xt702v2cc47t https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt702v2cc47t/data/mets.xml  Thomas Merton 1967 This letter is from collection 75m28 Thomas Merton papers. archival material 75m28 English  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Thomas Merton correspondence Lent Letter from Thomas Merton, 1967 text Lent Letter from Thomas Merton, 1967 1967 1967 2023 true xt702v2cc47t section xt702v2cc47t Abbey of Gethsemani
Trappist, Ky
hOOTB

Lent 67
Dear Friends

The last mimeographed letter is running out and there are still more than
four weeks to go kefore Easter. And in any case I write this on the eve of going
into the hospital for a miner operation (bursitis on the elbow) which may make
typing difficult for a while. So here goes with another one, to fill the gap.

We have had some cold weather but nothing like the blizzards up north around
Chicago recentl . In front of my place, crocuses came up on Ash Wednesday and have
persisted since, even through snow and low temperatures. They are still there.
(From the bulbs Eileen Curns sent last year.) Speaking of Eileen, who was a papal
volunteer in Brazil, I got a letter from a Holy Cross Brother in Brazil taking me
to task, as many critics have done, for what seems to be a negative attitude on
technology in anjecturcs. It might be well to try to dot the i‘s and cross the
t's on this point. Am I ”against technology”?

vaiousl I am not maintaining that we ought to get rid of matches and go back
to making fires by rubbing sticks together (thought of this yesterday when burning
brush piles, lighting matches in the wind). Nor am I maintaining that modern trans~
portation, medicine, methods of production and so on are ”bad". I am glad to have
a gas heater this winter, since I can't cut weed. Yet I am not saying I am a better
human being this winter, when I have more ”leisure", than I was last winter when I
did a lot of chopping. Nothing wrong with chopping either. What I question is the
universal myth that technology infallibly makes everything in everyway better for
everybody. It does not.

Modern medicine is certainly a good thing. Thank God for it. Thank God for
the fact that penicillin saves thousands of lives, But let‘s also face the fact -
that penicillin saves lives frr people whom srciety then allows to starve because
it is not set up t' feed them, If it used its techn lrgical resources well, society
certainly could feed them. In fact it doesn't. Technology comes into a "backward
country” with an industrial setup that works fine in an advanced country ~~and de—
pends on financial support from an advanced country, and brings profits blck to the
advanced country. It may simply dislocats the "backward country" completedy. Today
twelve percent of the world‘s population, repeat twelve percent live in the appall—
ing shanty towns and poblaciones that are seen in the outskirts of South American,
African, and Asian cities. What is technology doing for these people? It is not
creating work for them, but is developing more and more labor saving methods of
production.because technology in our society is not in the service of people but
in the service of profit. What I am criticizing then is the myth that this kind
of ”labor—saving” technology will turn the world into a paradise. It will not.
Look what technology is doing to Viet Namlil

0n the other hand, I am quite willing to admit that the resources are there and
that things could be quite other than they are. Technology could indeed make a much
better world for millions of human beings. It not only can do this, but it must do
it. We have an absolute obligation to use the means at our disposal to keep people
from living in utter misery and dying like flies. Note: there has never been such
abject misery on earth as that which our technological society has produced along
with the fantastic plenty for very few. What I am ”against" then is a complacent
and naive progressivism which pays no attention to anything but the fact that won—
derful things can be and are done with machinery and with electronics. Even more

 

 2

wonderful things might be done. But on our present setup, the chances of them
getting done are not as good as these people seem to think.

We face anutterly self—defeating and even absurd situation. A critic took
me to task for saying in the book that "the realm of politices is the realm of
waste." It is and it always has been. When a human question becomes a "political
issueg unfortunately the human problem gets shOVed into the background, human hopes
are derided and ignored, money passes from hand to hand and a lot of noise is made
in the press, and the human problem may or may not even be touched. Witness John—
son's great ”war on poverty". It is a sheer insult to the people living in our
Eastern Kentucky Mbuntains. All the attention and money are going not to help them
but to exterminate innocent non—combatants in Viet Nam and to enrich the big cor»
porations that are making higher profits now than they ever did before.

In our technological world we have wonderful methods for keeping people alive
and wonderful methods for killing them off, and they both go together. 'We rush in
and save lives from tropical diseases, then we come along with napalm and burn up
the people we have saved. The net result is more murder, more suffering, more in-
humanity. This I know is a caricature, but is it that far from the truth?

What is my answer? I don't have one, except to suggest that technology could
be used entirely differently. But the only way it ever will be is to get it free
from this inescapable hang-up with profit or power, so that it will be used for
people and not for money and politics. The essential message of an encyclical like
Mater ct Magistra or the Council Constitution Gaudium et spgg adds up to this: tech-
nology has given us the means to alleviate human misery, but the profit system makes
it practically impossible to use the means effectively. The myth of technology (as
distinct from the reality)is myth that serves the religion of profit vs people. He
who swallows the myth is serving that religion.

Sorry for this long tirade, but I thought it was worth while to make this point
clear. Obviously Ihave no intention whatever of turning the clock back to the
Middle Ages, though there are people around who want to do that too.

And so we turn our eyes to the great feast of Christian hope: the Resurrection.
Too often the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord have been used in the past to
canonize earthly injustice and despair: the old business of saying ”Yes, you are
getting a dirty deal, but just offer it up and you will be happy in heaven”. The
real root of Christian hope is the presence of the Risen Lord among us and in us
by His Spirit which is the Spirit and power of love. The power of the Resurrection
is the power of love that is stronger than death and evil, and its promise is the
promise that the power of this love is ours if we freely accept it. To accept it
is not just a matter of making a wish, but of entire and total commitment to the
Law of Christ which is the Law of Love. Let us realize this, and believe it, and
pray for one another. Let us be one in this love, and seek to make all men one in
it, even here on earth. And if technology helps to express the creative power of
love, then all the better: it will give glory to God and have its own place in the
Kingdom of God on earth. But technology by itself will never establish that King—
dom.

My love to all of you, in Christ: