People with beards have something to hide, or so the saying goes. I will not deny this for myself, but I might argue that some of them are actually revealing an essential truth about themselves rather than covering something up. In America, 1 in 10 men have beards, an ornamental preference that is often popularly associated with “letting yourself go” – think Al Gore after the 2000 election. I've heard it said that one doesn't choose to have a beard, one chooses not to. There are some men that don't have beard-growing in their genotype, but if they do, simply living creates one. It is not having one that requires action. Hence, perhaps, another common perception of the bearded – we're just lazy.
I've had a beard for most of my adult life. Allowing it to grow out started as a kind of internal psychological experiment combating my sense of vanity. (Then, as now, most people think I look better - more attractive, younger, and with more visible emotional affect - without hair on my face.) I was 22 at the time, single, and living in Portland. There were, and still are, lots of bearded men in Oregon. So, even though it was spring – a time when many winter beards were being shaved, trimmed, or cropped into stylish Van Dykes, burly goatees, slick “soul patches,” or mustaches (ironic and otherwise) – I didn't stand out very much spending a few months growing facial hair. One of the first things I noticed was that all the other men sporting beards stood out to me as if highlighted. I was somewhat dismayed that the majority of these men seemed either hopelessly geeky, unkempt and homeless, or mentally unstable. “Crazy” is another quality commonly associated with the bearded. This can pertain to the bushy-faced, living-in-a-shack-in-the-wilderness-Unibomber type, or the well-groomed-but-devious-looking-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad type; either way, the cultural default is definitely the clean-shaven look and growing a beard typically puts one outside the mainstream.
The 20th century Armenian mystic philosopher, G. I. Gurdjieff, maintained that there exist certain beneficial cosmic vibrations, the influences of which can only be absorbed either by the hair on a man's face, or the hair on the top of the head when it is exceptionally long – the thicker gauge, specialized cilium of a beard acting like a fibrous antenna array for receiving these frequencies. In anatomy, the anterior-most area of the chin is called the mental point. Perhaps this is why stroking one’s beard is so helpful during active mentation, the manual tweaking of the array serving to fine-tune the signal as though adjusting the dial on a radio. Looking at a picture of Rasputin doing this, with his piercing gaze, black frock, and fingers encrusted with occult-symbol-emblazoned rings, hand entwined in his goaty mane, it does indeed seem he is receiving some esoteric, galactic transmission.
After living with a beard for some months, I observed another notable phenomenon. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the length of my whiskers and the amount of attention I received from the opposite sex. The longer my beard, the less flirting I enjoyed, until eventually there were no more interested glances, no more unsolicited compliments, no more coy smiles. I may as well have been invisible. Well, not completely invisible, of course. The crazy-looking guys with the woolly, Grizzly Adams facial fuzz would still talk to me about their pet conspiracy theories, but that was not a trade I had intended to make. My burgeoning bristles did seem to mirror, however, an increasingly self-reflective phase I was entering.
That summer, I quit my job, moved into my rust red, '83 Honda Civic Wagon, and migrated a few hours south to work as a wildland firefighter. Surfing the couches of friends and family while I waited for an emergency page, I spent a lot of time walking in the woods, communing with the trees – they seem to accept beards. In fact, trees seem to accept everything: wind, rain, sun, fire, treehouses, chainsaws. I had few responsibilities and was able to simply hang out at my friend's cabin in rural Oregon, reading books and contemplating my navel. As the course hair on my face lengthened, it seemed I was watching human dramas unfold as a dispassionate observer, as though the beard were exponentially distancing me from the realm of human affairs with each increment of its wily, determined growth.
After spending a few months out on forest fires with nary a woman in site, however, my contentment with the stoic company of trees and gruff firefighters gave way to a desire for more intellectual and emotional interpersonal engagement. Thus, when fire season ended, and I returned to civilization, I showered, shaved the year-long Brillo pad off my face, and headed to the grocery store. As I moseyed through the produce section, appreciating the lush selection of kales, chards, and beets, a voice asked, “What's for dinner?” It belonged to a young woman with chocolate tresses and bright green eyes picking through the apples, Honeycrisp in hand. Her tone was warm and casual, as though we were two friends seeing each other in the produce isle by chance.
“Soup,” I replied.
Believing us to be strangers, I moved on. Perhaps she had me confused with someone else?
In the bulk isle, I located the roasted, salted cashews and spooned a few cups into a plastic bag. A redhead scooping dried Bing cherries into a small, brown bag next to me asked: “You like the salty ones I see?”
“I blend them in soup,” I said. “I don't have to add salt that way.”
At that, she simply performed a slow nod before putting the bag of cherries in her grocery basket and moving away from me towards the boxed cereals.
“Why are these women behaving so strangely towards me?” I wondered. Needless to say, I felt like a complete jackass when it finally hit me what was going on. In my defense, I had spent the better part of the last year being utterly ignored by the opposite sex – not to mention communing with trees, and they don't flirt much.
