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Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into a means.102
Humans cannot live without the sacred. They therefore transfer their sense of the sacred onto the very thing which has destroyed its former object: to technique itself.103
One of the most important books in Ellul’s sociological oeuvre (and one of the most significant in the story of his fame in North America) is La Technique ou l’enjeu du siècle (1954), published in English as The Technological Society (1964).104 In this work, we find a detailed analysis of twentieth-century Western society as an expression of technique. In ascribing the economic qualities of a century mostly to a single major force, Ellul’s book shares qualities with Karl Marx’s view of nineteenth-century Western industrialized society as an expression of capital. Ellul engages with technique in nearly all of his writings—sociological and theological—and regularly employs it as an essential tool in his social criticism. Understanding The Technological Society is mandatory for those with a serious interest in Ellul’s thought.105
Technique as Technological System and Consciousness
While Ellul never gives one ultimate definition of technique, he does offer two interrelated ways of understanding it. First it is “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.”106 Technique is thus not equivalent to what we mean when we say “technology.” Rather, it describes an ensemble of means striving toward calculated efficacy in all sectors of society, a search for one mathematically best way to do things. In educational, military, business, manufacturing, and even healthcare institutions, we find an increasing drive toward greater productivity, which is itself judged by its efficiency in output.
Second, Ellul discusses “the technological phenomenon,” which is composed of the proliferation, inescapability, and dependence on technology and technical devices. Automobiles, airplanes, computers, televisions, and cell phones have all been thoroughly incorporated into our lives; they are assumed or expected to be utilized by almost everyone, and many everyday processes often cannot be done without them. As society evolves, so does technology and its dominance. We can no longer live outside it; it is an encircling system (as Ellul will go on to argue in a later book, The Technological System [1977], which particularly examines the effects of computerization). Thus, for Ellul, technique is often described as an environment, a “technological milieu.”
Technique is also a mentality that has both spawned and resulted directly from the technological world.107 Our contemporary outlook has been gradually structured in a way that mirrors the techniques we employ. For example, efficiency and its corollary values such as competition and productivity become the primary driving forces motivating both action and thought. Having uncritically adopted the mindset of technique, humans increasingly apply its standards to nearly every sector of society. This is why Ellul also refers to technique as a type of consciousness.108 Ultimately, technique describes both a mindset that strives for efficiency and the type of social unity created by this mindset. These are simultaneous and interdependent, each fostering the development of the other.
Characteristics of Technique: Automatism, Self-Augmentation, Monism
Throughout The Technological Society, Ellul describes various internal characteristics of technique. We will briefly discuss three of these here. The first is automatism, or technological rationality. By this Ellul is referring to the fact that once a population adopts a mindset driven by technique, they give up their ability to freely choose, to a large extent. Once efficiency is the determining factor in a decision-making process, in many cases one’s judgments have already been made for them. Ellul writes:
There is no personal choice, in the respect to magnitude, between say 3 and 4; 4 is greater than 3; this is a fact that has no personal reference. No one can assert the contrary or personally escape it. Similarly, there is no choice between two technical methods. One of them asserts itself inescapably: its results are calculated, measured, obvious, and indisputable.109
The focus on efficiency has led to the incorporation of technological means and standards in every social domain. This trend is often accompanied by an emphasis on measurable, quantifiable results; it is thus not uncommon to see the increasing emphasis on science and mathematics in education and the rise of bureaucratization in the workplace. These are just two common instances of the results of the sort of automatism that Ellul sees as an expression of technique.110 Another vital characteristic of technique is that it continues to progress in a self-augmenting manner. As the technological system grows and more people adapt to its form of consciousness, our energy, time, and resources are increasingly devoted to the development of efficient means. Ellul writes: “Modern humans are so enthusiastic about technique, so assured of its superiority, so immersed in the technical milieu, that without exception, they are oriented toward technical progress.”111 Thus, individuals consciously and unconsciously work in ways that further and promote technique.
The self-augmentation of technique points to another disturbing entailment: the inevitability of technological expansion. It is increasingly impossible to simply say no to emerging forms of technology; this would be considered irrational or even heretical. For example, a decision to limit funding for the creation of military technology would be seen as a threat to national security. Or if we choose to halt improvement of new computer technology, then our business competitors would seize the opportunity to take advantage of us. Thus, technological development must continue in all fields of society; the logic inherent to this development means that it cannot slow down. In this way, for Ellul, technological rationality always leads to the ongoing self-augmentation of technique.
