Technology: Conformity and Compensation

In Perspectives on Our Age (1981), Jacques Ellul points out that living in a society increasingly dominated by a Global Technological System (GTS) is painful, to a greater or lesser degree, for all of us humans (48). That’s because the nature of the GTS differs fundamentally from our own. It is cold, rational, and rigid. While we humans may occasionally imitate those ways, we remain mostly passionate, emotional, and spontaneous.

     
If we are treated more like technological automatons than genuine humans for very long, we grow angry or depressed and seek “compensations” (49). In other words, “we are forced to find something providing satisfactions elsewhere and permitting us to live otherwise” (49).

     
This need grows increasingly pressing with the growth of the GTS. As the GTS expands, we all increasingly suffer “the suppression of the subject and the suppression of meaning” (49).

Devotion to Vulcan Brought Changes in Class Structure

Throughout the history of Olympia, societies have always organized their members into four social classes based on the power exercised by each. The top class has always been the ruling class. Its members set the rules for the rest of us. The middle class provides the managers of people, processes, and information needed by the ruling class. The working class consists of those people who actually do the work, especially the physical labor, of society. The bottom of this social scale is occupied by the marginal class: those who don’t fit into any other class or society in general. Historically, we always find four classes: rulers, managers, workers, and outcasts.

     
While this class structure endures, there are plenty of historical variations within it. Changes over time include the size of each class, the relative power of one class over others, the rate of social mobility between classes, and what it takes to become a ruler.

Devotion to Vulcan and Its Consequences

In 1648, intellectuals—and gradually the rest of Christendom—abandoned Jesus Christ, the only true god/man of truth, freedom, love, and vitality, in favor of returning to the six conventional yet false gods of Olympianity. More specifically, they abandoned Jesus, the only true god/man of freedom, especially for Vulcan, one false god of power through technology.

     
In Perspectives on Our Age (1981), Jacques Ellul points out that our newfound devotion to Vulcan had broad unforeseen consequences.

Why Today's Technological Phenomenon Started in the 1700s

In Perspectives on Our Age, Jacques Ellul identifies five major reasons why today’s technological phenomenon emerged in the 1700s in Europe. These conditions had never before existed simultaneously. That’s why today’s technological phenomenon did not exist before or elsewhere.

     
One, a large growth in population (p. 41). This happened because society had become better organized. It resulted in more available workers as well as a faster distribution of people and ideas.

The Difference between Yesterday's Technology and Today's

Let us define technology, in a general and preliminary way, as (1) the use of any tool or method as a means of obtaining a goal and (2) the study of such means. From this point of view, we may say that humans have always used technology. Furthermore, many of yesterday’s technologies relate directly to some today.

     
At the same time, the sheer quantity and scope of today’s technologies far exceed those of yesterday. This quantitative change is so great that Jacques Ellul, in Perspective on Our Age (1981), insists we acknowledge that a qualitative change in technology has resulted. As he puts it, when we as humans “moved from the flint arrowhead to the atomic bomb, there was a qualitative change” (36).

Today's Greatest Source of Power

In his book, Perspectives on Our Age (1981), Jacques Ellul rightly points out that today’s most powerful countries are no longer those with the most money or largest populations. Today, power is based on technology.

     
He first uses the example of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia. These oil-rich countries have grown fabulously wealthy. But, as Jacques points out, “the accumulation of their wealth is not bringing any true interior development or any sort of independence from the West” (78).

The Global Technological System: The Parasite Is Killing Us

In the distant past, we humans lived in a creational context. We experienced an immediate relationship with creation and it was creation itself which both provided for our basic needs and confronted us with our greatest threats. With the development of cities and writing, society became our primary context, mediated our relationships with creation, provided us with our means of living, and made war the greatest threat to our survival. Today, we live in a third context: a technological society. Today our most significant livelihoods and threats of death are technological in nature. It is technology, more than politics, economics, or religion, which structures our societies, cultures, and personalities.

     
Unexpectedly, the innumerable technologies developing separately since about 1750 eventually coalesced into a single technological system. Worse, this system is now global in extent. As individuals, cultures, and societies, we now face a Global Technological System (GTS) that far exceeds our ability to control or even comprehend.

     
“Still, one thing seems absolutely certain,” says Jacques Ellul, and that is the “opposition between the development of the technological system on one hand and society and human beings on the other” (Perspectives on Our Age, 69).

The Global Technological System: Uncontrollable and Incomprehensible

Jesus invites us today, as Christians and churches, to respond creatively to the challenges of our times. To do that, we must have a rigorously realistic understanding of those challenges. Sadly, we don’t. We continue to diagnose today’s ills as political problems in a societal context. This is a diagnosis made invalid by technological growth at least one hundred years ago. Jesus invites us to understand that the most significant challenges we face are the destructive consequences of our technological context. Happily, Jacques Ellul helps us to understand these challenges in his book, Perspectives on Our Age (1981).

Our Three Overlapping Contexts: Creation, Society, and Technology

In Perspectives on Our Age (pp. 59-84), Jacques Ellul speaks about the three interrelated contexts in which we now live: creation, society, and technology.

     
He begins briefly by describing our technological context: the city. He points out that it is a totally artificial context, composed of nothing but the products of technology, and practically devoid of life except for us human beings.

     
He then gives us a quick glimpse of how difficult it is for us humans to leave that context. Even when we find ourselves in a purely creational context, such as in a forest or at a lake, we quickly turn on a radio, TV, or, now, smartphone to reestablish our familiar technological context. Whew!