Technology: A "New Reality" We Must Learn to Master
A useful lens on the "titanic struggle of man" from Russian philosopher Nicolai Berdyaev.
In my years studying the development of modern technology, I discovered three 20th century thinkers in particular that I think can inspire and encourage us in our relationship to technology today. You’ll be hearing a lot from me in The Human Adventure about French sociologist Jacques Ellul, Austrian-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber, and Russian philosopher Nicolai Berdyaev.
Today, I shine a spotlight on Berdyaev’s essay “Man and Machine” (Chelovek i Mashina). It was orginally published in 1933 in a Parisian journal for Russian exiles. I read a new translation by Walker Trimble, available here. I had been enjoying Berdyaev’s writing on creativity, but I was not aware of his essay specifically addressing technology until a scholar friend, a noted writer, thinker and friend to Jacques Ellul, recently shared it with me. I am grateful he did, because in it, Berdyaev gives us a useful lens to help us better understand technology as a new reality with the potential to enslave us. He describes the power technology has to reveal both our creativity as well as our weakness, and he suggests what we will have to muster if we are to master technology and achieve the goals we set for our lives.
From Organic to Organized
For millennia, humankind lived an organic life, rooted to the earth and governed by the limitations of the natural world. The order of nature shaped man’s view of the world, of himself, and of his place in eternity. But as the Age of Civilization progressed, man developed technology that gave him the power and desire to master earth, space, and time in ways he had never previously considered. And technology is no neutral force, says Berdyaev. Rather, technology constitutes a new reality, a “new category of being,” a “peculiar kingdom.” It is neither organic nor inorganic. Instead, it is organized. Technology produces organized bodies and systems that rationalize organic life by its own law. And organization, Berdyaev points out, tends to turn the organizer from organism to machine. As he puts it, “The very spirit that created the machine and technology can neither be completely mechanized nor technologized.”
And therein lies the rub with technology. By default, it moves us away from organic life and toward organized life. But humans were never designed to be fully organized bodies. Humans are organic, birthed, and whole, brought forth into life by a creative, life-giving force. An organization, on the other hand, is not birthed but made by human activity. And the organizational process, when applied to human beings, tends to ultimately destroy individuality and rationalize the spirit. In short, it seeks to master the spirit, which is to enslave it. The end game of technology - the perfection of technology - is non-human. As Berdyaev notes:
There shall come a time when there will be perfect machines with which man could rule the world, but there will be no humans at their helm. The machines themselves will behave with perfection and achieve maximum results.
The Machine Is Not Responsible: We Are
Interestingly, Berdyaev doesn’t give us an excuse to blame the technology itself for its dehumanizing effect on us. We are the makers of our own possible undoing:
The machine is not responsible for anything. Man is the maker of machines, the machine is not to blame for anything, and it is unworthy to transfer responsibility from the person itself to the machine. It is not the machine, but the human which is guilty of the terrible power of machinism. It is not the machine that has immobilized the man, but the man who has immobilized himself.
Berdyaev invites us to ponder what kind of spirit lies in the makers of our technology. It’s a useful exercise to consider the morals, goals, and spirits of the people who lead the companies producing today’s technology: people like Sam Altman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Google), Elon Musk (xAI), and others. What do they want with the power they wield? What are they doing with it? What is their end game? If it’s the perfection of their technologies, that could lead to a very non-human future.
Berdyaev warns about the terrible power that comes with technology:
A small handful of people with the secrets to technology in their hands will find it possible to hold hostage the whole of humankind.
A Strong Spirit
But Berdyaev doesn’t call for us to run for the hills in desperation or capitulate to this new reality. Our duty, he says, is to preserve in humankind the image and likeness of God. To do that, we have a duty to engage with technology. We must allow our spirit to demand a technology that does not enslave or destroy us. We must not give technology full autonomy: it must be subordinated to the spirit and spiritual values of life. The technology we ourselves have created must not be allowed to overcome our spirit.
He offers no magic formula for success, but he does offer some suggested postures and practices we can adopt. First, he encourages us to get right in the head. Our mental state, inherited from other times, can be a bulwark to an ever-encroaching technological process:
Can we hold on to those moments of contemplation, contemplation of eternity, God, truth, and beauty in our present state?…There is creativity in contemplation itself, that is, in our relation with God.
Allowing plenty of time for thought and reflection, without the distraction that comes with technology, will help us stay grounded to what matters. All too often, we pull out our phones or turn to a screen and we miss out on the benefits of just thinking. I’ve written about the benefits of thinking without distraction here.
Second, Berdyaev encourages us to slow down and live at the speed of organic life, not organized life:
The human soul cannot withstand the speed that modern civilization demands. This requirement alone is inclined to turn the person into a machine.
That old saying to stop and smell the roses? It’s on point. We move way too fast. Reduce your speed until you feel that you are enjoying moments, not just existing through them. The clock, as it happens, is one of the most significant inventions of man that moves us toward organization. It can govern our every minute of every day if we allow it. That’s why there’s a clock on the homescreen of our smart phones. We must always have the ability to know what time it is. Or do we? Don’t be ruled by the hands of a clock. Berdyaev addresses the dilemma of living in time:
Both past and future belong together to time. Indeed, in both past and future, and at any time, it is possible to enter into eternity, into a precious, saturated moment.
He also refers to philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s notion that the fullness of time is the moment as the eternal. If you can slow down to enjoy more fully some of the moments in your day, you’ll get a little taste of eternity.
As the poet William Blake has written:
He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise.
And here:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
A New Heroism
Finally, Berdyaev encourages a new heroism as we face the existential task of keeping the dehumanizing effects of technology at bay:
Machinism would like to replace in man the image and likeness of God with the image and likeness of the machine. This is not the creation of a new person, it is the extermination of the person, the disappearance of the person, replacing him with another being, with a different, non-human existence. This is the whole agony of the problem. Humanity created the machine, and it can give him a proud awareness of his dignity and strength. But human pride can turn imperceptibly into human humiliation. A truly new being may appear, but it is no longer a human being.
It takes bravery to say no to certain uses of technology, especially when it seems most people around us are saying yes. But each time you put technology in its place, your confidence will grow. Berdyaev compares the heroism we’ll need to the same heroism it takes to fly an airplane into the sky or dive down to the depths of the sea to explore the unknown. It’s a pioneering, organic, God-honoring kind of courage. And we need it every day and in spades.
You are unique, don’t forget. One of a kind in this universe. And you’ve got work to do that was planned in advance long before you came on the scene (Ephesians 2:10). Don’t let technology take away your ability to contemplate and create. Berdyaev’s message in a nutshell? Master technology before it masters you.
That’s a message that is as relevant to us today as when he first wrote it in 1933.
Thank you Andrew, for unearthing another writer-thinker for us to consider, adding this essay to my TBR. It is so helpful to read outside our era, the blinders of our age are different than those in another.
I appreciate his emphasis on personal responsibility and your phrase "we are the makers of our own possible undoing". The effort required for us to live tech-responsibly is so huge, it's easy to want to blame shift to the inanimate and ambiguous machine itself.
But his acknowledgment that technology like this can consolidate power for an elite few is even more critical to recognize. The implications of that are monumental to humankind. Pope Leo speaks to this with such clarity in his new encyclical on Magnificent Humanity. It's a caution many seem not to be addressing or writing about.
Thank you for this summary