/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14083959]

The Technological Society and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[Anonymous No.14083976]

Yeah. So what’s the best way to live with this fact?

[Anonymous No.14083987]

>>14083976
Buy some rural land, , build a small shack, live as free from the system as possible. Garden, read books, enjoy a comfy life on the outskirts of hell. :)

[Anonymous No.14083994]

>>14083959
Technology is based, hope you'll get killed by a bear when you go shit in the woods.

[Anonymous No.14084033]

>>14083994
Ah yes, the brainlet that groups a bow and internal combustion engine as the same under the simple definition of technology. A timeless classic.

[Anonymous No.14084098]

Ellul is probably the most based man to ever live - both by theory and by action.

I love his work, even Anarchy and Christianity is excellent

[Anonymous No.14084111]

>>14084033
ICE are god tier, especially diesel since you can power them with vegetable oil or kerosene if need be.

[Anonymous No.14084139]

for me it's kaczynski he is edgier therefore better

[Anonymous No.14084150]

>>14083959
>In sum
Of what? Where is this quote from?

[Anonymous No.14084175]

“Industrial labor likewise tends more and more to dispense with orders and personal contact. This was pushed to an extreme in the concentration camps, where men of different nations were mixed together so that they should have no contacts and yet be able to perform collective work. It was hasty and superficial work, to be sure, but a little more rigor could easily make this labor really productive (as seems to be the case in the Soviet Union). One cannot speak merely of isolation. These men work in teams, but there is no need for them to know or understand one another. They need only understand the technique involved and know in advance what their teammate will do. It is not necessary for the crew to understand one another in order to run an aircraft. The indicator panel controls the actions to be performed; and every crew member, submitting by necessity and conscience to the automatic indications, obeys for the safety of all. Each man's actions are dictated by the conditions of life and its preservation. This is clear in the case of flying an aircraft. But it is equally clear in every other situation involving technique—and this encompasses the most important areas of life. Men do not need to understand each other in order to carry out the most important endeavors of our times. Technique is of necessity, and as compensation, our universal language. It is the fruit of specialization. But this very specialization prevents mutual understanding. Everyone today has his own professional jargon, modes of thought, and peculiar perception of the world. There was a time when the distortion of overspecialization was the butt of jokes and a subject for vaudeville. Today the sharp knife of specialization has passed like a razor into the living flesh. It has cut the umbilical cord which linked men with each other and with nature. The man of today is no longer able to understand his neighbor because his profession is his whole life, and the technical specialization of this life has forced him to live in a closed universe. He no longer understands the vocabulary of the others. Nor does he comprehend the underlying motivations of the others. Yet technique, having ruptured the relations between man and man, proceeds to rebuild the bridge which links them. It bridges the specializations because it produces a new type of man always and everywhere like his duplicate, who develops along technical lines. He listens to himself and speaks to himself, but he obeys the slightest indications of the apparatus, confident that his neighbor will do the same. Technique has become the bond between men. By its agency they communicate, whatever their languages, beliefs, or race. It has become, for life or death, the universal language which compensates for all the deficiencies and separations it has itself produced. This is the major reason for the great impetus of technique toward the universal.”

[Anonymous No.14084187]

“In sum, I have no faith in a pure anarchist society, but I do believe in the possibility of creating a new social model. The only thing is that we now have to begin afresh. The unions, the labor halls, decentralization, the federative system - are all gone. The perverse use that has been made of them has destroyed them. The matter is all the more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary and electoral system and our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable. Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, and omnipresent. Our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any
confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority and social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state.” (Elull, Anarchy and Christianity, 22)

“This is the result of techniques. We cannot speak of a technocracy, for technicians are not formally in charge. Nevertheless, all the power of government derives from techniques, and behind the scenes technicians provide the inspiration and make things possible. There is no point here in discussing what everybody knows, namely, the growth of the state, of bureaucracy, of propaganda (disguised under the name of public information), of conformity, of an express policy of making us all producers and consumers, etc. To this development there is strictly no reply. No one even puts the questions. The churches have once again betrayed their mission. The parties play outdated games. It is in these circumstances that I regard anarchy as the only serious challenge, as the only means of achieving awareness, as the first active step.” (Elull, Anarchy and Christianity, 22)

"No God, no Master" and "I believe in God the Father Almighty" - these two convictions I hold in all sincerity. No one can be the master of others in the sense of being superior. No one can impose his or her will on others. I do not know God at all as supreme Master. I reject all human hierarchy. Jean-Paul Sartre finely expressed the unique value of every human being when he said that one human being, no matter who, is of equal worth to all others. Before Sartre, Jesus made no distinction between people. Those in power were upset by his attitude and wanted his death. They said to him: "You speak without worrying "about what will be, for you do not regard the position of persons" (Matthew 22:16). Human life transcends all the laws that try to organize society. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are full of stories of clashes between Jesus and the authorities because he violated the law out of
concern for individual lives.” (Elull, Anarchy and Christianity, 97)

[Anonymous No.14084192]

>>14084098
>even Anarchy and Christianity
>even

His entire philosophical project has its roots in his understanding of Christianity, I wouldn't sound so dismissive. Reading texts like Anarchy and Christianity makes things like the Technological Society take on a new meaning.