After experiencing the consequences of my self imposed isolation, the relative merits of looking one's sharpest, if for no other reason than for the purpose of attracting a mate, seemed perfectly clear. But how is it, exactly, that a beard can be an obstacle to this? Certainly, there are women that find beards attractive. They must have historically been a relatively small minority because, though the trends of fashion ebb and flow with the tides of history, men have been shaving for a long, long time – the oldest razors discovered by archaeologists date to 30,000 B.C.E. This is not to say that impressing women is the only reason men started shaving.
In ancient India long beards were venerated and associated with virility and potency; a common punishment for adultery was to publicly cut them off. Full, bushy beards were a symbol of wisdom and health in ancient Greece until Alexander the Great began requiring his soldiers to shave, believing that a beard compromised a soldier's defense in hand to hand combat. Then it was necessary that all the slaves, who were previously made to shave, grow out their stubble lest they be mistaken for their masters. Thus, a sea change in facial fashion was initiated among not only the Greeks but all the conquered lands of Alexander's empire. Some centuries later, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, and Peter I of Russia, all laid a penalty for wearing a beard. Men wishing to keep their facial hair had to pay an annual tax for the privilege. Ultimately, however, when it comes to that perennial existential question - To beard or not to beard? - the most compelling logic seems to revolve around the multifarious dynamics of the human mating ritual.
Amish men maintain a clean shave until they marry, at which point their iconic facial ornamentation begins to take shape. I took a page out of the Amish play book in meeting my wife, Megan. Having been convinced of the necessity of shaving in order to attract a lady, I kept my face relatively free of stubble throughout the courting process. Once I was sure she wouldn't run away though, I started growing it out post-haste. When she was still my girlfriend, Megan nannied a two year-old named Ketchum. She came to visit me once in the store where I worked, and brought Ketchy along to introduce us. He took one look at me and started backing away, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” – glistening snot running down his pink, cherubic face, already turning scarlet. He was inconsolable and Megan had to take him back to the car in order to calm him down. The same or a similar scene occurred whenever he saw me after that, even from afar. What did I do?
Ketchy was somewhat of a late bloomer with regard to oral communication. He didn't talk much and it was difficult to parse the meaning of what little he did say. When Megan asked why he felt so terrified of me, he would just answer, “No!” Megan had some hypotheses that revolved around his having an attachment to her that I somehow threatened because she loved me and I took attention away from him when the three of us were together. I was never convinced by these postulations, however, and it remained an enigma that haunted me for a long time. Why was he so terrified of me? What was my principle concern, anyway – his trauma, or something more self-absorbed? When I looked at the situation honestly, I had to admit it was my injured ego.
Small children and domesticated animals almost always like me; at worst, they pay no attention to me. Other people may think I’m weird, arrogant, mean, stupid, crude, or rude – all of which are true at times – but I can usually count on little kids and pets to see beyond my appearance and occasional egoistic outbursts to my essential character. Perhaps this is why I was so upset by Ketchy’s response – was he seeing my essence and reeling back in horror? Several years later, Megan called Ketchy's mother to get a reference for job. His mother said that when Ketchy started talking more, she asked him why he was so afraid of me. His reply?
The beard.
That was it? The beard? No creepy uncle with a similar appearance? No red-bearded bogey men that stalked his dreams?
Nope, he was just scared of the beard. There is actually a psychological condition in which people suffer from a pathological fear of beards called pogonophobia – Pogon meaning beard in ancient Greek – perhaps Ketchy was thusly afflicted.
I like having a beard, and I think most men that can grow them look better wearing one. I prefer to have a beard, but it doesn't bother me to shave it. In fact, I rather enjoy the cognitive dissonance and disorientation it causes my wife and some of our friends when I do shave. Without first telling my wife that I was going to, I completely shaved my face one Halloween. She walked into the bathroom, lost in thought, just as I finished the last stroke of the razor across my chin. I turned my head towards her right as she looked up. Barely stifling a scream, she jumped back, startled, arms jerking to her chest with instinctive protection. As her shock gave way to amazement, the look on her face became one of unbridled attraction – she thinks I look much cuter without facial hair.
It can be fun to play with masks and different identities – Megan says I look so different with a naked face that it feels like she's cheating when we kiss. A problem arises, however, when we believe we are these masks and cannot see ourselves apart from them. Considering one's appearance may be a necessary evil for the purpose of achieving certain strategic ends - getting a job, attracting a mate, etc. - and enjoying inhabiting a certain look can be healthy and fun. But is it ever appropriate to become fully identified with it? Is it wise to invest ourselves so completely in some identity that it becomes the basis upon which our emotional well-being and sense of self-esteem depend?
Perhaps people with beards really are hiding something – the same thing everyone is hiding: a deep down fear that who we really are is somehow not good or whole or complete enough and needs to be disguised. But good enough for whom? Why do so many of us feel like we have to shave or cake on make-up or behave a certain way to be accepted? What are we looking for or trying to achieve through all this manipulation? And why do we feel like we need the security of an authority figure outside of ourselves to tell us what's what? The answers to these questions go way beyond the simple explanations that often take the place of meaningful resolutions to our existential dilemmas – the unsatisfied-need-for-approval-from-mommy-and-daddy, faux-Freudian pop-psychologizing that gets bandied about so casually and erroneously, or the immature projections of such dynamics onto an anthropomorphized god, to name just a few.
