A technetronic society is one whose mentality, habits, social relations, economic structures, ideologies, and intellectual reactions, even, are influenced by the advent of the ‘domestic machine’. He points out that ‘in the industrial society, technological knowledge was essentially utilised to achieve a specific purpose: the acceleration and improvement of production technologies. In a technetronic society, not only does scientific and technological knowledge serve to reinforce production possibilities, but also impacts all aspects of life’.
Following in the footsteps of countless others and falling, at times, into certain platitudes, Mr Brzezinski proceeds to outline this mutation.
America, a society that is ‘both pioneering and guinea pig-like’, is the leading propagator of the technetronic revolution: ‘The United Sates exports its technetronic knowledge just as Rome once exported law, England exported parliamentary democracy and France exported republican nationalism’.
The omnipresence of technology comes up against the opposition of the ‘new Left’, a Left which, likewise, saw the light of day in the US. According to Mr Brzezinski, the latter is characterised by its totalitarian methods, its cult of violence and its ‘infantile ideology’: ‘Despite its increasingly Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, it is far more reminiscent of Fourier in its content and of Dadaism488 in style. And it is highly symptomatic that both Fourier and Dadaism embodied, each in their own way, a reaction against a new era’.
A Father Threatened by His Own Son
Philosophically speaking, Leftists behave as if the world represented a constant reality. As a result, they cannot bear the repeated redefining of technology.
Nowadays, there is an entire mythology surrounding ‘oppressive technology’ and necessarily alienating machines. Both the silver screen (as seen in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) and science fiction literature focus on it extensively. The topic of machines rebelling against their masters is nothing new. It is no different from that of creatures longing to become equal to their creator. This theme is found in the Bible and resurfaces with Karl Marx. It is the myth of the Golem. The idea is that, by attempting to ‘play God’ (i.e. wanting to become God’s equal), man can only set in motion a process that will cause his own demise; and that technology is ‘bad’ because it allows man to dominate nature. It is a dramatic enactment of a ‘rebellion’ that takes place both at the level of man as a creature (one that rebels against God) and that of man as a creator (having to face the revolt of his own creation against him). In other words, it is an inversion of the Faustian myth.
Also connected to this theme is the myth of the father who finds himself threatened by his own son, by what has come from him, by the very son that he has brought into this world and that may well end up supplanting him. This myth is repeatedly expressed in the Old Testament (where it is often connected to a ritualised menace of castration): the tale of Esau and Jacob; the transfer of birthrights (paternal authority threatened by the sons, with the support or complicity of the mother, as seen in Genesis 27); and Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac, which Yahweh prevented at the very last moment (see also the episode where Absalom, son of David, openly beds his father’s concubines so as to assert his right to David’s crown). It is also encountered in Freud’s489 ‘scenario’ of the birth of civilisation — the ‘conspiracy of the sons’ to kill their own father and divide his power amongst themselves on the basis of their mutual renouncement of the individual exercise of authority.
The mistake made by Mr Brzezinski lies in his belief that technology leads to the death of ideologies and that it establishes the reign of objective reason; for what is labelled ‘reason’ is but a small part of the process of human understanding, which, by contrast, remains irrational overall. As is the case with all scientific or experimental activities, technology allows profoundly irrational lines of thoughts and inspiration to subsist at its very top, lines whose substance could never be reduced.
In Die Rückseite des Spiegels. Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens490 (Flammarion, 1975), Konrad Lorenz491 demonstrates that the reason behind the existence of various technologies is far more difficult to identify than one may be inclined to believe. In this respect, the evolution of technologies is, on the whole, as impossible to account for by means of a causal explanation as biological evolution, whose extension it embodies.
‘When one considers the historical future of machines as a Homo Sapiens organ, every attempt to explain their composition in one way or another will have us come up against the very same residue that is encountered in the analysis of the functioning of living systems’, Lorenz writes.
As a result, the issue of excessive specialisation, which many deplore (and with good reason), does not relate solely to the ever-growing separation of research or activity sectors, but also (and above all) to the implicit belief that the supreme determination of the great finalities of technology is exclusively tied to some ‘knowledge’ of, or ‘competence’ in, these sectors; when, in actual fact, any such determination must necessarily remain external to the latter.
The most commonly made mistakes with regard to technology actually stem from a poor assessment of both its exact nature and its role within society.
As indicated by Arnold Gehlen492 (in Anthropologische Forschung, Rowohlt, Hamburg, 1961), technology is a response to a twofold organic ‘lack’ within man: the deprogramming of his instincts and the relative inadequacy of his organs in relation to his environment. The reason why technology exists and has become, culturally speaking, a new kind of organic function is that man is essentially multi-specialised and his instincts are manifested solely through impulses that can be channelled in accordance with his own choices.
Thanks to technology, man is able to create various areas of stability in his environment. Gehlen expands on this, stating that there is a sort of resonance, meaning a physiological and spiritual connection, between man and some of his environment’s ‘rhythmic’ properties: natural automatisms, cycles, seasons, lunations, tides, etc. It is technology that enables us to reproduce such ‘automatisms’ on a practical level, which seems to account for the ‘fascination’ that it holds. And this fascination is all the more intense since technology represents the most ‘archetypal automatism’ and thus provides automatisms with a regularity that surpasses the one we can witness in the physiological or organic domains.