[Anonymous No.14084206]

>>14084192
Yes your very right. I mean't 'outside of his main seminal texts' i.e. Technological Society and its two follow books. Should've specified, but I think Christianity is a way to actively resist technique/technology.

(I just posted the quotes btw)

[Anonymous No.14084221]

“And the opinions of the scientists quoted by are not even on the level of Einstein or Oppenheimer. Their pomposities, in fact, do not rise to the level of the average. They are vague generalities inherited from the nineteenth century, and the fact that they represent the furthest limits of thought of our scientific worthies must be symptomatic of arrested development or of a mental block. Particularly disquieting is the gap between the enormous power they wield and their critical ability, which must be estimated as null. To wield power well entails a certain faculty of criticism, discrimination, judgment, and option. It is impossible to have confidence in men who apparently lack these faculties. Yet it is apparently our fate to be facing a ‘‘golden age” in the power of sorcerers who are totally blind to the meaning of the human adventure. When they speak of preserving the seed of outstanding men, whom, pray, do they mean to be the judges. It is clear, alas, that they propose to sit in judgment themselves. It is hardly likely that they will deem a Rimbaud or a Nietszche worthy of posterity. When they announce that they will conserve the genetic mutations which appear to them most favorable, and that they propose to modify the very germ cells in order to produce such and such traits; and when we consider the mediocrity of the scientists themselves outside the confines of their specialties, we can only shudder at the thought of what they will esteem most '‘favorable.’* None of our wise men ever pose the question of the end of all their marvels. The “wherefore’* is resolutely passed by. The response which would occur to our contemporaries is: for the sake of happiness. Unfortunately, there is no longer any question of that. One of our best-known specialists in diseases of the nervous system writes: “We will be able to modify man’s emotions, desires and thoughts, as we have already done in a rudimentary way with tranquillizers.’* It will be possible, says our specialist to produce a conviction or an impression of happiness without any real basis for it. Our man of the golden age, therefore, will be capable of “happiness5* amid the worst privations. Why, then, promise us extraordinary comforts, hygiene, knowledge, and nourishment if, by simply manipulating our nervous systems, we can be happy without them? The last meager motive we could possibly ascribe to the technical adventure thus vanishes into thin air through the very existence of technique itself. But what good is it to pose questions of motives? of Why? All that must be the work of some miserable intellectual who balks at technical progress. The attitude of the scientists, at any rate, is clear. Technique exists because it is technique. The golden age will be because it will be. Any other answer is superfluous

[Anonymous No.14084245]

>>14084206
Oh fair enough. Based quotes, and you're right, Christianity is a great way to resist because the belief system is inherently resistant to commodification and colonisation by technique.

[Anonymous No.14084348]

>>14084187

it just doesnt seem worth reading, he's not doing enough here

[Anonymous No.14084391]

>>14084348
Anarchy and Christianity is an addendum on his work in Technological Society, System and Bluff. These provide a more holistic understanding of technique/technology, but don't really offer a means of engagement or resistance with them, which was a criticism leveled by many, and I think this work is a response to that. It's also more personal since he was a devout Catholic

[Anonymous No.14084404]

>>14083976
Build hope, the Christian kind.

[Anonymous No.14084431]

>>14084245
Christianity and Technique. The East: passive, fatalist, contemptuous of life and action; the West: active, conquering, turning nature to profit. These contrasts, so dear to popular sociology, are said to result from a difference in religion: Buddhism and Islam on the one hand; on the other, Christianity, which is credited with having forged the practical soul of the West. These ideas are hardly beyond the level of the rote repetitions found even in the works of serious historians. It is not for me to examine religious doctrines in themselves or as absolute if unrealized dogma, but rather to interpret them sociologically. After all, I am not writing theology; I am writing history. And there is a world of difference between dogma and its sociological application. (I shall not touch upon the personal interpretation of religion, which concerns the relationship between the individual and God.) This being the case, it is obvious that certain statements call for modification. For example, the assertion that as a consequence of the teachings of Mohammed, the Islamic conquests of the seventh century are evidence of passivism. This might also be said of the determined Islamic resistance to Western encroachments during the last two centuries. We attribute to Buddhist indifferentism the
remarkable artistic, political, and military development in India from the second to the fifth century. In fact, however, these civilizations were little advanced technically, though they had developed in many other areas. Christianity in Russia, on the other hand, gave rise to a mystical civilization which was indifferent to material life and had no technical drive and no interest in economic exploitation. “Ah, yesl” is the reply. “But Christianity in Russia had Eastern overtones . . .” Here, then, indifference to technique would appear to be a question of temperament and not of religion. Another embarrassing fact: when in her decline Greece applied
herself to technical inquiry and the development of industry, she looked to the East for methods. And in the first century, when
Rome— the perfect example of the technical spirit in antiquity— took up industry, she too turned to the East for industrial techniques— the refining of silver and gold, glassmaking, the tempering of weapons, pottery, ship construction, and so on. All these techniques came to Rome from the East, either early, through the Etruscans, or much later, after the conquests. We are far indeed from being able to support this traditional cleavage between East and West. In fact, during classical antiquity it was the East which
possessed the concrete, inventive mind that grasps the truth and exploits it.

