A Plastic World Changed How We Perceive the Self
From a Fixed World to a Plastic World
One important part of the context of the changing understanding of the self is that of the correlative understanding of the world (which includes how we understand the self) that has also emerged over time. Indeed, the notion of the self with which we now intuitively operate in the West—that of something plastic that we believe we can shape in any way we wish—is arguably simply one example of a much broader view of the whole of reality.
To clarify this, it is useful to engage in a thought experiment. If I had been born in England in the fourteenth century, I would have lived in a world that I would have considered stable and fixed. Wherever I was born in the social hierarchy—peasant, noble, or king—that is where I would have remained. In all likelihood, I would have been born to a family that worked the soil as peasant farmers. My career path would thus have been determined at birth: I would grow up to be a peasant farmer. My geographical placement would have been fixed as well, as travel, let alone emigration, would have been difficult and pointless. Everything I needed would have been in the village or town where I was born. I would have had a wide extended family with whose members I was familiar. I would probably have met the girl I was to marry fairly early in life. I would have been baptized, married, and buried in the same church. And my children—as well as my children’s children—would have experienced much the same. My religion would not be a choice since the Catholic church was the only religion available in my town. And my life on an annual basis would have been shaped decisively by the rhythm of the seasons: I needed to sow my crops in the spring, not the winter, and harvest them in the autumn, not the summer, praying for appropriate rain and sunshine in the interim. In short, my world would have been very fixed and very stable.
Strange New World
Carl R. Trueman
Carl Trueman identifies the historical, philosophical, and technological influences that have shaped present-day identity politics and teaches believers how to shift their modern understanding of personhood to a biblical perspective.
Our world is very different. Mass transportation, migration, education, social mobility, technology, science, medicine: all of these things and more have served to make the world a much more plastic place than it was in 1400. I will look at a few specifics below, but notice here the general picture: where once the world was fixed and therefore I needed to find my place within it (a place that was itself rather fixed), now its lack of fixity inclines me to think that the world can actually be shaped to my will. I was born the son of a small-town accountant and lived in Gloucestershire as a child, attending a state grammar school; but, unlike my parents, I went to college, gained an undergraduate and a postgraduate degree, and, having worked at four previous institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, I am now a professor of humanities at a college in western Pennsylvania. My fate was not set by the circumstances of my birth; the world in which I live is one that I consider to be largely the result of my own free choices. Now, emigration might not be part of everyone’s experience of life, but most people in the West today think of the world as far more flexible, even fluid, than anyone in 1400 would have thought. In 1400, the world seemed fixed, stable, and solid. Today it seems as pliable as playdough.
To put it bluntly, the modern cultural imagination sees the world as raw material to be shaped by the human will. Perhaps the most important factor in shaping this has been technology. To return to the medieval farmer: his life was utterly dependent upon the soil available in his locale and upon the rhythm of the seasons. Today, irrigation means that we can farm in the desert; glasshouses, insecticides, and fertilizers mean that the soil and the seasons lack the omnipotence they once possessed. Nature’s authority has not been eliminated, but it has been significantly mitigated. The same goes for medicine. Diseases that were once death sentences can now be addressed with simple medications. Some, like polio, have even been eradicated. And geography is no longer the force that it was: with cheap transport, public and private, distances that were once measured in days or weeks can now be measured in hours.
If the modern person considers himself to be something he can create for himself, so he tends to extend that same notion to his relationship to the world in general.
From agriculture to medicine, from automobiles to computers, technology is not simply a means of doing perennial human activities with greater speed and efficiency. It changes the fundamental relationship of human beings to their environment and to each other. Neither the seasons of the year nor the geography of the land are as significant as they once were. Technology shifts the balance of power from nature toward human agency and the competition between agencies.
Technology also reinforces the focus on the individual, and upon individual satisfactions. Take something like music, a basic part of human societies throughout history and across the globe. In the past, music was always a live, and often a communal, activity. Somebody had to be playing music for it to be heard; and somebody had to be present in order to appreciate it. Now we can listen to whatever music we choose, whenever we want, and, perhaps most significant of all, we can do so in privacy. Music has been transformed from something with a primarily live and communal focus (live concerts notwithstanding) and has become most commonly an item of consumption for the individual. If expressive individualism has come to focus on personal satisfaction as the meaning of life, technology has served that cause well.
All of these things contribute to, and reinforce, a cultural imagination that tilts toward seeing the world simply as “stuff,” the future as something we can make in whatever way we desire, and nature not so much as a fixed reality as something that is to be overcome and remade through technical mastery. If the modern person considers himself to be something he can create for himself, so he tends to extend that same notion to his relationship to the world in general. We no longer think of ourselves as subject to the world’s fixed nature, or of it as having an objective authority or meaning. We are the ones with power, and we are the ones who give the world significance.
It is likely impossible to present a watertight account of why we modern men and women think intuitively about the world in the way that we do. Yet one can certainly offer an account that piles up various necessary preconditions for this and observe how these tend to tilt us in a particular direction. The rise of technology feeds the notion that we can bend nature to our will, that the world is just so much raw, plastic material from which we can make whatever meaning or reality we choose.
This article is adapted from Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman.
Related Articles
Podcast: Making Sense of Transgenderism and the Sexual Revolution (Carl Trueman)
Why is our culture obsessed with gender identity and sexuality? Learn what history has to say about our modern times and how Christians can navigate this increasingly hostile issue.
What the Early Church Can Teach Us about Living in This Strange New World
Traditional Christians are typically those who take history seriously. If only we might be able to return to ancient worlds, we tell ourselves, all might be well.
Podcast: We're in a Strange New World. Now What? (Carl Trueman)
Carl Trueman explores the history of Western thought with the view of answering two simple questions. How did we get here? How should the church respond?
How Technology Is Changing the Way We View People Created in God’s Image
One of the ways that modern technology is changing the way we view other people has to do with the disembodied nature of so much of modern technology.
