I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
–Neo, The Matrix
Movies like The Matrix, The Terminator, or even War Games show the possible, under-explored consequence of human ingenuity: in our legitimate act of scientific research and invention, we might create something which not only would move beyond our control, but could, in the end, dominate us instead. The good which comes from our scientific research is obvious, but so is the possible harm, especially when our research is done outside the restrictions which would be placed upon it by the accumulated wisdom of traditional morality. For every good invention we make, whatever its possible power for good, there is also an equal power for evil which comes forth, and brought into the world scene, capable of becoming a menace all of its own. Terrorism relies upon this dark underbelly of scientific progress, because our progress makes it easier for a terrorist to commit great harm with little to no resources of their own. Technological advances create new kinds of weapons – ones which, not originally meant to be one, can still be easily transformed into one, such as we see with airplanes: even non-military airplanes, used for the sake of travel, can be turned into a vehicle for destruction, as we saw on 9-11. It is for this reason that Paul Virilio points out that “Terrorism is intimately connected with technologization.”[1] The rise of technology has seen the rise of terrorism because it offers more people the opportunity to engage in significant terrorist acts with ease, and we must expect, as we continue to advance in our technological control over the world, we will find people using it to wreck great destruction over the face of the earth.
And yet, we must also remember, the threat isn’t merely with terrorists. All that is needed is for one great industrial accident, such as at Chernobyl, for irreversible harm to be done. Bumbling along for so long with powers which we do not fully understand, it is surprising how few technological catastrophes we have had to date. We should not take this as a demonstration that we can control what we create; rather, the further we advance, the more likely we will find ourselves in a situation similar to that of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Goethe’s Der Zauberlehrling. Promethean designs to rise up and become gods, be it through magic or machine (are they really that different?[2]) end in disaster, because we are not gods and can not control nature as if we were. While there appears to be something positive in the process, there is, beneath it, an attempt to destroy the world so as to leave ourselves free to recreate it in our own image. “Prometheus is creative negation between the ‘One’ and the ‘All’ at the dynamic center of the world.”[3] Each time we try to negate the world and what is within it, so as to rise above the limits we find ourselves living under, we end up once again under new limits, new rules, new constructs which send us crashing back down to the earth, often in worse shape than before our adventure began. “The problem is not to use technology but to realize that one is used by it.”[4] Those tools which we create so as to gain control over the earth end up dominating us instead. “We do not control what we produce. Knowing how to do doesn’t mean we know what we are doing.”[5]
Obviously, we cannot condemn scientific progress because of how people might end up using it (although we must always act prudentially; if it can be predicted that more harm than good will come out of what we produce, perhaps we might want to engage other avenues of research). But we must understand, our progress does come at a price, and with it two rather important issues must not be neglected.
First, we have been led to believe scientific progress means societal progress, and so, if scientific research is brought far enough forward, we can create a utopian society. False expectations for science, of course, encourage progress for the sake of progress, without any prudential oversight. Human creations will always be constructs which impose limits and restrictions on us, no matter what form they come in: political, legal, metaphysical, existential, psychological, linguistic, or technological. Despite what we try to do to counter such limits, the system which we will create will impose them, and they will, in turn, establish limits upon us which prevent a utopian society from being possible. The greater the heights, the greater the fall will be, the greater the devastation we will make, once we hit those limits.
Second, even when we are in a time of prosperity, there are consequences for what we do. Technology always comes at a price. We might try to hide it, we might try to pawn it over on someone else, but yet, for any organized development, there will be an equal, and opposite, increase in entropy. Our world is interdependent. Try as we might to push the entropy to the side, eventually its effects will reach us, and our lives will be the worse for them. Climate change is a real problem, and, with an understanding of entropy, one can easily see that it is the negative consequences of our actions which produce it.
Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth (Genesis 11:1-9).
The myth of Babel is Promethean at its core, and represents a universal truth which we should never forget. If history is doomed to repeat itself when we do not learn its lessons, we are getting ready for a great, world-wide fall which will take centuries for us to recover from (if, that is, the eschaton does not come before then). Indeed, it seems that the destruction of the world will come about from one such a Promethean move, if not soon, then sometime in the future. When we try to engage the world based upon our own ingenuity alone, we will, of course, find out that we cannot overcome the necessary impact of our actions. “And so we are brought to the following formulation, extravagant though it may seem: mankind’s self-destruction is the only foreseeable end to the world, left to itself, and the only end it deserves, insofar as it prefers to hoard what is its own (that is, power, mammon), rather than to gather with Christ.”[6]
For far too long, the idea of progress, and the way progress might be able to help humanity in the future, has been used to justify all kinds of evil. Consequentialism is used to defend such actions. We are told the destruction done in the midst of scientific research is worth it because the knowledge it produces will “save millions from pain and suffering.” People, their lives, and their wellbeing, are put at risk, or worse, they are killed, but their voices are rarely heard or considered, because we are told that their lives are worth the sacrifice for the common good. Nazi experimentation on the Jews, syphilis research on Black Americans at Tuskegee, and embryonic stem cell research have one gross error in common: people are seen as expendable, and not inviolable ends in and of themselves. People have been killed at the altar of science, and the idol, in return, has given its adherents many rewards. Despite all the blood shed, is it any wonder that this idol not only remains, but is vested with so much authority, that its dictates are rarely questioned?
Lives are not only destroyed in the pursuit of research, but also in the use of technology. Entropic effects must be dealt with; the poor, in one fashion or another, tend to be the ones which have to face them first, and because of it, have a far greater tendency to develop life-threatening diseases, killing them at a young age, than those who are affluent and capable of keeping industrial waste away from their homes. Once again, for many, as long as they are not on the receiving end of the harm, they do not care, and so think the system, even if imperfect, is as good as it can get, and are satisfied with the results. They do not take the time to pause and consider whether or not it is just; scientism, for the most part, has removed that question from us. All we are concerned about is the utility of our tools, not the morality of their use.
Footnotes
[1] Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, Pure War. Trans. Mark Polizotti (Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e), 2008), 123.
[2] “Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, — and so the Machine (or Magic). […] The Machine is our more obvious modern form though more closely related to Magic than is usually recognized,” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 145-6.
[3] “Prometheus ist schöpferische Negation als dynamische Weltmitte zwischen ‘Hen’ und ‘Pan.'” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Apokalypse der Deutschen Seele. Bd. I (Einsiedeln, Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 1998), 147. trans. mine.
[4] Paul Virilio, Pure War, 92.
[5] Ibid., 76.
[6] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV: The Action. trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 442
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