140. We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be
reformed in a such a way as to reconcile
freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense with the
industrial-technological system altogether.
This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a
radical and fundamental change
in the nature of society.
141. People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much
greater change than reform does,
it is more difficult to bring about than reform is. Actually, under
certain circumstances revolution is
much easier than reform. The reason is that a revolutionary movement can
inspire an intensity of commitment
that a reform movement cannot inspire. A reform movement merely offers to
solve a particular social problem
A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and
create a whole new world; it provides the kind
of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this reasons it would be much easier to
overthrow the whole technological system than to put effective, permanent
restraints on the development of application of any one segment of
technology, such as genetic engineering, but under suitable conditions
large numbers of people may devote themselves passionately to a revolution
against the industrial-technological system. As we noted in paragraph 132,
reformers seeking to limite certain aspects of technology would be working
to avoid a negative outcome. But revolutionaries work to gain a powerful
reward -- fulfillment of their revolutionary vision -- and therefore work
harder and more persistently than reformers do.
142. Reform is always restrainde by the fear of painful consequences if
changes go too far. But once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a
society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of
their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian
Revolutions. It may be that in such cases only a minority of the population
is really committed to the revolution, but this minority is sufficiently
large and active so that it becomes the dominant force in society. We will
have more to say about revolution in paragraphs 180-205.
143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to
put pressures on human beings of the sake of the functioning of the social
organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society to another.
Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, excessive labor,
environmental pollution), some are psychological (noise, crowding, forcing
humans behavior into the mold that society requires). In the past, human
nature has been approximately constant, or at any rate has varied only
within certain bounds. Consequently, societies have been able to push
people only up to certain limits. When the limit of human endurance has
been passed, things start going rong: rebellion, or crime, or corruption,
or evasion of work, or depression and other mental problems, or an elevated
death rate, or a declining birth rate or something else, so that either the
society breaks down, or its functioning becomes too inefficient and it is
(quickly or gradually, through conquest, attrition or evolution) replaces
by some more efficient form of society.
[25]
144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the
development of societies. People coud be pushed only so far and no farther.
But today this may be changing, because modern technology is developing way
of modifying human beings.
145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that amke them
terribley unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their
unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our
own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been
greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to
disruption fo the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even
if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result
of SOME conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the
conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them
antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants area a means of modifying
an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to toelrate
social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know
that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to
those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)
146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the methods of
controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us look
at some of the other methods.
147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video
cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, computers are
used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals.
Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical
coercion (i.e., law enforcement).[26] Then there are the methods of
propaganda, for which the mass communication media provide effective
vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections,
selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment
industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly
even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence.
Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of escape. While
absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety,
frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don't have
work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at
all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most
modern people must be contantly occupied or entertained, otherwise the get
"bored," i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.
148. Other techniques strike deeper that the foregoing. Education is no
longer a simple affair of paddling a kid's behind when he doesn't know his
lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is becoming
a scientific technique for controlling the child's development. Sylvan
Learning Centers, for example, have had great success in motivating
children to study, and psychological techniques are also used with more or
less success in many conventional schools. "Parenting" techniques that are
taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values
of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable. "Mental
health" programs, "intervention" techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are
ostensibly designed to benefit individuals, but in practice they usually
serve as methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system
requires. (There is no contradiction here; an individual whose attitudes or
behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that
is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to
suffer from stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he
thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the system is
acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into
conformity.) Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms is disapproved in
most if not all cultures. Tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no
reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone. But many
psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is
spanking, when used as part of a rational and consistent system of
discipline, a form of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by
whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit
in well with the existing system of society. In practice, the word "abuse"
tends to be interpreted to include any method of child-rearing that
produces behavior inconvenient for the system. Thus, when they go beyond
the prevention of obvious, senseless cruelty, programs for preventing
"child abuse" are directed toward the control of human behavior of the
system.
