They may be pessimistic about our ability to respond to a world of global inequities and scarce resources. One thing is clear: readers who ignore Elluls spiritual writings are missing one of the major objectives of his work. He didnt come from French blue blood; he was a meteque.. This is most clearly evident in the defense industries with their close ties to government agencies. Technique is the complex and complete milieu in which human beings must live, and in relation to which they must define themselves. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 1972); Robert Schrag, Ten Thousand Working Days (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978); William A. Faunce, Problems of an Industrial Society, 2d ed. 14. The technologies needed there must be relatively inexpensive and labor-intensive. (Translated by Dominique Gillot and Carl Mitcham from Recherche pour une Ethique dans une socit technicienne, Morale et Enseignement (1983), pp. There is also Chellis Glendinning, author of When Technology Wounds, and Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale and Rebels Against the Future (a history of the original Luddite movement). Above all, soil erosion and massive deforestation threaten the biological resources essential for human life, and global warming from our use of fossil fuels threatens devastating changes in world climates. Elle puise les ressources naturelles. This is where the so-called Ellul Understanding Curve comes into play. Aquinas held that there is both a revealed law, known through scripture the church, and a natural law, built into the created order and accesable human reason. Appropriate technology can be thought of as an attempt to achieve some of the material benefits of technology outlined in the first section without the destructive human costs discussed in the second section most of which result from large-scale centralized technologies. The redirection of technology will be no easy task. In general, power corrupts and leads people to rationalize their use of power for their own ends. Nuclear energy is a prime example of a vulnerable, centralized, capital-intensive technology. Separate technologies form an interlocking system, a total, mutually reinforcing network that seems to lead a life of its own. 21. This emphasizes again that technique is really the Milieu in which modern humanity is placed. Egbert Schuurman, Technology and the Future (Toronto: Wedge Publishing, 1980), also The Modern Babylon Culture, in Technology and Responsibility, ed. <> He was optimistic about the use of technology in a communist economic order, and thus he belongs with the third group below, the contextualists, but his idea of alienation has influenced the pessimists.
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