Jacques Ellul says that technology
has “destroyed everything which people have ever considered sacred. This is the
horror of our civilization. What is so awful.”
Technology
has replaced, taken the place, of the sacred. People have accepted technology as
something sacred.
That is why,
if during a demonstration a car is set on fire, people are shocked. Because a
sacred object is destroyed.
Human
happiness has its price. We must always ask ourselves what price will we have to pay for something. Traditional
societies always asked themselves this question: How will our decisions affect
the 7th generation from now.
If we disturb
the order of things, what will we have to pay?
Wisdom does
not come from intellectual reflection. It is achieved in a long process of transfer
from generation to generation, from our elders. Received wisdom is an
accumulation of experience in direct relations with the natural social climate.
Nature served
as an example for us. We must now divest ourselves from all that. For in a
technological society, traditional human wisdom is irrelevant. It is nonsense.
Technology requires
us to live faster and faster, ever more quickly.
Inner reflection
is replaced by reflex. In the natural society reflection means that after
having undergone an experience, we thought about that experience. In the case
of reflex there is no time for thought, we know immediately from conditioning what
must be done in a given situation.
Technology will
not permit us to think about things. We must react quickly to the flow of
changes.
People must
adapt to change.
Technology
will not tolerate any judgment being passed on it.
City dwellers
live in a completely dead environment, consisting of concrete, brick, cement,
glass, steel, and so on. People cannot be happy in such an environment. So they
suffer psychological problems. Mainly as a result of their social climate, but
also as a result of the speed at which they are forced to live.
Human beings
evolved to live in nature. And they suffer from this loss of nature.
They then turn
to technology to relieve their suffering, medication, diversion, amusement,
relief, hatred, as compensation – instead of confronting the root of their
suffering.
The
technological era is an era of media and loneliness. That is a very important fact.
We can see this so clearly in the young. Students shoot up their schools and
commit mass murder, and we are perplexed and ask ourselves how this could be. They
have everything, and yet they rebel, go berserk. They consume technology and spectacular
media, and yet they rebel.
But, if people
lose their motive for living two things can happen. It only seldom happens that
they accept that fact. In that case, they develop suicidal or murderous tendencies.
Usually, they
just try to find refuge in diversion, or they become depressed and begin taking
medicines.
If some people
become aware of their situation they react to it as usually happens in western societies.
They become depressed and discouraged. So they just don’t think about their situation
and carry on. They drive faster and faster, never mid where, as long as it is
fast.
Because of
our technology, we now have a world in which the situation of mankind has
totally changed. Mankind is now prepared to give up their human independence in
exchange for a certain security. The human being is becoming “post human”
as one is changed internally,
manipulated by media.
We who resist technology are
accused of being pessimistic luddites because we want to awaken people. It is
better to let them sleep peacefully, and dream of Disneyland.
But freedom
begins when we become conscious.
