Dehumanization: The Cost of Progress (part 1)

Jacques Ellul, who I quoted last week, has helped give me more insight and language for the reality of the powers at work in society that are far beyond our ability to control apart from Jesus. His was truly a prophetic voice. (For any who may want to know more about Ellul, this link gives a short biography on his life: http://www.ellul.org/bio_e1.html)

In the foreword to Ellul's book, The Technological Society, Robert Merton says this of Ellul's insights:
"By technique…he means far more than machine technology. Technique refers to any complex of standardized means for attaining a predetermined result...The Technical Man is fascinated by results, by the immediate consequences of setting standardized devices into motion...

"Ours is a progressively technical civilization: by that Ellul means that the ever-expanding and irreversible rule of technology is extended to all domains of life. It is a civilization committed to the quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends. Indeed, technique transforms ends into means. What was once prized in its own right now becomes worthwhile only if it helps achieve something else.

"Not understanding what the role of technique is doing to him and his world, modern man is beset by anxiety and a feeling of insecurity. He tries to adapt to changes he cannot comprehend.

"In Ellul's conception, then, life is not happy in a civilization dominated by technique...every part of a technical civilization responds to the social needs generated by technique itself. Progress then consists in progressive dehumanization – a busy, pointless, and, in the end, suicidal submission  to technique."

Ellul's works were written in French and translated into English; at the start of this book, the translator, John Wilkinson, says this: "To him (Ellul), to bear witness to the fact of the technological society is the most revolutionary of all possible acts...His concept of the duty of a Christian, who stands uniquely (is 'present') at the point of intersection of this material world and the eternal world to come, is not to concoct ambiguous ethical schemes and programs of social action, but to testify to the truth of both worlds and thereby to affirm his freedom through the revolutionary nature of his religion..."

C.S. Lewis writes about the dehumanization of the human race as well in his work, The Abolition of Man. He says that which we have made eventually makes us: "Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man...We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on."

In the second and third parts of this, I'll address what this means (at least in part) for those of us who are in Christ.