Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 5 people come before machines and profits. Surely that’s a slogan that both social-justice progressives and traditional conservatives can make their own. This is the truth at the center­ piece of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’. Economists may mutter about what they call the Luddite fallacy, but the “people first” principle stands. Jesus, too, taught that the welfare of human beings is paramount, trumping both economic efficiency and religious precepts. We can’t mine his words in the Gospels for proof texts on the newest technologies. But we can take seriously his teaching on an old technology: money. The technology of money was as essential to the functioning of society in the first century as it is in the twenty-first. Jesus never prohibited his followers from using it. But he came uncomfortably close, describing money not as a mere tool but as a personified false god boasting its own Aramaic name: “No one can serve two masters. . . . You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Luke 16:13). The same either-or clarity will be ­ necessary as we hurtle toward an increasingly techno- logical future. Technological asceticism on its own won’t solve society-wide dilemmas, much less save our species from extinction. Its function is more basic: to help us maintain the spiritual independence needed to tackle these challenges. Like any other kind of asceticism, it requires regular practice. But the reward is worth having: the prize of staying human. Warm greetings, Peter Mommsen Editor When it comes to children, tech abstinence is hardly a fringe idea. Steve Jobs famously refused to give his kids tablets or smartphones; as Johann Christoph Arnold writes, the abundant benefits of a screen-free childhood are widely acknowledged (page 34). More ominously, evidence is mounting of the long- term damage caused by internet pornography. In the face of this insidious horror, deciding to keep one’s children offline is not a tough call. Yes, it’s easier said than done, and may require changes to lifestyle and spending patterns, switching schools, or even moving. But to a Christian parent, does any other value out- weigh the soul of a child? And life offline can be fun (pages 55 and 58). The joys of abstinence need not be restricted to new technologies, either. Forty years have passed since the advertising executive Jerry Mander provoked a national debate with his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, and all of his arguments remain as compelling as ever. Here’s to the day when having a TV in the family living room will be as disreputable as having a cigarette-butt- strewn ashtray is now. Voice such ideas, and sooner or later you’ll be called a Luddite. Rather than reject the label, then, perhaps we should rehabilitate it. The original Luddites of nineteenth-century England didn’t risk the gallows out of senti- mental technophobia. They were working-class weavers who rose in protest when a new invention, the frame loom, threatened their livelihoods and communities. While it’s true they smashed machinery, their real opponent was the greed of textile barons who stood to make a fortune by putting them out of work. In a society warped by technological consum- erism, a bracing dose of nonviolent Luddite rebellion might be just what we need. The Luddites’ message was straightforward: The Luddites’ message was straightforward: people come before machines and profits.