One example he gives is “the transformation of a
hierarchical society into an egalitarian one” (70). To help us understand the
significance of this transformation, he gives us a little history lesson.
“Traditional society, all traditional
societies, are hierarchical…There have [70] never been any egalitarian
societies, and hierarchy was part of the general-cultural universe” (70-71).
All individuals within an organized social group, and all organized social
groups within a society, have always been hierarchically organized.
He sharpens the issue by adding: “The rare egalitarian
movements (the Levellers [England, 1640s], for instance), envisioned no real equality, but
rather a conquest of power for themselves!” (71). Even apparently egalitarian
movements of the past remained, in truth, hierarchically oriented.
Ellul then makes this ambiguous point: “Since the
eighteenth century, not only has the idea of equality become general, but, even
more, it [is] taken as an established fact, and its realization seems possible”
(71). Hierarchies have been universal until our own times. In our age, this has
changed. Hierarchies (at least traditional ones) have been both challenged and modified as equality has
become a significant cultural value.
This radical historical change has been brought about by
technology.
Technology cannot put up with
irrational discriminations or social structures based on beliefs. All
inequality, all discrimination (e.g., racial), all particularism, are condemned
by technology, for it reduces everything to commensurable and rational factors.
A complete statistical equality for any adequate dimension and any identifiable
group—such is the goal of a society having technology as its chief factor (71).
He adds:
And this corresponds to the
process of specialization. If everything is specialized, if all specialties are
equally technological, equally necessary from a technological point of view,
how could we help but have equality? If fact, we can resolutely say that the
demand for equality…is nothing but the ideological product of the unlimited use
of technology (71).
In The
Technological Society (1964), Ellul defined technology as the totality of
methods which have been rationally developed to have the greatest possible
efficiency, effectiveness, usefulness, success, power. This totality of methods has grown and integrated itself
into today’s gigantic and inescapable Global Technological System (GTS).
Before the GTS, the traditional religions of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam were social
structures based on qualitatively determined beliefs, values, norms,
narratives, and goals. Indeed, each of these three religions created and
sustained its own unique and enduring civilization. As vital parts of each
civilization, organized social groups such as congregations, families,
workplaces, schools, towns, and governments were structured in terms of them. Painting,
sculpture, architecture, literature, and music expressed each religion in unique
ways. People understood themselves primarily to be Jews, Christians, or Muslims.
The GTS has changed all that. It has been able to assume
the immense proportions it has by imposing its intolerance of irrational discriminations or social structures
based on beliefs. In other words, the GTS is intolerant of any way of
thinking or living that does not, as it does, exalt efficiency as the greatest
of all values. Consequently, the GTS fragmented the three ancient religious
civilizations of Olympia with their religiously structured societies, cultures,
and personalities. It broke them down into their component parts and then rationally
reassembled those parts solely in terms of their technological suitability.
In this way, Ellul is right in asserting that the GTS has
succeeded, beyond anyone’s imagination, in completely disintegrating the
hierarchies of the three traditional religious civilizations of Olympia.
Copyright © 2018
by Steven Farsaci. All rights reserved.