149. Presumably, research will continue to increas the effectiveness of
psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we think it is
unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust
human beings to the kind of society that technology is creating. Biological
methods probably will have to be used. We have already mentiond the use of
drugs in this connection. Neurology may provide other avenues of modifying
the human mind. Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to
occur in the form of "gene therapy," and there is no reason to assume the
such methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the
body that affect mental funtioning.
150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely
to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human
behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a
considerable proportion of the system's economic and environmental problems
result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem,
depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won't study, youth gangs,
illegal drug use, rape, child abuse , other crimes, unsafe sex, teen
pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic
rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (i.e., pro-choice vs. pro-life),
political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate
groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will
be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.
151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of
mere chance. It can only be a result fo the conditions of life that the
system imposes on people. (We have argued that the most important of these
conditions is disruption of the power process.) If the systems succeeds in
imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure itw own survival,
a new watershed in human history will have passed. Whereas formerly the
limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of
societies (as we explained in paragraphs 143, 144),
industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits by
modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological
methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit
the needs of human beings. Instead, human being will be adjusted to suit the
needs of the system.
[27]
152. Generally speaking, technological control over human behavior will
probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a
conscious desire to restrict human freedom. [28] Each new step in the
assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational
response to a problem that faces society, such as curing alcoholism,
reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study science and
engineering. In many cases, there will be humanitarian justification. For
example, when a psychiatrist prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed
patient, he is clearly doing that individual a favor. It would be inhumane
to withhold the drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their
children to Sylvan Learning Centers to have them manipulated into becoming
enthusiastic about their studies, they do so from concern for their
children's welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one
didn't have to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid
didn't have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But what can
they do? They can't change society, and their child may be unemployable if
he doesn't have certain skills. So they send him to Sylvan.
153. Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a
calculated decision of the authorities but through a process of social
evolution (RAPID evolution, however). The process will be impossible to
resist, because each advance, considered by itself, will appear to be
beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will appear
to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will
seem to be less than that which would result from not making it (see
paragraph 127). Propaganda for example is used for many good purposes, such
as discouraging child abuse or race hatred. [14] Sex education is obviously
useful, yet the effect of sex education (to the extent that it is
successful) is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the family
and put it into the hands of the state as represented by the public school
system.
154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood
that a child will grow up to be a criminal and suppose some sort of gene
therapy can remove this trait. [29] Of course most parents whose children
possess the trait will have them undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane
to do otherwise, since the child would probably have a miserable life if he
grew up to be a criminal. But many or most primitive societies have a low
crime rate in comparison with that of our society, even though they have
neither high-tech methods of child-rearing nor harsh systems of punishment.
Since there is no reason to suppose that more modern men than primitive men
have innate predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must
be due to the pressures that modern conditions put on people, to which many
cannot or will not adjust. Thus a treatment designed to remove potential
criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of re-engineering people so
that they suit the requirements of the system.
155. Our society tends to regard as a "sickness" any mode of thought or
behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because
when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the
individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an
individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a "cure" for a "sickness"
and therefore as good.
156. In paragraph 127 we pointed out that if the use of a new item of
technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional,
because the new technology tends to change society in such a way that it
becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using
that technology. This applies also to the technology of human behavior. In
a world in which most children are put through a program to make them
enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be forced to put his kid
through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up
to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or
suppose a biological treatment is discovered that, without undesirable
side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so
many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to
undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be
reduced, so that it will be possible for the system to increase the
stress-producing pressures. In fact, something like this seems to have
happened already with one of our society's most important psychological
tools for enabling people to reduce (or at least temporarily escape from)
stress, namely, mass entertainment (see paragraph 147). Our use of mass
entertainment is "optional": No law requires us to watch television, listen
to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape
and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone
complains about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches
it. A few have kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could
get along today without using ANY form of mass entertainment. (Yet until
quite recently in human history most people got along very nicely with no
other entertainment than that which each local community created for
itself.) Without the entertainment industry the system probably would not
have been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing pressure
on us as it does.
