Reading Jacques Ellul

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 7^th 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.