Man vs The Machine

In the years following WWII many commentators became extremely uncomfortable with the dehumanization of civilisation that was being brought about by hyper-industrialisation, uncontrollable science and technology, intrusive government and unresponsive politics.  All were faces of a die that, when cast, resulted in humanity’s loss and “the system’s” gains.  Perhaps the most famous critic of the direction that things were going was U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower who, when drafting is valedictory speech from the presidency, warned of the “congressional, military, industrial complex.” When he delivered the speech, he omitted Congress as one of the dangers, but in the event, his draft was correct.

What wasn’t apparent at the time was that the financial services industry would join this complex, take it over and turn it into a machine that could destroy not only humanity, but the planet.  Take it over, not in the sense that one leader deposes another, but in the sense that cancer cells, mindlessly following their programming, take over the body and eventually destroy it.  Cancer cells aren’t evil, they just go along with the system.

The machine’s excrement of soulless buildings and neighborhoods constrain the mind and wither the soul. Concrete and steel reach for the sky but curb reflection, displace nature and corrupt the meaning of progress.  It doesn’t have to be this way.

The machine proceeds on a path laid out by its DNA which is no more than the short-term self-interest of each of its components.  If any component becomes particularly successful, its self-interest will draw that of others into its sphere until its marginal utility to the machine is negligible and other components compete within the machine for temporary dominance in their respective spheres.  The critical point here is that the system is undirected and dominated by short-term thinking.

Short-term thinking doesn’t work very well.  Think of a complex maze.  It has an entry point and an exit point.  Traverse a maze in which you are immersed by trial and error.  If you make a wrong turn, you can turn around and go back.  Reality is full of decision points like a maze, but you can’t turn back; the only direction is forward. Light water nuclear reactors (LWR) became the global standard, not because they were the best technology but because they received more funding than thorium reactors (LFTR) at the earliest stages of nuclear power development.  The estimated ninety-three thousand people that have died in the wake of the Chernobyl LWR accident died simply because the machine can only move forward. We have known since 1967 that LFTR was far better technology than LWR, but now, forty-five years later, we have yet to build our first commercial LFTR plant.  Chernobyl began construction in 1970, three years after the advantages of LFTR became generally known but the machine just plowed on inexorably.

We make bad decisions, but not only do we make bad decisions, feedback is so slow that we are well beyond the point where we made that mistake and we’ve been compounding and re-compounding it before we realize what we’ve done.  Once we realize, we cannot go back, we can only change our direction going forward.  We have become machine in which we are enmeshed.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  Rarely an opportunity comes along where dramatic changes are possible and the machine can be reconstructed and redirected.  We have such an opportunity now.

Gross overpopulation, rapid depletion of our remaining resources, skyrocketing energy and food prices, an out-of-control financial system and a changing climate that every year exceeds the expectations of climate scientists in the speed and magnitude of its change have made it clear that we will either alter course or disappear as a species.

We need look no further than the cityscape that surrounds us to sense the corruption of the soul and the possibility of redemption within.

Next:  The dimensions of the crisis.

Contributed by Frank Bouman