157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that
technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control
over human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that
human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis. As
experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger
and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate
parts of the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the
brain or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation.
Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may
not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one it clearly is less
powerful that the biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were
not the case then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate
human feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents.
158. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes
inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by the
authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to
biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling human
behavior is mainly a technical problem; a problem of neurons, hormones and
complex molecules; the kind of problem that is accessible to scientific
attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in solving technical
problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances will be made in
the control of human behavior.
159. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological
control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made to
introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be
introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no
rational and effective public resistance. (See paragraphs 127,132, 153.)
160. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point
out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial
Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it
is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the
human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his
environment and way of life have been.
161. But we have gotten ahead of our story. It is one thing to develop in
the laboratory a series of psychological or biological techniques for
manipulating human behavior and quite another to integrate these techniques
into a functioning social system. The latter problem is the more difficult
of the two. For example, while the techniques of educational psychology
doubtless work quite well in the "lab schools" where they are developed, it
is not necessarily easy to apply them effectively throughout our
educational system. We all know what many of our schools are like. The
teachers are too busy taking knives and guns away from the kids to subject
them to the latest techniques for making them into computer nerds. Thus, in
spite of all its technical advances relating to human behavior the system
to date has not been impressively successful in controlling human beings.
The people whose behavior is fairly well under the control of the system
are those of the type that might be called "bourgeois." But there are
growing numbers of people who in one way or another are rebels against the
system: welfare leaches, youth gangs cultists, satanists, nazis, radical
environmentalists, militiamen, etc..
162. The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome
certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the problems of
human behavior are the most important. If the system succeeds in acquiring
sufficient control over human behavior quickly enough, it will probably
survive. Otherwise it will break down. We think the issue will most likely
be resolved within the next several decades, say 40 to 100 years.
163. Suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several decades. By
that time it will have to have solved, or at least brought under control,
the principal problems that confront it, in particular that of
"socializing" human beings; that is, making people sufficiently docile so
that their behavior no longer threatens the system. That being
accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further obstacle
to the development of technology, and it would presumably advance toward
its logical conclusion, which is complete control over everything on Earth,
including human beings and all other important organisms. The system may
become a unitary, monolithic organization, or it may be more or less
fragmented and consist of a number of organizations coexisting in a
relationship that includes elements of both cooperation and competition,
just as today the government, the corporations and other large
organizations both cooperate and compete with one another. Human freedom
mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be
impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an
arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating
human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion.
Only a small number of people will have any real power, and even these
probably will have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too
will be regulated; just as today our politicians and corporation executives
can retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains
within certain fairly narrow limits.
164. Don't imagine that the systems will stop developing further techniques
for controlling human beings and nature once the crisis of the next few
decades is over and increasing control is no longer necessary for the
system's survival. On the contrary, once the hard times are over the system
will increase its control over people and nature more rapidly, because it
will no longer be hampered by difficulties of the kind that it is currently
experiencing. Survival is not the principal motive for extending control.
As we explained in paragraphs 87-90, technicians and scientists carry on
their work largely as a surrogate activity; that is, they satisfy their
need for power by solving technical problems. They will continue to do this
with unabated enthusiasm, and among the most interesting and challenging
problems for them to solve will be those of understanding the human body
and mind and intervening in their development. For the "good of humanity,"
of course.
165. But suppose on the other hand that the stresses of the coming decades
prove to be too much for the system. If the system breaks down there may be
a period of chaos, a "time of troubles" such as those that history has
recorded: at various epochs in the past. It is impossible to predict what
would emerge from such a time of troubles, but at any rate the human race
would be given a new chance. The greatest danger is that industrial society
may begin to reconstitute itself within the first few years after the
breakdown. Certainly there will be many people (power-hungry types
especially) who will be anxious to get the factories running again.
166. Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the
industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work to
heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the
likelihood that it will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that a
revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop
and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial
society if and when the system becomes sufficiently weakened. And such an
ideology will help to assure that, if and when industrial society breaks
down, its remnants will be smashed beyond repair, so that the system cannot
be reconstituted. The factories should be destroyed, technical books
burned, etc.
167. The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of
revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary attack
unless its own internal problems of development lead it into very serious
difficulties. So if the system breaks down it will do so either
spontaneously, or through a process that is in part spontaneous but helped
along by revolutionaries. If the breakdown is sudden, many people will die,
since the world's population has become so overblown that it cannot even
feed itself any longer without advanced technology. Even if the breakdown
is gradual enough so that reduction of the population can occur more
through lowering of the birth rate than through elevation of the death
rate, the process of de-industrialization probably will be very chaotic and
involve much suffering. It is naive to think it likely that technology can be phased out in a smoothly managed
orderly way, especially since the technophiles will fight stubbornly at
every step. Is it therefore cruel to work for the breakdown of the system?
Maybe, but maybe not. In the first place, revolutionaries will not be able
to break the system down unless it is already in deep trouble so that there
would be a good chance of its eventually breaking down by itself anyway;
and the bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of
its breakdown will be; so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the
onset of the breakdown will be reducing the extent of the disaster.
168. In the second place, one has to balance the struggle and death
against the loss of freedom and dignity. To many of us, freedom and dignity
are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain. Besides,
we all have to die some time, and it may be better to die fighting for
survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless
life.
169. In the third place, it is not all certain that the survival of the system will lead to less suffering than the breakdown of the system would. The system has already caused, and is continuing to cause , immense suffering all over the world. Ancient
cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and their environment, have been shattered by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a whole catalogue of economic, environmental, social and p
sychological problems. One of the effects of the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much of the world traditional controls on population have been thrown out of balance. Hence the population explosion, with all that it implies. Then the
re is the psychological suffering that is widespread throughout the supposedly fortunate countries of the West (see paragraphs 44, 45). No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and other environmental problems t
hat cannot yet be foreseen. And, as nuclear proliferation has shown, new technology cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and irresponsible Third World nations. Would you like to speculate abut what Iraq or North Korea will do with genetic engine
ering?
170. "Oh!" say the technophiles, "Science is going to fix all that! We will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody healthy and happy!" Yeah, sure. That's what they said 200 years ago. The Industrial Revolution was supposed
to eliminate poverty, make everybody happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The technophiles are hopelessly naive (or self-deceiving) in their understanding of social problems. They are unaware of (or choose to ignore) the fact that wh
en large changes, even seemingly beneficial ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of other changes, most of which are impossible to predict (paragraph 103). The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable that
in their attempt to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social systems that are terribly troubled, even more so that the present one. For example, the scientists boast that they will
end famine by creating new, genetically engineered food plants. But this will allow the human population to keep expanding indefinitely, and it is well known that crowding leads to increased stress and aggression. This is merely one example of the PREDI
CTABLE problems that will arise. We emphasize that, as past experience has shown, technical progress will lead to other new problems for society far more rapidly that it has been solving old ones. Thus it will take a long difficult period of trial and e
rror for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their Brave New World (if they ever do). In the meantime there will be great suffering. So it is not all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve less suffering than the breakdown of t
hat society would. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape.
171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decade and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider several possibilities.
172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines
and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the merc
y of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines
would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. As society
and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decision for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. E
ventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be ab
le to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car of his personal computer, but control over large systems
of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today, but with two difference. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superf
luous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless the may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass
of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are sat
isfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purp
oseless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in suc
h a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surp
lus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training neces
sary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and m ore training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, becau
se they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to
use any means that I can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such
a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve that needs of the system. We can imagine into channels that serv
e the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige an power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Ve
ry repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.
176. Once can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human bei
ngs will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service of industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people will would spend their time shinning each others
shoes, driving each other around inn taxicab, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other's tables, etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives
in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, , crime, "cults," hate groups) unless they were biological or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.
177. Needless to day, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us mots likely. But wee can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable that the ones we've j
ust described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial-technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the "bourgeois" type, who are
integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more "socialized" that ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly t
o a very great extent ) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God's will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under
the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, becau
se once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.
178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human begins a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically an
d psychological. If man is not adjust to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long an painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely that the latter.
179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.
180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC)
don't think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it.
181. As we stated in paragraph 166, the two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system. When the system become
s sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their respective revoluti
ons, showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new world view that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old orde
r. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose in something along the same lines.
182. It will be objected that the French and Russian Revolutions were failures. But most revolutions have two goals. One is to destroy an old form of society and the other is to set up the new form of society envisioned by the revolutionaries. The Fre
nch and Russian revolutionaries failed (fortunately!) to create the new kind of society of which they dreamed, but they were quite successful in destroying the existing form of society.
183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideals well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is , WILD nature; those aspects o
f the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human indivi
dual that are not subject to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions).
184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system). Most people will agree that
nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology. [30] It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any
new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amoun
t of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of ind
ustrial society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre-industrial societies can do significant damage to na
ture. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to keep increasing its control
over nature (including human nature). Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is not other way that peopl
e CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or hunter, etc., And, generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of gove
rnments or other large organizations to control local communities.
185. As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society -- well, you can't eat your cake and have it too. To gain one thing you have to sacrifice another.
186. Most people hate psychological conflict. For this reason they avoid doing any serious thinking about difficult social issues, and they like to have such issues presented to them in simple, black-and-white terms: THIS is all good and THAT is all bad.
The revolutionary ideology should therefore be developed on two levels.
187. On the more sophisticated level the ideology should address itself to people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational. The object should be to create a core of people who will be opposed to the industrial system on a rational, thought-out basis,
with full appreciation of the problems and ambiguities involved, and of the price that has to be paid for getting rid of the system. It is particularly important to attract people of this type, as they are capable people and will be instrumental in influ
encing others. These people should be addressed on as rational a level as possible. Facts should never intentionally be distorted and intemperate language should be avoided. This does not mean that no appeal can be made to the emotions, but in making such
appeal care should be taken to avoid misrepresenting the truth or doing anything else that would destroy the intellectual respectability of the ideology.
188. On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a simplified form that will enable the unthinking majority to see the conflict of technology vs. nature in unambiguous terms. But even on this second level the ideology should not be expressed
in language that is so cheap, intemperate or irrational that it alienates people of the thoughtful and rational type. Cheap, intemperate propaganda sometimes achieves impressive short-term gains, but it will be more advantageous in the long run to keep th
e loyalty of a small number of intelligently committed people than to arouse the passions of an unthinking, fickle mob who will change their attitude as soon as someone comes along with a better propaganda gimmick. However, propaganda of the rabble-rousin
g type may be necessary when the system is nearing the point of collapse and there is a final struggle between rival ideologies to determine which will become dominant when the old world-view goes under.
189. Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wan
ts. Until the time comes for the final push toward revolution [31], the task of revolutionaries will be less to win the shallow support of the majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people. As for the majority, it will be enough to make t
hem aware of the existence of the new ideology and remind them of it frequently; though of course it will be desirable to get majority support to the extent that this can be done without weakening the core of seriously committed people.
190. Any kind of social conflict helps to destabilize the system, but one should be careful about what kind of conflict one encourages. The line of conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and the power-holding elite of industrial society (
politicians, scientists, upper-level business executives, government officials, etc..). It should NOT be drawn between the revolutionaries and the mass of the people. For example, it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn Americans for t
heir habits of consumption. Instead, the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk that he doesn't need and that is very poor compensation for his lost
freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a matter of attitude whether you blame the advertising industry for manipulating the public or blame the public for allowing itself to be manipulated. As a matter of strategy one should g
enerally avoid blaming the public.
