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Turn off the lights... Take a closer look at it all

At the cutting edge of an emerging academic discipline, Fr. John Staudenmaier, SJ views scientific and technological breakthroughs in a different light than most people. He suggests you might want to as well.

Take two hours in the Holy Dark, get a good night's sleep, and call me in the morning.

If Fr. John Staudenmaier, SJ were the surgeon general, that would be his prescription for the public as a first step to emotional, spiritual, physical, and cultural well-being in the new millennium. As a Ph.D. not an MD, and a priest not a physician, he recommends the same.

"The Holy Dark is what I call a part of the day that every generation in human history experienced until the early part of this century, at which time the advent of electric lights changed our world," Fr. Staudenmaier says. "Until then, when darkness came, we ceased our daily strategic work (business and other activities that fill the hours of natural light). We experienced a whole frame of time for non-strategic activities."

These activities included such things as prayer, rest, reflection, storytelling, and other events conducted alone, in couples, or in small groups.

"We had time for these things. We enjoyed that time. It was an essential part of our lives that helped us in the forming of our selves and our relationships," he says.

As a historian of technology, Fr. Staudenmaier is neither anti-light nor anti-technology, but part of an emerging discipline that urges people to question technological advancements and their outcomes as other than predestined inevitabilities.

"For example, what was it about the emergence of electric lights that encouraged us to think it wise to squeeze out our after-dusk human activity, de-legitimize it, and render it second class status? Why," he asks, "does our culture think things of the light are generally superior to things of the dark? Why is that a good application of the electric light bulb?"

When individuals view technological advancements as options, they position themselves as freethinkers, capable of weighing the strengths and weaknesses of a particular discovery or breakthrough and balancing its benefits with its pitfalls.

Fr. Staudenmaier's path to becoming a historian of technology began in 1967.

"I was fresh off the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where I lived and worked among the Lakota people. I was also in a deep depression. The Lakota culture was fragmented and irrevocably altered by western European expansion. Life on the reservation can be terribly rough - the suffering, the drinking, the shocking incidence of suicide and sudden death and despair. The despair just knocked me over," he says.

After leaving Pine Ridge, he went on retreat outside St. Louis.

"Outside my window I could see machinery gobbling up a cornfield to turn it into a development of tract houses for workers at a McDonnell Douglas factory. The factory was part of the Vietnam War military-industrial complex. The image exacerbated my depression. The culture I had returned to made me want to vomit," he says.

"But I heard Jesus in my prayers and his message was clear: 'I do not hate this culture. I am devoted to this culture every bit as much as the Lakota culture you've just been immersed in for a time.'" The message, short on comfort and high on personal challenge, led Fr. Staudenmaier to a belief that one should not criticize something he or she cannot love.

Theologically, any part of reality is worthy of affection. And so I worked at that and continued in the belief that any culture is continually evolving and continually needs conversion. If the culture needs conversion, it makes sense then to ask, what are its graces and what are its temptations? Further, since all segments of a culture are made up of individuals, everything and everyone need conversion. From the scientist to the preacher, nothing or no one is above that rule," he says.

As a historian of technology, who also happens to be a priest, Fr. Staudenmaier preaches a balance between what is professed to be human progress and our unending desire to love the one true God.

"It is a very powerful notion that says there are no gods, but only one true God," he says. "I could argue that an unquestioning love of what we accept as progress is a form of idolatry, under which we have come to revere a god with a dual personality. We call the god Science and Technology."

Such a deity, he says, was unwittingly depicted in a sculpture at the 1933 Chicago International Exposition. Two life-size figures, one male and one female, faced forward with arms uplifted. Both were dwarfed by the massive figure of an enormous robot.

"The sculpture's iconographic message was further reinforced by the exposition's motto: Science finds; industry applies; man conforms." In this context, Fr. Staudenmaier explains, industry comprises technology and business. "Together, sculpture and motto advanced the assumption that there is such a thing as Science and Technology, in the singular with a capital S and a capital T, and that it is some sort of trans-historical meta-force that moves of its own momentum."

A similar notion, he says, is conveyed in the film version of The Wizard of Oz with the image of an omniscient, all-powerful wizard projected on a towering wall. As Toto pulls aside a curtain revealing the revered Wizard as fraud, the Wizard urges: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." It becomes clear to those in search of courage, a heart, a brain, and a trip back to Kansas that they had best ignore that advice.

'I could argue that an unquestioning love of what we accept as progress is a form of idolatry, under which we have come to revere a god with a dual personality. We call the god Science and Technology.' - Fr. John Staudenmaier, SJ 

"As inhabitants of the western world on the cusp of a new millennium, we are not unlike those travelers. We cannot entrust our lives to some mysterious, non-existent force," Staudenmaier says. "Rather, we need to explore our options and question contradictions such as why on one hand we encourage creativity and individual achievement, and on the other continually create systems that demand conformity."

Fr. Staudenmaier repeats the exposition motto as question: "Science finds? Industry applies? Man conforms? I would say not. Scientists are very mortal and very imperfect human beings who work at finding things out. People who work in matters technological create helpful artifacts, according to somebody's definition of helpful. Individuals choose to support or oppose specific activities of the scientists and the technologists based on the merit of each activity. The public debate is worthwhile.

"As individuals, we each own a very small, but very real amount of influence in the process. Finding a way to exercise that influence is hard work. It's hard to imagine, and it's harder still to do, which returns us to the concept of the Holy Dark and the process of reclaiming it.

"We begin on a personal level taking time at the end of the day with our families, friends, and loved ones. We set aside a small segment of additional time for reflective prayer."

That is the first small step each individual can take in discerning things that are benevolent and beneficial to our universal existence, and those things potentially malevolent and detrimental. In time, in small steps, the harder work gets done.

"In the Holy Dark, immersed in our inner self and in touch with the Holy Spirit, we can begin to listen to how Christ directs each of us to help build a better world."

Read Fr. Staudenmaier's article, Three ways to make time for the Holy Dark.

Phil Nero is Communications Director for the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and editor of Jesuit Journey. Previously, he was a metro reporter for the Milwaukee Journal for seven years after working on a number of newspapers in New York State.

Reprinted by permission from http://www.jesuitswisprov.org/jesuit_journeys/1999Summer/holydark.html

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