The Wordy Shipmates

A summary of:
Vowell, S. (2008). The Wordy Shipmates. Riverhead Books: New York.

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time. Sarah Vowell is fabulous - she manages to make even the Pilgrims entertaining! But the reason I finally read it now is because I began to think while reading Schultze's book that perhaps there is a connection between America's religious foundations and the particular way in which the Internet has developed. And if perhaps there was no truth to this theory, understanding how the Pilgrims attempted to establish a religious society in America might offer some insight into how to (or not to) develop a more spiritual 'space' within or in conjunction with cyberspace. In the end, I'm glad I read this when I did.

I don't know how well respected Vowell is as a historian; but I don't know how much it matters for my purposes, firstly, because she cites primary sources, which I can extract and interpret for myself; and secondly, because my PhD is not in history. I will begin my own dissertation by making a historical/sociological argument, but the purpose of this is only to articulate my research biases and make a case for the need for more spiritual technology. Now that's out of the way, here's what I learned from the Vowell book:

1. Exceptionalism (and lessening the “digital divide”)

In his famous sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," John Winthrop utters the famous, quintessentially American imperative: "'We shall be as a city upon a hill" (11); and from then on, these words have been appropriated by politial leaders who have failed to assimilate the profundity of its implications. The immediate impact, Vowell argues, is that speeches such as this were "watering the seeds of American exceptionalism that will, in the twenty-first century, blossom into preemptive war in the name of spreading democracy in the Middle East...," (6) etc.. For a people who became increasingly unsure about their own salvation, Americans latched onto the idea of themselves as having a special "calling" (Weber) in this world, namely to save everyone else. And thus in a continual and ever more manic sucking-up to God, America made its mission the liberation of the world... whether or not anyone asked for America's help. Vowell writes:

The most ironic and entertaining example of that mind-set is the Massachusetts Bay Colony's official seal. The seal, which the Winthrop fleet brought with them from England, pictures an Indian in a loincloth holding a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. Words are coming out of his mouth. The Indian says, 'Come over and help us.' That is really what is says. The worldview behind that motto - we're here to help, whether you want our help or not - is the Massachusetts Puritan's most enduring bequest to the future United States. And like everything the Puritans believed, it is derived from Scripture (24-5).

This exceptionalism is so ingrained in the American psychology that it is still very much manifesting in our foreign policies today. "Soon enough we were helping Europe in two world wars, helping South Korea, helping South Vietnam, just as we are now, as I write this, hleping Iraq" (206). And the justification provided by Cheney (not that I believe anything that Cheney says, but it's important that many Americans gobbled up Cheney's rationalization for the invasion of Iraq): "My belief is that we will, in fact be greeted as liberators" (26).

There is clearly a humility problem here. Vowell writes, "This contradiction - between humility before God and the egomania unleashed by being chosen by God - is true of both Winthrop and the colony of Massachusetts itself. This man hopes for tallness for himself as well as for his future city, pitched, in his mind, above sea level, on yonder hill" (39).

The point that's important for my purposes is how this very same logic is the motivation behind the liberal ideals of lessening the "digital divide." We think that we must share what we have created with all of humanity, whether or not they asked for it, assuming that we know better than they what they need. Technology, we know, is the way. Where's the humility in this, I ask? Furthermore, while people are beginning to wake up to the fact that forced democratization on the world is perhaps immoral, and increasingly people of my generation are creeped out by missionaries, the discussion about the morality of forcing technologies on people under the auspices of equality if it is happening at all, is not yet reaching audible decible levels. Yes, there is a digital divide; perhaps this is because other cultures do not want technology taking over their lives the way it has for Americans. In short, we need to cultivate greater humility.

