Book Review | Case For More Christ, Less Tech

J.D. Vance received communion and officially became a Roman Catholic in August 2019. This book is an account of that transformation. Another bildungsroman-cum-memoir, if you will, after Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 bestseller.

It is also a strong argument for the supremacy of Christian civilisational values which, as per his understanding, lie at the heart of the rules-based world order. These are love, mercy, beauty, community and grace. As compared to, and distinct from, the practices of personal study and intellectual truth-seeking and freedom of thought in the Hindu cultural tradition. Which are commendable for the individual but do not provide a society glue and anchorage.

J.D. Vance counts J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas among his intellectual influences. This strong philosophical grounding notwithstanding, he keeps skirting obvious conclusions whenever they are uncomfortable. For a good part of the book, Vance expatiates on the idea of God. To prove the existence of whom he dwells at length on the argument that ‘God Is Not Great’, the title of a 2007 book by Christopher Hitchens, trying to refute that with tenuous explanations instead of addressing, ‘Is God There?’, the real question. He also cites his own belief in miracles which strikes one as subjective at worst and sentimental at best. And he actually favours the Christian teaching to fear God and the punishment of God. Does that betray a tendency to fawn over authority and worship the master? Anybody's guess.

Vance does admit elsewhere that the core of his faith rests on rituals and emotions rather than the intellect and it is actually the stronger argument for his devoutness or “return to faith”. He felt called upon to honour his working-class roots and his people. His departure to atheism was a result of “elitist pressure”, he writes, and he frames his experience eloquently as a clash between the real and the refined, the trustworthy and the selfish, ‘woke’, upper classes and inner circles. But was this the only way? Unlike Hinduism, Christianity does not accommodate atheist philosophy, but even as a thought leader he could still have struck his own intellectual path.

In the 1990s, Vance informs us, Christian conservatives fused with the Republican Party. Vance’s family, working class Union Democrats, did the same at their church’s behest. What is remarkable here is the commonality of this factor of devoutness between the Indian and the American working classes which lead them to embrace right-wing authoritarian propaganda. Although Vance presents a spirited rebuttal citing Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum which argued for labour unions and living wages as far back as in 1891. The rest of the book can be read as an interesting critique of late-stage capitalism. Referencing Peter Thiel’s speech on hypercompetitive workaholism and technological stagnation of society despite the fact that most of the jobs today are not about saving the world but are actually harmful to the planet, he exhorts his readers to put family over GDP in the immediate term. Even so, his arguments are flimsy sometimes (for example, he writes that world over societies with high fertility rates take more risks and have higher productivity and, again, that labour unions began declining from the 1950s due to immigration hurting the social fabric, forgetting to mention McCarthyism). But he writes with passion and elegance and humour.

What we get is a compelling manifesto for Christianity and a less tech-driven world. Its logical gaps are plainly visible and adopting a parallel to its mindset could be disastrous for societies like India that have no safeguard against the hijack of civil liberties by the family and by the state. Because, liberalism and new, secular traditions aside, Vance's philosophy, too, has none.

Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith

By J.D. Vance

HarperCollins

pp. 295; Rs 799/-