Vincent Bertolini-Felice / 12.09.23 / "Technique has taken over the whole of civilization.
Death, procreation, birth all submit to technical efficiency and systemization."
— Jacques Ellul
My reading habits are erratic and obsessive at best. For the better part of a month, I worked my way through Down and Out in Paris and London. My persistence is derived from an apathetic obligation I feel to complete something I’ve started. I find Orwell’s writing style pedantic, picking and choosing from the greats that preceded him to make novels that always lack the originality necessitated in writing a great novel. Fiction is a medium in which I’ve easily digested throughout the course of my life, often with little external thought or analysis to decipher an antiquated story.
Philosophical texts, on the other hand, reside in a genre I deeply enjoy, but often require multiple rereads to discover crucial words I overlooked or concepts that read as nothing beyond the words that describe them.
One way in which I’ve circumnavigated this issue is by using Audiobooks. It took a continual three week stretch to digest David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System. Followed by a period twice as long dedicated to understanding Kierkegaard’s library.
My most recent uptake in this regard has been Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society. Following a deeper dive into the unfortunate history of Ted Kaczynski, I discovered Ellul’s body of work, and became enamored with the concepts he outlined. Jacques Ellul doesn’t carry the widespread recognition that other 20th century French Philosophers carry. In such, the pursuit of a physical copy of his book is either met with trying my luck at secondhand stores, or a hefty fee to order one through a corporate delivery site.
As a result of the troubles of “obscurity” in a forgotten medium, I determined the best vessel to learn from Ellul was an Audiobook. I suspended my displeasure in Orwell to listen to Ellul; playing it in the background as I study, cook, and relax has proven an effective medium to help me understand the intricate human psychologies, and themes of Christian response to the dangerous evolution of the dogmas that posed a threat when introduced to the world in the early and latter parts of the 20th century.
Despite my intrigue in Ellul and pursuit of his concepts, I feel as if he would be disappointed by the means in which I attained his teachings and the implications on societal function that normalized the channels in which that process occurred.
The crux of Ellul’s work summates in his belief that throughout the course of history, humanity has worked to develop idols that have unknowingly replaced God. That the consolidation of worldly power develops governing bodies that push people’s passions away from God and into buying into systems that ruin the concept of God in the eyes of the masses.
The direst of these idols, Ellul had the displeasure of seeing these pains engrain themselves in society’s roots. The growth of tech and accompanying intertwine between the growth of an economy and growth of a workforce reliant on industrialized tech led to dangerous economic consolidation into an amoral few. Ellul feared the growth of Capitalism into not only the hearts of governments, but the workings of the common man. This ultimately resulted in a society in which corporate interest is the only interest. It becomes in the best heart of the individual to see a heartless placation manipulated to entertain, develop, and colonize, as well as the upper echelon of power who control it, succeed. The subsequent removal of human purpose in favor of a material God displacing the emotion of the individual was a prediction that has rang true in a lot of regards.
The idea of a corporate entity that controls every aspect of human need and want from grocery, to clothe, to pharmaceutical, to entertainment, to a connected web of human and corporate interaction, being the sole holder of the only means in which a tradesman or common person can acquire a copy of Ellul’s work on a medium he believed sought to replace human passion and purpose, seems enough to disdain Ellul’s soul. The greater fact that one wouldn’t blink at a Mega Corporation with the controlling stake in almost every aspect of daily life, ran by someone capable of buying Ellul's native Ligue 1 Fútbol league twenty times, would sign to Ellul that the battle is lost, and the war is nearing its conclusion.
Was Ellul right? Is Materialism an inevitably of the schools of thought that many formal Anarchists feared? The answer can no better be described than, “well....yes, and no.” Ellul was right in his concept of idolatry and the tie between economic pursuit and the slow disillusionment with Christianity. However, he was incorrect about his reasoning behind the stagnation and decline of Christianity.
Ellul (like many of his contemporaries) failed to predict the social dichotomy around corporate identity and religion that would shape the modern slate of anarchial rejection vs. strict propagandization.
The growing discontent, and general understanding of corporate will being exerted and prioritized over the will of the masses is something Ellul would have found susceptible as a bare minimum.
Think of Amazon, and its many subsidiaries. Within the online grocery market, Amazon is 2nd, occupying 22% of the purchases and transactions. As well as entertainment, with Amazon being responsible for 50-80% of worldwide book purchases by the five largest publishers, as well as 21% of the streaming market. An emerging market is cloud hosting, a new medium to sustain and expand hosting for websites and networks; a market dominated by Amazon’s web hosting services, at near 34% of the market. These many subsidiaries ultimately culminated in 38% of the United States entire retail economic market being owned and operated by Amazon.
Four companies dictate five out of every ten American consumer purchases, and the means in which they do so has romanticized the medium that promotes personal consumerism and societal Capitalism plays heavily off themes Ellul outlined in another work of his, Propaganda.
Propaganda explores the efficacy of Propaganda in influencing the masses, and the role that plays in informing public opinion. Critics view Ellul as almost a flatterer of authoritarians, seemingly praising their ability to sway the masses towards a sinister and detrimental will in a similar manner to the way one might glorify a Chess player guiding his player towards an inevitable checkmate.
