The point of any technology or tool is the reduction of friction. Friction is more than the physical process by which an object encounters a force that slows its momentum. Friction is any force in our lives that slows us down, makes things more difficult, or provides resistance to our best efforts to move faster or more efficiently. We have fetishized the process of removing friction. The world has come to mirror the beliefs of capitalism, to believe than any barriers to movement and progress are bad, and that we must eliminate all frictions as quickly as we can, that we have a moral imperative to do so. Technology mirrors this drive. Technology no longer serves to make human life simply more fulfilling, but as something that can reduce all friction in our life, to maximize our leisure and our ease at every turn.

We need a return of friction to our lives. We need a reminder that slow, hard work is good for us, and may be a good in and of itself. Friction is a reminder that we are mortal, something we spend our lives trying to forget.

Romand Coles describes radical democracy as a process of doing and undoing. He envisions a political process that checks itself. This is a form of friction, over and against technocracy, bureaucracy, and the politics of the strong man who can fix it all for us. Democracy is messing, inefficient, halting. It achieves progress in starts and stops; sometimes, its two steps back for every three forward. But that friction is good, contrary to the thinking of many across the political spectrum today. Many are overly concerned with the outcomes of our political system, and less with the process of democracy for democracy’s sake. Radical democracy is a political process of constant self-criticism and undermining, not in favor of some particular outcome, but in order to ensure a turning of the soil, so that the voices at the bottom are consistently brought back to the top, to voice. This democratic friction ensures things don’t move so swiftly or efficiently that regular people get swept under the feet of Progress or Utopia.

This kind of democratic friction is also something that should be desirious for any Christian who cares about the society we live in. All systems of government and power – even democracy – are part of the Powers and Principalities Paul talks about. They are systems that have good intentions, yes, but are inherently systems that entrench sin, injustice, and violence, because of their roots in fallen human nature and the endeavors that nature pursues. Thus, any friction that slows down forward momentum and allows time for breathing, for the voices in the wilderness to cry out in the face of injustice and death, is a good and desirable thing. As Christians, we should be very careful to overly idenitfy our faith with the god of Progress, no matter how just that progress may look, because it has its origins in our limited human nature.

Additionally, any progress powered by the state is a progress being powered by violence, because the state is the only “legitimate” wielder of violence in our modern liberal order. Violence, in any and all of its forms, is antithetical to Christianity, and results achieved with the power of violence – whatever form that violence takes – should be viewed askance.

All of this is just a way of saying: lean into the friction, whether it be the friction of an older technology, or an inefficient process, or a check and balance in our politics. Friction is good.