The engineer and the prophet

Engineers build things. Prophets take things already built and say what's wrong with those things.

 

But here's where they differ. Engineers know that things they build need upgrading, and so they suggest engineering changes. Prophets point out how the engineering is failing, but they don't suggest using engineering to correct the situation. They tell people how they should change their behavior in order to allow the engineering to work better.

 

Here's an example. Abortion.

 

Most people see abortion as unfortunate, if not downright evil. I shared this statement, verified by numerous surveys, with a Democratic activist, and she reacted with hostility.

 

Democrats come close to saying that abortion is something to be desired. They propose an engineering solution to the issue: set up the laws so that abortions can be procured as easily as possible, even to the point where the government should support getting them.

 

I think this strategy is too optimistic about engineering. If "most people" see abortion as unfortunate, if not downright evil, adopting a position where the politics actively support it is a gift to Republicans. It allows them to demonize Democrats as baby killers.

 

"Prolife" defenders make a similar mistake. They think that an engineering solution will make abortion less desirable. They make abortion illegal and make anyone involved in procuring an abortion guilty of crime. They are correct in believing that most people see abortion as unfortunate, and maybe downright evil, but they have not taken seriously the practical results of trying to criminalize it. Their position is a gift to Democrats. It allows Democrats to demonize them as heartless fanatics.

 

Prophecy

 

Prophets are outside the system, and that means prophets ignore the engineering.

 

We have become so conditioned to seek engineering solutions to everything that we have tied ourselves up in laws and lawsuits. We see a problem and immediately pass a law to fix it. If we have not yet passed such a law, we can enforce our own version of the law by suing someone. We are drowning in laws and lawsuits.

 

Parallels between Abortion and Slavery

 

Prolife theorists have argued that moral appeal had not been enough to overturn the racist effects of slavery on our culture--it took changing the laws, the structures.  They point to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision which outlawed segregated schools as an example.

 

But it has been seventy years since Brown, and racism persists. We did make advances in parts of our country--many more people of color are doing better today than they would have if Brown had never been issued. But we have re-segregated ourselves by housing preferences, and there are many areas where racist behaviors persist. 

 

When I first read the prolife argument, it sounded appealing, because I am a sociologist, and we look for systemic solutions to systemic problems. But I reflected that there are huge differences between abortion and slavery. Slavery was an institution that shaped half the country's laws and institutions, with immense economic consequences. Abortion has an economic component--prolife activists demonize abortion providers, but abortion provision is a negligible part of our economy.

 

There is a reason why we became so optimistic about legal engineering. We observed how defenders of slavery and its Jim Crow replacements used laws to achieve bad ends. The engineering of slavery was so successful that only reverse engineering could free us. 

 

That lesson ignored the power of prophecy. Without prophets like Dr. Martin Luther King, political opposition to the engineering of Jim Crow could not have dismantled the evil engineering. What we now call the "civil rights movement" was prophetic enough to change the engineering.

 

Prolife activists have hoped that engineering the Roe v. Wade decision would reduce the number of people seeking abortions, but that does not seem to be happening. We need prophets who can acknowledge the tragedy that abortion often creates but approach people facing the decision to abort with gospel compassion rather than with threats of violent repression. 

 

Another example: climate change

 

The world is facing an unprecedented challenge caused by engineering gone wild. Our engineering is upsetting the balances of nature to the point where natural disasters are becoming more and more disruptive to the rest of our engineered world. As hurricanes, floods, and fires become more destructive, insurance will become so expensive that most people will not be able to afford it. 

 

The Biden administration attempted engineering solutions to deal with the problem: subsidize wind and solar production. But artificial intelligence requires so much electrical power that its demands are swallowing all the advances we are making in wind and solar. New gas-powered sources of electric power are being constructed to meet the new demand.  Auto manufacturers tell us that bigger and heavier cars are the preference of car buyers these days. Heavier cars consume more energy. We want fast food, and so multinational corporations cut down rainforests to feed cattle to provide that fast food.

 

We need prophets who will have the courage to say to the public: We have to stop expecting our every wish to be fulfilled by engineering magic. To put it in more moralistic terms: if we let every entrepreneur convince people that they need more and more of whatever the entrepreneurs is offering, we will destroy our human environment.

 

The Christian tradition of "mortification" could moderate these trends. Mortification means that you give up something you would like because you hope for a greater good. You could say, "I really would like my fast-food lunch, but for the sake of the greater good I will prepare my lunch at home and use an old-fashioned lunch bucket." Only prophets can motivate that kind of behavior.