{"id":149,"date":"2014-04-11T17:44:21","date_gmt":"2014-04-11T17:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2014-08-11T21:57:22","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T21:57:22","slug":"from-community-to-individual-and-back-to-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/from-community-to-individual-and-back-to-community\/","title":{"rendered":"From Community to Individual and Back to Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tried to summarize The Making and Unmaking of\u00a0Technological\u00a0<\/em>Society<\/em>\u00a0by Murray Jardine, but Walter Mead, former President of the Polanyi Society and Professor Emeritus, Illinois State University, does a much better job than I ever could. Mead sums the book up by saying,<\/p>\n

Jardine\u2019s discussion is a grand narrative that leads readers from early pagan culture through the various stages of contemporary Western culture with its serious governance problems. He affirms human creativity and outlines how technological advances let to modern styles and standards of living unimaginable in earlier periods. Our capacity for creativity seen in this development has not been adequately guided by a system of morality that provided correctives. We have slipped into the excess of consumer-oriented materialism, which threatens our survival. A solution is desperately needed and Jardine suggests the high virtues represented in the Bible and the best of the Christian tradition- particularly Christian compassion- can provide proper limits and direction.[1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, when it is all said and done, we need to go back to the Bible and allow it to define our culture and community. People are tired. Communities are broken. Cities are not designed properly. We work too much. Jardine\u2019s point in this book is that the only \u201cpossible alternative to this exhausted culture would be a culture based on biblical understanding of God, the world, and humanity because only this understanding can make sense of human creative capacities and their technological manifestation\u2026 developing a culture that embodies the virtues of faith, hope, and love\u2026 [And] reconstruct face-to-face communities where people actually talk to each other more.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

I like what Jardine says. I think I even agree with him, but I don\u2019t think that he is very realistic in the things he says. His focus is on the individual changes, but the changes he desires are systemic changes. It took us thousands of years to get here\u2026 it will take us thousands to go back to the way things used to be. However, you cannot turn back the clock, and I feel like that\u2019s what he is saying\u2026 that we somehow need to turn the clock back without turning it back. We cannot keep the technological advances and go back to a simple community life. I don\u2019t know how that would be possible.<\/p>\n

I think Jardine gives humanity too much credit\u2026 faith; hope and love are not our strong points as a Christian community. Also, which faith tradition would be emphasising in this new Christian culture. Christianity is so divided, we would never agree on anything.<\/p>\n

In the conclusion Jardine says, \u201cit is inevitable that sacrifices must be made to build new forms of community and ultimately a new culture. The early Christians often sacrificed their lives; it hardly seems too much to ask present-day Christians to forgo some income to work shorters hours.\u201d[3]<\/a> That\u2019s something to think about!<\/p>\n

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\n[1] Walter Mead, \u201cMurray Jardine on Christianity and Modern Technological Society,\u201d Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical <\/em>37, no. 3 (2010\/2011): 55.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]<\/a> Murray Jardine, The Making and\u00a0Unmaking\u00a0of Technological Society: How\u00a0Christianity Can Save Modernity From Itself <\/em>(Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004), 279.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Jardine, 266.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I tried to summarize The Making and Unmaking of\u00a0Technological\u00a0Society\u00a0by Murray Jardine, but Walter Mead, former President of the Polanyi Society and Professor Emeritus, Illinois State University, does a much better job than I ever could. Mead sums the book up by saying, Jardine\u2019s discussion is a grand narrative that leads readers from early pagan culture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jardine","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}