What if there are no easy answers to fundamental questions – questions that often require a lifetime of experience, introspection and relationships to even begin to understand. Direct, intuitive, experiential knowledge, what the ancient Greeks called gnosis, the quality from which true authority flows, is the only security I know of; it can actually be felt when in the presence of someone possessing a high degree of it. When combined with genuine humility, this kind of authority spontaneously inspires trust and deference. Assumed authority, on the other hand – the kind that most of us are used to encountering – incites fear, resentment, and rebellion, even if only unconsciously. Many of us spend our whole lives chasing after some measure of the second kind, often without ever having experienced or even known about the first.
Gnosis cannot be bought, borrowed, or lost, and can only be achieved through actual experience. Because it transcends rational thinking, it simply cannot be communicated through words in normal discourse; it can only be hinted at, alluded to, or transmitted, through mediums such as art, music, and poetry, possibly even a touch, a look, a smile.
Or sometimes, a beard.
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The Technique of Globalization
Examining globalization through the lens of Ellul's Technological Society
In the movies “Terminator” and the “The Matrix,” a future is portrayed in which a global network of computerized machines, imbued with artificial intelligence, become self-aware and logically conclude that the greatest threat to their further existence is mankind –therefore humanity must be enslaved or destroyed. In these dystopian visions of the future, one can see many of the elements Jacques Ellul predicts in his prescient 1954 book The Technological Society. Without the intervention of human values to govern and constrain the growth and development of technique, he argues, it will eventually take over and eliminate or incorporate into its system every non-technical element, including us. “When technique enters into every area of life, including human,” he says, “it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance” (6).
At the beginning of the book, Ellul asserts “no social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique in the modern world. And yet no subject is so little understood” (3). He uses the term technique to signify the “totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity” (xxv). It is logical, autonomous and progressive (in the sense that it develops naturally and of itself; in contrast with the modern, political understanding of progressive), and determinative to the degree to which humans refuse to consciously direct it in service of non-technical considerations like social justice, equality, and human rights. “Technique is nothing more than means and the ensemble of means” (19) – and means, he observes, are more important than the ends in modern society.
Ellul sees the basis for the changes he predicts in social, economic and political phenomena, and we have seen many of those predictions born out in the phenomenon of globalization. Richard Falk, in his 1999 book Predatory Globalization, defines globalization partly as the “material developments that reflect the expansion of technological capabilities to a global scale,...the de-territorialization of these capabilities due to informatics and the Internet” (2), and the incremental realization of the neo-liberal ideal of “autonomous markets and facilitative states” (1). An important addition to this definition is the increasing integration and interdependence of economies and societies through networks of commercial and/or electronically mediated relationships, as well as the increase in migration and movement of people around the globe made possible by the decreased cost, and growth, of transportation networks.
The way in which globalization has developed and transformed our present civilization – socially, economically, and politically – reflects the dynamics Ellul outlines. His statement that “technique is in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world” (6), perfectly encapsulates the above dynamics if one inserts “globalization” in place of “the mechanized world.” Indeed, the economic and foreign policies of the worlds largest countries/economies, especially the US, have been shaped by the logic of technique – a dynamic that has allowed them to dominate the global economy. Once political and economic domination has been achieved – what Falk refers to as a dynamic of “global apartheid” (13) – technique demands that it be maintained or increased at any cost. Likewise, international and supranational bodies like the WTO, World Bank, IMF, etc., have institutionalized technique – i.e., the commercial and, in some instances, political factors of globalization – in such a way as to actually supersede the abilities of nations and grassroots organizations to effectively oppose them.
Technique may have been born with the machine, but it has become “almost completely independent of the machine”(Ellul 4). Thus, though technology as we habitually conceive of it today – in the form of computers, robotics, telecommunications, etc. – is a manifestation of technique, it is in reality only a fractional component of what it comprises. Efficiency is the clarion call of both technique and globalization. It may be greed that is the original inspiration for affecting that efficiency with respect to economic globalization, but it is nevertheless the defining characteristic of these phenomena. Ellul also talks about standardization as being a hallmark of technique. The desire among international and supranational bodies, such as the WTO, for more harmonization of regulations between countries is merely a reframing of the same technical impetus for standardization. It is in fact the rationality and autonomy of technique that shapes the agenda of policy-making bodies and necessarily compels them to adapt, change or eliminate laws and regulations in order to accommodate its progression.
Falk argues that it is necessary to make a “sharp distinction...between globalization-from-above and globalization-from-below” (7), by which he means the multifarious political/capital apparatuses of governments and corporations vs. collaborative – and in some cases transnational – grassroots social movements facilitated by global telecommunications and internet technologies. Where “predatory globalization has eroded, if not all together broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century” (3), Falk sees these “globalization-from-below” organizations and state or regional governments guided by progressive ideals as the only elements capable of counterbalancing the juggernaut of the neo-liberal globalizing economic forces. It remains to be seen, however, whether these movements can effectively work against the top-down globalizing forces without having an understanding of the true nature of what they're fighting against – i.e., technique.