Let us consider one final example. If I were to choose neither to own a phone nor use email, it would be nearly impossible for me to find lasting employment. Even if I were to look for work at a low-level occupation, I would likely be required to have a phone number and email address. To not do so would be out of the question. The point is that as technology changes, the individual must adapt to it in order to locate basic employment and corresponding essential necessities. Thus, it is becoming more and more difficult to reject technology. Today we are necessarily absorbed into it and its augmentation. One final characteristic of technique worthy of discussion is monism. As technique encompasses civilization, it becomes interlinked with societal systems. For instance, the public educational configuration becomes dependent on the economic organization, which relies on the business sector, which is determined in large part by the political apparatus. It follows that all these technical spheres must continually strive toward calculated efficiency in order to avoid harm to the whole. This interrelatedness is the very monism of technique. Ellul explains:
There is no foreseeable limit to the spread of technology that has entered on the path of complete ingestion of natural resources, of nature itself, of human beings, and everything in existence. The process of technological growth is intrinsically totalitarian. Nothing can stop it except the actual disappearance of the fuel it feeds on: raw materials, space, objects of every kind, and ultimately human beings. All the nuances and fine distinctions are useless here. Technology can’t come to a halt until it has reached the barrier of absolute finitude, when everything has been technologized.112
Thus, the world of techniques becomes its own closed system, relating only to itself, and offering no relation to anything outside itself.
Exploitation and Artificiality
Most of us must operate computers and use motorized transportation in some capacity to stay employed and provide for ourselves and our families. However, in order to create and maintain these technologies, millions of people are demoralized in factories and the earth is increasingly exploited of fossil fuels and minerals. This profound, multilayered exploitation—whether evident or unseen—is caused by technique, our dependence on it, and insistence on instrumentality. Because the essence and primary motivation of technique is efficiency, the natural world becomes secondary and devalued. Nature requires space and time; it is simply not as efficient as the synthetic environment. Ellul contends that the trivialization of nature has led to an increase of artificiality, from ingredients in our food to virtual reality. In fact, numerous people are no longer familiar with nature, and some are even afraid of it.113
For Ellul, the artificial milieu causes two serious harms: a simulated sense of reality, and reliance on artificial needs. As he argues in The Humiliation of the Word, images from propaganda and the corporate media saturate our daily lives. Many unconsciously assume that these representations are truthful. However, the visual depictions found in the media only signify the interests and perspectives of those manufacturing the images; they in no way give us an accurate or complete understanding of the complex nature of societal events. These depictions compose our new reality.
Promoted in large part by commercial institutions, the artificial realm also creates and stimulates false needs. For example, it is not uncommon today to find people desperately trying to obtain unnecessary products that have been presented as essential. From cosmetics to the latest cell phone, these superfluous goods exist in contrast to our authentic needs. In order for humans to live healthy, fulfilled lives, Ellul reminds us that we require only food, drink, shelter, meaningful relationships, and education, among a few other things. However, because of the artificial world and the desires it has fashioned, we continue to sacrifice our true needs, and with them, our health and freedom.
Technolatry, Freedom, and Necessity
According to Ellul, humans are essentially religious beings; we have an innate longing and drive to worship something greater than ourselves—an object or person that can give our lives substantial meaning and purpose. In the modern age, the principal object of this devotion is technology. Ellul explains:
Nothing belongs any longer to the realm of the gods or the supernatural. The individual who lives in the technical milieu knows very well that there is nothing spiritual anywhere. But humans cannot live without the sacred. They therefore transfer their sense of the sacred to the very thing which has destroyed its former object: to technique itself.114
The kind of worship of technology Ellul describes might be cast as a kind of technolatry. By transferring the sense of the sacred onto technology, people try in vain to obtain significance in their lives. However, the veneration of technology does not provide authentic purpose, but instead forces us to live in the shallow, meaningless, and often unsatisfying world of the latest gadget and the trendiest product.
Related to his denunciation of technolatry, Ellul’s most fundamental criticism of technique is that it strips individuals of the power of self-determination. Many have argued and continue to maintain that technology provides humans with greater freedom. Ellul disagrees. At one time technology may have assisted humans in attaining a degree of freedom, before it became autonomous, self-augmenting, and monistic. Today things are different: technology is not just used by people but uses people for its own proliferation. Technique and technolatry have turned into a progressing cycle that continues to envelop, restrict, and control. Humans are not only physically constricted by technique; they are psychologically determined by the images and values surfacing from it. After living in the technologically saturated milieu, people begin to adopt the mental framework of technique—thinking in its categories, seeing the world through its lens. Ellul points out that this creates a system of mental coercion that constrains people by limiting their frame of reference and their ability to think for themselves.
