Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Politics and Religion
Advanced Technology Makes Us More Primitive

Advanced Technology Makes Us More Primitive

Last updated on: December 5, 2025 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

0 Comments

Advanced Technology Makes Us More Primitive 2025-11-29T22:00:15-05:00 Gene Veith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

When we think of our advanced information technology, we immediately marvel at how advanced our science and engineering have become and how far we have progressed.

But the pioneering media scholar Marshall McLuhan, writing mainly about electronic media such as television but anticipating what would be soon coming, argued that this technology was actually making us more primitive. With its immediacy, dependence on visual images, emotionalism, and undercutting of rationalism, electronic information media undermines the ways of thinking shaped by the earlier technology of the printing press.

Reading a book, McLuhan pointed out, requires a sustained attention span that promotes rational analysis. Reading is a private activity, so it promotes individualism and personal liberty. At the same time, since a printing press enables books to be mass produced, it was a catalyst for universal education, breaking down the medieval hierarchies and leading eventually to democratic forms of government. The printing press gave us the Reformation, science, liberal democracy, and, in short, the modern world.

The new technology, by contrast, takes us back to the preliterate days. Information is conveyed in ways closer to the oral tradition–speaking, hearing, relating to others–than to the era of printing. The new technology is emotional, communal, immediate, and non-reflective. McLuhan said that the new information environment creates a “global village,” in which the world is smaller and people are more interconnected, but also a small town environment of conformity, peer pressure, and immediate sensation.

McLuhan died in 1980, three years before the official birth of the internet and 24 years before Facebook came into existence.

Most of us cultural critics decry what this technology is doing to us, and we yearn to find a way to bring back at least elements of print-oriented thinking.

British author Mary Harrington, though, a conservative, kind of likes it. She has written in the mostly-Catholic journal First Things an article entitled The King and the Swarm.

The end of print culture is already upon us. With its end, we are already witnessing the disintegration of modernity’s load-bearing foundations, including the valorization of facts and objectivity, and a conception of the individual subject as a universal model of human personhood. This reality-picture, which crystallized in the seventeenth century, is already well on its way to dissolution in the solvent bath of digital media, a process radically accelerated by the spread of AI.

It is perhaps too neat to say the transition from print to digital forces us to replay the seventeenth century again, but in reverse. And yet much that is happening today makes sense, seen in those terms. And perhaps its most momentous effect is to undermine the cultural norms and habits of thought that form the bedrock of modern liberal democracy.

She is among those conservatives who believe dissolving liberal democracy is a good thing. By going back to a pre-modern global village–before the Reformation and the Enlightenment–we could repair our culture and our alienated minds.

This indeed “makes sense” of “much that is happening today.” Spending Thanksgiving with family in Houston, we went to the Renaissance Festival. I enjoyed the jousting, jesters, and juggling, but I was astonished to see that not only the cast but most of the visitors came dressed like knights, fairies, fair damsels, elves, witches, and even a few monks. This new medievalism may help account for the new popularity of Catholicism, the Latin Mass, and why First Things published Harrington’s article.

Harrington does not draw away from the political implications of this neo-medieval overturning of liberal democracy:

Of all possible alternative modes of governance, the one that today carries the most potent cultural charge still lurks, mostly shadowed, at the fringes of the contemporary political imaginary. It is not deemed legitimate among respectable people, in respectable countries. And no wonder: It is the political form whose abolition forms the origin story of Whig history as such. It was the most common mode of governance across the West in premodern times, this political form that now seems, at least to many of today’s extremely online young radicals, to call seductively not from the deep past but rather from the future: the king.

I don’t mean to be too critical of Harrington, whose writings I have often found beneficial. She is British, so she actually has a king. She describes herself as a “a mildly heretical Anglican” who often writes for Catholic publications, so I understand her aversion to the Reformation.