191. One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than that between the power-holding elite (which wields technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its power). For one thing, other conflicts tend to distract
attention from the important conflicts (between power-elite and ordinary people, between technology and nature); for another thing, other conflicts may actually tend to encourage technologization, because each side in such a conflict wants to use technolo
gical power to gain advantages over its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It also appears in ethnic conflicts within nations. For example, in America many black leaders are anxious to gain power for African Americans by placing
back individuals in the technological power-elite. They want there to be many black government officials, scientists, corporation executives and so forth. In this way they are helping to absorb the African American subculture into the technological syste
m. Generally speaking, one should encourage only those social conflicts that can be fitted into the framework of the conflicts of power--elite vs. ordinary people, technology vs nature.
192. But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is NOT through militant advocacy of minority rights (see paragraphs 21, 29). Instead, the revolutionaries should emphasize that although minorities do suffer more or less disadvantage, this disadvantage is o
f peripheral significance. Our real enemy is the industrial-technological system, and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no importance.
193. The kind of revolution we have in mind will not necessarily involve an armed uprising against any government. It may or may not involve physical violence, but it will not be a POLITICAL revolution. Its focus will be on technology and economics, not
politics. [32]
194. Probably the revolutionaries should even AVOID assuming political power, whether by legal or illegal means, until the industrial system is stressed to the danger point and has proved itself to be a failure in the eyes of most people. Suppose for exa
mple that some "green" party should win control of the United States Congress in an election. In order to avoid betraying or watering down their own ideology they would have to take vigorous measures to turn economic growth into economic shrinkage. To the
average man the results would appear disastrous: There would be massive unemployment, shortages of commodities, etc. Even if the grosser ill effects could be avoided through superhumanly skillful management, still people would have to begin giving up the
luxuries to which they have become addicted. Dissatisfaction would grow, the "green" party would be voted out of of fice and the revolutionaries would have suffered a severe setback. For this reason the revolutionaries should not try to acquire political
power until the system has gotten itself into such a mess that any hardships will be seen as resulting from the failures of the industrial system itself and not from the policies of the revolutionaries. The revolution against technology will probably hav
e to be a revolution by outsiders, a revolution from below and not from above.
195. The revolution must be international and worldwide. It cannot be carried out on a nation-by-nation basis. Whenever it is suggested that the United States, for example, should cut back on technological progress or economic growth, people get hysteric
al and start screaming that if we fall behind in technology the Japanese will get ahead of us. Holy robots The world will fly off its orbit if the Japanese ever sell more cars than we do! (Nationalism is a great promoter of technology.) More reasonably, i
t is argued that if the relatively democratic nations of the world fall behind in technology while nasty, dictatorial nations like China, Vietnam and North Korea continue to progress, eventually the dictators may come to dominate the world. That is why th
e industrial system should be attacked in all nations simultaneously, to the extent that this may be possible. True, there is no assurance that the industrial system can be destroyed at approximately the same time all over the world, and it is even concei
vable that the attempt to overthrow the system could lead instead to the domination of the system by dictators. That is a risk that has to be taken. And it is worth taking, since the difference between a "democratic" industrial system and one controlled b
y dictators is small compared with the difference between an industrial system and a non-industrial one. [33] It might even be argued that an industrial system controlled by dictators would be preferable, because dictator-controlled systems usually have p
roved inefficient, hence they are presumably more likely to break down. Look at Cuba.
196. Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to bind the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT are probably harmful to the environment in the short run, but in the long run they may perhaps be ad
vantageous because they foster economic interdependence between nations. I will be eaier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if he world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any on major nation will lead to its breakdwon in al in
dustrialized nations.
the long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they foster economic interdependence between nations. It will be easier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if the world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any one major nat
ion will lead to its breakdown in all industrialized nations.