The world of technique, according to Ellul, is one of necessity. Most basically, he means that a world of necessity is one where we do what we do because we cannot do otherwise. But this sentiment of being forced is complex; we know that we are not physically forced by someone. Examining this necessity opens further connotations. When technique becomes necessity, then this necessity is driven by worship of the image and of the latest technology; technique as necessity becomes a sphere permeated by an ever-increasing quest for efficiency no matter the cost; technique as necessity creates a milieu where humans, animals, and the earth are simply instruments—a world where wisdom and cooperation are replaced by knowledge and competition, a jurisdiction where one has the freedom to be creative only within the architecture of technique. Once one grasps the extent of technique’s far-reaching tentacles, one can comprehend how tragic our situation appears.
However, this is precisely why one must not read only Ellul’s sociological studies. In his theological ethics, Ellul contends that we should not give up hope. If we can recognize and understand technique and its entailments, this indicates that there is still a degree of autonomy. The act of becoming aware of what limits us is the first sign of our freedom from it.
Ellul argues that those informed individuals can work to carve out a limited freedom within the realm of necessity. He points to the ancient Israelites as models from whom we can learn today. They elected to observe the Sabbath once a week to escape the requirement of constant labor; they chose common ownership among the Levites to bypass the need for private property; they embraced periodic fasting to transcend the necessity of consumption. We too should take Sabbaths from technology and intentionally rest from the continual pursuit of efficiency and productivity. We must struggle against technolatry and make thoughtful choices that provide some degree of human freedom inside the domain of necessity.
Summary
The main topic of The Technological Society, technique, is in fact central to all of Ellul’s work—both theological and sociological. It refers simultaneously to the growth of technology and the uniquely modern mindset governed by the quest for efficiency, calculation, and control. Ellul believes that technique’s characteristics—automatization, self-augmentation, and monism—are beyond human control and are moving toward increased “technological totalitarianism.” Technique causes people to adopt moral systems that rely on calculation and self-justification, and to view one another and oneself as means rather than ends. It also leads to technolatry. Both entail greater exploitation of living beings and nature. For Ellul, it is vital that we engage in a careful consideration of the attributes and entailments of technique. This will result in an obvious conclusion: technique is detrimental to human freedom and dignity. The only adequate response is a greater awareness of technique and a constant struggle against it.115
102. Ellul, Technological Society, 142.
103. Ellul, Technological Society, 143.
104. La Technique ou l’enjeu du siècle is literally translated as “Technique or the stake of the century.” The “stake” here refers to a gamble when making a bet. See Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World, 134.
105. Ellul’s Technological Society is the first in what some see as his major sociological trilogy, followed by Propaganda and The Political Illusion. Darrell Fasching writes: “These three works form the cornerstone and provide the theoretical groundwork for Ellul’s critical sociology as a revolutionary instrument” (Fasching, Thought of Jacques Ellul, 57).
106. Ellul, Technological Society, xxv.
107. See Ellul, Technological System, 1980.
108. David W. Gill: Technique “refers to rational, scientific, measurable methods of doing something in the most efficient way possible” (Ellul, Presence in the Modern World, 13n17). David Lovekin: “La technique, as consciousness, is still before an object taken as an object, but it does not face this object as a facet of its own awareness . . . La technique is an objectification of technical desire resulting in the technical phenomenon” (Lovekin, Technique, Discourse, and Consciousness, 89).
109. Ellul, The Technological Society, 80.
110. Ellul’s notion of technique was influenced in part by Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy. For Weber, bureaucracy constitutes the formally rational organization of human activity in modern society. Weber also argues that bureaucracy threatens human freedom and leads to dehumanization. He refers to it as “domination through knowledge.” See Weber, Economy and Society, part 2, p. 255.
111. Ellul, Technological Society, 85.
112. Ellul, Living Faith, 194.
113. One of the authors had an interesting experience in this regard. A colleague reported having started a small garden to show his eight-year-old children where vegetables come from, and the children laughed at the idea that vegetables come from the earth; they replied, “No, Dad, they come from the store!”
114. Ellul, Technological Society, 143.
115. By keeping in mind Ellul’s theological works as one reads his sociological writings, one will see how each side of his oeuvre provides a counterpoint to the other. As one contemplates the arguments in Technological Society, one should keep in mind Ellul’s contentions in Hope in Time of Abandonment. An analysis of technique may leave one somewhat despondent, but Ellul argues that there is always hope, even in a realm determined by technique. Ultimate hope, however, is not found in scientific or technological progress, but only in an existential encounter with the Wholly Other.