Romano Guardini wrote The Letters from Lake Como in order to confront the dominance of technology. This book comprises of a series of letters which he wrote while reflecting upon the Como landscape in Italy. His premise is that technology “has become a destiny that subjugates its human creators as much as their creations” (xiv). He offers a way forward by suggesting that “we must recover a sense of the sacred before the sacred name can be heard again” (xv).
Guardini begins with the question of how machines are shaping culture, nature, and humanity. Certainly there is a problem of culture since we have never had a relationship with nature in its untouched form. Yet consider the example of a boat that requires us to be aware of the natural elements for its operation. Guardini asks us to compare this with a steamer in which nature no longer has power over it. This is the artificiality of existence that technology brings.
The cost of this mastery over nature is the abstraction of our world where everything becomes concepts and formulas. The resulting attitude becomes one of consciousness and awareness of everything. This is seemingly a good thing, yet Guardini proposes that it is not. For “we cannot perform an intellectual act and at the same time be aware of it” (31). If we try to achieve awareness of all that we do, it requires constant interruption between our action and knowledge. “Thus all of life bears the distinctive character of what is interrupted, broken” (31).
The possessive quest for knowledge in this new culture has become conceptual and formulaic. Thus, “on the basis of a known formula, materials and forces are put into the required condition: machines” (46). This demonstrates a dissolution of the organic. Whereas culture in the past was natural and creative, there is now a mechanical desire. “It’s starting point is the isolated, rationally understood power of nature, which works through the machine” (72).
Guardini asks the following urgent question: “in all that is taking place, is a life supported by human nature and fully human work possible?” (78) Unfortunately the answer to this question must be no. However, there is a way forward in which “technical events and unleashed forces can be mastered only by a new human attitude that is a match for them” (80). In this way we should not oppose what is new, preserve what is old, and build a new world void of any cultural damage. Instead, we transform what is coming to be by saying “yes to it and yet with incorruptible hearts remain aware of all that is destructive and nonhuman in it” (81). Thus, we do not need less technology but more. We need more mature, more intellectually designed, more responsible technology. This is only possible “if living people first make their influence felt in the sphere of objective nature, if they relate this nature to themselves and in this way create a “world” again” (83).
Guardini concludes his book by address the process of cultural development and how it relates to “the things and energies of nature to use in tools, contrivances, and machines” (97). He expresses a positive concern about whether the process of technology will really realize its great claims. However, there are serious problems that affect the basis of our existence in the use of machines. Using machines, we attain power with a freezing of emotions in order to become more objective.
Evaluation
Guardini has written a nuanced reflection of technology and humanity in his series of Letters from Como. It is interesting to note that he does not immediately dive into the issue of technology in his letters. Instead, he traces the contours of humanity with questions about the changing nature of our existence, adopting abstraction, developing consciousness, realization of survey, mastery of knowledge, normalization of the masses, and the dissolution of the organic.
His particular questions for Christians are insightful. Since the technological worldview is where the machine is the symbol of fulfilled culture, there is a loss in religious motivation. Thus, we should think through the technological process particularly through the issue of religion. Perhaps we may see that “the center of a faith approach must be found more profoundly than before in what is truly personal, in the venture and fidelity of decision” (111). In spite of his concerns regarding technology, he expresses a positive hope for the future and recommends the readers to think about the urgent tasks of technology. This particular task of reconciling the technologizing of culture with a renewal in Christian religious existence is especially needed and required for such a time as this.