[Anonymous No.14084436]

>>14084245
>>14084431
The West is making a prodigious advance in technique at the present, and the West is traditionally Christian. Nor can it be maintained that Christianity is a negligible factor in that advance. However, there were several distinct historical periods in the West The West was officially Christian until the fourteenth century; thereafter, Christianity became controversial and was breached by other influences. What do we find, from a technical standpoint, in the so-called Christian era, the period from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries, the “sociological moment”? First, we observe the breakdown of Roman technique in every area— on the level of organization as well as in the construction of cities, in industry, and in transport from the fourth to the tenth centuries, in fact, there was a complete obliteration of technique, a condition so deplored that it became a focus of anti-Christian polemic, and rightly so. It was because the Christians held judicial and other technical activity in such contempt that they were considered the “enemies of the human race”— and not only because they opposed Caesar. The reproach of Celsus was not without truth. After the Christian triumph in Rome, there was not one great jurist left who could guarantee the life and the value of the Roman organization. Decadence? No
— complete disinterest in such activity. Saint Augustine devoted much of his De Civitate Dei to justifying the Christians in this respect, and to denying that their influence was detrimental. "They are good citizens," he proclaimed. That may have been so, but their focus of interest was nevertheless on something other than the state and practical activity. I shall show later on that the technical state of mind is one of the principal causes of technical progress. It is not a coincidence that Rome declined as Christianity triumphed. The Emperor Julian was certainly justified in accusing the Christians of ruining the industry of the Empire.

[Anonymous No.14084451]

[Anonymous No.14084472]

>>14084436
Based

[Anonymous No.14084564]

>>14084187
>Jean-Paul Sartre finely expressed the unique value of every human being when he said that one human being, no matter who, is of equal worth to all others.
Cringe

[Anonymous No.14084679]

>>14084564
Lol. GOT 'EM

[Anonymous No.14084801]

>>14084404
Ellul was educated at the universities of Bordeaux and Paris. In World War II, he was a leader in the French resistance.[3] For his efforts to save Jews he was awarded the title Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2001.[4] He was a layman in the Reformed Church of France and attained a high position within it as part of the National Council.[5]

Unlike a lot of French in the resistance he actually genuinely did something. But I was mistaken of him being Catholic - his views were much more complicated.

[Anonymous No.14084825]

The Ellul Society is a good resource for all things Ellul. https://ellul.org/

[Anonymous No.14084829]

>>14084451
Don't you have some innocent people to kill?

[Anonymous No.14084831]

>>14084801
Cathoshits are too retarded to come up with Ellul tier thoughts.

[Anonymous No.14084850]

Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes came much earlier (1965) and is more pertinent than Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (1988)

“To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; be is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his condition, of his society -- for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events. We already have mentioned man's inability to consider several facts or events simultaneously and to make a synthesis of them in order to face or to oppose them. One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. Moreover, there is a spontaneous defensive reaction in the individual against an excess of information and -- to the extent that he clings (unconsciously) to the unity of his own person -- against inconsistencies. The best defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing, man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he lives on the surface of events and makes today's events his life by obliterating yesterday's news, he refuses to see the contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented.

This situation makes the "current-events man" a ready target for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he follows all currents. He is unstable because he runs after what happened today; he relates to the event, and therefore cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist. No confrontation ever occurs between the event and the truth; no relationship ever exists between the event and the person. Real information never concerns such a person. What could be more striking, more distressing, more decisive than the splitting of the atom, apart from the bomb itself? And yet this great development is kept in the background, behind the fleeting and spectacular result of some catastrophe or sports event because that is the superficial news the average man wants.

[Anonymous No.14084865]

>>14084825
Was not aware of this. Thank you very much fren.

[Anonymous No.14084881]

>>14084451
>>14084829
Agreed. Don't pervert Ellul with this

[Anonymous No.14084888]

>>14084245
>the belief system is
>inherently resistent to commodification and colonisation
>by technique
progressively more stupid with each claim anon. how?

[Anonymous No.14084907]

>>14084245
Not "christianity", only catholicism and orthodoxy. Prostys literally gave us modern capitalism.

[Anonymous No.14084928]

>>14084907
>not god-tier Neo-orthodoxy

[Anonymous No.14084976]

>>14084907
>t. babbys first weber

[Anonymous No.14084984]

It seems as though dissatisfaction with life has increased dramatically, but how can we be so sure technology is the cause. Whenever people are dissatisfied with life they always want change or to go back to “the good old days.” I don’t necessarily disagree that living a simple life may be more rewarding, but please convince me that modern technology is the root of our societal woes.

[Anonymous No.14085007]

>>14084984
Ellul is not speaking about technology.

