From Caption to Text
A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me an article from Ribbon Farm by Venkatesh Rao entitled, The Internet of Beefs. In it, Rao argues that the internet has created an “unflattened Hobbesian honor-society conflict with a feudal structure.” Mooks, he argues, are people who are unintentionally anonymous, following the lead of more senior point guards which he calls knights.
Of course, mooks may or may not accurately represent the dogmatic schema of the knight under whose banner they fight. It’s almost irrelevant. Paul Vanderklay, in his podcast episode on this article, asks an insightful set of twin questions, Can Jesus exorcise mooks and knights? and Is this the end of history?
I got a smartphone when I gave up pre-millennialism. A perfect storm of covenantalism, preterism, and post-millennialism swept through and took all my stopgaps with it. Once I ceded ground to the reading of Scripture that has the millennial reign of Christ beginning with His ascension, I couldn’t help but see one primary policy through which all decisions were to be run . . . bringing all His enemies into subjection to Him, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death.
If we read scenes, like the one in Isaiah 65, and recognize that two primary guardrails limit how far we can go in any direction, we will acknowledge that two things co-exist on the earth: peace and death. This tells us that progress towards a kind of peace has been made, but not so much that death has been destroyed. Post-millennialism then offers the simplest reading of passages like this. Jesus has brought increased submission on the earth, but He hasn’t returned yet, because death hasn’t been destroyed.
Within the confines of what a-millennialists and post-millennialists would understand to be the millennium (the period of Christ’s reign, from His ascension to the final judgment), there are a number of descriptors in Scripture of what this period will look like. Snapshots include drastically prolonged lifespans, heightened skill in domestication of the animal realm, agricultural prosperity, swords being beaten into plowshares, and more.
What does it mean for swords to be beaten into plowshares? I don’t believe this is merely an endorsement of pacifism. I think we are shown a principle of re-purposing. Tools which had been community destroyers are converted into community nourishers. The process by which a sword is transformed into a plow is fairly simple. A lot of it has to do with a shift taking place in what you’re trying to cut open. Run with the sword down, not up.
I believe cell phones are community destroyers.
What needs to take place in order for cell phones to become cultivators of communities is not simply a conversion of tools, but a conversion of homo faber. Man, the maker, must be converted because all tools are manifestations of the design principles of their makers. Or in the words of Henry van Til, “Culture is religion externalized and made explicit.” Homo faber must become homo adorans, man the worshipper.
Vanderklay’s first question is the correct one. If Jesus cannot exorcise mooks and knights . . . in deed, if he cannot convert them, then there is no help for any of us. The swords in question, needing to be re-purposed, are the various manifestations of the tongues of human beings. From the abundance of the heart the fingers type. This was done at Pentecost, when the curse of Babel was reversed. Global communication is not the problem; it not being in subjection to the reign of Christ is.
In the new earth, knowledge is complete. Faith is sight. This redeems and repurposes the very nature of sight-based communication. The problem with images is that, without knowledge, the image is contextless. If we were able to include full knowledge with the viewing of an image, the experience of the believer with the image would then lose its trajectory of fragmentation. Sword: Plowshare. We could call it conversion or we could call it mutation.
To use big words, confronted with the technological phenomenon and the new milieu we live in, we must have ‘mutants.’ Not the mutants of science fiction – the technological human being with a robot’s brain but quite the opposite. To be a mutant a person needs to become someone who can use the technologies and at the same time not be used by, assimilated by, or subordinated to them. — Jacques Ellul
We need mutants, or converts . . . not separatists. So then, the question remains, “What must I do to be mutated?” Back to mooks and knights. We tell our sons, when they get in trouble for bullying their sisters, “Knights fight dragons, not princesses.” Rao’s observation about a new feudalism is of a specific kind of feudalism. It is a tribal boredom in which knights are warring against knights. We have seen the ennui and it is us. The dragons are running the cage-matches.
In some of the tellings of St. George and the Dragon, the knight saves the people by slaying the dragon. In some of the tellings, he domesticates it. All dragons should be seen as having design features which speak of the religion of its designer. There are two ways to see a dragon, just as there are two ways to see all cultural artifacts . . . in the employment of God or not. A dragon is scaled with impenetrable armor; it breathes fire from its mouth; it towers in its height; etc. This could either be a dreaded enemy or the world’s greatest service dog. Could this feral chaos be domesticated, what kind of cultivation might be practiced?
Dominion is required for domestication and the job of dominion is not given to rare heroes, but to all image-bearers. Domesticating the dragon was not George’s job, but the citizens of the kingdom. David’s brothers should have slain Goliath. Saul should have slain Goliath. David is heroic because he assumes the victory of God to be axiomatic. The next question is not Can mooks be exorcised? but can the internet be redeemed?
I think it’s possible. It will have to die and be reborn. It will have to be shoved in the fire and hammered on, but it’s possible to see what it might become, at least for a time being. It could be a societal memory bank which manifests feedforward to the fulfillment of all knowledge. It could be a shadow of future memory. The inclusion in the new earth of cultural artifacts which were forged in the fires of rebellion is a testimony to the extent of God’s redemption reaches towards earth. Trumpets are in heaven? Where did they come from? Tubal-cain? Jubal? Ships of Tarshish? Books? Kings? What are these things doing on a glorified earth? They are being saved from extinction.
Books function, apparently even in Heaven, as the servants of humans. Einstein said, “Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book.” Why do humans who possess a fulfilled knowledge need to employ servants such as books? Firstly, we might ask if it is possible to construct tools that are not built around the principle of efficiency? Perhaps not. But if the sinful desire to avoid the effects of the curse on our work is eliminated by establishing an environment in which neither death nor decay exist, are efficiency-based tools infected by a sinful philosophy of design? We only need one example of culture existing in glory in order to prove this in the negative: Heaven has books and buildings. That’s two. Efficiency apparently has a place in fulfilled knowledge.
The internet, or the book, could become a servant of the human, even in its natural shape, at least for a time . . . if it takes its place as a tool rather than a master. The primary pre-requisite for this to take place is the mutation/conversion of the maker/user. The internet must become an illustration to the text of human presence, rather than the other way around, which is the case at present. In our day, human presence has become a mere caption to the image.
One final thought, there is an etymological revelation that needs to be understood, especially in an age of pandemic-inspired isolation. The web is called the internet. This means that the unassuming user is conformed to its insular shape. This is direct opposition to the nomenclatural appellation given to the Church by God . . . ekklesia. We are called out. If we are not careful, there may be an equivocation that takes place between ekklesia and eislesia. When we have conformed into the eislesia, we require mutation . . . or transformation out of our conformity. Connectivity must become shaped by a desire to give more than take. We must have an estimation of the other that supersedes the estimation of the self. This kind of a creature happens to be a thing God continues to make.
If the internet were shoved in the fire and hammered on, what lasting thing might emerge from the flames? We are told in the book of Daniel: two or three gathered with the Son of Man in their midst. The church, ekklesia, is the opposing and lasting alternate to the internet, eislesia. What does a redeemed internet look like? It functions as a catalyst for a gathered body.
