The self-betrayal of ingenuity: When man is made lower than the machine

“ Millions of human beings have laboured to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves to-day. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labour to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.
There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man. ”

“ Then he began to invent, and seeing in physical laws an escape from his fears, and a solution for his ambitions, he trained these forces and made them subservient to his will, and established his right to rule. Out of the maze of the centuries a steam engine is born—not all at once, for that would be inconsistent with the law of evolution—but gradually growing first into practicability, then into efficiency, and finally into perfection, it stands to-day a beautiful monument of man’s ingenuity, throbbing with life and energy, and moving the world. ”

“ Man’s fear, which with the conquest of fire gave way to courage, has resulted in his mastery of many mechanical appliances and in the development of social coöperation, which so increases his power as to make him an object of fear to the wild animals. Since the wild animals now try to escape from man’s presence, there is a greater demand made upon man’s ingenuity than ever before in supplying his daily food. The way in which man’s cunning finds expression in traps, pitfalls, and in throwing devices, and finally in a remarkable manifestation of art, is made evident in these pages. ”

“ At the same time, by means of science and fire, man sought very timidly, if not to free himself from, at least to enlarge, the limits which nature seemed to have set to his forces. The strata of coal began to be discovered and exploited. Men set themselves to invent machines more complicated and more rapid than those of which their fathers made use; the steam-engine, the fountainhead of all the formidable agitation which has invaded the world, made its appearance ”

“ What has not the steam engine done for the Nineteenth Century? It speeds the locomotive across the continent faster and farther than the birds can fly; no fish can equal the mighty steamship on the sea; it grinds our grain; it weaves our cloth; it prints our books; it forges our steel, and in every department of life it is the ubiquitous, tireless, potent agency of civilization. Does the ambitious young philosopher predict that electricity will supersede steam? ”

“ The air we breathe is hardly more necessary for our animal life than the use of any machine, on the strength of which we have increased our numbers, is to our civilisation; it is the machines which act upon man and make him man, as much as man who has acted upon and made the machines; but we must choose between the alternative of undergoing much present suffering, or seeing ourselves gradually superseded by our own creatures, till we rank no higher in comparison with them, than the beasts of the field with ourselves. ”

“ The wall speaker and circuit had become the vocal cords and mouth, the wiring the spinal cord and nerves, the hatches and relays and circuit breakers the muscles.
They had been helpless, completely helpless. The ship had, in a brief second, stolen their power away from them and left them defenseless, practically at its mercy. It was not right; it made him uneasy. All his life he had controlled machines, bent nature and the forces of nature to man and man’s needs. The human race had slowly evolved until it was in a position to operate things, run them as it saw fit. ”

“ The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. ”

“ And that won’t be done, Wilkins, by leaving War alone. War, war with modern machines, is a damned great horrible trampling monster, a filthy thing, an indecency; we aren’t doing anything heroic, we are trying to lift a foul stupidity off the earth, we are engaged in a colossal sanitary job. These men who go for us into the trenches, they come back with no illusions. They know how dirty and monstrous it is. They are like men who have gone down for the sake of the people they love to clear out a choked drain. They have no illusions about being glorified. ”

“ The context in which the present case comes before the Court is well-known. On 24 February 2022, the President of the Russian Federation, Mr. Vladimir Putin, declared that he had decided to conduct a “special military operation” against Ukraine. Since then, there has been intense fighting on Ukrainian territory, which has claimed many lives, has caused extensive displacement and has resulted in widespread damage. The Court is acutely aware of the extent of the human tragedy that is taking place in Ukraine and is deeply concerned about the continuing loss of life and human suffering. ”

“ Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death. For thousands of people.
Russian troops have already fired nearly a thousand missiles at Ukraine. Countless bombs. They use drones to kill more precisely. This is a terror Europe has not seen for 80 years!
And we ask for a response. For the response from the world. For the response to terror. Is this too much of a request?
To establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine is to save people. Humanitarian no-fly zone. Conditions under which Russia will no longer be able to terrorize our peaceful cities every day and night. ”