>Many critics have misunderstood Ellul’s diagnosis of the world’s social ills via “technique”, because they have wrongly perceived that he was attacking technology. This is understandable among English speaking readers and critics due to the mistranslation of his books. His most influential sociological book with the English title, The Technological Society, was originally entitled in French, Technique, the Stake of the Century, for example. Technique is not the same as technology; not in French, nor in English.

>Ellul’s issue was not with technological machines but with a society necessarily caught up in efficient methodological techniques. Technology, then, is but an expression and by-product of the underlying reliance on technique, on the proceduralization whereby everything is organized and managed to function most efficiently, and directed toward the most expedient end of the highest productivity. Ellul’s own comprehensive definition is found in the preface of The Technological Society: “Technique is the totality of methods, rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.”
>According to Ellul, technique necessarily came into play at the Fall of man into sin. But the place of technique began to change dramatically in the eighteenth (18th) century with the quest for efficient procedures to find the “one best means” in every human endeavor. By the nineteenth (19th) century the bourgeoisie recognized technique as the key to their material and commercial interests. The industrialized technical employment of technique became a monster in the urbanized and technological society of the twentieth (20th) century, “the stake of the century” as Ellul termed it. Technique became the defining force, the ultimate value, of a new social order in which efficiency was no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity. Technique became universally totalitarian in modern society as rationalistic proceduralism imposed an artificial value system of measuring and organizing everything quantitatively rather than qualitatively. Like cancer in a living organism, the systematization of technique pervades every cell of our modern technical and technological society. The subtle illusion of this invasive methodology of technique is that people view technology as the liberator of mankind, the operational instrument that sets them free from natural function. Quite the contrary, says Ellul, “technique enslaves people, while proffering them the mere illusion of freedom, all the while tyrannically conforming them to the demands of the technological society with its complex of artificial operational objectives.”

[Anonymous No.14085044]

>>14085007
Thank you for the clarification, this makes much more sense. Trying to increase efficiency to its maximum will inevitably reduce individuals to little more than cogs.

[Anonymous No.14085058]

>>14084888
Care to explain how what I said is stupid?

[Anonymous No.14085084]

>>14085044
In addition it will erode everything deemed unnecessary. Art, religion, humanities, eventually even science (in the science for the sake of science/curiosity sense).

[Anonymous No.14085442]

>>14084888
>>14084888
Commodification. A true christian realizes all he needs is christ and the only freedom he needs is the freedom to worship christ, and all other freedoms will arise after that. I will concede I do not know why he brough colonilization into the mix, it seems a product of a technical society, and technical society is inherantly un-christian due to its immense vanity and pride. Read revelation. Babylon fell. Babylon will fall again. Rome was another Babylon. Rome fell. America tries to imitate the greeks and romans in most facets of its governance. America will fall. Be in the world, not of it. Just look at the tower of babel. It is man obsessed with man, and technology (the manifestation of the physical prowess of man over his environment) and God tore down their idol, and scattered their tongues. Seems like God is anti-technology, and therefore is against colonialization, as it is a result of technology. Spreading Gods words is not colonialization.

[Anonymous No.14086168]

>>14085007
At its very basic level, isn't everything we do a technique?

[Anonymous No.14086839]

>>14086168
>According to Ellul, technique necessarily came into play at the Fall of man into sin

Did you read the post?

[Anonymous No.14087207]

>>14083959
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

"People don’t need
only fun, they need purposeful work, and they need to have control not only
over the pleasure-oriented aspects of their lives but over the serious, practical,
purposeful, life-and-death aspects. That kind of control is not possible
in modern society because we are all at the mercy of large organizations.
Up to a point, having fun is good for you. But it’s not an adequate substitute
for serious, purposeful activity. For lack of this kind of activity people in our
society get bored. They try to relieve their boredom by having fun. They seek
new kicks, new thrills, new adventures. They masturbate their emotions by
experimenting with new religions, new art-forms, travel, new cultures, new
philosophies, new technologies. But still they are never satisfied, they always
want more, because all of these activities are purposeless. People don’t realize
that what they really lack is serious, practical, purposeful work—work that is
under their own control and is directed to the satisfaction of their own most
essential, practical needs."

--Theodore Kaczynski, Technological Slavery (2019), p. 250

Kaczynski is a better writer, and goes far beyond Ellul in his analysis. Also, Ellul only offers a vague kind of spiritual revolution. Kaczynski's concept of revolution aimed to force the collapse of the industrial system is very concrete and highly logical

This is why "Anti-Tech Revolution," his second book, is so great and totally undeniably established Kaczynski as ahead of Ellul and similar people.

[Anonymous No.14087235]

>>14084829
>>14084881
"innocent"

implying people promoting technological growth and industry are "innocent" is a reflection of how domesticated and brainwashed you are. Ellul would see you as a sucker for propaganda.

the changes that technology will bring will be a hundred times more radical, and more unpredictable, than any that have occurred in the past. The technological adventure is wildly reckless and utterly mad, and the people who are responsible for it are the worst criminals who have ever lived. They are worse than Hitler, worse than Stalin. Neither Stalin nor Hitler ever dreamed of anything so horrible.

