Technology and Responsibility (Part 3 of 4)

Romano Guardini on the challenges and opportunities of our strange age

In the first part of this series, we saw how Romano Guardini traces the roots of the apparent amorality of modern technology to two intrinsic aspects of technological production itself. The first is the reliance on mathematical models, machines and measurement devices that mediate contact with the raw material. This mediation separates the world of work from the world of immediate experience, complicating moral reasoning and weakening the force of instinctive moral reactions. Today, we will examine the second aspect: the necessity of large-scale collaboration. In the industrialized West, the fabrication of even the simplest product normally involves the coordinated activity of hundreds to thousands of people across the globe. Historically, this coordination has often been secured by violent or unjust practices, which have been a subject of moral controversy and condemnation since the earliest years of the Industrial Revolution. But Guardini deliberately sidesteps this issue, in order to focus on the phenomenon of mass organization itself. What are the essential aspects of this phenomenon, which would persist even if these specific injustices were definitively eliminated? What dangers does it carry in its very nature? And what new possibilities does it open up for the flourishing of individuals and communities?

When the system of technological production has been stably established among a given population, it is necessarily accompanied by a new way of thinking and acting: that of the “mass man.” As with the concept of the “non-human” person, Guardini wants to use this term in a morally neutral, purely descriptive sense:

This word does not here imply any depreciation, but depicts a human structure, which is bound up with technology and planning.¹

The central feature of this new way of being is spontaneous identification with the exigencies of industrial organization:

[The “mass man”] rather accepts the things of use and forms of life as they are imposed on him by rational planning and standardized industrial products, and does this on the whole with the feeling that it is reasonable and right. Just as he has no desire at all to live on his own initiative. Freedom of external and internal movement are not self-evident values for him. He rather inserts himself with naturalness into the Organization, which is the form of the mass, and follows the Program […]. Indeed, the instinct of this human structure is not to stand out as a unique individual, but to remain anonymous - almost as if having one’s own personal identity were the basic form of all injustice, and the beginning of all danger. ²

This is a profound transformation, especially when compared with the values of the Enlightenment, with its reverence for freedom, autonomy, and cultural achievement. As with all such transformations, it did not happen automatically. Rather, it was the work of dedicated individuals who believed in the promise of the new form of industrial production, and saw the necessity of forging the type of character required for its success. Historian David Noble has documented the names and deeds of the men who accomplished this feat in America, by reshaping the nation’s university system in the service of industry, with special attention to the formation of the requisite psychological qualities.³

Guardini does not enter into the details of how this happened (earlier) in Germany, but concentrates instead on its logical necessity, as a corollary to the positive achievement of our unprecedented power over nature:

This [positive] sense lies [...] in the work of dominion over the world which is inevitably given to us. The demands of this work will be so immense that they cannot be met by individual initiative or by a simple union of autonomous individuals. It will require a gathering of forces and a unity of effort that can only come from a different attitude. It is precisely this attitude, however, which shows itself in the naturalness with which the man of the coming epoch renounces his peculiarities and assumes a common form -- as well as in the naturalness with which he gives up individual initiative and assumes his assigned role.⁴

The fundamental dependence of technological production on the “mass man” helps explain how the latter phenomenon has lasted so long. Widespread discontent with the new form of human existence was certainly one of the central motives behind the social unrest of the late 1960’s. The resulting transformation of culture, political priorities, and especially of the university system seemed to do away with the mass man for good, opening a new era of individual creativity, freedom and fulfillment. As late as 1992, Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court solemnly affirmed an anthropological vision that seems as far as possible from the collectivist form of life described by Guardini: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” And yet, by 2001, it was clear that The Organization Man of the 1950’s was alive and well, and stronger than ever: in The Organization Kid who filled the halls of the nation’s elite universities. Now that these kids are taking their place in government and management, this mode of human existence is becoming universally normative in its purest form. While Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are left scratching their heads about NPR denouncing the evils of free speech and the ACLU promoting forced vaccination as a form of liberty, Guardini would see all of this as a natural feature of a society organized around technological industry.