“ Today, it is as a result of Russia's actions on the territory of my state, on the territory of Ukraine, that the most heinous war crimes of all time since the end of World War II are being committed.
Russian troops are deliberately destroying Ukrainian cities to ashes with artillery and air strikes.
They are deliberately blocking cities, creating mass starvation in them. They are deliberately shooting at columns of civilians on the roads who are trying to escape from the territory of hostilities. ”

“ Instead of being a thing on the dump-heap, man may grow in power as he grows in years. His body is made by food, drink, air, and thoughts. Its cells are constantly rebuilding. By understanding his own power, he can direct this rebuilding to an increased Life-capacity.
His power to do so has been limited by his own ignorance. Once men said that [Pg 33] there could never be a steam-engine. Later they scoffed at the possibility of building a flying machine. In his discovery of new laws, man is learning that he has hindered his own growth through his lack of understanding. ”

“ Artificial wants—the very pillars of civilization—are increasing upon them. These require exertion, call into action their mental faculties, force them to provide for coming exigencies, gradually tames down their wild nature, and prepares them for that subdued, but improved state, in which alone is to be found the highest point of cultivation, as well as the highest enjoyment intended for man in this probationary world. ”

“ The quantity of the things which modern industry, thanks to electricity- and steam-driven machinery, produces, is prodigious. No century ever witnessed the realisation of the miracle of abundance in a more marvellous way. But the quality of the things suffers in consequence. The ugliness and the crude vulgarity of so many objects, which in much poorer times had an elegance and a beauty which have now vanished, are the price we pay for the abundance of our times. The necessities of man have increased beyond all measure, and to satisfy them lavish and rapid production50 is required. ”

“ I said that, since machinery produces much and at great speed, there seemed to me no room for doubt that it increased the sum of benefits at man’s disposal, and therefore enriched the world. My wife replied that if machinery produces much, it also consumes enormously, more indeed than it produces, so that a mechanical civilisation must always feel itself tormented by the necessity of having more than it possesses, and, therefore, must be always in a state of indigence. ”

“ Is not progress for us first and foremost the continual increase of production? And what avails it to produce more, if the riches produced do not find consumers?
The modern world, in freeing men’s desires from all the ancient limits and restraints, has given a vigorous impulse to human industry. In order to satisfy the increased needs of the masses, man has invented machinery, and has put a premium on the new countries. But precisely because there is no longer limit or restraint to men’s desires, industry, which in the past was the handmaiden of human needs, is now becoming their tyrant. ”

“ Can you expect the modern drudge in the ugly huge factory to make beautiful things? He is part of the machine, a cog in the soulless industry, his labor mechanical, forced. Add to this his feeling that he is not working for himself but for the benefit of some one else, and that he hates his job or at best has no interest in it except that it secures his weekly wage. The result is shirking, inefficiency, laziness.
The need of activity is one of the most fundamental urges of man. Watch the child and see how strong is his instinct for action, for movement, for doing something. ”

“ The appearance of the “efficiency engineer” showed the low estate into which man had fallen—man made once a little lower than the angels but now treated as a little lower than the machine. The business of efficiency engineering was the closer subordination of the man to the machine by methods alleged to be scientific. Nothing could show more plainly than this does the absence of that broad humanism which is the very breath of democracy; and even the generous intention of the socialist ideal was vitiated by the mechanistic character of socialist doctrine. ”

“ Men are but the presiding genii over the wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the volition that gives impulse [193] to the giant force of a mighty engine. Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in every branch of mechanism—human ingenuity is racked, chemical analysis investigated, mathematical research explored—and all, that Mr. ”

