The Religion of Technophilia

Article by Свѣт

Photo by Stanislav Traykov

“He believed in science as he believed in God — unreasoningly.”

—Ivan Vazov, Under the Yoke[1]

A new faith is in its infancy — one that exalts technological progress above all else. But to understand this pseudo-religion, it would help to first take a look at traditional religion and its place in the present industrial society.

It’s no secret that Christianity is on a slow decline in the Western world. Christian affiliation in the USA has gone down from 91% in 1976 to 64% in 2022;[2] around one fourth of people in the EU are atheist, agnostic or otherwise non-believers;[3] and in the UK, atheism overtook Christianity more than a decade ago.[4] A similar trend can be seen in the Muslim world: in several countries, Islam is gradually giving out to atheism.[5] (For pragmatic reasons, this article will focus on Christianity.) Technology plays a key role in this process, as detailed by Kaczynski in his Letter to J. N., provided in Technological Slavery.[6] An inevitable outcome of “progress” is that the techno-industrial system takes charge of more and more matters that used to be determined by religion. These include moral values, societal norms, traditions, laws, lifestyles, so on and so forth. Each and every one of these questions were formerly at least somewhat influenced by religion, but they are now all thoroughly secularized. Take Sabbath, for example. In early Christianity, Sabbath was the part of the week dedicated to rest and worship. Sabbath still exists in the form of the weekend, but it has completely lost its religious meaning: most businesses stay open and few people pray, let alone attend mass every Sunday. Even more devout Christians often find themselves too busy (or too tired) for it. (The technological system works in such a way that it seeks to strain people to the utmost threshold, right before they start to rebel.) Scientific findings put the Biblical worldview under question; many atheists point to science as a factor in their irreligiosity. Furthermore, many elements of traditional religion come into conflict with the values of the industrial system. Traditional religion by and large promotes self-restraint as a virtue — contrary to the consumerist culture of capitalist society. None of this is some kind of unfortunate accident: it is instead an unavoidable consequence of technology’s intrusion into every aspect of human life.

To fill the void left by the absence of religion, a new faith is emerging: technianity. (Technianity is Kaczynski’s term for the belief system of extreme technophiles — “techies”.) This phenomenon may sound too absurd to be true, but truth is oftentimes stranger than fiction. One example of technianity is the Church of Perpetual Life — a transhumanist cult that has set its sights on achieving immortality through technology. In their own words, “...we believe that future technology will conquer disease, aging, and death itself. While this technology may not be currently available, the impressive history of human problem solving and technological advancement gives us faith in its inevitability.”[7] What we’re talking about here is by no means a niche, fringe ideology. It’s the ideology of the technocratic elite. To quote Steve Jobs, “We're here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”[8] This is a sentiment which countless other corporate overlords would agree with — technianity is thus far more influential than most people would be led to believe.

But what exactly is technianity? To call back to Kaczynski’s words in Anti-Tech Revolution: technianity is a pseudo-religion (rather than an institutional one) since it lacks an official doctrine. However, technianity mirrors Christianity in many ways: whereas Christians await the Kingdom of God following Judgment Day, techies expect the coming of a techno-utopia akin to Brave New World, with some conceiving of a particular rapture called “the Singularity”.[9] Both Christianity and technianity promise eternal life in the future utopia — either through divine blessing or technological power. There do exist crucial differences between the two: for one — unlike organized religion — technianity doesn’t have to come with any moral lessons (aside from one very general moral precept, as we will see). This is only natural, considering that the purpose of morality is (in many or most cases) to adapt societies to their environment. Since modern technology can swiftly change that environment, any “set in stone” moral commandments risk clashing with the ever-changing reality of industrial society. (As it happens with traditional religion.) It follows that technianity can only afford to take a hard stance on one moral lesson: that technological progress does more good than harm.

For all of the foregoing reasons, technianity has the workings of a millenarian cult. (Millenarianism is the belief in a future radical transformation of society.) Historically, cults of this kind usually arise at times of trouble — which suggests that quasi-religious technological myths primarily stem from deep anxieties about the future, rather than any real confidence in technology. In other words, the motivations behind technianity are largely emotional, not rational.

One of these underlying emotional factors is the sense of belonging from taking part in technianity. This feeling has been capitalized upon by countless governments, corporations, armies, revolutions, cults, and organizations in general. People simply love being a functioning part of a group. (Undoubtedly this has much to do with humans’ need to be part of a tribe; but since the system has done so much to gut small-scale communities like the tribe, the village, or even just the family, people are forced to turn to alternative — real or imaginary — communities.) Herd mentality only adds fuel to the fire: someone joins a community, becomes emotionally dependent on it, then begins to take the word of the community as gospel (he or she would feel excluded otherwise). Hence why technianity’s myths and values are more consistent than one might expect. For instance: many techies strongly identify with a collective humanity, or at least the idea of it. (The aforementioned Church of Perpetual Life describes immortality as the “Common Task of Humanity”.) Mankind has always been divided into countless competing systems (clans, nations, companies, etc.) in a never-ending game of natural selection — and there’s no reason to believe that will change anytime soon. It should thus be obvious that this cosmopolitan concept of a united humanity is a false one — or at the very least, foolishly naïve. But truthfulness is the least of technianity’s concerns, as the following paragraphs will attempt to prove.