[Anonymous No.14087330]

>>14083987
Literally my life right now.

[Anonymous No.14087355]

>>14083987
not a permanent solution. the system continually expands. maybe a few people can escape it in their lifetimes, but there's probably only a generation left. So it would be pretty cowardly and evil I think to turn your backs on all future generations of humanity than to take a stand and work to collapse the technological system. This is to say nothing of the continued devastations to the biosphere that are also implied.

[Anonymous No.14087390]

main problem begins before tech. main problem is not tech but cause of human production of tech. one link in chain of causes for production of tech is reduction of effort. effort is hard and necessary - failed effort could be death. inner pressure to succeed is hard to feel. death fearful, effort necessary, pain inevitable. solution: reduce pain, effort, live better. solution: tech. relationship with death and suffering an earlier link in chain of problems to tech.

[Anonymous No.14087394]

>>14087390
please you tell me English no first language.

[Anonymous No.14087399]

>>14087394
no, he is just gang retard

[Anonymous No.14087401]

>>14087394
i will expand on thoughts if misunderstood, but tech is not most significant problem. cause of production of tech is the only true problem. human relationship with death and suffering. even now, having conquered so much, we are still trying to make our lives more comfortable for ourselves. impossible the way we are doing it. something internal is unaddressed.

[Anonymous No.14087403]

>>14087401
hi BAP

[Anonymous No.14087414]

No it hasn't, you're delusional. Just because you don't have to walk very far to get the ripe berries, you expect to live without the human condition?

It doesn't matter where you go, it doesn't matter where you hide. Misery will find you. Whether you're sitting behind a computer, or having your genitals smashed with a rock while being sodomized with a spear, you're not safe. You never will be.

Stop trying to run.

[Anonymous No.14087418]

>>14087401
thank you for your thoughts.

[Anonymous No.14087427]

>>14087414
You make the erroneous assumption that the "human condition" is the same in all contexts.

If you take a man and place him in a prison for life, he's going to have a different "condition."

the same truth holds for different environments, whether it is cultural, geographic, or technological.

There is abundant evidence that hunter-gatherers suffered no stress, anxiety, depression, or suicide, just to take one example. There are many reasons for this.

The irony of your post is that it is actually you who is running away from an idea. you're running away by denying something which, if true, you would find highly disturbing.

[Anonymous No.14087467]

>>14085442
>Spreading Gods words is not colonialization
>What was the spanish empire
Theres was a time, for a short period of time at least, where technique and christianity converge in such a way that it was possible to take down a whole empire with a handful of guns and ships

[Anonymous No.14087488]

>>14086168
Read the earlier quotes about the history of technique/technology. Our society was the first it was unleashed and did not have cultural restrictions around it.

This quote on Greece might make things clearer.

The Greeks were suspicious of technical activity because it represented an aspect of brute force and implied a want of moderation. Man, however humble his technical equipment, has from the very beginning played the role of sorcerer’s apprentice in relation to the machine. This feeling on the part of the Greeks was not a reflection of a primitive man’s fear in the face of something he does not understand (the explanation given today when certain persons take fright at our techniques). Rather, it was the result, perfectly mastered and perfectly measured, of a certain conception of life. It represented an apex of civilization and intelligence. Here we find the supreme Greek virtue, iyp&r<t* (self-control). The rejection of technique was a deliberate, positive activity involving self-mastery, recognition of destiny, and the application of a given conception of life. Only the most modest techniques were permitted—those which would respond directly to material needs in such a way that these needs did not get the upper hand. In Greece a conscious effort was made to economize on means and to reduce the sphere of influence of technique. No one sought to apply scientific thought technically, because scientific thought corresponded to a conception of life, to wisdom. The great preoccupation of the Greeks was balance, harmony and moderation; hence, they fiercely resisted the unrestrained force inherent in technique, and rejected it because of its potentialities. For these same reasons, magic had relatively little importance in Greece."

[Anonymous No.14087532]

>>14087427
You fail to understand what the human condition even is. By neglecting a deep analysis of the atomics of experience, you swing at strawmen and neglect the fact that all patterns are projections and assumptions, not material reality. This absence from material reality IS the human condition, how can I possibly take anything you say serious when you flaunt ignorance at the very basis of your argumentation?

You want to ignore the complete lack of complexity inherent in your own existence, a limitation of the very meat that informs you of your experience. You so terribly don't want to face up to the the fact that your experience is a tiny box, that your mind is a finite state machine much more finite than you'd prefer. You'd rather believe the tiny box is seperate from your experience. You are looking for the monster in the brush, and insofar as you are finding it, it isn't because it actually exists, but because you are as capable of NOT finding the monster as you are to scrub oxygen from water with your lungs.

In a crusade against negative valence, you fight against yourself and construct boogeymen to offset your inability to accept and integrate the repulsive with the attractive. You want to stay on the treadmill of reactionary thought, believing that by treating the avoidance of bad experiences as a zero sum game, rather than an artifact of the insect brain in your head that it truly is, some day you will arrive at an existence of pure positive valence.