It is precisely at this point where Falk's and Ellul's analyses may diverge. In saying that “there is...nothing deterministic about globalization, with reference to either its idealogical content or its normative goals” (7), Falk may be trying to leave open the possibility that the development of transnational grassroots movements and/or regional governments like the European Union have the potential to exert the necessary check on the globalizing forces of technique, but he could just as easily be simply failing to recognize the technical dynamic that underlies the phenomenon of globalization and its essentially autonomous, deterministic nature. Though he concedes that “the historical flow of developments has generated some pronounced, and troubling, trends,” Falk's analysis seems devoid of an understanding of technique as Ellul has articulated it. Falk does however argue for waking up to our individual and collective responsibility to reign in the forces of globalization-from-above within the value-based bounds of “sustainable development, human rights, and cosmopolitan democracy” (8), just as Ellul advocated constraining technique within a similarly defined context of humane values.
There is an interesting point of conflict between economic globalization and technique in that capitalism can work against technique by limiting efficiency and the application of new proprietary techniques/technologies in order to increase profits. Ellul argues that “technique demands that everything it produces be brought into a domain that affects the public” (106). The practice of some corporations of buying up more efficient, and therefore competing, proprietary techniques or technology, and burying them, is antithetical to the furtherance of technique. Ultimately, however, not even capitalism, the former master, will be able to withstand the insidious advance of technique, heretofore capitalism's most powerful servant. It is possible that we are presently seeing the beginnings of this role reversal as evidenced by the recent worldwide economic crisis. More and more governments and supranational bodies are applying, or considering, techniques to manage global markets as a means of affecting greater stability – which can also be interpreted as a form of efficiency – thereby reigning in the “free” market under the yoke of regulation, which itself is a form of technique.
Ellul asserts that technique in the present epoch is characterized by rationality, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy. Technique is rational in that it reduces “facts, forces, phenomena, means, and instruments to the schema of logic.” It is artificial in that it “destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world” (79). Automatism refers to that aspect of technique wherein the most efficient method must be selected and is therefore self-selecting, while self-augmentation refers to the dynamic of technique progressing without decisive human intervention – “the preceding technical situation alone is determinative” (90). Ellul argues that this progress is irreversible and tends to act in a geometric, or exponential, progression. He uses the term monism to signify the essential unity of characteristics that underlies the various separate techniques and to describe the dynamic of use as inseparable from being. Ellul's use of the word universalism represents both the increasing geographic reach or expansion of technique throughout the world – spread chiefly by means of commerce and war – and qualitative in that it penetrates into nearly every sphere of human activity – “intellectual, artistic, [and] moral” (130).
With respect to the characteristic of autonomy, Ellul says that “technique has become a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws and its own determinations” (134). This characteristic is exemplified in all the various self-correcting feedback mechanisms that use an array of sensors to relay information about the environment back to a decision-making device – whether it be a simple set of solenoid switches or the most sophisticated computer interfaces. Humans are only necessary in the equation for the purpose of maintaining these systems (and even then, for how much longer?). From climate-controlled buildings and ambient light-sensing window panes, to auto-pilot mechanisms, AI software and robotics, technology is increasingly becoming more and more “intelligent” and autonomous in its operations. This “progressive elimination of man from the circuit must inexorably continue” (Ellul 136).
Technique, and by extension globalization, requires the restraint and intervention of human values precisely because the above mentioned characteristics necessarily lead to the elimination or conversion of all non-technical elements into technical ones, creating what Ellul refers to as a “technical civilization.” He even goes so far as to state that “technique has taken over the whole of civilization” (128) – and here again it works just as well to supplant the word “globalization” for “technique” as there are few places of human activity in the world that remain minimally or totally unaffected by the phenomenon of globalization. In its inexorable, accelerating progress, the technique of globalization is eroding the barriers erected by states to control the flow of goods, services, people, and capital by politically, economically, and technologically integrating individuals and even whole societies. Falk's observation that the blind, amoral forces of globalization are subordinating states to economic markets, rendering them less and less able to provide for the basic welfare of their citizens, could just as easily have come out of Ellul's discussion of technique. One could say the same thing of Falk's entire book, which is essentially one long argument for the necessity of states to reassert the welfare and security of their citizens as a national interest more central than the growth of trade and finance.
It is Ellul, however, who paints the most compelling, and terrifying, picture of what will happen if we fail at this task:
Every conscious being today is walking the narrow ridge of a decision with regard to technique. He who maintains that he can escape it is either a hypocrite or unconscious. The autonomy of technique forbids the man of today to choose his destiny. ...In the past, when an individual entered into a conflict with society, he led a harsh and miserable life that required a vigor which either hardened or broke him. Today the concentration camp and death await him; technique cannot tolerate aberrant activities (140). Since heredity is full of chance, technique proposes to suppress it so as to engender the kind of men necessary for its ideal of service. The creation of the ideal man will soon be a simple technical operation. (Ellul 143)
The author makes it clear in the forward that his analysis only pertains to a course of events in which man “abdicates his responsibility with regard to values,” and that “if man does not pull himself together and assert himself (or if some other unpredictable but decisive phenomenon does not intervene), then things will go the way I describe”(xxxi). Here Ellul is presenting us with an impeccably well-reasoned argument for action, as well as a powerful motivation.
