It's A Wild World After All

Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy

Technopoly, in other words, is totalitarian technocracy. Agreeing with Agamben “the form of capitalism that is being consolidated on a planetary scale is not that which it had assumed in the West: it is, rather, capitalism in its communist variation, which unites an extremely rapid development of production with a totalitarian political regime. This is the historical significance of the leading role that China is taking on, not only in the realm of the economy in a narrow sense, but also – as the political use of the pandemic has so eloquently demonstrated – as a paradigm for the government of men. “

Despite the industrialization of the nineteenth century it was still possible to keep from being fully enveloped within the thought-world of machinery and technique. But what emerged in America by the twentieth century was a reductionist, imperializing technological consciousness that claimed the right of exclusive arbitration over all decisive questions, including most importantly that of determining truth. This is what Neil Postman sees as the great threat of modern technology. It is surely rare today that a New York University professor speaks as follows of the losing side in the Scopes trial:

These “fundamentalists” were neither ignorant of nor indifferent to the benefits of science and technology. They had automobiles and electricity and machine-made clothing…. What wounded them was the assault that science made on the ancient story from which their sense of moral order sprang… The battle settled the issue, once and for all: in defining truth, the great narrative of inductive science takes precedence over the great narrative of Genesis, and those who do not agree must remain in an intellectual backwater.

Cultures must have narratives, Postman says; if good ones are not available, bad ones will do (he points to Nazi Germany). The older narratives, full of rich symbols, sustained traditional, coherent worldviews. Very little in America—and less and less elsewhere—support that possibility any longer.

In his last chapter puts forward what he terms “a reasonable response (hardly a solution) to the problem of living in a developing Technopoly.” He proposes some curriculum reforms for the schools which, in the improbable event of their ever being adopted, would certainly be more helpful than most of those suggested by our numerous educational commissions. He also offers a brief description of “the loving resistance fighter.” Postman being no advocate of violence, this is not a portrait of an eco-guerrilla but a list of principles that run counter to those of prevailing technological attitudes. His resistance fighters are people who are “suspicious of the idea of progress,” who “refuse to accept efficiency as the pre­eminent goal of human relations,” who “do not believe that science is the only system of thought capable of producing truth,” and so on. Who can quarrel with such unexceptionable maxims? But since most people drawn to Postman’s book will probably find them already reflected in their own beliefs, the range of their practical effect may not be very wide.

Postman covers a good deal of already well-traversed territory, but does so with charm and intelligence. He speaks as a defender of humanistic learning and liberal democracy. He belongs to an old and honorable tradition of critics who have reproached Americans for their enthrallment with, and unquestioning acceptance of, technological innovation. But the voices of the tradition may have grown a little tired over the course of our history. In the middle of the nineteenth century Thoreau noted unhappily that the “devilish Iron Horse” had “muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot,” but his tone was never carping, and he even found some charm in his countrymen’s delight with the railroad. Thoreau knew the machine was here to stay, and although that fact posed a problem for him, in the end he found in nature his resolution. To be sure, a great deal of relatively unspoiled nature was still left to contemplate, and further more Thoreau’s resolution was only a private one. Half a century later Henry Adams could not discover even that; he presented the contrasting images of the Virgin and the Dynamo as signs of the profound decay of Western civilization. Now a century past Adams, we get hourly updates on the technological reconstruction of the universe.

Owen Barfield explained. “For imagination is not a reasoning about, it is a Schauung, a seeing, and indeed a being, the object. Systematic imagination is, in fact, clairvoyance.” As such, Steiner’s philosophy culminates in a philosophy of free will, allowing the imagination to serve as an objective guide to beauty and thus to truth. “It leads in every department of life to a fuller and richer conception of the human being,” Barfield asserted. Imagination, therefore, “is not content with merely looking-on at the world,” but rather “seeks to sink itself entirely in the thing perceived.” Though Barfield came at the question philosophically, linguistically, and psychologically rather than theologically, he arrived at a rather orthodox understanding of the Christian Logos. “I mean the fact that, through the incarnation of Christ in a human body, there was born into the world, not for the West or for one section of humanity only, but for all men, what one can only call a legitimate self-consciousness,” he wrote. Further, “had Christ not come to earth, individual human beings would never have been able to utter the word ‘I’ at all,” Barfield continued. Because of his identification—again, it must be remembered, a relatively orthodox position arrived at by and through heterodoxy—of the Logos and the imagination, the light that lighteth every man, “imagination is the most precious of all our possessions—the chosen one of all our faculties to be our saviour.” One must recognize that words are reflections of the Word, and in our attempt to unify and understand words, we must unify with the Word, but only through a humble and alive imagination. Man will never be truly free unless his ethics reside in this humble imagination of the Word.

To comprehend these truths, Barfield concluded, meant a greater understanding not only of the self and free will, but of the community of all men, united in one body and one soul, offering us “the ability and the will, not merely to say sentimentally ‘we are all brothers,’ but to explain just how we are brothers and exactly what it is in our history, in our nature, and in our destinies that makes us so.” The Logos makes us more human, it must be remembered, not less human, and it reminds us that others share in that same humanity of the Logos.

The modern world, Barfield argued, must readopt these truths of the Logos, should Western Civilization move beyond its current selfish and totalitarian phase in its western and eastern parts, respectively. And this re-found love of the Logos must express itself throughout culture and the arts. “Science must itself become an art, and art a science; either they must mingle, or room for one that may have spirit enough to learn how to know God’s earth as He actually made it,” Barfield wrote. Then, he stated, one will also realize, rather Stoically, that “the truth does not consist of a collection of isolated facts; it is all woven together into a single fabric.”

While it is crucial to continue reporting the imaginative facts and sharing them as widely as possible (which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the censorship of alternative and social media), it is important to accept what we are up against. What we are up against is not a misunderstanding or a rational argument over scientific facts. It is a fanatical ideological movement. A global totalitarian movement … the first of its kind in human history.

It isn’t national totalitarianism, because we’re living in a global capitalist empire, which isn’t ruled by nation-states, but rather, by supranational entities and the global capitalist system itself. And thus, the cult/culture paradigm has been inverted. Instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it.

I wish I could be more optimistic, and offer you some sort of plan of action, but the only historical parallel I can think of is how Christianity “converted” the pagan world, which doesn’t really bode so well for us. While you’re sitting at home during the “second wave” lockdowns, you might want to brush up on that history.

Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence.”

Léon Bloy