For hundreds of thousands of years your ancestors ran that treadmill, and the end result has been nothing. Conflating material prosperity with the capacity to be inorganic is one of the most degenerate, blind, small-picture standpoints one can possibly have. The bare bones approach akin to arithmetic, simple operations on simple abstract patterns, has been tried by countless people before you, almost all of them vastly more intelligent, and not one has ever came up with a solution. No matter what fancy dialects were utilized, they all had an inability to provide a solution. However upon extending the logical thought to calculus, whereby change and amalgamation of the simplest methods synthesize in an observational calculus, the solution becomes crystal clear you would rather have the quick fix based on your own broken intuition and rail against all that your ancestors have built in the name of the existential terror you will never, ever be free from. The most pathetic thing about this is that you actually believe your absolute drivel, that primitive peoples lives were not fraught with negative valence and an all-permeating danger of death and suffering, without so much as a single consideration as to how and why these same people toiled night and day that you might not have to worry about such material danger. You could live this life right now, but you don't care to. You just want a fairy-tale to pay lip service to.

[Anonymous No.14088438]

>>14087467
and smallpox. The spainerds did not kill millions of natives, and that is where some estimate are. In the first landing, they did not explore much, but they made enough progress to spread the disease. And there is evidence of millions of natives. Guns and steel yield to the power of germs.

[Anonymous No.14088444]

>>14083959
The only answer that isn't some dumbass escapism is revolutionary marxism

[Anonymous No.14088449]

>>14087414
>or having your genitals smashed with a rock while being sodomized with a spear, you're not safe.

insipid reddit hyperbole.

[Anonymous No.14088452]

>>14087532
>let me tell you about this condition you've never lived, that I haven't lived either

every time. how's the boot tasting today?

[Anonymous No.14088457]

>Q. But the suburbs, like television, are merely neutral, and can be used for good or bad. The problem is sin. Attack sin, not suburbs!

>A. It is precisely to attack sin that one attacks modern suburbs, because their way of life favours sin. Their softness and comfort favour sensuality (Second Sorrowful Mystery). The anti-socialness and independence of their way of life favour pride (Third Sorrowful Mystery). True, television is in theory neutral, but not in practice. As installed in the (suburban or modern city) home, it strongly tends to be misused, discombobulating mind, will, the sense of reality, activeness, humanness, and family. Similarly the suburbs in practice strongly tend to discombobulate human beings. Listen to the Rock musicians, voice of now two alienated generations (1960’s to 1990’s). This alienation cannot go on.
>-Bishop Williamson

---

>[...]industrialization, in particular the motor-car, changed radically the structure of cities, and the mentality of city-dwellers. For instance the people who had socialized and the children who had played in the city streets were chased off them by the motor-car. Similarly, as long as the country outweighed the cities, city-dwellers shared more or less of the country-men’s common sense (e.g., you cannot fool with day or night, winter or summer), but as soon as industrialism enabled the cities to outweigh the country then that common sense began to be worn away (e.g., with electricity and central heating we can change night and winter). The modern city and suburbs easily erode this natural sense of there being a nature of things. Now without nature, where is grace?

[Anonymous No.14088468]

>Q. But the suburbs, like television, are merely neutral, and can be used for good or bad. The problem is sin. Attack sin, not suburbs!

>A. It is precisely to attack sin that one attacks modern suburbs, because their way of life favours sin. Their softness and comfort favour sensuality (Second Sorrowful Mystery). The anti-socialness and independence of their way of life favour pride (Third Sorrowful Mystery). True, television is in theory neutral, but not in practice. As installed in the (suburban or modern city) home, it strongly tends to be misused, discombobulating mind, will, the sense of reality, activeness, humanness, and family. Similarly the suburbs in practice strongly tend to discombobulate human beings. Listen to the Rock musicians, voice of now two alienated generations (1960’s to 1990’s). This alienation cannot go on.
>-Bishop Williamson

---

>[...]industrialization, in particular the motor-car, changed radically the structure of cities, and the mentality of city-dwellers. For instance the people who had socialized and the children who had played in the city streets were chased off them by the motor-car. Similarly, as long as the country outweighed the cities, city-dwellers shared more or less of the country-men’s common sense (e.g., you cannot fool with day or night, winter or summer), but as soon as industrialism enabled the cities to outweigh the country then that common sense began to be worn away (e.g., with electricity and central heating we can change night and winter). The modern city and suburbs easily erode this natural sense of there being a nature of things. Now without nature, where is grace?

[Anonymous No.14088489]

>>14087414
>>14087532
Agreed. But the misery of the modern man becomes much deeper than mere lack of material comfort.

[Anonymous No.14088496]

>>14083976
Know God and help others to know Him too (and hence be saved). We were never meant to make a permanent home of this planet, and what we've done in trying to make it so, in becoming worldly, is created a monster (modernity) that we cannot control, and in all likelihood it will eat us up, or at least part of us.