197. Some people take the line that modern man has too much power, too much control over nature; they argue for a more passive attitude on the part of the human race. At best these people are expressing themselves unclearly, because they fail to distingu
ish between power for LARGE ORGANIZATIONS and power for INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS. It is a mistake to argue for powerlessness and passivity, because people NEED power. Modern man as a collective entity--that is, the industrial system--has immense pow
er over nature, and we (FC) regard this as evil. But modern INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS have far less power than primitive man ever did. Generally speaking, the vast power of "modern man" over nature is exercised not by individuals or sm
all groups but by large organizations. To the extent that the average modern INDIVIDUAL can wield the power of technology, he is permitted to do so only within narrow limits and only under the supervision and control of the system. (You need a license f
or everything and with the license come rules and regulations). The individual has only those technological powers with which the system chooses to provide him. His PERSONAL power over nature is slight.
198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS actually had considerable power over nature; or maybe it would be better to say power WITHIN nature. When primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare edible roots, how to track game and take it wi
th homemade weapons. He knew how to protect himself from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals, etc. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because the COLLECTIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared to the COLLECTIVE power
of industrial society.
199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should argue that the power of the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM should be broken, and that this will greatly INCREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS.
200. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the destruction of that system must be the revolutionaries' ONLY goal. Other goals would distract attention and energy from the main goal. More importantly, if the revolutionaries permit themse
lves to have any other goal than the destruction of technology, they will be tempted to use technology as a tool for reaching that other goal. If they give in to that temptation, they will fall right back into the technological trap, because modern techno
logy is a unified, tightly organized system, so that, in order to retain SOME technology, one finds oneself obliged to retain MOST technology, hence one ends up sacrificing only token amounts of technology.
201. Suppose for example that the revolutionaries took "social justice" as a goal. Human nature being what it is, social justice would not come about spontaneously; it would have to be enforced. In order to enforce it the revolutionaries would have to ret
ain central organization and control. For that they would need rapid long-distance transportation and communication, and therefore all the technology needed to support the transportation and communication systems. To feed and clothe poor people they would
have to use agricultural and manufacturing technology. And so forth. So that the attempt to insure social justice would force them to retain most parts of the technological system. Not that we have anything against social justice, but it must not be allo
wed to interfere with the effort to get rid of the technological system.
202. It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to attack the system without using SOME modern technology. If nothing else they must use the communications media to spread their message. But they should use modern technology for only ONE purpose: to
attack the technological system.
203. Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine in front of him. Suppose he starts saying to himself, "Wine isn't bad for you if used in moderation. Why, they say small amounts of wine are even good for you! It won't do me any harm if I take just
one little drink..." Well you know what is going to happen. Never forget that the human race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.
204. Revolutionaries should have as many children as they can. There is strong scientific evidence that social attitudes are to a significant extent inherited. No one suggests that a social attitude is a direct outcome of a person's genetic constitution,
but it appears that personality traits tend, within the context of our society, to make a person more likely to hold this or that social attitude. Objections to these findings have been raised, but objections are feeble and seem to be ideologically motiv
ated. In any event, no one denies that children tend on the average to hold social attitudes similar to those of their parents. From our point of view it doesn't matter all that much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically or through childhood tra
ining. In either case the ARE passed on.
205. The trouble is that many of the people who are inclined to rebel against the industrial system are also concerned about the population problems, hence they are apt to have few or no children. In this way they may be handing the world over to the sort
of people who support or at least accept the industrial system. To insure the strength of the next generation of revolutionaries the present generation must reproduce itself abundantly. In doing so they will be worsening the population problem only sligh
tly. And the most important problem is to get rid of the industrial system, because once the industrial system is gone the world's population necessarily will decrease (see paragraph 167); whereas, if the industrial system survives, it will continue devel
oping new techniques of food production that may enable the world's population to keep increasing almost indefinitely.
206. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which we absolutely insist are that the single overriding goal must be the elimination of modern technology, and that no other goal can be allowed to compete with this one. For the rest, revol
utionaries should take an empirical approach. If experience indicates that some of the recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs are not going to give good results, then those recommendations should be discarded.
Manifesto Contents - More
