If technology really represented the rule of reason, there would be much less to regret about our present situation. Actually, technology represents the rule of quantity, not the rule of reason (quality=value=relation of means to authentic human ends). It is by means of technology that man the person, the subject of qualified and perfectible freedom, becomes quantified, that is, becomes part of a mass–mass man–whose only function is to enter anonymously into the process of production and consumption. He becomes on one side an implement, a ‘hand,’ or better, a ‘biophysical link’ between machines: on the other side he is a mouth, a digestive system, and an anus, something through which pass the products of his technological world, leaving a transient and meaningless sense of enjoyment. The effect of a totally emancipated technology is the regression of man to a climate of moral infancy, in total dependence not on ‘mother nature’ (such a dependence would be partly tolerable and human) but on the pseudonature of technology, which has replaced nature by a closed system of mechanisms with no purpose but that of keeping themselves going.
If technology remained in the service of what is higher than itself–reason, man, God–it might indeed fulfill some of the functions that are now mythically attributed to it. But becoming autonomous, existing only for itself, it imposes upon man its own irrational demands, and threatens to destroy him. Let us hope it is not too late for man to regain control.
Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Wow! I was just writing an article for our local magazine on the difference between monks and friars. Since our new bishop had been a Benedictine for 10 years my search to find out more naturally began here. As a daughter of the clergy, I am very well aware of the strange placement of working in the world but being apart from it. [Merton’s] words immediately struck me as being so poignant through being an external observer of a world in which most of us (and I do, now, include myself) are trapped and cannot see from that all important external perspective. I am reminded of Plato’s cave theory. . . .
[Merton’s] words say so much more and hit so many more nails on their heads than I have done. And what most strikes me is the way that being outside the social machine enables [him] a freedom to find you and so comment and to hit those nails on their heads. Recently I have noticed with my heart sinking to ever greater depths, how much “thinking” done by “intellectuals” isn’t very clever. It’s not even remotely insightful. What a thrill, then, to read [Merton’s] view, and how much did it strike me that this was only possible by being away from the “noise” of the outside world, enabling [him] to focus on what is real. The machine is tangible, but it creates a deluded life.
In October (largely because St Francis Day falls on the 4th) we are having a focus on monks and friars. This article shows how important it is to have people setting themselves apart from society and able to focus on what it really does mean to be human and what, therefore, it really is that God wants for us.
Many thanks
Helen Brookhouse