All Watched Over by a God of Loving Grace

Here are some thoughts on some the the issues raised by Adam Curtis' series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Catch up with the films here. See my review of the series here.

1. They believe in anything

Ayn Rand very consciously rejected the Judeao-Christian tradition. In its place she  posited a new kind of self-organising society based on human selfishness. Rand and her fellow travellers really believed that her theories could transform the world for the better. Putting her ideas into practice she had an adulterous relationship with one of her acolytes. It seemed the logically selfish thing to do. But when he in turn was unfaithful to her, Rand was outraged and threw him out. Her selfishness was logical, his was unforgivable. Thinking that unrestrained selfishness might be the way to achieve human happiness was a naive dream. It puts me in mind of G. K. Chesterton's quip that, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything." The apostle Paul devastatingly exposes the proud delusions of those who in professing themselves to be wise become fools in Romans 1:18-23. 

2. What is man?

Are human beings little more than nodes in a delicately balanced ecosystem, or deterministic gene-replicators? Clearly we are part of the world. We are dependent on what the earth provides for life and health. Passing on our genes through reproduction is an important aspect  of human life. But is man basically a self-replicating flesh and blood computer? The Bible teaches that human beings, all human beings, whatever their race or state of health are made in the image of God. We have a God-given mandate to subdue the earth, re-shape our surroundings and change the world for the better, Genesis 1:26. In a fallen world carrying out this mandate is subject to frustration and disappointment. But the biblical injunction to "love your neighbour as yourself" (Matthew 22:39) demands that we endeavour to improve the lot of our fellow man. Our behaviour is not mechanistically pre-determined. We are free to make choices and we will be held accountable for our actions. 

3. In the state we're in we need the State 

The ideologues who saw human beings as nodes in a self-correcting ecosystem believed that without State interference society could achieve a utopian state of self-organised equilibrium. As pointed out, the hippies who endeavoured to put this into practice soon came to realise that things aren't so easy. Human beings are sinners. Without the checks and balances provided by the State with its laws and judicial system, society is at the mercy of those who grab power for themselves and use it to their own advantage at the expense of others. The communes had no mechanism for standing up to bullies. Despite talk of "Love and peace, man" the experimental communities failed to reckon on the stubborn fact of the total depravity of man in sin. The State is a necessary bulwark against the worst excesses of human sinfulness, Romans 13:1-7. A democratically accountable State may be, as Churchill put it the "least worst form of government",  but it is certainly better than no government at all. 

4. The rise of the machines

Adam Curtis' key thesis is that human beings have ceded control of the world to machines. Applying Ayn Rand's ideas to the world of economics Alan Greenspan believed that computers would allow the financial system to self-correct. It was therefore thought to be unnecessary for the Sate to intervene to prevent markets spiralling out of control.

The advent of personal computing and the internet has undoubtedly been a positive factor, facilitating easy communication between people across the globe. But we cannot entrust the running of the world to machines. That would be to opt out of our God-given "creation mandate". Machines must be our servants, not our masters. The distinction between human beings and machines must be maintained. Human behaviour cannot simply be understood in mechanistic terms. Human beings, made in the image of God are more than flesh and blood IT systems.

Early developers of personal computing and the world wide web hoped that the internet would enable the achievement of Rand's utopian vision of a self-organising society based on heroic self-expression. The vested interests on politicians could then be swept aside. However, this has not been the case. Social networking sites such as Facebook have done little more than commercialise personal trivia. Our private thoughts are now for sale and friendship has become a financially valuable commodity. Facebook hasn't changed the world. It just means that the world can know that you've just had a shower. And don't forget to click on a few ads while keeping up with the latest gossip. Facebook is now worth an estimated  $76.4bn. That's money earned from your status updates. Social networking has given big business a vested interest in the private lives of millions of users.

Now, I'm not saying that social networking is a bad thing per se. I have a Facebook account and FB is a good way of keeping up with friends, exchanging information and so on.  For what it's worth this is my 1,000th blog post, so I can hardly claim to be a convinced anti-techno Luddite.  But blogging and social networking hasn't made us into world changing  heroes of self-expression as Rand and her followers hoped. Hardly.

