The Loving Resistance Fighter

What do you think about these characteristics: Loving resistance fighters are people who

1. pay no attention to a poll unless they know what questions were asked, and why;

2. refuse to accept efficiency as the pre-eminent goal of human relations;

3. have freed themselves from the belief in the magical powers of numbers, do not regard calculation as an adequate substitute for judgment, or precision as a synonym for truth;

4. refuse to allow psychology or any 'social science' to pre-empt the language and thought of common sense;

5. are, at least, suspicious of the idea of progress, and who does not confuse information with understanding;

6. do not regard the aged as irrelevant;

7. take seriously the meaning of family loyalty and honor, and who, when they 'reach out and touch someone,' expect that person to be in the same room;

8. take the great narratives of religion seriously and who do not believe that science is the only system of thought capable of producing truth;

9. know the difference between the sacred and the profane, and who do not wink at tradition for modernity's sake;

10. admire technological ingenuity but do not think it represents the highest possible form of human achievement.

These characteristics come from Neal Postman's 1993 book Technopoly. What's interesting is that characteristics four on up, the Left does not believe in especially the secularists. The old Soviet Union definitely did not believe in these principles. Their whole society was based on science completely--religion was not allowed. If you notice this is not so much an attack on science but a healthy skepticism of it. Science is just a human methodology like any other.

Final thoughts from the author:

A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology--from an IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer--is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism, and control.

In short, a technological resistance fighter maintains a epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural."