The Vision of the Dehumanized Society of A. D. 2000

[Bob Michael]

The Vision of the Dehumanized Society of A. D. 2000 (From 'The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology' by Erich Fromm - 1968)

What is the kind of society and the kind of man we might find in the year 2000, provided nuclear war has not destroyed the human race before then?

If people knew the likely course which American society will take, many if not most of them would be so horrified that they they might take adequate measures to permit changing the course. If people are not aware of the direction in which they are going, they will awaken when it is too late and when their fate has been irrevocably sealed. Unfortunately, the vast majority are not aware of where they are going. They are not aware that the new society toward which they are moving is as radically different from Greek and Roman, medieval and traditional industrial societies as the agricultural society was from that of the food gathers and hunters. Most people still think in the concepts of the society of the first Industrial Revolution. They see that we have more and better machines than man had fifty years ago and mark this down as progress. They believe that lack of direct political oppression is a manifestation of the achievement of personal freedom. Their vision of the year 2000 is that it will be the full realization of the aspirations of man since the end of the Middle Ages, and they do not see that the year 2000 may not be the fulfillment and happy culmination of a period in which man struggled for freedom and happiness, but the beginning of a period in which man ceases to be human and becomes transformed into an unthinking and unfeeling machine.

It is interesting to note that the dangers of the new dehumanized society were already clearly recognized by intuitive minds in the nineteenth century, and it it adds to the impressiveness of their vision that they were people of opposite political camps.

A conservative like Disraeli and a socialist like Marx were practically of the same opinion concerning the danger to man that would arise from the uncontrolled growth of production and consumption. They both saw how man would become weakened by enslavement to the machine and his own ever increasing cupidity. Disraeli thought the solution could be found by containing the power of the new bourgeoise; Marx believed that a highly industrialized society could be transformed into a humane one, in which man and not material goods were the goal of all social efforts. One of the most brilliant progressive thinkers of the last century, John Stuart Mill, saw the problem with all clarity:

"I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.....Most fitting, indeed, is it, that while riches are power, and to grow as rich as possible the universal object of ambition, the path to its attainment should be open to all, without favor or partiality. But the best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward."

It seems that great minds a hundred years ago saw what would happen today or tomorrow, while we to whom it is happening blind ourselves in order not to be disturbed in our daily routine. It seems the liberals and conservatives are equallty blind in this respect. There are only a few writers of vision who have clearly seen the monster to which we are giving birth. It is not Hobbes' Leviathan, but a Moloch, the all-destructive idol, to which human life is to be sacrificed. This Moloch has been described most imaginatively by Orwell and Aldous Huxley, by a by a number of science-fiction writers who show more perspicacity than most professional sociologists and pyschologists.

[Tomas]

You are one depressing .

A bitter old man whose time he frittered away.

[David Quinn]

Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said, "Each man becomes what he hates"....?

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[Diebert van Rhijn]

This Moloch has been described most imaginatively by Orwell and Aldous Huxley, by a by a number of science-fiction writers who show more perspicacity than most professional sociologists and pyschologists.

Orwell and Huxley describe completely different distopias. Of both Huxley's Brave New World comes closest metaphorically and Orwell's 1984 comes closest in a literal sense, in terms of predictive power. Then again, imaginative descriptions can be found in abundance in science fiction as they do not have any restrain in having to be somewhat accurate or reasonable. Perhaps it's why we have fiction in the first place.

The problem I have with the idea of "man ceasing to be human and becoming transformed into an unthinking and unfeeling machine" is that this in itself is possibly tainted with the same notions born in "the society of the first Industrial Revolution", or perhaps the age of Enlightenment, especially with its Humanitarian reveille. I believe these are connected with belief in the dominance of reason and that ‘Man’ is perfectible in some fashion. The idea that by changing social conditions one "improves" and "perfects" the Human which waits for hurdles to be removed so it can blossom toward this Ideal Image of Maximized Thought and Feeling (and what it might Produce of course).

The crisis of the current world lies not in the notion that human life is being sacrificed to any idol, but with the bankruptcy of the ideas of the Humanitarians which have shaped our culture. Ideas which have spent themselves and have come to an ending. In that sense "human life" is being threatened not by monsters but by clinging to a "worn out" perception of human nature and human being, and all what needed to be in place for him to thrive. A now obsolete and counter-productive belief system which has removed the very things needed for the classical human being to exist: like limits, horizons, rules and a certain mental breathing room.

[Bob Michael]

Show me the love

In order to see, feel, and embody the love one must have the courage for the truth.

[Bob Michael]

Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said, "Each man becomes what he hates"....?

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You don't believe Wilde do you, David? My hatred of the darkness has resulted in my coming to be a Light. Something which our dark, dark world sorely needs. Though granted much of the world will hate such a Light.

[Bob Michael]

In that sense "human life" is being threatened not by monsters but by clinging to a "worn out" perception of human nature and human being, and all what needed to be in place for him to thrive.

No matter what the reason may be, the ongoing and ever further deteriorating dehumanized human species remains quite tragic and pitiful. But it is what it is and pity can have no place in the ARK. Practical pity (and/or sympathy) for the all-too-terribly-many unfortunately "weak and the botched" (Nietzsche) will serve only to bring in the darkness and inhibit and impede the fullness, perfection, and radiant glory of the light.

A now obsolete and counter-productive belief system which has removed the very things needed for the classical human being to exist: like limits, horizons, rules and a certain mental breathing room.

A new 'religionless religion' must be developed if some of the relatively few who were not fatally dehumanized by the thoroughly fallen, sinful, dehumanized societies they were born and raised in are to attain to the heights. Those whom by the hand of fate alone managed to escape the irreparable destruction of their innate humanness and their potential for human naturalness and wholeness.