Technology, the Myth of Progress (“Progressivism”) and Racism
Dear reader,
This is my latest chapter from American Insanity.
Let’s do the following experiment: try to imagine that when the White Man went to Africa, instead of being faced with a mass of people with minimal clothing and some very unsophisticated weaponry, he would have been confronted with people wearing alien-like clothes and sporting the kind of sophisticated weapons 21st century humans have. Do you think Westerners would have developed the kind of racist tropes they developed consequently? Do you think they would have thought of black people as inferior? It is very likely that in such a scenario, Westerners would have returned with stories about a Powerful Black God, some kind of Prometheus, and blackness would have been henceforth associated with superhuman qualities. You may say that, even so, they would have still perceived black people as Other. Of course, they would have. Seeing otherness is inherent to the human spirit, and there is nothing wrong with that. By the way, “the Other” sees you too as the Other. Westerners who imagine that only Europeans “otherize” are incapable of putting themselves in the place of this Other about whom they know nothing and in whose name they speak.
When contemporary Americans repeat, after Robin di Angelo, “All whites are racist,” they repeat a mantra that is structured around a moralizing view of the world—the Puritan ethos in which confessing redeems you. They are desperately honest, for they know that whenever they witness an African peasant in her humble cottage, toiling away from the fancy tools of modern life, they experience not only empathy, but also a nagging, confuse, hard-to-put-into words, feeling of superiority. They feel, in spite of themselves, that they belong to a superior race because they believe in the myth of technological progress. They believe that the world in which they live, with their fancy machines, computers, and devices that talk back to them, this world is clearly superior to the world of the black peasant in her humble cottage, but because they are also progressive people and believe that all people are equal, they are caught within an insoluble contradiction. Note the use of the word “progressive” here: I used it in the political-moral sense of today—but, historically, this word was used to refer to those who embraced technological progress. Today, its original meaning has been obliterated by its political meaning. Nevertheless, in the Anglo-Saxon world there is a direct correlation between the belief in technological progress and Left politics. This correlation is much less obvious, or non-existent, in non-Western countries.
Briefly: the (American) progressives live with a fundamental contradiction that exists between these two opposite beliefs, but because they have never examined their belief in the myth of progress, because their implicit bias so deeply inscribed in their way of being, they can’t see that all their other beliefs are layered atop this primordial one. They only see the surface of their system of beliefs—to paraphrase them, they only “see color” and so, they conclude that all white people must be fundamentally racist; with their puritan ethos they repeat this newly acquired mantra, hoping that they will be saved from what they see as their internalized racism.
But they won’t. Because their “internalized racism” is only the tip of the iceberg of many layers of cultural presuppositions that have nothing to do with race. I remember many years ago, at the beginning of the Internet, there was a campaign led by “progressive” white Americans to go to Africa and provide computers to a deprived population and “educate” this population in the benefits of the new technology. As always, the desire was noble, but built on a presupposition that the world of computers is superior to the world that preexisted them. It never crossed the minds of these progressive-minded people that maybe, just maybe, the invention of the computer and of the Internet is not the best thing that happened to humans. That, while a victory of human intellect, this invention may represent a regression for the human spirit. And if you believe in the superiority of your technology, doesn’t this mean that you secretly believe that the populations that live less technologized lives are, inherently, inferior? To be fair, at this point in history, these populations have internalized the myth of progress themselves. Just like “progressive” Westerners, the populations that internalize a vision that comes from outside live with a fundamental contradiction: that the outsiders must be “superior” to them, if their technology is superior, but they can’t help rejecting this “superiority” and thus develop resentment and a type of nationalism specific to non-Western nations. I am very familiar with this contradiction and this resentment because I come from a society at the borders of the Western world, a society that is plagued by an enormous feeling of inferiority. (Throughout their history, Romanians have lived at the borders of several empires, with their necks in the direction of the Western world, and their identity shaped by a constant tension between the West and the East, thus developing a psychology specific to colonized people.)
As long as the strongest myth of the Western world is the myth of progress and progress is seen as technological progress, the people with the least developed technology will be seen as inferior. In progressive America, this myth is elevated to a religion, insofar as everything new is embraced by default, and if you resist it, you are a “reactionary.” The perversity of a puritan-moralizing society such as America is that the technophiles never acknowledge the belief in their perceived superiority, maybe because most of them are not even aware of it. The progressives have reframed their implicit bias in their superiority as “white supremacy,” which allows them, as always, to have their cake and eat it too. As masters of Tech (don’t forget that Silicon Valley is the locus where both Tech and ideological progressivism are intertwined), they now occupy all the key positions in society.
If you think of human history as the history of technological development versus cultural inscriptions, you can see how “culture” has always been redefined according to technology. When print replaced oral cultures, those whose primary medium was the spoken word became marginalized, while the masters of the written word became closer to centers of power. Similarly, today, when print is being displaced by electronic culture, the new masters are redefining culture in a way that demonizes everything that has to do with the old and the traditional. If you read dead white writers, if you like classical music, if you admire beautiful constructions of the past, never mind believe in the human species as incarnated in the universality of maleness and femaleness, you are now a “conservative” and denounced as a fascist. But this is not enough for the new Masters: in their subliminal contradictory style, they also claim that they are the ones who are, if not oppressed, at least “allies” of the latter, and keep enlisting the “Global South” (a euphemism for non-Western non -whites) in their cause. Never mind that people from the “Global South” are, as a rule, grounded in a traditional way of life, believe in a Supreme Deity and have very binary views about maleness and femaleness. The perversity of progressives is that the more they are in control the more they claim the opposite (they have to, as the highest value of traditional Leftism is that of supporting the marginal, but this value is at odds with the reality of their positions in society). Even their alleged ideology (Marxism) is a farce, insofar as the premises of Marxism are incompatible with the nihilism inherent in Tech.
Another superb essay, Alta, very astute and profound. I experienced the kind of contradictory feelings on the part of the people from the developing world when I lived in the Middle East. On the one hand, most Arabs felt a keen sense of inferiority vis-a-vis the West in terms of the technology, and indeed many Arab leaders explicitly want to adopt the technology, but nothing else from the West. On the other, because Islam tells them that their culture is superior, and that Arabic is the language of God, they feel superior to everyone. (And in some respects you could certainly argue that traditional Bedouin culture was superior: the Bedouin, both the men and the women, were almost superhuman in their endurance and bravery.) So there was an inherent ambivalence in how most Gulf Arabs responded to modern western civilization. Unfortunately, on the whole they've taken the worst of it--the computers, the air conditioning, the relentless destruction of the environment to get the oil out of it--and ignore the best that it has to offer, the literature, the classical music and so on. They can't be blamed for that, particularly when, as you say, the expats who come to manage their economies for them are so patronising, and also, frequently, so shallow in their values. I try to explore some of this in my first book, a collection of short stories set in the Gulf. And you're right too, that Puritanism is much to blame. I'm afraid that's the fault of the early English settlers! Not my ancestors, though! The Church of England was rather different--more pragrmatic, and much less guilt-ridden. By the way, I think much of what you say applies also to the current pro-Palestine protests in American universities. There's an implicit sense of superiority and entitlement when you listen to those kids. They are so condescending to anyone who disagrees with them.
Very interesting, Alta. There is the term “technochauvinism”—though it applies mostly to digital technology, which has made information so much more accessible but also so much less reliable, two results of which are a net increase in average stupidity and a severe decline in the educability of college students. “I have a smart phone, therefore I am.”