Singing The Luddite Song
A short contemplation on truth and fiction
Whenever I’m heading down some reckless uncertain path of gentle contemplation, there’s always someone ready with a Luddite Incantation to help me back onto the straight and narrow. Of course there’s no need to be warned-off from the path because there are no paths that lead away from all this. There’s really nowhere to go. Besides, if there were such a path wouldn’t it be an overcrowded thoroughfare by now, overwhelmed by millions of us hastily heading away from here and toward there?
Anyway, there are times when people warn you off that nonexistent path, for example, when you might express the whimsical opinion that this juggernaut heading furiously cliff-wards, this maniacal cult of blind devotion and cruel sacrifice, should, for the love of god, should, possibly, slow itself down and allow for a moment’s contemplation. It’s then that people will invoke the Luddites to remind you of your reckless gamble. “You’re not a Luddite are you?” they’ll say, casting this powerful incantation to raise you from your slumber. “You don’t want to be an idiot loser from the freak show of history through your own ignorance and refusal to accept the true path of progress, do you?”. It’s powerful sorcery, this slap with a velvet glove, this warm reprimand, this jujitsu-like manoeuvre of a kindly arm over the shoulder and vicious poke in the eye. “Watch yourself my friend, don’t say you haven’t got been warned”.
There’s so much energy in the Luddite spell. I can hardly face the considerable (and exhausting) task of dismantling the distortion and sophistry parading about as fact. When people invoke the Luddites I almost shut-down entirely, keel-over and float away on the ever rising tide. The very utterance of the word Luddite fills me with such weariness that I’m reduced to staring into the distance like a panicked student who’s suddenly realised on the eve of the final exams that they’ve taken the wrong course.
Where to begin? Let me set the scene. Say you’re having one of those ridiculous simulacrums of a conversation we all seem to have these days. You know, where someone you’re talking to has mistaken a bunch of crap they’ve temporarily soaked up from the internet for a personality, and then demands that you engage with their newfound expertise by subjecting you to facts and truths about anything and everything.
As you know, there’s no limit to the deep knowledge on, say, the intimate workings of government or the vast statistical analyses required to pontificate on climate science, that a person can glean from a 1/2 hour podcast or a screeching YouTube video.
Although, I’m not denigrating people for soaking up and expunging the sea of madness they find themselves drowning in these days. I don’t think it’s their fault anymore than having a mother tongue is their fault. It’s just the historical terrain they’ve been dropped into. It’s a rare bird indeed that can recognise the multitude of competing forces that shape the landscape on which their lives play out. And an even rarer bird that can then fly away unscathed.
On the whole I just wait for these internet-inspired opinion flows to cease. Wait a beat, take a breath and then change the subject. But sometimes I might, and I don’t recommend this, I might engage a tiny bit by suggesting the possibility that an alternative universe exists underneath their despotic telling. The kind of universe John Keats might love, where “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” was a strength, a super-power even, in today’s comic vernacular. I might even go so far as to coin Keats term “negative capability” and suggest that it’s actually OK to resist explaining away that which we do not understand. Although, more often than not I won’t stomp so recklessly over the thin ice of someone’s newly adopted personality, and instead just make a vaguely disparaging remark about “stuff on the internet”.
And it’s at the word internet that the Pavlovian dominoes start a-falling and the Luddite Incantation will be cast and I’ll begin swaying in weakness and exhaustion. “Oh ho,” they’ll say, “You not a Luddite are you?” and then, as often as not, they’ll seal the points with some half aggressive reminder that “you own an iPhone don’t ya? DON’T YA?!” (internet inspired opinion flows are quite hostile exchanges, being that they’re actually a desperate cry of “who goes there, friend or foe”, in the never ending search for similar opinion collections in our increasingly fractured world).
But the truth is I am a Luddite. I love the Luddites. I aspire to Luddism. I see these beautiful people who struggled to resist this dreadful juggernaut that was merely revving up during the historical period in which they found themselves. The Luddites were never anti-technology. And neither am I. Dig a hole with a shovel and I love that shovelly technology. But hit me over the head with that shovel and then call me anti-technology for trying to defend myself? That isn’t OK. That wouldn’t really a be true representation of my feelings about technology. It would be a malicious manipulation of events and a cold-blooded rewriting of the chronicles in the name of power. And every time someone resorts to the Luddite Incantation, that’s exactly what they are doing, repeating a malicious manipulation of history devised by those with the biggest shovels and a penchant for swinging them instead of using them to dig. The Luddite Incantation is to offer oneself up as a sacrifice to power. Go on, knock my brains out and I’ll defend you while your doing it. Not a million miles from the average internet inspired opinion flow if you think about it. Will we ever learn?
The Luddites were never anti-technology, nor were they poor at handling or using tech of their day. They invented machinery themselves and were skilled machinists. What the Luddites saw (correctly) was their communities and their power (attained precisely from their skilled worker status) being dismantled by more powerful classes through the implementation of new working practices. Luddites weren't anti-technology, they were pro-human and pro-communities and pro-flattened forms of power that allowed for autonomy and dignity, instead of increasing inequality. They prioritised fairness, people and nature over the underlying principles of unrestrained profit and competition that was tearing up their land. They weren’t smashing machines, they were fighting the externalities those machines were creating that led to a future of servitude, poverty and massive inequality. Sound familiar?
The Luddites were showered with overt violence and conspicuous dishonesty by the class that formed (and still forms) the social landscapes we live in today. So successful was the treachery performed upon them that people are still repeating those insidious lies as if they are retelling some unvarnished truth.
The tarnishing of the Luddites was total. The retelling of their story became the only telling. They were folded in upon themselves with tragic and terrifying unfairness. When a lie becomes the truth the injustice is tangible, touchable, tasteable. The story of the Luddites is the story of power in the wrong hands. A story as old as the hills. And a story still being told. But this time the story of dangerous power is being hyper-weaponised by the kind of technology that no-one can smash. These internet inspired opinion flows to which we are more and more frequently subjected aren’t like a simple Spinning Jenny weaving cloth. The information age is more like a Spinning Myth Machine weaving whole new realities for people to tediously repeat over and over and over again until no-one knows what’s the truth and what’s a fiction.
So the next time anyone throws a Luddite Incantation at you, don’t worry, just wait a beat, take a breath and then change the subject, or thank them. After all, there’s a good chance it might be the best thing you hear all day.
“Luddites weren't anti-technology, they were pro-human and pro-communities and pro-flattened forms of power that allowed for autonomy and dignity, instead of increasing inequality. They prioritised fairness, people and nature over the underlying principles of unrestrained profit and competition that was tearing up their land. They weren’t smashing machines, they were fighting the externalities those machines were creating that led to a future of servitude, poverty and massive inequality”
This is so important. It’s like we have to create a better sounding story than the common narratives of progress and modernity. A story that people can see themselves in as being satisfied, healthy, loved, working for a common cause, etc. That’s why I can see the importance in the work of artists and writers and poets in creating a better narrative that we can all get behind.
I'm a bit of a Luddite myself. When the Amish started moving into our neighborhood, I was thrilled that we might all be able to go back to some idyllic time. But of course, there's no such thing. Just all of us trying to grapple with life and its choices. The internet isn't really that different from the way newspapers used to get people all ginned up for war or electing some candidate. In America, people have always been really news and politics obsessed so that hasn't changed since the country's founding. I guess the big difference is the way people can anonymously say truly evil things and not have to suffer any consequences ... actually that's a really big difference.