If technique “in itself leads to a certain amount of suffering and scourge” (Ellul 104), and it is advancing exponentially, we can most certainly expect to see an increase in the number and intensity of armed conflicts around the globe in the years to come. Falk echoes this point in his analysis of globalizations likely effects, citing the increasing prevalence of ethnic outbursts and religious extremism that in part result from the inability of states to cope with globalization. As he points out, the only significant political dissent against economic globalization comes from “ultranationalists” and ethnic or religious groups, as the traditional political affiliations have become subservient to increasingly omnipotent and amoral global economic interests. Thus far, the state governments have been very effective at containing or shutting down the various demonstrations and protests from grassroots organizations that oppose the more corporatist aspects of globalization and the economic policies of governments that support and perpetuate it.
The perennial fear of conspiracy theorists and paranoiacs everywhere of the formation and institutionalization of a totalitarian, one-world government is further justified by Ellul's analysis. It is easy to see how this could develop from the best of intentions under the altruistic guise of providing greater security and stability to a world riven by conflict and scarcity – it certainly wouldn't be sold to the public, or even conceived of by its proponents, as totalitarianism, but it could be in practice nothing else. If indeed, as Ellul contends, technique is in the process of taking over the world, if it “tends to be applied everywhere it can be...without discrimination” (Ellul 100), and if it “cannot be otherwise than totalitarian” (Ellul 125), then a totalitarian, one-world government is not only likely but inevitable.
With chilling logic, Ellul articulates the progression which stems from the application of police techniques and necessarily leads to “the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp” (100). It could be argued that these alarming claims are exaggerated and probably more the result of the collective psychological scars left by the Nazi practices during World War II than by disciplined reason. “Certainly,” one might object, “when we said with a single global voice 'Never again!' after 1945 we meant it, right? We are too advanced and evolved now to revert to that kind of fascist barbarism.” When these kind of objections are challenged with the examples of mass killings or outright genocides in China during the revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, 90's Rwanda or present day Darfur, the same people respond merely by adding the qualification that they meant it could never again happen in a Western democracy. Rounding up dissidents and putting them in prison or outdoor fenced enclosures after the administration of pepper spray and barrages of rubber bullets and tear gas was practiced during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and has become standard operating procedure ever since in the US, England and many other West European democracies. The point Ellul makes is that, when order is the highest value – and “[t]o deny this is to deny the whole course of modern times” (103) – it is a slippery, but logical slope, from the desire to maintain order to a populace under 24 hour surveillance and whose movements in and out of their region are tightly controlled; from “Now leaving the United States” and “Welcome to Canada,” to “Papers, please.”
Even though technique still requires the action and collaboration of humans to further itself, the diminishing necessity for this due to technological advance, combined with humanity's seemingly infinite capacity for delusion and self-deception, make it possible for technique to subordinate/enslave humans completely while they maintain the illusion of control over it. It is in this respect that the paranoid conspiracy theorists perhaps have the end correct but misunderstand the means. An inner circle of elite Illuminati may be the instruments of this global takeover but they are not the puppet masters they are made out to be – rather, it is the blind force of technique pulling the strings to affect its own perpetuation. Like an ethereal version of the Blob from the fifties horror classic, assimilating/eliminating anything and everything that opposes or even touches it, technique is an awesome force almost to subtle to notice.
We are indeed “conditioned...by technological society,” as Ellul contends (xxviii). I am a product of technique in so far as most of my life has been organized around the various techniques of bureaucratic institutions of government and education, and technology – television and mass media, video games, computers and the internet, etc. I cannot fundamentally separate myself from this milieu. Though I can survive without the technique of today as the foundational ground of my existence – for instance, if I were to live in the forest without modern conveniences – my entire personality and world view have been shaped and informed by technique. It is the context within which all of modern life takes place. Likewise globalization, being an outgrowth of technique, subsumes and consumes all non-globalized processes in the same way that Ellul talks about technique eliminating or converting into technique all non-technical phenomena. He also maintains that “the technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a way as to retain the good and reject the bad” (111). It is therefore meaningless to talk about utilizing the techniques we like and banning those we don't for, eventually, if they are necessary for technique as a whole to progress, technique will compel us to change our minds.
