Essays From West of 98: The Counterculture of Humanity

There’s an idea afoot that the human touch is no longer necessary in much of life. Automation is in, people are out. Retail stores have self checkout lines. Fast food restaurants have a touch screen kiosk to order your food in lieu of a cashier. Countless meetings are now conducted by video conference, rather than in person. We can’t leave out the so-called “artificial intelligence” craze. Siri and Alexa are there to answer your questions. Something called “Chat GPT” is apparently constructed to do your writing for you. I wouldn’t know about that one. I have too many words in my brain, so it’s really for the best that I type them out instead of ask a machine to create new words for me.

There’s seemingly no end to the amount of work that machines can do.

To many in power, the best aspect of machines is that they lack human feeling and emotion. A machine never argues or questions authority. A machine is never unpredictable in its behavior. A machine never calls in sick, struggles with personal problems, or has a bad day where focus is lacking. There are two sides to that coin, though. A machine is never there for you when you need it. Siri will answer your questions but she’ll never ask how you are doing, and then say, “no, really…?” when something is off. A machine coworker will never hand you a Kleenex or put its hand on your shoulder during that bad day at work. A computer might diagnose your symptoms of illness but it will never boost your spirits when the diagnosis is grim. A machine will never high-five or hug you with enthusiasm when you receive good news.

I’m not here to rail against the evils of all technology. I wrote this on a yellow pad but I edited it on my computer and then posted it to my website and social media. Even if I deeply admire Wendell Berry’s legendary essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer,” I am not going to ditch my computer just yet.

Berry famously said that tools should make our lives better, but we should not become enslaved by them. Without a doubt, there are more than a few adherents to technology—inventors, financiers, and politicians—who would be perfectly fine having us subjugated to technology in that manner. Business would be “simpler” and “more efficient.” Things would be less messy. Worker drones cause fewer problems than independent thinkers. Business would be more profitable.

Contrary to the ideals of utopian technology, that’s not what people are designed for. Whether your belief of human origin is deeply religious, deeply scientific, or composed of a belief that Creator and science can co-exist, you should be deeply offended by the idea that humans are merely destined to be technology-enslaved drones subjugated to a predetermined order. Human beings are aggravating, but they are also special.

Wendell Berry once asked years ago, “is the obsolescence of human beings now our social goal? The great question that hovers over this issue one that we have dealt with mainly by indifference, is the question of what people are for.”

So what are people for? People were not created to be subjugated by technology. People are not meant to endlessly scroll their days away and they are surely not meant to live their lives in so-called virtual reality. People are not meant to have their decisions controlled by automation in some manner that is more dystopia than utopia.

People are for sharing their humanity, no matter how frustrating and inefficient it might be to the economic order. People are for community. You might doubt me. You might think that the horse is out of the barn at this point, that society is too far gone in its technological obsession to live this way. I disagree. It might be countercultural and radical at this point, but that’s fine. It just takes individual choice. I choose to emphasize humanity. I choose to emphasize community. Will you join me?

James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.