>>14087414
The human condition remains a constant, but the EPISTEMOLOGICAL crisis that is the essential feature of modernity is largely unprecedented, at least in terms of scale. We live in an age when it is impossible to know. Truth and place are not coinciding as they ought to be, as they would be in a more rooted society. The 'givenness' of reality dissolves and our capacity to be moral beings dissolves with it. Life has already been terrible, but at least in former times (though not all former times) it has been possible to know, to have ties and bonds.

[Anonymous No.14088498]

>>14087235
>if you are not with us, you are against us

Who is being the sucker for propaganda now?

[Anonymous No.14088510]

>>14087207
Fuck off with your therapeutic fantasies of revolution.

[Anonymous No.14088565]

>>14088498
>if you are not with us, you are against us

>you're not complicit if you're out of sight in an air conditioned office totally inoculated from the consequences of your actions

[Anonymous No.14088670]

>>14087355
t. Unabomber

[Anonymous No.14088910]

>>14088498
no. again you try to muddle the issue. there is a world of difference between a scientist actively engaged in growing the industrial system, and a landscaper or barista, for example.

[Anonymous No.14088937]

>>14088510
no, and it's not a therapeutic fantasy. on the contrary, people's discussions about ellul more often than not ARE therapeutic fantasies: it costs them nothing (no one will revile or spit on them like you are trying with me) and they can temporarily alleviate their discomfort with the modern world by identifying with some anti-tech observations, without any call to action to do anything about the situation. it's quintessential self-therapy.

[Anonymous No.14089045]

>>14087330
What country do you live in?

[Anonymous No.14089176]

>>14088937
And people who read Kacynski begin bombing people? No.

Both are Therapeutic, but Ellul gives a better framework and tools for understanding the technological society and not a poorly written polemic. This call to action is anarchism and Christianity and trying to disengage society. The Invisible Committee does a good job on carrying his project forward.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-invisible-committe-now

[Anonymous No.14089197]

>>14089176
This is utter farce. The manifesto is certainly not “poorly written” its one of the most logical, lucid, and comprehensive articulations on the issue, and his two books, furthermore, go far far beyond all of elluls work on the subject.

[Anonymous No.14089243]

>>14089197
How many of Ellul's books have you read?

[Anonymous No.14089249]

>>14088910
Apparently secretaries and guards are now actively engaged in growing the industrial system.

[Anonymous No.14089253]

>>14089197
Dude...

"But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a
psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology"

Are you kidding me? Ted didn't realize that Techno-Capital was causing this? He rants about 'leftism' the whole time. Even Christopher Lasch, whom I admire deeply, saw this problem, i.e. the therapeutic state/bureaucracy. The """"Right"""" is just as vile and caught in the system.

Ellul transcendences this and understands that technology/technique is just as alienating under socialism and capitalism

[Anonymous No.14089256]

>>14088937
It costs you nothing to discuss here. Are you going to start killing people or are your words just hot air?

[Anonymous No.14089296]

>>14089243
Ted addresses this convincingly. Read “Stay on Target”

Capitalism has arisen because under current technological conditions, its the system best adapted to survive and propagate. Your never going to be qble to get rid of it while the current level of tech is in place. In other words, capitalism is predicated and determined by technology.

[Anonymous No.14089317]

>>14083959
Letting jews into the country, and thereby legitimizing baby torture has been the worst thing that happened for the human race.
Remember, it's all because some people needed money.

[Anonymous No.14089318]

>>14089243
Literally all of them. I became obsessed with anti-tech after I read “Technological Slavery” by Kaczynski, and I got my hand on all the books of Ellul, postman, illich, and zerzan and a few others. Currently trying to get through Mumford’s man and technics but I'm finding it to be really boring.

[Anonymous No.14089334]

>>14089249
Dude, there’s something called collateral damage. It happens in every ear or major conflict. I doubt you would indict the whole allies of wwii because some of their actions led to the deaths of civilians. TK was waging the best campaign that he could. People like you have to bend yourself into logical pretzels to invent all sorts of rationalizations and excuses why he is wrong in his actions while others who use violence are justified.

[Anonymous No.14089345]

>>14089249
By your standard the death of nazi secretaries and administrators who were just doing their jobs and what society expected of them totally negates the moral worth of all allied offenses against the third reich.

[Anonymous No.14089349]

>>14089318
All 58 of them? Impressive.

[Anonymous No.14089364]

>>14089334
>People like you have to bend yourself into logical pretzels to invent all sorts of rationalizations and excuses

Says the man comparing allies bombing nazis to a crazy hermit who bombs geneticists because he saw Gremlins 2.

[Anonymous No.14089382]

>>14089364
Rekt

[Anonymous No.14089399]

>>14089364
You're perfectly illustrating my point. You have to imbed a faulty premise and ad hominem into your statement just to (sound) like your being morally rational.

I would never compare the morality of the allies in wwii to Kaczynski! Kaczynski's actions were FAR more justified and far more moral.

