Babby's introduction to Ellul

[Anonymous No.17157694]

Hi anons. I'm reading The Technological Society and I'm contemplating whether this stuff is as true and perceptive as it sounds or I'm being meme'd, I've no doubt that 'Technique' not only has the role and prevalence he ascribes it with, but I also agree on the dehumanizing consequences.
Any thoughts?

[Anonymous No.17157733]

never understood the appeal of this stuff, what he says is but a truism

[Anonymous No.17158071]

The most important notion of the book is technique as an autonomous force where man doesn't helm it or even steer it, but partakes in as much as he can, and should he object to it, the phenomenon will find some other man to further it for its own purposes, whether it's by his sincere belief in technical advancement as a good, or just to make some money (recall that technicians are some of the most well-paid careers now). Since Ellul's time the US and UK restructured their entire economies around new economic techniques to great success.

What you should think about now is things like: Is it really possible for societies to resist technique? (What if you're a Haitian slave and the only chance of a successful uprising is via guns?) Isn't it possible we still live better than pre-modern society due to their prevalence of famine, disease, poor life expectancy, and crude medicine? Could we "halt" the technical phenomenon at some desirable point?

You might know some authors who have answered the above questions, since they are the most basic to ask. Ellul kind of does it. They are the biggest questions though, so it's worth dwelling on them.

[Anonymous No.17158996]

>>17157694
You are trapped in a shell, or rather, on it, trapped within a gravity well. All kinds of retardation swirl and wave and break and tear across its surface, and you seem trapped, until some monkey says, "haha rocket go whoosh," thereby spontaneously escaping the shell and its TECHNICAL constraints.

In outer space, those constraints don't apply, and attempting to impose them on space, that is to say, attempting to toss modernism upon mother nature as a burden doesn't work out. Because you die of exploding and stuff. You know. It's probably painful. Anyone who can access outside the shell of technology needs technology, so jacques ellul thinks no one can pierce the shell. That is because jacques ellul is a retard. If he was an engineer, or a mathematician like Kazynsky (I can't even spell his name), he would instead say, "haha bomb make electrical grid go boom," and consequently spontaneously be freed of the technical burden but remain aware of Newton's laws... because the medeivalists figured out quaternions and octonions, you dolt.

Everything he says is true under the constraint given: you are a slave to your technology, therefore you are a slave to your technique. That is, until you spend FIVE FUCKING KINUTES playing with for example the konigsberg bridges, at which you realize this is true, but only in the context of one additional fundamental constraint: you are fucking retarded and a ducking gorilla is smarter than you.

Unfortunately for moderns, modernism has a massively dygenic-inducing effect on its... peons... so of course most of them wind up dumb as bricks after a thousand fucking years of killing everyone too smart to be easily controlled.

[Saint Seiso !Mahdi26/jg No.17159049]

>>17157733
This. The whole purpose of writing is to express ideas to someone who doesn't know those ideas already. Ellul's prose appeals to an audience that already finished Industrial Society and Its Future.

[Anonymous No.17159401]

>>17159049
I think it is useful to at least present Technique as a kind of superset of Technology. It's like a sanity check: I can clearly live absent tech... but I have a walking stick... does that qualify as tech... Well no it doesn't because the thing to worry about is not technology but rather the agglomeration of many ontological entities which in common English we call techniques and in Ellul's book he calls Technique.

[Anonymous No.17159532]

>>17158996

[Anonymous No.17159551]

>>17157694
Technology is a system onto itself, woooooooow.

[Anonymous No.17160421]

>>17159532
Indeed, thus are you trapped in Ellul's shell. Let the bunny and the pancake consume you, that you might pancake and bunny until sleepy sleepy.