact still more.
Widespread use of bikes in some countries, such as The Netherlands and Japan, doesn’t seem to create any environmental harm. There is no pollution or emission produced by them, other than a bit of occasionally heavy breathing. They are dependent on a paved roadway infrastructure, and that certainly has some environmental impact, but they use a rather small amount of roadway, and usually share the same roadways with other vehicles anyway. If more and more people rode bikes, the environment might actually improve, because those people would probably be using larger vehicles less often.
Finally, I can’t see any ways that bicycles make any potentially risky alterations to the fundamentals of nature.
Overall, although bikes are not perfect, they seem to be a technology that is very close to right.
Now let’s consider the automobile, using the four questions.
Similar to the bike, the car does not cause injury to the driver or the makers when typically or responsibly used and produced. Traffic accidents can be harmful, but they generally result from driver mistakes.
The key difference between cars and bikes is the larger environmental impact of the car. Cars not only produce a significant amount of fumes from combustion, but also have a much larger production impact than, say, bicycles. The amount of material and energy used in manufacturing and operating a car is probably astounding, if you are able to do the math.
In addition, the widespread use of cars compounds their problems. If only a few cars are used, the fumes don’t have a big impact. If millions are used, it adds up. Widespread use also demands huge and complex systems for roads, traffic, and refueling. This infrastructure covers a large percentage of urban land.
Cars don’t fundamentally alter nature in any way that is different from things that can occur naturally. For example combustion may cause pollution but it is a natural event on earth.
To conclude regarding cars, they certainly have a large potential impact, a lot of which is probably not good for nature. I’d estimate that cars are significantly wrong from a Naturalist perspective. If I see cars as the imaginary “flagpole of ethics”, the flagpole would likely be visibly leaning, not straight enough to be satisfying.
However, to really consider the whole picture, there’s an interesting counterpoint to the shortcomings of cars. Prior to cars, horses were widespread, even in urban areas. Horse manure was everywhere, and the rotting smell of abandoned dead horses was common in cities. In comparison, the smell of abandoned dead cars is very inoffensive. When gas-powered cars started to replace horses and buggies, people loved the cars for their cleanliness. Cars were viewed as a cleaner technology. My point here is that it is good to consider the history and alternatives. If urban people had done a similar ethical analysis of horses and cars in the year 1905, the car might have been judged as the righter of the two, based on the information they had then.
If we were to phase out cars in developed countries, how would people behave differently? Do we have any better tech to use in place of them? Electric cars may be slightly better, but having an informed judgement on that would require a lot of study. Electric cars have a perhaps even greater environmental impact in their production, and in most of the US they still end up causing combustion fumes because they use electricity that is chiefly made in natural-gas power plants. Perhaps switching from gas to electric is not the best answer. Perhaps minimizing trips, making cars more efficient and lighter, and designing future neighborhoods better, might be better answers. These would all be positive responses to help prop up a technology that is not satisfyingly right, in my estimation.
All in all, it’s impossible for me to say with precision how wrong gas-powered cars are. It would require a detailed and lengthy study to provide a definitive judgement or trustworthy score. However, one thing is clear: as far as technological morality goes, bikes are obviously righter than cars. In terms of personal choices, how would this affect someone’s behavior who believes in Naturalism? Obviously, it’s better to use a bike rather than a car, when possible. However, because our cities and lifestyles have been constructed around cars, it is very hard for most people to completely avoid using cars. It’s simply good when people find cleaner alternatives. When moving to a new house or apartment, the Naturalist would probably feel that it’s more ethical to choose a residence where it is easier to bicycle or walk to shopping and entertainment. When buying a new car, a Naturalist would probably feel righter in a smaller vehicle that burns less fuel.
Your transportation choice is, of course, not the only consideration of morality. There are many ethical matters to weigh when making life decisions. Strict prescriptions about what-to-do and what-not-to-do are perhaps neither welcome nor effective at producing large social change. The key contribution of Naturalism is to introduce the ethics of technology into life decisions, and to provide a durable ethical framework for deciding when that technology should be minimized or in some cases altogether avoided in life. These decisions—to avoid certain tech, or be satisfied with other types of tech—should be arrive at personally, by each Naturalist. Naturalism does not offer a dogma regarding rightness or wrongness of specific tech; it offers an ethical framework for individuals to make such decisions.
In the next part, I’ll assess smartphones and covid vaccines for technological rightness.