I do not believe Ellul means to serve as an apologist or a vessel for Western sympathy towards Mussolini, Lenin, or other deranged populists. Rather, his perceived praise of masters of manipulation reads like a cliché Movie's rising action, with a hero agonizingly recognize they were outsmarted by the stories’ villain.
The ultimate conclusion of Ellul’s work on Propaganda is that if a group with a large enough platform is able to play into a common necessity or interest and portray themselves as the appropriate medium to attain this goal, enough public goodwill is bought to justify everything to and between these goals. This, in theory, would allow for the individual interests of the elite to be projected onto the people as a shared interest; engraining itself as a “big brother”, that for all its aches and woes, still had the people's best interest in mind.
Regardless of applicability of its theory, Ellul’s ideas about the historical implementation of Propaganda serve as a more than plausible explanation for how corporate Personhood has taken its place among society, and the Amazons of the world have co-opted the masses into supporting their platforms.
The idea of how corporate personhood came to be accepted in society sets the stage to understand the prevalence of secular worship in a Western World in which Christianity is seeing less prevalence within.
In the United States, Christianity is well beyond its peak within the general Populus. The 91% majority it reached in the 20th century has dipped to 64% in 2022 and is projected to reach below 50% within the next half-century, according to NPR. This decline is not a result of the Idols that Ellul feared would dictate society playing out a malicious, almost mystical fate on a depraved union of human-esque amalgamations mimicking a society. Rather, a large group of normally tempered and still sensible individuals simply growing out of it, largely as a response to perceived and very real intolerance, antiquated tradition some don’t feel are very suitable, and simply bereft of purpose.
Ellul bought into the idea of Subconscious Divinity, the idea that there is an inherent driving force behind individual’s action that compels and dictates their action. The idea that people always believe in, and worship, a person, concept, or school of thought that develops a personal dogma no different than any standardized religion. While the range of this varies wildly, I believe Ellul’s most accurate prediction was in the prevalence of materialism as a means to rationalize and motivate the human spirit.
I by no means are criticizing a thought process that functions outside of traditional religious conceptions, rather are attempting to highlight the individual and societal dismay that builds as a result of promoting personal holdings and monetary empiricism.
The growth of unfettered Capitalism and the proliferation of media in a way that no thinker or outlet accurately predicted saw new means to increase the outlet of technological and capitalist impact on the individual. The growth of internet paired with a largely socially driven exodus away from Christianity in the 21st century led to people seeking out the concept of Subconscious Divinity in a way Ellul predicted in theory, but not in application.
The rebirth of rugged individualism paired with a medium like new age social media and tech has created new opportunities to address old ideas regarding Subconscious Divinity and provide new vessels to worship what Ellul saw as idols.
While I don’t personally believe there is a correct or uniform school of thought that explains the workings of a Creator(s) or the Universe as a whole, I believe its easier to point out dogmas that are detrimental to society, and I believe large parts of Ellul's work were incredibly apt, given the time in which he published his works.
With new vessels to increase wealth, paired with an increased polarization that sees large groups of men responding to a rebirth of traditional roles regarding masculinity are seeing a growing group of young men develop personas reliant on the pursuit of wealth, material pleasure, and traditional conceptions of power. This mindset, while an inherently modern thing, is a response very similar to the one Ellul predicted in the early 60’s.
Another example of this mindset is the prioritization of employment and grounded accolade over personal freedom. The conception that Wealth is the ultimate liberator that creates future freedoms and tranquility for those who can possess it is an inherently Capitalist and inherently material mentality. The belief that the intended purpose of life is painful testing to bear the fruits of your labor only in the waning years of your life is a modern attempt to justify the intrusion of unaltered Capitalism into the minds of the many.
The modern attempts to put personal interest above all is arguably more of a threat to the stability of societal and individual thought than ever before.
The applicability of Ellul’s thought beyond cynical thought is also apparent. I believe Ellul’s cure is tremendously accurate, and while may not address the personal and mental ideas that contribute to this thought to the degree it should, by rooting out the political and social backing of the thought would remove a lot of the pressure it puts on the individual.
The remedy Ellul proposes is the spread of grassroots movements to initiate action. Ellul believed violence was an unnecessary act, as it simply bought into the mindset of the state, which Ellul believed was the largest proliferator of violence. Ellul believed personalizing issues and attacking large issues on a communal level was more effective. Rather than attack widespread issues from the top and trickle belief down (much like Reaganomics) which was ineffective, by developing unified communities opposed to government policy at the local level, more good could be done more sustainably.
The jury is still out on whether or not I recommend Ellul. His work, given modern context, reads incredibly analytical. Often when reading his work, it felt as if I was reading a Philosophical Study. His work approaches the concept of Personal Relations to God, or the idea of God takes something inherently ambiguous and applies an almost mathematic lens. I found myself enamored with his approach to human understanding, yet it can be a bore or a hard train to follow. If nothing else, think about the outlined ideas, and think about ways in which we fall victim to it, and determine for yourself its purpose or applicability.
In my frustration with the borderline plagiarism and gratuitous language of Orwell, I was fortunate enough to be enlightened to an author, who despite his pursuit of aggressive reactions, poses sound reasoning to address societal trends that both plight and define modern society.
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