“ In his own wants, in the needs of his anxious wife, in the demands of his half-cared-for, perhaps even hungry and shivering children, there is demand enough for labor, Heaven knows! In his own willing hands is the supply. Put him on a solitary island, and though cut off from all the enormous advantages which the co-operation, combination, and machinery of a civilized community give to the productive powers of man, yet his two hands can fill the mouths and keep warm the backs that depend upon them. Yet where productive power is as its highest development they cannot. ”

“ But if these machines were ingenious, what shall we think of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage? What shall we think of an engine of wood and metal which can not only compute astronomical and navigation tables to any given extent, but render the exactitude of its operations mathematically certain through its power of correcting its possible errors? What shall we think of a machine which can not only accomplish all this, but actually print off its elaborate results, when obtained, without the slightest intervention of the intellect of man? ”

“ The efficiency of labor always increases with the habitual wages of labor—for high wages mean increased self-respect, intelligence, hope, and energy. Man is not a machine, that will do so much and no more; he is not an animal, whose powers may reach thus far and no further. It is mind, not muscle, which is the great agent of production. The physical power evolved in the human frame is one of the weakest of forces, but for the human intelligence the resistless currents of nature flow, and matter becomes plastic to the human will. ”

“ It is not for us to be either so enthusiastic, impious, or uncharitable as to prophesy that human ingenuity will ever endow its creations with anything more than the rudest semblance of that self-directing vitality which characterizes the most servile of God-created machinery. The human mechanic must be content, if he can approach as near to the creation of life as the painter and sculptor have done. ”

“ I have watched in spirit, hundreds of years, the machines grow out of Man like nails, like vast antennæ—a kind of enormous, more unconscious sub-body. They are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissue than tongues or eyes or flesh; and like all bones they do not renew, of course, as often or as rapidly as flesh. But the difference between live and dead machines is quite as grave and quite as important as the difference between live and dead men. The generally accepted idea a live thing is, that it is a thing that keeps dying and being born again every minute ”

“ Mankind has already extended its senses and its muscles to their tenth powers. He can already command engines to do what I can do. It is not necessary that he become an engine himself. It is preposterous that he should think of it—even to transcend his engines. I defy you, I defy you with all my strength, to think of what I can do to justify myself!"
The words had been wrung from Hugo. Perspiration trickled down his face. He bit his lips to check himself. The older man was grave. "All your emotions, your reflections, your yearnings and passions, come—to that. ”

“ 105 Hence bloody Wars at first began,
The artificial Plague of Man,
That from his own Invention rise,
To scourge his own Iniquities; ”

“ I shall perish molecule by molecule, feeling my own death, able to appreciate every change, every stage in the inevitable progress of corruption. That lingering process of annihilation which other men suffer unconsciously underground I shall suffer consciously above ground. ”

“ Annihilation of one's own identity in the moment is possible in nature's domain—never in man's. The resistless, never-ending rush of the waters, madly churning, pitilessly dashing against the rocks below ”

“ But man cannot ignore the creation as the Mystics would. Although created out of nothing, that is, through and out of God, he cannot of his own power resolve himself back into this nothingness. The self-annihilation of which Tauler so often speaks is scarcely better than the sinking away of the human soul in Nirvana, as the Buddhists have it. ”

“ In thine own self-will, thou hast set thyself to try thy strength against God and his whole universe. Dost thou fancy that he needs to interfere with the working of that universe, to punish such a worm as thee? No more than the great mill engine need stop, and the overseer of it interfere with the machinery, if the drunken or careless workman should entangle himself among the wheels. The wheels move on, doing their duty, spinning cloth for the use of man: but the workman who should have worked with them, is entangled among them. ”

“ Now he is beginning to realize that it is much easier to make a perfect machine than it is to find a perfect man to put behind it, and that man himself, even at his worst (and that is pretty bad) is worth more than anything else in the scheme of created things.
This tremendous change in environment resulting from the overwhelming domination of machinery has brought about a corresponding change in manners. For manners consist, in the main, of adapting oneself to one's surroundings. And the story of courtesy is the story of evolution. ”