5. All watched over by a God of loving grace

Adam Curtis' films raise questions concerning the relationship between man and machine, but they do not propose answers. He has exploded the idea that computers will enable human beings to live in harmony with the environment, "all watched over by machines of loving grace". But how can humanity be saved from the evils of selfishness, greed and the abuse of power?

This is exactly where the Christian gospel comes in. The Bible recognises the true greatness of man, his inventive artistry and technological capability. But the Christian faith is not blind to the fact that human beings are deeply flawed creatures. We are sinners. That is why we have a tendency to mess things up so badly, as even idealistic hippies found to their cost. The most serious thing about sin, however, is not it's disastrous social consequences. Sin is rebellion against our Creator. We are not machines, but his image bearers and he will hold us accountable for our actions.

The good news is that our Creator is a God of loving grace. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ into the world as one of us. Jesus came to die for our sins and be raised from the dead so that we might be forgiven and put right with God. In Christ God has acted not simply to save human beings, but also to rescue the whole creation from the ruinous effects of sin. When Jesus returns at the end of the age, he will usher in a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells and love prevails. Utopian  schemes want the fruits of redemption without a Redeemer, which is why they are doomed to failure.

Machines make for a poor God-substitute. It is folly for human beings to place their unquestioning trust in technology. We need to turn from our IT-olatry to the living God. The Christian believer lives secure in the knowledge that we are all watched over by a God of loving grace, Psalm 139:1-6. 

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Tuesday evening saw the broadcast of the last of three programmes in the excellent BBC2 series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. If you are based in the UK you can catch up with the series here. The programmes explore the idea that machines have been allowed to take over the modern world, with disastrous consequences. 

The first film, Love and Power Adam Curtis explores Ayn Rand's proposal that if people were allowed to give expression to their selfish desires, then society would organise itself without the need for formal political power. Distrusted politicians would soon find themselves out of a job. The advent of computer technology led to Rand's ideas on a self-organising society being applied to the wider world. In terms of the economy, it was thought by Alan Greenspan and others that computers would allow the financial system to correct itself, leading to and end of boom and bust. Then the credit crunch happened. The only people who seemed to benefit when it all went wrong were the bankers who caused the problem in the first place.

Next, in The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts, Curtis critiques idea of nature as terms of a self-regulating ecosystem. Theorists mistakenly applied the mechanical concept of equilibrium to "spaceship earth" in an endeavour to respond to the environmental crisis. Hippies latched on to this notion and gathered themselves into non-hierarchical communes. They hoped that with the aid of machines, man and nature could live together in harmony, "all watched over by machines of loving grace". But every singly one of their experimental communities failed. Dominant individuals began to rule the roost. The "self-regulating" communes allowed for no checks and balances to curb the worst excesses of human nature. 

Further research demonstrated that the idea that the natural world spontaneously moves towards equilibrium was a myth. Nature exists in a constant state of flux. Dire predictions of environmental catastrophe were based on a mechanical model of nature in which human beings were mere "nodes" in the ecosystem. No account was taken of the fact that human beings can change the system by choosing to act differently on a personal and political level. 

The final programme, The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey the documentary maker explores the impact of a new view of humanity in which human beings are depicted as little more than gene replicating machines. This idea was developed by scientists George Price and Bill Hamilton and popularised by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene. Price couldn't live with the implications of his theory. He converted to an extreme form of Christianity, devoting his life to helping down and outs in an attempt to show that he was not a prisoner of his selfish genes. Hamilton followed his ideas through to their logical conclusion and advocated eugenics. He  argued that the sick should be left to die in order that inferior DNA be weeded out from the human gene pool.

The film charts the development of these theories against the backdrop of catastrophic post-colonial policies in Rwanda that saw millions die in tribal conflicts. Conflicts made worse by the plundering of Africa's mineral wealth in order to manufacture gaming consoles for western consumers. Curtis posits that seeing ourselves as deterministic computer-like gene replicators  is a way of avoiding our responsibility to try and change the world for the better. We have become machines without loving grace. 

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace made for unusually intelligent and thought-provoking television. Some aspects of Curtis' case might no doubt be called into question. But his key thesis concerning the dire results of seeing human beings as little more than cogs in a global system is a timely wake up call for western culture. See here for an interview with Adam Curtis in The Guardian, where he discusses  his TV series. In the next post I hope to reflect on some of the issues raised by the programmes from a Christian perspective.