To the extent that I strive to develop my consciousness in a manner outside of technique, to cultivate non-technical values and considerations, I suppose I am engaged in an active struggle against the insidious but blind forces of both technique and globalization. Meditating, doing yoga (which is itself a sophisticated physical/psycho-spiritual technique), preferentially buying local or used goods, eschewing the majority of mass media products for more homegrown entertainment and leisure, and investing my energy in building community and relationships all seem antithetical to the impetus of economic globalization. They are modest forms of resistance but are perhaps my only means of affecting any control over the further encroachment of modern technique into my personal sphere. It could perhaps be argued that this is itself another technique I am affecting. But it is a means of technique in service of a non-technical end – does this constitute doing what Ellul admonishes us to? Can it be enough? That is a conversation I would very much like to have with him – and one we all need to have with each other.
Works Cited
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1964.
Falk, Richard. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
In the movies “Terminator” and the “The Matrix,” a future is portrayed in which a global network of computerized machines, imbued with artificial intelligence, become self-aware and logically conclude that the greatest threat to their further existence is mankind –therefore humanity must be enslaved or destroyed. In these dystopian visions of the future, one can see many of the elements Jacques Ellul predicts in his prescient 1954 book The Technological Society. Without the intervention of human values to govern and constrain the growth and development of technique, he argues, it will eventually take over and eliminate or incorporate into its system every non-technical element, including us. “When technique enters into every area of life, including human,” he says, “it ceases to be external to man and becomes his very substance” (6).
At the beginning of the book, Ellul asserts “no social, human, or spiritual fact is so important as the fact of technique in the modern world. And yet no subject is so little understood” (3). He uses the term technique to signify the “totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity” (xxv). It is logical, autonomous and progressive (in the sense that it develops naturally and of itself; in contrast with the modern, political understanding of progressive), and determinative to the degree to which humans refuse to consciously direct it in service of non-technical considerations like social justice, equality, and human rights. “Technique is nothing more than means and the ensemble of means” (19) – and means, he observes, are more important than the ends in modern society.
Ellul sees the basis for the changes he predicts in social, economic and political phenomena, and we have seen many of those predictions born out in the phenomenon of globalization. Richard Falk, in his 1999 book Predatory Globalization, defines globalization partly as the “material developments that reflect the expansion of technological capabilities to a global scale,...the de-territorialization of these capabilities due to informatics and the Internet” (2), and the incremental realization of the neo-liberal ideal of “autonomous markets and facilitative states” (1). An important addition to this definition is the increasing integration and interdependence of economies and societies through networks of commercial and/or electronically mediated relationships, as well as the increase in migration and movement of people around the globe made possible by the decreased cost, and growth, of transportation networks.
The way in which globalization has developed and transformed our present civilization – socially, economically, and politically – reflects the dynamics Ellul outlines. His statement that “technique is in fact the consciousness of the mechanized world” (6), perfectly encapsulates the above dynamics if one inserts “globalization” in place of “the mechanized world.” Indeed, the economic and foreign policies of the worlds largest countries/economies, especially the US, have been shaped by the logic of technique – a dynamic that has allowed them to dominate the global economy. Once political and economic domination has been achieved – what Falk refers to as a dynamic of “global apartheid” (13) – technique demands that it be maintained or increased at any cost. Likewise, international and supranational bodies like the WTO, World Bank, IMF, etc., have institutionalized technique – i.e., the commercial and, in some instances, political factors of globalization – in such a way as to actually supersede the abilities of nations and grassroots organizations to effectively oppose them.
Technique may have been born with the machine, but it has become “almost completely independent of the machine”(Ellul 4). Thus, though technology as we habitually conceive of it today – in the form of computers, robotics, telecommunications, etc. – is a manifestation of technique, it is in reality only a fractional component of what it comprises. Efficiency is the clarion call of both technique and globalization. It may be greed that is the original inspiration for affecting that efficiency with respect to economic globalization, but it is nevertheless the defining characteristic of these phenomena. Ellul also talks about standardization as being a hallmark of technique. The desire among international and supranational bodies, such as the WTO, for more harmonization of regulations between countries is merely a reframing of the same technical impetus for standardization. It is in fact the rationality and autonomy of technique that shapes the agenda of policy-making bodies and necessarily compels them to adapt, change or eliminate laws and regulations in order to accommodate its progression.
Falk argues that it is necessary to make a “sharp distinction...between globalization-from-above and globalization-from-below” (7), by which he means the multifarious political/capital apparatuses of governments and corporations vs. collaborative – and in some cases transnational – grassroots social movements facilitated by global telecommunications and internet technologies. Where “predatory globalization has eroded, if not all together broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century” (3), Falk sees these “globalization-from-below” organizations and state or regional governments guided by progressive ideals as the only elements capable of counterbalancing the juggernaut of the neo-liberal globalizing economic forces. It remains to be seen, however, whether these movements can effectively work against the top-down globalizing forces without having an understanding of the true nature of what they're fighting against – i.e., technique.