Another factor at play is the inherent drive for hope. For the sake of one’s mental well-being, everyone needs a way to deal with the struggles of life. And in both industrial and preindustrial societies, some things will always stay out of the control of the individual. Hope — the belief that things will get better — is what helps people cope when there’s nothing they can do. In the past, people largely fulfilled their drive for hope through their faith in God; but with the decline of religion, some are turning to faith in technology. Just as Christians can rest easy believing the Kingdom of God will one day come, techies get their sense of optimism from knowing the techno-utopia will one day come and somehow make everyone free, happy and equal. Nothing about that is realistic, but it’s not meant to be — it’s meant to fulfill the techies’ emotional needs. Look at the Solarpunk movement: their entire identity is based on being optimistic, feelgood, wholesome “rebels”; they may present themselves as realists, but they do not have any practical plan for how to bring about their utopia.

Space colonization is another self-congratulatory prophecy of technianity. The fact of the matter is that none of us will live to see large-scale, life-changing colonization of space. Why then does it remain such a popular topic of discussion among techies? Likely because it is a point of pride for them. Look at it from their perspective: space colonization is a lavish display of mankind’s technological prowess. It paints a pretty picture of a dominant, expansive human civilization. It plays into the “patriotism” techies have for humanity: it is the manifest destiny of technianity. For the techies, technianity is a fix of hope, the opium to distract them from the psychological suffering of industrial society. It also serves as a flimsy psychological justification for that suffering — the rationale being that “while my life is devoid of any real fulfillment or freedom, I’m helping to build this great future where everything will be alright!”. Needless to say, close to none of us are making much of a difference, given the nature of the techno-industrial system. Technophiles prefer to overlook this fact.

Every religion presents a dichotomy between good and evil. In technianity this conflict lies between the “good” industrial society against the “evil” primitive society. As techies see it, history is a gradual progression from the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short life of primitive man to the near flawless life of civilized man. In support of this worldview, technophiles have internalized a great amount of myths about preindustrial life — “everyone died before 30 back then”, “one cut and you’re done for”, “they were all, sick, dying or dead”, so on and so forth. (For the sake of brevity, these untruths won’t be debunked in this article. Kaczynski spends much of Technological Slavery on this.) It can be argued that these prejudices are indicative of the techies’ phobia of wilderness: it is by no means a stretch to say they look down upon wild nature. Some techies seem to even equate wilderness to death. They try to argue such a life is not even worth living — usually for the lack of modern conveniences, be it A/C, TV, vaccines or something else. Techies are the kind of people who value comfort over freedom, hence their attachment and reverence towards technology. Few will outright scorn nature, but it’s self-evident that technophiles are more than willing to sacrifice nature for their goals. If there is to be one central dogma of technianity, it would have to be anthropocentrism: humanity above nature, humanity above all. (Of course, the techies’ view of humanity is heavily skewed through their technophilic lens.)

Lastly, there is an important distinction to be made between the moderate (“passive”) technophiles and extreme (“active”) technophiles (techies). The former only ambivalently coexists with technology — much unlike the latter, who have been the focus of this article. (Needless to say, most people belong to that first group.) And though the active techies are in the numerical minority, their disproportionate political power means they hold great influence over the character and tone of technianity at large. What can be said is that despite the fact technianity remains a vague concept, it represents real negative tendencies in modern society; namely, the coping mechanism that is the growing reverence of technology spurred by the decline of traditional religion. Technianity is just one of many symptoms of the societal ills brought upon us by technological progress.

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NOTES:

[1] Vazov, Ivan, Under the Yoke: A a novel about the life of the Bulgarian people on the eve of the Liberation, 1876, Borina Publishing House, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2004, p. 18.

[2] Daniel Silliman, "Christian Decline is ‘Inexorable’ as More US Adults Shed Religion, Pew Study Finds,"Christianity Today, September 13, 2022, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/september/christian-decline-inexorable-nones-rise-pew-study.html.

[3] European Commission, "Deliverable Report," Webgate (European Commission), accessed February 26, 2025, https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/ebsm/api/public/deliverable/download?doc=true&deliverableId=76996.

[4] Statista, "Christian Identity in the UK," Statista, accessed February 26, 2025, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1075336/christian-identity-in-the-uk/.

[5] Arab Barometer, "Arabs Are Losing Faith in Religious Parties and Leaders," Arab Barometer, December 2019, https://www.arabbarometer.org/2019/12/arabs-are-losing-faith-in-religious-parties-and-leaders/.

[6] Kaczynski, Theodore John, Technological Slavery, 2008. Letter to J.N., Dated April 29, 2001. Page 383.

[7] Church of Perpetual Life, "About," Church of Perpetual Life, accessed February 26, 2025, https://churchofperpetuallife.org/about/.

[8] Quote by Walter Isaacson in Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 2011, Simon & Schuster, p. 95.

[9] “The Singularity” is a theoretical ‘point of no return’ in the future when technological progress becomes so rapid that it finally changes humanity and its society irreversibly. Most contemporary interpretations of the concept center around artificial intelligence.

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