To her credit, she recognizes that most of today’s postmodernists, while being post-print, are far from recognizing the objective doctrines and the hierarchical structure of the Middle Ages:

As this has grown increasingly difficult to deny, a bitter struggle has erupted over how best to shape the post-print (which is to say post-liberal, post-democratic) political order. To date, the incumbency advantage has rested with those seeking to continue print-era democratic desiderata, within a body politic now predominantly formed by and for digital media consumption. This “swarm” model frames its program as radically democratic, and as surfacing organically from the aggregate desires of the people. In practice it withdraws political agency from that people to an expert class of purportedly neutral functionaries. And the program such functionaries implement is often unpopular, its structures viewed as illegitimate by the very people it purports to represent. Its unpopularity is due not to a rupture with democratic principles so much as to continuity with these principles, and particularly with the democratic presumption of a somewhat agonistic relation between rulers and demos.

To be ruled by a king, though, is to acknowledge authority, become an organic part of a community, and feel a “friendship” between the ruler and the ruled. This would be far better than the postmodern relativism and division that we have today.

Let me propose an alternative explanation. Postmodernism does indeed make us more primitive. But the Middle Ages were far from primitive. The theologians of that time were highly literate and rationalistic to a fault. The global village created by electronic media does not take us back to the Middle Ages; rather, it takes us back before those times, to barbarism.

The Dark Ages after the Fall of Rome with its classical civilization was a time of tribalism, with the contending tribes waging war against each other. (Sound familiar?) It was a time of vandalism, a term that comes from the name of one of those tribes famous for destroying libraries. (Sound familiar?) It was a time of diversity, to be sure, when each little tribe asserted its own religion and its own truth. (Sound familiar?) It was a time when small-time tribal chieftains called kings tried to seize power, though few outside the tribe recognized their authority. (Sound familiar?)

The Middle Ages brought us out of the Dark Ages, for the most part. Objective truth, objective morality, and objective authority were taken for granted. To be sure, most medieval folk were not literate, were filled with superstition, and were horribly oppressed by their rulers. But with the help of information technology–the printing press–that would change.

C. S. Lewis in his role as a major literary scholar stressed the continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I think he is right. And the trajectory of people moving from postmodernism to Catholicism and other sacramental churches (such as Lutheranism) is progress to something less digital and more humane. As far as kings go, I can’t think of many who were as “friendly” to their subjects as Harrington calls for. And there was no good way to replace a bad king, as most of them were. Being able to vote them out of office was a better way to ensure friendly politicians.

Photo: A Medieval Party by RandomDan (talk) – I created this work entirely by myself., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19708203

information technology

Marshall McLuhan

monarchy

print culture

technology and primitivism

Previous Post

December 5, 2025

DISCUSS: Heritage Americans?

Next Post

December 8, 2025 Monday Miscellany, 12/8/25

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"I am told one only gets the $90 if one is on a Supplemental Medicare ..."

reg

On Trump’s Political Ads That You ..."

"I too don't think the $5,000 giveaway will happen, but only because the Trumpublicans won't ..."

Tom Hering

On Trump’s Political Ads That You ..."

"Well, large cash give-aways are generally bad policy, but really bad in any of the ..."

1another

On Trump’s Political Ads That You ..."

"Well, we think it pretty much fits my thesis, except I'm not sure whether all ..."

kerner

On Trump’s Political Ads That You ..."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category America Apologetics Art baseball Bible Blog Christ Church crime Culture Economics Education Ethics Family Food Football Government History Holidays Holy Week Humor International Islam Language Law Life Issues Literature Media Medicine Movies Music Nature News Personal Philosophy Politics psychology Reformation Religions Sacraments Science sex Social Science Sports technology television terrorism Theology Uncategorized Vocation war

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which parable tells of a shrewd manager who is commended for his cleverness?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The Unjust Steward The Lost Sheep The Wise Virgins The Good Samaritan

Books by This Author Books by Gene Veith

See All Titles »