Gluttony, Fasting, and Feasting: Three Approaches to Technology

“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say ‘look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” (Matt. 11:19)

In thinking about the human relationship to technology, we often go wrong in two directions. The first is the error under which most of us labour in our Technological Society: we assume that technological growth is an unqualified good. We see ever increasing power, speed, and efficiency as the path to earthly paradise. We live by the maxim first uttered by creator of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer: “When you see something that is technologically sweet, you go ahead and do it.” A chilling statement in light of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a chilling statement in light of the ecological and cultural destruction that our Technological Society has wrought. Perhaps one way to describe our age is to say that we have fallen prey to the vice of gluttony. Gluttony is consumption without limit or a sense of proportion. It is consumption without regard for the food one is eating, or indeed for oneself. Our approach to technology one might say, is gluttonous: We desire ever more speed, power, and efficiency, disregarding the consequences of this ‘ever more’ to ourselves or the world, and never considering what ‘enough’ might be.

In response to this gluttonous approach to technology, a second, perhaps more reasonable error emerges. What is needed, these critics assert, is a technological fast, a form of asceticism. To find absolution from our technological gluttony, we must seek purity and holiness. This second approach is rightly critical of where the whole modern project of ever more power, speed, and efficiency is taking us: “…we do not know wither we are going, we have forgotten our collective ends, and we possess great means: we have set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere.”[1] It is also rightly worried that this endless, gluttonous taking from the earth leaves both us and Mother Nature sick. The error of this second approach is that it pushes its critique too far. These critics feel so guilty about technological gluttony that they begin to see technology itself as tainted and they seek atonement through maintaining purity from technological corruption. For these critics, the ideal is the naked purity of the garden of Eden, from which technological growth has progressively (or regressively?) alienated us. This critic feels compromised in our technological age and even though he cannot pry his gaze from his computer screen, he simultaneously loathes himself for it, and longs to be free. A prime example of this kind of approach in my mind is Paul Kingsnorth who sees technological growth in mythic terms:

“What we do in Genesis is we rebel against God… and we choose knowledge and power really over life and then we’re expelled from this place where life is eternal… and the first thing we do is we start tilling the ground, we start developing Agriculture, and then Cain is the first murderer and he builds the first city…his descendant… is the first smith so he creates the first… weapons and we’re right into industrial civilization as the kind of alternative to God and then we’re into the tower of Babel and what we are trying to do is almost build our way back to the Garden, you know build our way back to this Perfection.”[2]

Now in broad strokes I can see Kingsnorth’s point, and as a broad strokes mythological pattern what he is laying out is helpful. However, the problem with framing things in these terms is that we are left with a dualistic contrast between on the one hand, technology, power, knowledge, human creation; and on the other, God, nature, and cosmic harmony. On this account, any use of tools, exercise of power, or human creation is rebellious, tainted, violent, or impure. To put it in the terms we have been developing, this is an approach to technology that favours abstinence, scarcity, fasting, or starvation. For Kingsnorth, the alternative to technological gluttony is abstinence or purity.

If we find fault in both technological gluttony and in technological abstinence, what might a different path look like? The first place to begin is with Joy. To put a sharper point on it the first thing is not purity or renunciation for its own sake, nor simple base pleasure, but rather the Joy of finding our humanity in relationship with others. The experience of life in our technological age is that our humanity has been hollowed out—the rise in depression, loneliness, alienation from culture and nature all point to us losing touch with our humanity. Our first task then is simply to re-learn how to be human, to lean into the Joy: Plant a tree. Make a friend. Invite people over. Write something. Make something. Read a book. Cook a meal. Raise your own chickens. Pray. Go barefoot. Gaze at the stars. Think about the meaning of life. Take a risk. Love someone. Go back to your roots. Start wherever you are, urban or rural, and find ways to be human, to form relationships with others and with creation. The goal is not to be ‘pure’ or untainted by technology but simply to live a human life. It is from this place of re-connecting with what it means to be human that we can then be brought into proper relation with technology. This is the starting point.