With technology, ‘natural’ automatisms thus find themselves extended by a mechanical automatism, one which gives rise, through automation, to perfectly identical repetitions. Human action undergoes a change of nature and, above all, significance: instead of being experienced by the organism itself, it is perceived and controlled by the intellect, an intellect that is thus somehow robbed of its physiological ‘monopoly’. Man no longer performs actions, but has things done for him. And it is this offset between the experienced action and its ‘double’, induced by the gradual encroaching of regulation gestures into our daily lives as the latter progressively replace our actual experiences, which, according to Gehlen, embodies the underlying cause behind our contemporary world’s ‘technological malaise’.
In conclusion, what Arnold Gehlen proposes is that we have a closer look at the consequences that the replacement of physiological actions with their technological surrogates will have upon our species, so as to envision the manner in which one could compensate for the inconveniences.
As far as research is concerned, such an effort may well entail a ‘synthesis’ of organic sciences and technology, one that would act as the reflection of the already existing ‘informative’ interaction between technological machines and the organic characteristics of the living.
Cybernetics and ‘Social-Fascism’
In the very near future, technological development is bound to accelerate. If one is to believe James Albus493 (Scientific American, February 1976), whose views have been popularised in France by Mr Louis Pauwels,494 robotics is actually in the process of taking over from (the alread
y obsolete) automation. Mankind’s ‘liberation’ would thus be achieved through social-robocracy. Mr Albus writes: ‘We stand on the brink of an age of robots and automatic factories. If we could lead people to acknowledge the fact that machines can, in fact, enable the industry to develop much more efficiently and much more quickly than men ever could, we would be able to invent a distribution system in which work appreciation is based on something other than employment’.
The Eastern Bloc should also be impacted by this evolution. Stalin once celebrated the union of nationalism and Marxism-Leninism; and his successors are now appealing for the use of modern technology. There are some who believe that a ‘liberalisation’ is thus bound to follow, but such is not the view taken by Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski, according to whom the persistence of the current oligarchy and the endurance of a certain ideological rigidity are hardly incompatible with technological adaptation.
Ever since 1965, East Germany has been making systematic use of cybernetics — the operational pursuit and electronic treatment of information. Hence the reason why, ‘despite having belonged to the societies that suffered the most extensive destruction during the war, it managed to become, towards the end of the 1960s, the most advanced communist country (whether economically or ideologically) and the one that had the most pronounced scientific mindset. Following a decline that lasted for half a century, the combination of Prussian discipline, German scientific efficacy and a Leninist-Stalinian ideology has thus, once again, turned German communism into a model for its eastern neighbours to follow’.
Making no attempt to conceal his sympathies for the ‘humanistic objectives’ of Marxism, Mr Brzezinski goes as far as to predict the establishment of ‘Social-Fascism’ not only in the USSR itself, but also in Poland and Bulgaria.
In Man and Technology (Gallimard, 1970), Oswald Spengler connected the advent of the machine to the decline of creative man. On the one hand, he characterised the phenomenon as one of ‘weariness’, involving the ‘flight of the natural leader in the face of a machine that paralyses his creative inspiration’, and, on the other, one of ‘mass mutiny’ against a way of life that is becoming more and more mechanised and standardised.
Spengler was probably mistaken on this level. The European civilisation does not find itself threatened as a result of its technological progress, but because the egalitarian utopia that seems to hold sway nowadays has proven to be in direct conflict with the demands of modern societies that were born, among others, of this very same technological progress. It is this egalitarian utopia that inhibits man’s will to assert his sovereignty over his own creation. The end to ‘the domination of machines’ is not to be found in the latter’s destruction, but in man’s willingness to undergo self-transformation in a manner that would enable him to retain mastery over his own ‘productions’.
***
Between Two Ages, an essay by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Calmann-Lévy, 388 pages.
***
Mr Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock (Denoël, 1971), recently reconsidered some of his positions. He remarks that the tendency towards ‘massification’ and social homogeneity seems to be shifting now. He declares: ‘My contention is that we are witnessing a gigantic centrifugal process, the falling apart and “demassification” of ancient mass societies. It is one of the traits that characterise the new era which we are entering. I would argue that we are heading towards a diversified society, a heterogenous society that shall replace the once homogeneous one; this phenomenon is mirrored most faithfully not only at the level of products, which are now becoming ever more diversified, but also that of the technologies which we use and which are even more varied, and that of schooling, where we are heading towards an increasingly diversified education’. He goes on to add: ‘It is my conviction that diversity is a survival mechanism capable of breathing new life into our society. And the very same view is held by geneticists, who stress the necessity to safeguard our racial and cultural qualities’ (in Futuribles, Summer 1976).
Mr Toffler highlights the fact that, from a political perspective, this evolution poses significant problems, insofar as most developed countries still lack a ‘political system capable of controlling the high degree of diversity required by such civilisation’.
