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Kate's avatar

So many fascinating thoughts to consider, especially the concept of technology as a Western Christian heresy.

An interesting trend I've noted is watching my peers, many of whom are thoughtful people who are ex-Christian, move from young adulthood to adulthood along an intellectual trajectory of Christian academics to general disillusionment with faith to jobs in/interest in the tech sphere to seeking meaning through the power of physical craft. For what it's worth, I count myself in this group. The attraction for us, near as I can tell, is the bodily incarnation of playing, practicing, focusing, and creating material artifacts - at least for me, I'm astounded when I can create by hand what I'm so used to seeing as machine-made. What that signifies about our estrangement from our bodes/ourselves is telling.

I'm especially finding joy in weaving lately, and I think I'm enjoying it as a refuge against the fact that in my work life in a tech company, I'm surrounded by an almost fanatical enthusiasm with AI and data collection and all of that. And I just can't get on board, so I turn to poetry and weaving and blacksmithing and arts that teach me the practical applications of math, attentiveness, imagination, the sublime, tactile pleasure, etc.

Anyways, I just discovered SAORI weaving, which is ideologically committed to the idea that we are flesh and blood creatures and so we ought not to imitate machines. We should, instead, develop our aesthetic senses, create imperfections that we can bring into harmony with the overall piece, find creativity in being untrained and therefore unconstrained by inherited notions of how weaving should be, seek to honor the creativity and dignity in our own sensibilities by enjoying and attending to what we make. It's such a refreshing antidote to the "more productivity, don't do boring stuff" language I hear about technology at work (not to discount the very valid ways in which technology has brought up the human standard of living and liberated folks from certain types of drudgery).

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Jesse  Porch's avatar

I'm currently doing a book club reading the Wendell Berry Life is a miracle text, and we just did the passage you cite last week.

It's been interesting as my co-readers are a Philosophy PhD currently teaching at a classical Christian school, and an AI PhD currently doing computer vision research for Microsoft. Some *very* good discussion to be had, for sure!

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