Technology and Faustian Bargain

Thanks to St. Artur for the tip;

excerpt from "The Modern Philosophical Revolution:The Luminosity of Existence"

by David Walsh. Catholic University of America:

The dominant force of the modern world is instrumental reason. This is
what dictates the flow of capital within an ever more integrated global
economy, what compels our submission to the demands of the comput-
erized manipulation of data, and what subjects us to the dehumanizing
possibilities looming over the biotechnology horizon. The problem of
modernity becomes conscious in the realization of modernity as a prob-
lem. We sense a fatal entrapment from which all avenues of escape have
been foreclosed. Neither technology nor its benefits can be surrendered.
We can no more live without electricity than we can live without water,
as periodic breakdowns vividly remind us. But the costs of our access to
electrical energy are measured not just by our monthly utility bills. They
are also purchased by the dependence on which our independence has
been built. Our putative mastery of light and heat and power is purchased
at the cost of our entanglement in the vast network of grids by which we
are held fast. Power and powerlessness seem coeval moments.

Normally the irony passes without remark. It is only when the realiza-
tion of our predicament is propelled into consciousness that the contra-
diction becomes explicit. Then we cast a glance over the whole develop-
ment in which we have become entangled and bemoan the loss of our
freedom. We see that it has been an ever more comprehensive project
of liberation that has paradoxically led to our ever greater confinement.
Our subordination to the tools of our domination becomes transparent.
But in that realization we simultaneously transcend the fatality of our
situation. We can step outside of who we are and ensure that we are
never just the sum of our constituents...

All around us we see evidence of the refusal to submit to the demands
of rigorous efficiency. Nostalgia for the old, monuments of spiritual aspi-
ration, the worldwide revival of ancient religious forms, the power of
orgiastic political movements of destruction, and the protest impulse
that has driven artistic expression for more than a century all testify to
the profound ambivalence with which the success of instrumental ratio-
nality has been greeted. The incoherence of the attitude is perhaps best
captured by its defining aspiration that we rid ourselves of the dehuman-
izing consequences of a technological society while retaining all of its
benefits. Fundamentalists with their technical expertise and their spiri-
tual ignorance best embody this lethal conjunction. But it would be a
mistake to regard them as unique. The underlying attitude is pervasive.
It can be countered only by a direct confrontation of the challenge posed
by the instrumentalization of reason in the modern world. Ghosts may
spook, but they cannot illuminate our technological problematic. Only
reason can grapple with the self-imposed limitation of reason. Instrumen-
tal rationality is primarily a challenge for philosophical reflection, and
its engagement has given rise to the formidable modern philosophical
development whose scope and coherence are still not fully understood.

The task of establishing a boundary to the reign of technology is gen-
erally taken to be so great that the efforts of resistance seem at best to
be inconclusive. Pressures to bend every aspect of nature and of life to
the demands of mastery seem relentless. Nothing is sacrosanct; nothing
is immune to exploitation so long as it can be put to service. Yet this
very critique is the fruit of modern philosophical reflection. Technol-
ogy, which treats everything as a means and nothing as an end, cannot
furnish its own purpose. Instead, it undermines all final goals, refusing
to acknowledge anything as an end in itself. Everything is drawn into
its imperious grasp, and nothing is allowed to stand in judgment over
it. We are left with a technique of control that can direct everything
except itself. The project of technological mastery, our philosophical
reflection has shown, can remain rational only if it is subordinate to a
noninstrumental finality beyond itself. Man himself cannot submit to
the same instrumentality; otherwise the instrumentality ceases to have
any purpose. The problem, however, is that we seem to have struck a
Faustian bargain. We have been able to obtain this vast technical prowess
only because we have been willing to override all presumptive limits.
Neither nature nor tradition nor mystery has been allowed to hinder the
enlargement of man’s estate, which now threatens to include humanity
too within its reach."
-David Walsh, link