The notion that the transformation of our current societies requires the ‘invention’ of a new governance model reflects a rather widespread opinion. In the United States, this concern has given birth to the topic of ‘anticipatory democracy’. Elsewhere, one is now calling for the establishment of ‘planning cells’. Whatever the case, it is crucial to discover a means of participating in public life that would be suited to what is, at times, referred to as the ‘post-industrial era’ (Rostow), and, at others, as the ‘super-industrial revolution’ (Toffler).
It is unfortunately just as widely accepted that the technologies aiming to expand political participation (parliamentary recourse, parties, plebiscites, extended advisory bodies, ‘open planning’, ‘grassroots democracy’, etc.) have, thus far, turned out to be ineffective. Furthermore, the very concept of a ‘post-industrial era’ has been criticised, insofar as it seems to correspond to a mere extension of the current system. In many respects, the ‘post-industrial’ model comes across as an intricate sub-product of the ‘American dream’ of the 1950s. Just like the latter, it belongs to a conception of history without discontinuity. Founded upon a naïve belief in the inherently ‘objectivising’ power of technological progress, it defines ‘science’ not as a tool to be used for the potential solving of social issues, but as the solution itself. From this perspective, technological development paves the way for humanity’s ‘continuous progress’; in addition to not triggering any crucial sort of disruption, it also generates, in a virtually automatic fashion, the curbing of the conflicts and antagonisms between nations and social groups — perhaps even the latter’s transformation into dynamic ‘inputs’, a transformation that would be synonymous with their ‘digestion’.
Those interested in examples of such fine optimism should read Daniel Bell’s The End of Ideology (Free Press, Glencoe, 1967) and Things to Come by Herman Kahn and B. Bruce-Briggs (Laffont, 1972). Zbigniew Brzezinski is no exception to this and has, likewise, surrendered to the lure of such liberal interpretations of the end of history.
***
The City
The notion of urbanism is not restricted to a question of accommodation and circulation. The city is a micro-society governing our entire lives. In his Grundrisse, Karl Marx remarks that the city brings together ‘all that bestows upon society its societal character’. Henri Laborit495 describes the city as one of the means utilised by social groups to perpetuate their own structure. As for Oswald Spengler, he writes the following: ‘All major cultures are of an urban nature. The superior man of the second cosmic era is a city-building animal’.
Wherever there are no cities, mankind has not yet freed itself of ‘nature’. As soon as man becomes aware of his own humanity, it is the city that represents the sociological expression of this awareness. The city is thus born of all that is specifically human: our history, our domination of nature, and our appropriation of the world. Urban existence is indistinguishable from political and, strictly speaking, human existence. There is no such thing as nomadic civilisation, for civilisation can only stem from the exploitation of sedentariness.
Every Builder Is a Son of Cain
Mr Jacques Ellul, a sixty-six-year-old professor of political studies in Bordeaux, wrote a profound essay in which he lays the groundwork for a genuine urban theology, having managed to detect a true condemnation of the city in Biblical texts.
Significantly, it is Cain who is mentioned as the very first city builder. Following Abel’s murder, he built a city which he named ‘Enoch’496 (Genesis IV, 9–17). Abel, God’s own protégé, was, in fact, a shepherd, meaning a nomad. Cain, by contrast, was a farmer, and therefore sedentary. Each of them represented a different way of life, and Yahweh settled their dispute b
y cursing Cain and his descendants. Mr Giorgio Locchi explains: ‘Yahweh had rejected the gifts offered by Cain, accepting solely Abel’s pious offerings. For Abel was not a stock breeder, but simply a nomad that had relinquished hunting to indulge in raids; he was a nomad that prolonged the Mesolithic tradition within the new civilisation, which had stemmed from the Neolithic revolution and whose way of life he rejected’ (Le mythe cosmogonique indo-européen: reconstruction et réalité,497 in Nouvelle école number 19, July–August 1972). Abel’s murder at the hands of Cain also acts as a ‘duplicate’ of the episode of original sin. Adam’s sin condemned mankind to history, while Cain’s sentenced mankind to living this history in the city, i.e. the location in which it actually unfolds. Mr Ellul notes: ‘The establishment of the city is the direct consequence of both Cain’s murderous act and his refusal to be granted God’s protection’.
Since the very beginning, the city has come across as the project of a human Eden that has replaced God’s Paradise. The symbolic name of Enoch (meaning ‘initiation’) comprises the notion of (re)commencement. To Cain, the construction of the city marks the beginning of humanity. ‘God’s creation is taken to be meaningless, for He has neither done nor completed anything. This now is a new start, and it is man, and no longer God, that initiates things. […] And just as history commences with the murder of Abel, civilisation finds its beginning in the city and all that the latter represents’.
And it represents a lot of things indeed. It is the symbol of political power — that of man. It is the sign of the world. Yahweh cries out: ‘I shall punish the world for its malice’. The Bible establishes an equivalence between urban civilisation, warring civilisation, politics and the state. All wars involve sedentary people, in whose eyes territories are not all equal. ‘War is an urban phenomenon, just as the city is a military one. And the perfecting of one always entails the perfecting of the other’.
Systems and Debates Page 25