• Implication one: Responsibility
  

For Winthrop, being as a city upon a hill meant that this position came with tremendous responsiblity. "In Matthew 5:14, Jesus said to the throng before him, 'Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.'...'The eyes of all people are upon us,' warned Wintrhop, 'so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken... we shall be made a story and a byword through the world'" (58). And as Vowell says far better than I possibly could:

The thing that appeals to me about Winthrop’s ‘Christian Charity’ and Cotton’s ‘God’s Promise to His Plantation’ from this end of history is that at least the arrogant ballyhoo that New England is special and chosen by God is tempered by the self-loathing Puritans’ sense of reckoning. The same wakefulness that individual Calvinist was to use to keep watch over his own sins Winthrop and Cotton called for also in the group at large. This humility, this fear, was what kept their delusions of grandeur in check. That’s what subsequent generations lost. From New England’s Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution (71-2).

I have to wonder if our seeming loss of responsibility is a direct result of the soul-crushing dogma of Calvinism, the belief in predetermination, so harsh that it made Bishop Laud proclaim, "My very soul abominates this doctrine, for it makes God, the God of all mercies, to be the most fierce and unreasonable tyrant in the whole world" (110). In other words, I do wonder if the impossibility of knowing whether one is going to be saved fosters what Weber calls "unprecedented inner loneliness" and possibly, I would argue, bitterness toward the unfairness of it all... and a subsequent rejection of the responsibility (like the case of the woman who, so perturbed by her constant questioning about whether or not she was one of the chosen one, drowned her child because being a murderer solved the puzzle once and for all: she was going to hell).

Yet at some point along the way, the notion of responsibility was swapped for glittering fakes. Vowell quotes from a speech by Cuomo during the time of the Reagan administration's more egregious ethical violations: "We give money to Latin American governments that murder nuns, and then we lie about it.... We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much the speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses. We must make - We must make the American people hear our 'Take of Two Cities.' We must convince them that we don't have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people" (62-3).

It seems that it is getting harder and harder to hold one another accountable in a world in which we can hardly differentiate fact from fiction. We exist in a plurality of truths, which seems to equate to a confusion of morality and responsibility. It doesn't help, I imagine, to allow anyone and everyone to have a microphone in order to voice non-truths to confuse the matter even further. Again, as I wrote in one of my posts about Schultze's book, it seems our only responsibility at this point is to the commandment: "Thou shalt not inhibit another's freedom of speech." And now we live in a world in which news programs quote Newt Gingrich's venomous tweets and Sarah Palin's moronic Facebook posts. Where's the responsibility to the truth? Surely this is the foundation of responsibility for greater moral causes, e.g. ensuring America is, indeed, as a city upon a hill.

• Implication two: Salvation

Vowell makes an interesting point about the centrality of the concept of salvation to the Puritan: "...to Winthrop and his shipmates, the tradition of a covenant - a handshake deal between man and God in which man promises obedience and God grants salvation in return - extends, writes Perry Miller, 'unbroken from Abraham to Boston'" (50).

This made me think again of Wertheim's video conference (posted earlier) when she mentions the work of Jesuit scholar Michael Buckley who argues that traditionally in Christianity, there were two conceptions of God. This persisted until the birth of modern science, where now we focus on the glory of God’s creations at the expense of focusing on his redemptive purpose. For example, Newton and Copernicus believed that the purpose of exploring the works of God’s creations was to sure up the idea of God as the redeemer; but we are now completely obsessed with the former (e.g. Big Bang). The result is that God now is becoming almost merely a metaphor of physical laws, and sadly, this completely misses the point about redemption; “If God’s only purpose is to be God the creator, and he doesn’t play any salvific role, it actually becomes a kind of meaningless concept, at least in the context of Christianity” (Wertheim). If you never bridge this chasm, you never get to redemption… which is what brings you to morality; or to responsibility, for that matter.

• Implication three: Compassion

I don't have a great deal to say about this at the moment, but I did want to capture this brilliant Winthrop quote which may serve as inspiration for the design of more "compassionate" technology:

"We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body" (51).

• Implication four: Charity

Vowell notes that "'Christian Charity' begins: 'God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean in their subjection'" (37). This means that although Jefferson later pens the 'self-evident truth' that all men are created equal, "Winthrop is saying the opposite - that God created all men unequal" (37). But this is not - as it later became - a justification for capitalistic inequality (see forthcoming post on Weber); rather it a call for charity on behalf of Puritans. "Winthrop asserts, 'There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles' times.' (It is so curious that this sermon, in my lifetime, would become so identified with the Communist-hating, Communist-baiting Ronald Reagan, considering Winthrop just proclaimed that a follower of Christ must be willing to renounce property. Utter Commie talk.)" (48-9).