It is precisely at this point where Falk's and Ellul's analyses may diverge. In saying that “there is...nothing deterministic about globalization, with reference to either its idealogical content or its normative goals” (7), Falk may be trying to leave open the possibility that the development of transnational grassroots movements and/or regional governments like the European Union have the potential to exert the necessary check on the globalizing forces of technique, but he could just as easily be simply failing to recognize the technical dynamic that underlies the phenomenon of globalization and its essentially autonomous, deterministic nature. Though he concedes that “the historical flow of developments has generated some pronounced, and troubling, trends,” Falk's analysis seems devoid of an understanding of technique as Ellul has articulated it. Falk does however argue for waking up to our individual and collective responsibility to reign in the forces of globalization-from-above within the value-based bounds of “sustainable development, human rights, and cosmopolitan democracy” (8), just as Ellul advocated constraining technique within a similarly defined context of humane values.
There is an interesting point of conflict between economic globalization and technique in that capitalism can work against technique by limiting efficiency and the application of new proprietary techniques/technologies in order to increase profits. Ellul argues that “technique demands that everything it produces be brought into a domain that affects the public” (106). The practice of some corporations of buying up more efficient, and therefore competing, proprietary techniques or technology, and burying them, is antithetical to the furtherance of technique. Ultimately, however, not even capitalism, the former master, will be able to withstand the insidious advance of technique, heretofore capitalism's most powerful servant. It is possible that we are presently seeing the beginnings of this role reversal as evidenced by the recent worldwide economic crisis. More and more governments and supranational bodies are applying, or considering, techniques to manage global markets as a means of affecting greater stability – which can also be interpreted as a form of efficiency – thereby reigning in the “free” market under the yoke of regulation, which itself is a form of technique.
Ellul asserts that technique in the present epoch is characterized by rationality, artificiality, automatism, self-augmentation, monism, universalism, and autonomy. Technique is rational in that it reduces “facts, forces, phenomena, means, and instruments to the schema of logic.” It is artificial in that it “destroys, eliminates, or subordinates the natural world” (79). Automatism refers to that aspect of technique wherein the most efficient method must be selected and is therefore self-selecting, while self-augmentation refers to the dynamic of technique progressing without decisive human intervention – “the preceding technical situation alone is determinative” (90). Ellul argues that this progress is irreversible and tends to act in a geometric, or exponential, progression. He uses the term monism to signify the essential unity of characteristics that underlies the various separate techniques and to describe the dynamic of use as inseparable from being. Ellul's use of the word universalism represents both the increasing geographic reach or expansion of technique throughout the world – spread chiefly by means of commerce and war – and qualitative in that it penetrates into nearly every sphere of human activity – “intellectual, artistic, [and] moral” (130).
With respect to the characteristic of autonomy, Ellul says that “technique has become a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws and its own determinations” (134). This characteristic is exemplified in all the various self-correcting feedback mechanisms that use an array of sensors to relay information about the environment back to a decision-making device – whether it be a simple set of solenoid switches or the most sophisticated computer interfaces. Humans are only necessary in the equation for the purpose of maintaining these systems (and even then, for how much longer?). From climate-controlled buildings and ambient light-sensing window panes, to auto-pilot mechanisms, AI software and robotics, technology is increasingly becoming more and more “intelligent” and autonomous in its operations. This “progressive elimination of man from the circuit must inexorably continue” (Ellul 136).
Technique, and by extension globalization, requires the restraint and intervention of human values precisely because the above mentioned characteristics necessarily lead to the elimination or conversion of all non-technical elements into technical ones, creating what Ellul refers to as a “technical civilization.” He even goes so far as to state that “technique has taken over the whole of civilization” (128) – and here again it works just as well to supplant the word “globalization” for “technique” as there are few places of human activity in the world that remain minimally or totally unaffected by the phenomenon of globalization. In its inexorable, accelerating progress, the technique of globalization is eroding the barriers erected by states to control the flow of goods, services, people, and capital by politically, economically, and technologically integrating individuals and even whole societies. Falk's observation that the blind, amoral forces of globalization are subordinating states to economic markets, rendering them less and less able to provide for the basic welfare of their citizens, could just as easily have come out of Ellul's discussion of technique. One could say the same thing of Falk's entire book, which is essentially one long argument for the necessity of states to reassert the welfare and security of their citizens as a national interest more central than the growth of trade and finance.
It is Ellul, however, who paints the most compelling, and terrifying, picture of what will happen if we fail at this task:
Every conscious being today is walking the narrow ridge of a decision with regard to technique. He who maintains that he can escape it is either a hypocrite or unconscious. The autonomy of technique forbids the man of today to choose his destiny. ...In the past, when an individual entered into a conflict with society, he led a harsh and miserable life that required a vigor which either hardened or broke him. Today the concentration camp and death await him; technique cannot tolerate aberrant activities (140). Since heredity is full of chance, technique proposes to suppress it so as to engender the kind of men necessary for its ideal of service. The creation of the ideal man will soon be a simple technical operation. (Ellul 143)
The author makes it clear in the forward that his analysis only pertains to a course of events in which man “abdicates his responsibility with regard to values,” and that “if man does not pull himself together and assert himself (or if some other unpredictable but decisive phenomenon does not intervene), then things will go the way I describe”(xxxi). Here Ellul is presenting us with an impeccably well-reasoned argument for action, as well as a powerful motivation.