Even if such social conditions are inevitable and morally neutral in themselves, they clearly pose new problems for individual moral responsibility, especially in the workplace. Not only because the workers in this environment do not think of themselves as free agents, but also as the result of a more generalized atrophy of the spontaneous sense of justice:

Something else is connected with what has been said: the feeling for the selfhood of others and for their individual sphere of action, previously the basis of all social behavior, is disappearing more and more. More and more naturally, people are treated as objects, from the innumerable forms of mandatory “registration” to the unthinkable rapes of the individual, of groups, even of whole peoples. And this not only in the crises and paroxysms of war, but as a normal form of government and administration.⁵

This is another prescient line, which would have seemed out of date to most people 20 years ago, but has suddenly regained its full force. Like Vaclav Havel and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Guardini does not see the experience of Nazi Germany or of Stalinist Russia as an anomaly, or as the antithesis of democratic liberty. Instead, it is a predictable outcome of the form of life proper to a technological society, that can be prevented or overcome only with great difficulty.

It is here that Guardini’s theological perspective plays a crucial role. While recognizing the magnitude of the danger, he is able to identify a positive dimension in the heart of the problem itself. These persistent threats against human dignity can be the occasion for rediscovering the essential truth about the person, the truth that is the ultimate source of his dignity. In the former era of optimistic enthusiasm for individual liberty, such basic questions could not arise; it was simply “self-evident” that “all men … are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Only now, when the “self-evidence” is vanishing (despite all the outward rhetorical show) can these themes re-emerge in the very core of society:

[I]n the renunciation of the rich and free fullness of the culture of “personality,” there will emerge with hitherto impossible strength and clarity that which is actually “person:” encounter with God, inalienability of dignity, inexcusability of responsibility. Strange as it may sound: the same mass that carries the danger of absolute controllability and usability also carries the possibility of full maturity of the person. Of course, this poses challenges of inner liberation, an asceticism from within, a steeling against the ever more monstrously growing id-powers, which we are hardly yet able to fathom.⁶

This hope for a spiritual awakening of historically unprecedented proportions sets Guardini apart from the majority of commentators — both in his day and ours — who have examined the phenomenon of the “mass man.” He does not call for a global revolution against this social archetype, nor even a retreat into small communities dedicated to preserving older modes of existence. Rather, he thinks that this archetype already contains the potential for profound renewal “from the inside,” leading to a future whose goodness outweighs all that has been irretrievably lost:

The line: “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul” has something important to say about this. The “gaining the world” contains the totality of human cultural values: vital abundance, richness of personality, “the arts and sciences” in all their forms. Against this, the verse contrasts the loss or salvation of the soul, which entails a personal decision: the way in which man responds to the call of God, who makes him a person. In comparison with this, “the whole world” vanishes.⁷

Guardini thus believes that a deep sense of moral responsibility is compatible with the basic way of being of the mass man. With the awakening of this sense, technology can be controlled, and directed to truly human ends. This awakening is ultimately the work of God, whose call is what makes a human individual into a person in the first place. The response to this call, especially in the contemporary cultural context, demands the radical interior liberation and asceticism mentioned at the end of the previous quote.

In the next essay (the last of this series) we will examine these demands in more detail. Following Guardini’s analysis of three essential virtues, we will see the kind of heroism that is increasingly required in order to practice basic justice in a normal workplace.