This is where we come to the image of the feast in contrast to abstinence and gluttony.[3] To feast is to draw others into the abundance, it is to put material things in the service of joyful life together. Human making and culture building is for the other, for joyful life-together. Food is not meant to be gluttonously hoarded by the individual. Neither should we subsist on an austere diet of bread and water. Instead, food is meant to be made, shared, and in delighted in with others around the table. Consider the rich description of feasting from my friend Danika Warkentin:

So what is feasting? When I lived in Burkina Faso, I began to view the sharing of food differently. One morning, my family and I were walking down the red sandy streets to the marketplace when a local man called out to us from the side of the road. We went over to where he was eating his midday meal outside his courtyard. We greeted the man and entered into playful banter with him, a conversational skill that comes naturally to so many people in Burkina Faso. Then he said to us, “Vous êtes invités”. You are invited. This man was inviting us to share the rice and sauce on his plate. He was offering the little food he had to us – foreigners with more than enough money to buy our own lunch. This is not an uncommon occurrence in Burkina Faso. If you have food and someone else doesn’t, it is socially appropriate that you offer to share what you have. The mentality is very much: “I am hungry, but you are also hungry, so let us eat together.” This is an attitude that seems to be less prevalent in North America, where we are sometimes more likely to say, “I bought this food with my own money, so I get to eat it, even if I’m not hungry”. The man who offered us his rice and sauce was living with an attitude of abundance. He had faith that his plate of rice would be sufficient for the five of us to share. He had faith that tomorrow, if he was hungry and had no food, someone might share with him. That’s feasting. You are invited.[4]

When we apply this image of the feast to human relationship with technology, several things become salient. We notice, especially from Warkentin’s description, that feasting also involves a form of renunciation or self-denial. This is not renunciation for its own sake, or for the sake of maintaining ‘purity’, it is not a renouncing because there is not enough—rather it is a giving up of oneself for the other, it is a renunciation because there is enough for all. We also notice that just as gathering and sharing food is basic to being human, just so, making and creating is part of what humans do. Our making and creating is most human if it is a form of culture building, a way of enhancing our life together. Notice the difference. What we have described as a gluttonous approach to technology is precisely unfree: it is a making and use of technology that is propelled by forces beyond one’s control. Technological feasting puts technology back into the hands of human beings, tools made and used to serve human and cultural ends, rather than the nameless forces of technique, economy, or politics.

We notice that what is of primary importance in the feast is not so much the food (or in our case, the tools or techniques) itself, but the gathering, the communal experience, the coming together to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company. Finally, it is in this context of joyful life-together than our tools can find their proper order, limit, and orientation: they are meant to serve our being fully human rather than detracting from it. Think of the difference between a homegrown, slow-cooked meal created and enjoyed in the company of friends and a drive-and-go meal at Mcdonald’s. The goal is to have human beings who can be fully alive in their dependence on each other, rather than rushed, anxious and isolated from each other. How and what technologies we use can either lead us in the first or the second direction. This may well mean that we will have to ‘fast’ from consumerism and ‘quick fixes’ and embrace the suffering that comes with this. This may well mean that certain tools may have to be contained, others rejected outright, and the whole paradigm that prioritizes profitability and efficiency over all else must be overturned. At the same time, from here we see that of course, power, speed, and efficiency up to a certain point, do enhance our lives in some ways. The whole modern project is not—contra Kingsnorth—rotten to its core. However, the pursuit of power, speed, and efficiency for its own sake leads in a gluttonous, anti-human direction. The path forward is around the feasting table where our tools are brought into service of a joyful life-together.

 The featured image is called “Marriage Feast at Cana” by Paolo Veronese.

---

[1] Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, (New York, Seabury Press: 1967), 63.

[2] “Cathedral as Antidote to the Machine with Paul Kingsnorth”, Grail Country, April 5, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTl9vOsB8_M,  14:32-15:29.

[3] I am drawing in this section on Ivan Illich’s notion of “Conviviality” which he defines as “individual freedom realized in personal interdependence” see Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, (New York: Harper & Row, 1973)

[4] Danika Warkentin, “Join the Feast”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8pMB4t-A2g