The allies were simply looking to prevent the death and/or enslavement of tens of millions of people. And most of their individuals were just obediently following what their society's demanded of them, or else the allies also had alternate (economic) motivations.

Hitler and stalin were simply repeating on a far larger scale what war-mongers throughout history have done. But what continued technological progress entails is absolutely without precedent. Literally the fate of all the most fundamental aspects of the entire world are at stake.

[Anonymous No.14089411]

>>14089364
neither hitler nor stalin could ever dream of the horrors that continued technological growth have in store for humanity and the biosphere.

and here we've just barely scratched the surface. the technological world-system is just in its infancy compared to what it will become if allowed to continue.

[Anonymous No.14089454]

>>14089399
>>14089411
Literally what you base this on? We already have nuclear weapons and other toys and we haven't use them, don't you think something similar would happen in other aspects?

[Anonymous No.14089460]

>>14089399
>>14089411
>the technological world-system is just in its infancy compared to what it will become if allowed to continue.
>Literally the fate of all the most fundamental aspects of the entire world are at stake

Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?

[Anonymous No.14089506]

>>14089460
This is an interesting question actually. I've never managed to get anybody to answer this in a coherent manner either IRL or on the web. And I don't mean in the sense that glowniggers might be interested in, but just a general outline of what do that goes beyond preparing.

[Anonymous No.14089644]

>>14087330
If you're still around how'd you get there? I want that so much, but am trapped in the hell at the moment and don't see a clear path out.

[Anonymous No.14089940]

So give up technology and go innawoods luddites

[Anonymous No.14089951]

>>14089460
Someone tell me, what's left besides: insanity, asceticism, or suicide?

[Anonymous No.14089995]

>>14089506
O really?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuOCvKvrwI8

[Anonymous No.14090020]

>>14084564
>guys, me, a 23 year old NEET who hasn't contributed anything to the human socius is worth EXACTLY the same as Goethe.
incredible, I can't wait to see what these humanists come up with next

[Anonymous No.14090109]

>>14090020
Terrible understanding. Consider reading a book.

[Anonymous No.14090158]

>>14089995
Based

[Anonymous No.14090277]

>>14089995
tl:dw?

[Anonymous No.14091406]

Bump

[Anonymous No.14091539]

>>14090277
just watch it

[Anonymous No.14092063]

As I mentioned earlier, the Invisible Committee does a good job of articulating Ellul's points

“There’s a boatload of people nowadays who are trying to escape the rule of the economy. They’re becoming bakers instead of consultants. They’re going on unemployment as soon as they can. They’re forming cooperatives, SCOPs and SCICs. They’re trying to “work differently.” But the economy is so well designed that it now has a whole sector, that of the “social and solidarity economy,” which runs on the energy of those escaping it. A sector that merits a special ministry and accounts for 10% of the French GDP. All kinds of nets, discourses, and legal structures have been put in place to capture the escapees. They devote themselves in all sincerity to the thing they dream of doing, but their activity is socially recoded, and this coding ends up overshadowing end of work, magical life everything they do. A few people take collective responsibility for the upkeep of their hamlets water source and one day they find that they’re “managing the commons.” Not many sectors have developed such an obsessive love of bookkeeping, out of a concern for justice, transparency, or exemplarity, as that of the social and solidarity economy. Any small to medium business is a bookkeeping bordello by comparison. However, we do have more than a hundred and fifty years of experience of cooperatives telling us they have never constituted the slightest threat to capitalism. Those that survive end up sooner or later becoming businesses like the others. There is no “other economy,” there’s just another relationship with the economy.” (Now - 36)

[Anonymous No.14092085]

>>14091539
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rns_n82HiMo

Can you feel it brother?

[Anonymous No.14092111]

>>14083959
>The Technological Society and its consequences have been a disaster for the slave moralists.
Fixed that for you.

[Anonymous No.14093064]

>>14092111
>"I'm not the slave, you are!"
>*becomes a slave to his sexual passions and dies of a disease*
Based.

[Anonymous No.14093324]

>>14092111
>>The Technological Society and its consequences have been a disaster for the slave moralists.
They have secularized and standardized it, even synthesized it.
Think of 'white guilt', holocaust industry...

[Anonymous No.14093336]

>>14083959
Ellul is based but I find he doesn't, as I recall, spend enough time deliberating on the origins of this technification trap we find ourselves in or where to go from here. Only read the Technological Society. The book rang pretty solid with me. I work in a factory and I see it every day. Everything must be broken down, quantified, attempts to optimize are constant. It often seems as if we are drowning in data and that it will be our undoing. The pursuit of technification/optimization/data analysis often takes precedence over actual production. Kind of fucked.

[Anonymous No.14093341]

>>14084245
>Christianity is a great way to resist
Probably most any tradition pursued diligently conflicts bigly with the venal, hideous monomania of Exchange and Production Uber Alles.

[Anonymous No.14093367]

>>14088468
Kino post desu.

[Anonymous No.14094082]

>>14093336
>that pic
Why

[Anonymous No.14094388]

>>14083987
GG Alin lived that way as a child