Sporting Life Blues

Life in La Boheme

“They tell me I am here to realize I know not what social end; but I feel that I, like each one of my fellows, am here to realize myself, to live.” 

“The future depends upon our will and upon our spiritual efforts.”

Whether with nature or technology, humans succumb to a sacral awe of the powers which govern their destiny and rob them of their freedom and capacity for critical reflection. This awe turns them into slaves sacrificing and serving their new idols. A society of techniques undermines human freedom by requiring that we always choose the most rationally efficient techniques for every endeavor. No business or society can afford to choose a less efficient solution for fear of being rendered obsolete by their competitors. Even as once political ritual, in ancient Rome and elsewhere, mediated the divine favors granted by nature’s deities, so today, says Ellul, politics serves the technical myth of utopia by providing the collection of rituals that create the illusion of control over the favors granted by technique. And yet we discover that contemporary political rituals involve holding hearings from technical experts who can advise politicians on the most efficient techniques which can be used to solve our problems. Technical necessity continues to reign while utopian fantasy, Ellul argues, “is a consolation in the face of slavery, and an escape from something one is unable to prevent. . . . Whenever men have taken utopian descriptions seriously, the result has been disastrous” (“Search for an Image,” in Images of the Future, ed., Robert Bundy (Buffalo N.Y: Prometheus Books, 1976)  pp. 24-25.”

In such a society, no protest against the efficiency of technique is possible or even desired because we are enthralled with the utopian world of wonders we believe technique can give us. Moreover, all discontent is treated with psychological and sociological therapeutic and mass media techniques that will help us become well adjusted, fully entertained and happy with our slavery. Utopian hopes integrate the individual into the necessities of a technological society. Their promise: accept the demands of efficiency and your fondest hopes for wealth, pleasure and abundance will be fulfilled, offering a heaven on earth.

Sporting Life Blues

Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity

The Journal of Lingering Sanity is a reader-supported publication. We are beholden to truth not party.  “The time has come," the Journal said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."