1. Das Wort [Mensch der Masse] bezeichnet hier nichts Unwertiges, sondern eine menschliche Struktur, die mit Technik und Planung verbunden ist. (p. 72)

2. Er nimmt vielmehr die Gebrauchsdinge und Lebensformen an, wie sie ihm von der rationalen Planung und den genormten Maschinenprodukten aufgenötigt werden, und tut das im Großen und Ganzen mit dem Gefühl, so sei es vernünftig und richtig. Ebenso wie er gar nicht den Wunsch hat, aus eigener Initiative heraus zu leben. Die Freiheit der äußeren und inneren Bewegung scheint für ihn kein ursprünglich empfundener Wert zu sein. Er fügt sich vielmehr mit Selbstverständlichkeit in die Organisation ein, welche die Form der Masse ist, und gehorcht dem Programm als der Weise, wie '“der Mensch ohne Persönlichkeit” in Richtung gebracht wird. Ja der Instinkt dieser menschlichen Struktur geht geradezu darauf, nicht als Eigener hervorzutreten, sondern anonym zu bleiben — fast als bilde das Eigensein die Grundform alles Unrechts, und den Anfang aller Gefahr. (p. 73-4)

3. David Noble, America by Design (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977)

4. Dieser [positive] Sinn liegt [...] in dem uns unausweichlich aufgegebenen Herrschaftswerk über die Welt. Die Anforderungen dieses Werkes werden so ungeheuer sein, daß sie aus den Möglichkeiten der individuellen Initiative und des Zusammenschlusses individualistich geformter Einzelner nicht zu lösen sind. Es wird einer Sammlung der Kräfte und einer Einheit der Leistung bedürfen, die nur aus einer anderen Haltung hervorgehen können. Ebendiese Haltung ist es aber, die sich in der Selbstverständlichkeit anzeigt, mit welcher der Mensch der werdenden Zeit auf Besonderheiten verzichtet und eine gemeinsame Form annimmt -- ebenso wie in der Selbstverständlichkeit, mit der er die individuelle Initiative aufgibt und sich in die Ordnung stellt. (p. 79)

5. Mit dem Gesagten hängt etwas anderes zusammen: das Gefühl für das Eigensein und die Eigensphäre des Menschen, vorher die Grundlage alles sozialen Verhaltens, verschwindet immer mehr. Immer selbstverständlicher werden Menschen als Objekte behandelt, von den unzähligen Weisen statisch-behördlicher "Erfassung" bis zu den unausdenklichen Vergewaltigungen des einzelnen, der Gruppen, ja ganzer Völker. Und das nicht nur in den Notständen und Paroxysmen des Krieges, sondern als normale Form des Regierens und Verwaltens. (p. 74)

6. Und da darf man wohl annehmen, im Verzicht auf die reiche und freie Fülle der Persönlichkeitskultur werde das, was eigentlich "Person" ist, das Gegenüber zu Gott, die Unverlierbarkeit der Würde, die Unvertretbarkeit in der Verantwortung, mit einer Kraft und Klarheit hervortreten, die vorher nicht möglich war. So seltsam es klingen mag: die gleiche Masse, welche die Gefahr der absoluten Beherrschbarkeit und Verwendbarkeit in sich trägt, hat auch die Möglichkeit zur vollen Mündigkeit der Person in sich. Allerdings sind dabei Aufgaben einer inneren Befreiung, einer Askese von innen heraus, einer Stählung gegen die immer ungeheuerlicher anwachsenden Es-Mächte gestellt, die wir noch kaum erst zu ahnen vermögen. (p. 78)

7. Das Wort: "was hilft es dem Menschen, wenn er die ganze Welt gewänne, aber Schaden litte an seiner Seele" hat hierzu etwas Wichtiges zu sagen. Das "Gewinnen der Welt" enthält alles, was es an menschlich-kulturellen Werten gibt: vitale Fülle, Reichtum der Persönlichkeit, "Kunst und Wissenschaft" in all ihren Formen. Dem stellt der Ausspruch das Schaden-Leiden  oder Heil-Bleiben der Seele gegenüber, und damit ist die personale Entscheidung gemeint; die Art, wie der Mensch auf den Anruf Gottes, der ihn zu Person macht, antwortet. Davor verschwindet "die ganze Welt." (p. 77)