SUBHUMANITY, TECHNIQUE AND THE MYTH OF PROGRESS

SUBHUMANITY, TECHNIQUE AND THE MYTH OF PROGRESS.

French philosopher, sociologist, lay Theologian and professor, Jacques Elull, in his book, ‘The Technological Society’, defines the word ‘Technique’ as, “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.”

The aim of Technique then is ultimate efficiency and everything else must be sacrificed to that end.

Regarding technology itself, he says that, when governed by the ideals dictated by the idea of ‘Technique’, instead of technology being subservient to humanity, "human beings have to adapt to it, and accept total change."

In the attempt to make machines that work as well or even ‘better’ than Man, there is also the inevitable coefficient that tends to scale the ‘Human’ down to the level of the ‘Machine’, by reducing all human conduct and culture down to the machines limited capacities.

Ellul's commitment to scrutinize technological development is expressed as such:

“What is at issue here is evaluating the danger of what might happen to our humanity in the present half-century, and distinguishing between what we want to keep and what we are ready to lose, between what we can welcome as legitimate human development and what we should reject with our last ounce of strength as dehumanization.

I cannot think that choices of this kind are unimportant.”

“Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.”

It is useless, he argues, to think that a distinction can be made between technique and its use, for techniques have specific social and psychological consequences independent of human desires.

What is lost in all of this, Elull and a number of other ‘perennialist philosophers’ such as Rene Guinon, Fritjof Schuon, Jacques Maritain and more recently, Andrew Rossi and James Cutsinger argue, is a sense of the Sacred, which, up until now, has always been an essential element of the Human Person.

‘Technique’ itself, they point out, has become a religion unto itself, along with the ‘Myth of Progress' which, setting aside the ideals of the past, presupposes and ascent towards some Inevitable, Manmade, Technological Utopia in the Future.

Central to this ‘Myth of Progress’ in our day and age is what has come to be known as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

The First Industrial Revolution was marked by a transition from hand production methods to machines through the use of steam power and water power. The period which this refers to was between 1760 and 1840 or thereabouts…

The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, is the period between 1871 and 1914 that resulted from installations of extensive railroad and telegraph networks, which allowed for faster transfer of people and ideas, as well as electricity.

The Third Industrial Revolution, also known as the Digital Electronics Revolution, occurred in the late Twentieth century and is marked by the advent of the computer and all that entails.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is expected to be marked by breakthroughs in emerging technologies in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the internet of things, the industrial internet of things, decentralised consensus, fifth-generation wireless technologies, 3D printing, and fully autonomous vehicles, among others.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been defined as technological developments in cyber-physical systems such as high capacity connectivity; new human-machine interaction modes such as touch interfaces and virtual reality systems; and improvements in transferring digital instructions to the physical world.

These, almost god-like powers and abilities promise to remake the world in our own image and likeness, and yet, subtly threaten to do just the opposite, namely to re-make ourselves into the image and likeness of the machines that we have become fully dependent upon, to subliminate that which is most ‘human’ in us.

Not to mention, the distinct possibility of ushering in a technological centralization that may result in the most complete tyranny ever imagined.

We are subtly conditioned to think along certain lines and have been intentionally been immersed in an onslaught of propaganda designed to sell us on the Myth of Progress.

Jacques Elull has correctly identified the goal of this incessant propaganda that we have been subjected to, especially in the Twentieth Century as such:

“The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief in us”

The alternative to this Technological Myth of Progress is a rebirth of the sense of the Sacred in ourselves and the realization that we are much more than ‘human/machines’, that we were created to be like God and to become gods in our own right.

The fact of the matter is that, the only kind of ‘progress’ that Technology has enabled us to accomplish, is in the ability to ‘get around' the consequences of the Fall of Man.

As for the fall itself, we have only continued to fall further away from what it means to be a Human Being as God originally intended for us.

We have become, in effect, a different species altogether, a form of ‘Subhumanity’ almost entirely ‘other' than what we were originally intended to be, to the extent that we can hardly even imagine what qualities our first-created parents possessed, nor the kind of Human Beings we are ultimately meant to become. The Utopian Myth of Progress in the end, turns out to be nothing more than an empty chimera which leads us further and further away from our own True Nature.

The Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ is not only the means of our redemption, but is meant to be an example of what each one of us is capable of and called to.

God became Man and took on everything that is common to all men, precisely so that we may have the opportunity to ‘take on’ that which is common to God.

Jesus is both, the means of our Salvation and an example of what that would look like:

"According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world..." (2 Peter 1:3-4)

"For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."(Romans 8:29)

We were created to be like God and nothing less will ever be able to fully satisfy us.