Getting Plain: the Second Luddite Congress

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As he took the podium, he was dressed in a sober black suit, a farmer’s straw hat, and—yes—John Lennon glasses. “Although Quaker Friends have historically been very active in issues ranging from abolition to the status of women, they have always done the opposite of the activist model,” he began with a sly smile. “Friends use the `technology’ of sitting, the `dialectic’ of waiting, and the `activist platform’ of listening. This is the country of the disembodied brain, and a Quaker-style meeting this morning may be able to help us come back to our bodies. So sit close together.”

Warm laughter greeted Scott’s words. There was something so intriguing about this middle-aged man with cherubic features and a flyaway peace beard devilishly baiting activists, New Agers, simplicity-craving yuppies, and the press in a strange mix of pop culture-speak and humble Christian piety. I knew he was a person deeply concerned with technology, not in the abstract, but how it directly affects his family. Every time we spoke on the phone, it seemed, he had just rid himself of another modern convenience that I considered indispensable: his television, his computer, his car. The day after the conference, I later learned, he even moved the telephone out to the barn, with his new horse and buggy.

After Scott finished talking, everyone sat quietly for the next two hours watching sleepy wasps bang against the tall windows of the meeting house, trying not to speak unless we were prompted to do so by something beyond our egos, and struggling to have faith in one another. Although some people did get up, on occasion, to voice their concerns about conflicts that had arisen the day before, the fact that no one was refuting anyone else, and that there were long stretches of contemplative silence, led me to see that this—not the speeches or the debates—was the reason we’d been brought together.

After that interlude, many participants began to drop their agendas and make practical suggestions for nonviolent resistance to technology: “Don’t buy anything, anything,” said one man, “unless you call up the company that made it and ask ‘What are the working conditions for the people who assembled this? How were natural resources used in its manufacture? How long will it last? And can I maintain it myself?’”

“Let’s get rid of streetlights,” piped up the Philadelphia man. “Stop signs are safer for a community because they force people to use their judgment; streetlights just encourage us to drive faster.”

“Young people should create a scene where it’s cool to be plain,” suggested an Urban Outfitters-clad teenager. “Punks already have their vegan scenes and their straight-edge scenes. How about an anti-technology scene?” Visions of “plaincore” bands—sans amplifiers—screeching Lutheran hymns in dingy clubs danced in my head.

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