Thursday, December 07, 2006

luddites on the Right

I had just said:
This one I don't experience at the beginning of the 21st century nearly as much as I did at the end of the 20th:
But unlike Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute, I don't read conservatives and I don't know too many conservatives -- and those I do know are more of the neoconservative technophile variety.
A feature of conservative thought that I've never entirely understood is its persistent anti-technology theme. If the roots of left-wing anti-technology views are probably with Rousseau, where can we find the roots of similar right-wing views?

... technology is the result of human action to better one's material lot, and nothing more than that. It is not "unnatural" or "external" to human action; technological progress is merely the material expression of the inner drive to adjust one's surroundings in a manner that achieves our ends. It is what results when rationality is permitted the freedom to innovate in the service of humanity. It is not foreign or external to the nature of man but integral. To say that we should be willing to give it up is saying nothing other than that we ought to act in ways that diminish our well being. There are times when doing so is heroic, to be sure. But can or should we expect this as a social propensity in normal times? Surely not.
For me it's like a peek into an alien culture.
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