The God of the Machine - #17
Posted by mshupe 1 year, 9 months ago to Government
Chapter IX, Excerpt 1 of 2
The Function of Government
Even though a contrivance fails to work at all, or effects only destruction, the laws of energy and mechanism have not altered or varied; the fault is in the appliance. Political agency has never been examined rigorously in that light, as a specific problem of engineering. In the social organization, man is the dynamo, in is productive capacity. Government is an end appliance, and a dead end in respect of the energy it uses.
Energy is the medium of life. Science is aware that inanimate objects do not heed what is said to them, nor care about intentions. Thus, in nature, the energy, the mechanism, and the control appear as one, and the individual can function without defining them separately or abstractly. Neither do the social or economic relations of savages necessitate any such distinction. The absence of this distinction is the main difference between primitive and scientific thought.
Yet, the name of science has been used to carry the error one step further, with the notion that man is no more than a physical mechanism; that he must respond infallibly by formula if previously “conditioned,” as the machine must answer to controls. What is forgotten is the fact that . . . man is a genuinely automatic machine, self-starting, and self-acting. Initiative is life itself. Complete inhibition is death. No inanimate mechanism can be automatic.
The Function of Government
Even though a contrivance fails to work at all, or effects only destruction, the laws of energy and mechanism have not altered or varied; the fault is in the appliance. Political agency has never been examined rigorously in that light, as a specific problem of engineering. In the social organization, man is the dynamo, in is productive capacity. Government is an end appliance, and a dead end in respect of the energy it uses.
Energy is the medium of life. Science is aware that inanimate objects do not heed what is said to them, nor care about intentions. Thus, in nature, the energy, the mechanism, and the control appear as one, and the individual can function without defining them separately or abstractly. Neither do the social or economic relations of savages necessitate any such distinction. The absence of this distinction is the main difference between primitive and scientific thought.
Yet, the name of science has been used to carry the error one step further, with the notion that man is no more than a physical mechanism; that he must respond infallibly by formula if previously “conditioned,” as the machine must answer to controls. What is forgotten is the fact that . . . man is a genuinely automatic machine, self-starting, and self-acting. Initiative is life itself. Complete inhibition is death. No inanimate mechanism can be automatic.
Unfortunately the dividers in today's society are employing the same techniques. You hear references to "MAGA's" and "racists". The other side is not immune, referring to "wokesters". (merely a sample, for both sides). The intent is to lump the enemy into a (less than human) conglomerate, ignoring the individual, and making them easy to hate.
1) As a unique being whose characteristics; intellectual, moral, ethical, psychological, physical, etc. have never existed on Earth before and after death will never be replicated.
2) As a member of a class whose characteristics are determined by the group that human, allegedly, belongs to.
The error Ms. Paterson refers to amounts to denying reality by refusing to acknowledge it i.e. Joe Biden “I have six grandchildren”, or, Klaus Schwab “most humans are useless eaters”, or, the Nazi’s tattooing numbers on Jewish arms thereby reducing them to the level of cattle.
For dictators, this is a necessary component to carry out their twisted plans. Reality is their enemy and must be rearranged to accommodate the certainty of their beliefs. They place their consciousness ahead of existence.
Any Rand and Isabel Paterson warned us of this. Not enough of us are heeding that warning.