https://archive.org/stream/JacquesE...es Ellul - The Technological Society_djvu.txt
Progress and Technique, in its action on the economy, awakened vast
hopes in human hearts. And certainly there is no question of deny-
ing these hopes. The machine and all that came with it, all it
brought in the way of progress, would put into human hands riches
perhaps different but as impressive as those of legend. These riches
would not be piles of gold or precious stones reserved for the dar-
lings of the gods, but comfort and pleasure for everyone. And if the
carved palaces, the chests encrusted with coral and enamel, the
scultpures and objects of gold, the precious table services, the arms
with handles of emerald and pearl were all fated to disappear, in
compensationevery man was promised decent glassware and porce-
lain, a house in which he could be warm, abundant nourishment,
and, little by little, comfort and hygienic surroundings that would
assure him physical and mental harmony. Everyone was to have
in full measure the wherewithal to live. And, more than that, new
needs would arise which would no longer be the rare pleasures of
initiates but simply the human condition. To drink chilled bever-
ages in the summer or to be warm in the winter would no longer be
the costly fancy of a prince.
Poverty was retreating and, with it, man’s suffering. The machine
was taking over. The time devoted to work remained time wasted;
but it was constantly decreasing and no one imagined that this
process would ever stop.
This extreme view of things developed so rapidly that by the
end of the nineteenth century people saw hi their grasp the moment
in which everything would be at the disposal of everyone, in which
man, replaced entirely by the machine, would have only pleasures
and play. We have had to lower our sights. In practice, things have
not turned out to be so simple. Man is not yet relieved of the
brutal fate which pursues him. What appeared so near has again
been postponed. Yet two wars, two “accidents,” have in no way af-
fected our glorious conception of progress. Spiteful actions of fate,
human errors — call them what they will — men refuse to see in
them anything that essentially affects the marvelous progress that
opens before them. In spite of accidents, they believe that the road
is still free. The man of the mid-twentieth century preserves in his
heart exactly the same expectations as his grandfather had.
No doubt he has repudiated what he thought was naive. And
perhaps a certain distrust keeps him from enjoying the full life to
the extent that he might have expected. Even if he is unaware of
it, the average man preserves in his collective consciousness the
obscure feeling that he has been duped. He had believed so com-
pletely in the takeover by the machine, and in plenty, and he does
not wish to fall into a trap again. Nevertheless, hope persists wher-
ever tomorrows beckon; say Hitler’s Thousand Years, or the bour-
geois’s stupid notion of progress. The hope is still the same, but the
human being (model 1950) tells himself that he can only attain
Paradise through the destruction of his enemies. His feeling of frus-
tration — occasioned by the abrupt loss of what was possible and
even within reach — is one of the elements behind the atrocities of
modern wars. When man finds the foe who stands in his way and
who alone has barred Paradise to him (be it Jew, Fascist, capitalist,
or Communist), he must strike him down, that from the cadaver
may grow the exquisite flower the machine had promised.
All myths directly or indirectly go back to the myth of Paradise;
and the technical productivity man is witnessing seems to have
spurred a proliferation of myths. Psychologists and sociologists have
observed the appearance of new myths; and many theories have
been advanced to account for this return of man to the sacred
world. But such explanations are unsatisfactory because they lack
a material basis. That material basis is, in fact, the enormous tech-
nical progress of the modern world. This progress restores to man
the supernatural world from which he had been severed, an in-
comprehensible world but one which he himself has made, a world
full of promises that he knows can be realized and of which he is
potentially the master. He is seized by sacred delirium when he sees
the shining track of a supersonic jet or visualizes the vast granaries
stocked for him. He projects this delirium into the myth through
which he can control, explain, direct, and justify his actions . . .
and his new slavery. The myth of destruction and the myth of ac-
tion have their roots in this encounter of man with the promise of
technique, and in his wonder and admiration.
If we consider the theses of the economists, we find that they,
too, affirm the same hope. They locate it elsewhere and prescribe
conditions and modalities to it, but the foundation is the same.
Technique is for them, too, the only means of abundance and lei-
sure. Fourastie is right in putting the case numerically to dramatize
the shortening of the work week and the enormous transformation
in living standards and in the qualitative nature of life. The case
is indeed simple if 1950 is compared with 1815. But it is no
longer quite so simple if 1950 is compared with 1250. It is impor-
tant to consider, for labor, not only time but intensity. It is possi-
ble to make a meaningful comparison between the fifteen-hour
workday of a miner in 1830 and the seven-hour workday of 1950.
But there is no common denominator between the seven-hour day
of 1950 and the fifteen-hour day of the medieval artisan. We know
that the peasant interrupts his workday with innumerable pauses.
He chooses his own tempo and rhythm. He converses and cracks
jokes with every passer-by.
Exactly the same holds true for the qualitative nature of life.
If a whole people is oriented toward the search for justice or purity,
if it obeys in depth the primacy of the spiritual, it does not suffer
from the lack of material things, just as we today do not feel the
inverse need of the spiritual. Such preferences depend on personal
judgment and on the society concerned.
We cannot say with assurance that there has been progress from
1250 to 1950. In so doing, we would be comparing things which
are not comparable. Certainly, an airplane which, after all, exists
concretely seems like progress, compared with dim historical mem-
ories. Therefore, it is advisable to limit ourselves to saying that
there has been progress since the beginning of the industrial era,
which was founded on the breakup and destruction of the non-
comparable and vanished old order. For modern man with his pe-
culiar orientation — which has material possessions and "stomach’*
as the central values — the period of great hopes indeed arrived.
And these hopes are the same (even if the forms differ) for a man
met at random and for a great economist.
However, as it is said in England, "you get nothing for nothing,
and not much for sixpence."’ In spite of leisure and abundance,
supposing that leisure and abundance come in the way men expect
them, there is a great difference between this state and Paradise.
The difference has to do with the cost. The old dream that has
tempted man from the beginning, the medieval legend of the man
who sells his soul for an inexhaustible purse, which recurs with an
enticing insistence through all the changes of civilization, is per-
haps in process of being realized, and not for a single man but for
all. I say perhaps. Modern man never aks himself what he will have
to pay for his power.
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