If technique “in itself leads to a certain amount of suffering and scourge” (Ellul 104), and it is advancing exponentially, we can most certainly expect to see an increase in the number and intensity of armed conflicts around the globe in the years to come. Falk echoes this point in his analysis of globalizations likely effects, citing the increasing prevalence of ethnic outbursts and religious extremism that in part result from the inability of states to cope with globalization. As he points out, the only significant political dissent against economic globalization comes from “ultranationalists” and ethnic or religious groups, as the traditional political affiliations have become subservient to increasingly omnipotent and amoral global economic interests. Thus far, the state governments have been very effective at containing or shutting down the various demonstrations and protests from grassroots organizations that oppose the more corporatist aspects of globalization and the economic policies of governments that support and perpetuate it.
The perennial fear of conspiracy theorists and paranoiacs everywhere of the formation and institutionalization of a totalitarian, one-world government is further justified by Ellul's analysis. It is easy to see how this could develop from the best of intentions under the altruistic guise of providing greater security and stability to a world riven by conflict and scarcity – it certainly wouldn't be sold to the public, or even conceived of by its proponents, as totalitarianism, but it could be in practice nothing else. If indeed, as Ellul contends, technique is in the process of taking over the world, if it “tends to be applied everywhere it can be...without discrimination” (Ellul 100), and if it “cannot be otherwise than totalitarian” (Ellul 125), then a totalitarian, one-world government is not only likely but inevitable.
With chilling logic, Ellul articulates the progression which stems from the application of police techniques and necessarily leads to “the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp” (100). It could be argued that these alarming claims are exaggerated and probably more the result of the collective psychological scars left by the Nazi practices during World War II than by disciplined reason. “Certainly,” one might object, “when we said with a single global voice 'Never again!' after 1945 we meant it, right? We are too advanced and evolved now to revert to that kind of fascist barbarism.” When these kind of objections are challenged with the examples of mass killings or outright genocides in China during the revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, 90's Rwanda or present day Darfur, the same people respond merely by adding the qualification that they meant it could never again happen in a Western democracy. Rounding up dissidents and putting them in prison or outdoor fenced enclosures after the administration of pepper spray and barrages of rubber bullets and tear gas was practiced during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, and has become standard operating procedure ever since in the US, England and many other West European democracies. The point Ellul makes is that, when order is the highest value – and “[t]o deny this is to deny the whole course of modern times” (103) – it is a slippery, but logical slope, from the desire to maintain order to a populace under 24 hour surveillance and whose movements in and out of their region are tightly controlled; from “Now leaving the United States” and “Welcome to Canada,” to “Papers, please.”
Even though technique still requires the action and collaboration of humans to further itself, the diminishing necessity for this due to technological advance, combined with humanity's seemingly infinite capacity for delusion and self-deception, make it possible for technique to subordinate/enslave humans completely while they maintain the illusion of control over it. It is in this respect that the paranoid conspiracy theorists perhaps have the end correct but misunderstand the means. An inner circle of elite Illuminati may be the instruments of this global takeover but they are not the puppet masters they are made out to be – rather, it is the blind force of technique pulling the strings to affect its own perpetuation. Like an ethereal version of the Blob from the fifties horror classic, assimilating/eliminating anything and everything that opposes or even touches it, technique is an awesome force almost to subtle to notice.
We are indeed “conditioned...by technological society,” as Ellul contends (xxviii). I am a product of technique in so far as most of my life has been organized around the various techniques of bureaucratic institutions of government and education, and technology – television and mass media, video games, computers and the internet, etc. I cannot fundamentally separate myself from this milieu. Though I can survive without the technique of today as the foundational ground of my existence – for instance, if I were to live in the forest without modern conveniences – my entire personality and world view have been shaped and informed by technique. It is the context within which all of modern life takes place. Likewise globalization, being an outgrowth of technique, subsumes and consumes all non-globalized processes in the same way that Ellul talks about technique eliminating or converting into technique all non-technical phenomena. He also maintains that “the technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a way as to retain the good and reject the bad” (111). It is therefore meaningless to talk about utilizing the techniques we like and banning those we don't for, eventually, if they are necessary for technique as a whole to progress, technique will compel us to change our minds.
To the extent that I strive to develop my consciousness in a manner outside of technique, to cultivate non-technical values and considerations, I suppose I am engaged in an active struggle against the insidious but blind forces of both technique and globalization. Meditating, doing yoga (which is itself a sophisticated physical/psycho-spiritual technique), preferentially buying local or used goods, eschewing the majority of mass media products for more homegrown entertainment and leisure, and investing my energy in building community and relationships all seem antithetical to the impetus of economic globalization. They are modest forms of resistance but are perhaps my only means of affecting any control over the further encroachment of modern technique into my personal sphere. It could perhaps be argued that this is itself another technique I am affecting. But it is a means of technique in service of a non-technical end – does this constitute doing what Ellul admonishes us to? Can it be enough? That is a conversation I would very much like to have with him – and one we all need to have with each other.
Works Cited
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1964.
Falk, Richard. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1999.
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