• Implication five: We art holier than thou

The very reason that the Puritans sought to establish their own separate society is because they "became convinced England was courting the wrath of God" (28). Hooker wrote:

So glory is departed from England; for England hath seen her best days, and the reward of sin is coming on apace; for god is packing up of his gospel, because none will buy his wares.... God begins to ship away his Noahs, which prophesied and foretold that destruction was near; and God makes account that New England shall be a refuge fro this Noahs and his Lots, a rock and a shelter for his righteous ones to run unto; and those that were vexed to see the ungodly lives of the people in this wicked land, shall there be safe (29).

I can't help but see similarities between this kind of thinking and early utopian visions of the Internet as being a haven away from the crass materialism of the real world. Alas, how things get perverted over time...

So an important message from this book is that no matter how admirable your aims, things tend to take on a life of their own. The Puritan society has morphed over time into consumerist, anti-intellectual, rock-loving America. This, too, will inevitably happen for whatever I design: if it takes off, it will morph; it will likely corrupt. I think the lesson is not that it's not worth trying, but rather that this work is never done and requires constant reexamination / redesign.

• Implication six: Information seeking

One of the major premises of Protestantism, one of the key features that sets it apart from Catholicism, is the idea that: "The word of God, not a man of God, is The Man. For that reason, Luther translated the Bible into German so Germans could read it for themselves" (7). Being a good Protestant thus requires that the individual take responsibility for understanding the Bible, and otherwise educating themselves. In the words of preeminent Puritan scholar, Perry Miller, "Puritanism was not anti-intellectual fundamentalism; it was a learned, scholarly movement that required on the part of the leaders, and as much as possible from the followers, not only knowledge but a respect for the cultural heritage. Being good classicists, they read Latin and Greek poetry, and tried their hands at composing verses of their own. The amount they wrote, even amid the labor of settling a wilderness, is astonishing" (15). Furthermore, part of their education involved a commitment to writing their thoughts down. This, writes Vowell, created a society of "quill-crazy New Englanders" (13). But here's the crucial bit:

So an English subject of Henry VIII who already had a soft spot for the innovations of Luther rejoiced at the king’s break with Rome (while trying not to picture Henry and Anne Boleyn doing it in every room of every castle). That is, until the Protestant sympathizer went to church and noticed that the Church of England was just the same old Catholic Church with a king in pope’s clothing. Same old hierarchy of archbishop on down. Same old Latin-speaking middlemen standing between parishioners and the Bible, between parishioners and God. Same old ornamental gewgaws. Organ music! Vestments! (It is difficult to understate the Puritan abhorrence of something as seemingly trivial as a vicar’s scarf.) Same old easily achieved, come-as-you-are salvation. Here’s what one had to do to join the Church of England: be English. But we want getting into heaven to be hard! said the Puritans. And not for everybody (7)!

The point is, being a Puritan is hard work. Salvation is not guaranteed, but earned. Part of that is proving one's worthiness of salvation through strict and dedicated education of oneself.

But then, here's the irony: "The United States is often called a Puritan nation. Well, here is one way in which it emphatically is not: Puritan lives were overwhelmingly, fanatically literary. Their single-minded obsession with one book, the Bible, made words the center of their lives - not land, not money, not power, not fun. I swear on Peter Stuyvesant’s peg leg that the country that became the U.S. bears a closer family resemblance to the devil-may-care merchants of New Amsterdam than it does to Boston's communitarian English majors" (13). How has America become so anti-intellectual? Here's Vowell's explanation:

Anne Hutchinson is merely taking Protestantism’s next logical step…. [She] is pushing American Protestantism further, towards a practice approaching the more personal, ecstatic, anti-intellectual, emotional slant now practiced in the U.S.A., especially in the South and Midwest….
Protestantism’s evolution away from hierarchy and authority has enormous consequences for America and the world. On the one hand, the democratization of religion runs parallel to political democratization….
On the other hand, Protestantism’s shedding away of authority, as evidenced by my mother’s proclamation that I needn’t go to church or listen to a preacher to achieve salvation, inspires self-reliance – along with a dangerous disregard for expertise. So the impulse that leads to democracy can also be the downside of democracy – namely, a suspicion of people who know what they are talking about. It’s why in U.S. presidential elections the American people will elect a wisecracking good ol’ boy who’s fun in a malt shop instead of a serious thinking who actually knows some of the pompous, brainy stuff that might actually get fewer people laid off or killed (213-5).

The point of interest for my research is that there are religious roots to the kind of individualistic, anti-authoritarian information seeking behavior we now practice on the Internet. There is no one in cyberspace that we can go to for all the answers. And there is no Bible for this space. But what we do have is the freedom to go in search of our own answers. As such, we become constant bricoleurs, assembling our own individualized knowledge from scattered information we find on the web.

• Democracy
  

Consider this quote from Ronald Reagan's farewell address:

I’ve spoken of a shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still (64-5).

Firstly, this is rather different from the Puritans' exclusionary beliefs (i.e. that getting into heaven should be difficult and not for everybody), reflecting the growth of democratic thinking. But again, I see a parallel between this kind of rhetoric and that of utopian cyberspace. In fact, this could equally be a description of cyberspace if you take out the allusions to physicality. My point is that the idea of the justice of democracy as evidenced by this speech is undoubtedly influencing the emerging emphasis on the democratization of technology, mass creativity and the like, evidenced by the EPSRC's call for study of "Democratisaiton and Open Innovation": "This theme would study the emerging phenomenon of the democratization of innovation and its technical, business and design implications as a key strategic contribution to the digital economy. Areas of activity would include, citizen journalism, open source, co-creation, open innovation, post-participatory design and mass creativity."

• Losing my religion
  

Vowell writes:

So I always cringed, wondering why, when the English showed up, most of the Cherokee dropped whatever they were doing and adopted English ways on the spot, from becoming Christians and speaking English to eventually printing their own newspaper, ratifying a constitution, and owning black slaves like white Southerners they aspired to be. Perhaps this is why: they 'despaired so much that they lost confidence in their gods and the priests destroyed the sacred objects of the tribe.' It makes so much sense. Some microscopic predator comes along and wipes out most of the tribe and of course they would abandon their gods. Their gods abandoned them (34).

I feel exactly the same when I think of the way the West is homogenizing the world by spreading their technology and destroying local beliefs and culture in the process. I can't help but feel like Roger Williams felt about imposing a new religion on the natives: "...he points out that Jesus 'abhors... an unwilling spouse, and to enter into a forced bed: the will in worship, if true, is like a free vote.' Thus, imposing Christianity on American Indians (or anyone else) is, to Williams (and, according to Williams, Jesus) a rape of the soul" (160).

I just think that it's important that there be greater choice in the technology that these countries can adapt so that they can use something that fits with their lives without destroying their gods and cultures.

• Final thoughts
  

I thought this was a really interesting insight into American culture:

In the U.S.A., we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues. That is why the 'city on a hill' is the image from Winthrop's speech that stuck and not 'members of the same body.' No one is going to hold up a cigarette lighter in a stadium to the tune of 'mourn together, suffer together.' City on a hill, though - that has a backbeat we can dance to. And that's why the citizens of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan; that's why we are Ronald Reagan (63).

The message from this is that it's naive to think that anyone can change something that is so ingrained in culture. The Internet as it is now perfectly fits this sing-along-with-the-verses lifestyle. No matter how brilliant any alternative vision of it might be, most people are not going to want to change. The alternative vision will only appeal to those that do not feel at home in this world; the ones who play the blues, as it were. For them, I would like to offer more options. (For a model of this, see Stuart Walker's conceptual designs for mobile phone varieties ranging from a phone that comes in pieces in a bag that you have to assemble whenever you make a call, all the way up to the kind of convenient mobile phone we see all around us.)