The Machine
Technocracy and Transhumanism Part 1
Introduction
A reading of JRR Tolkien's “The Lord of the Rings” and Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength” has put to my mind this idea of “the machine”. What exactly is it? What does it mean for us? Finally, what will it look like in our world? In order to address those questions we must address what is generally meant by technocracy. I am not sure if I am using the word exactly the same as some others.
Technocracy: government by technicians
specifically: management of society by technical experts
Rather straightforward, technocracy is the combination of “techno” and “cracy” which means essentially the state of rule being XYZ. So this term technocracy is essentially the rule of technology or those who control technology. When I use the term technocracy I essentially agree with this definition. However, I would also add something else, perhaps another layer of definitions. “Technocracy, being A) the rule of a state or people by supplying and manipulating technology on the economic level. B) Creating a state where technology is the primary good/service and creating a populace that desires said technology.”
I hope that was clear and concise enough, but perhaps I should clarify. Technocracy in my view is the government control of technology, by technology, of a people who want to use technology. If the government was trying to rule and dominate technology, by technology, but the populace did not like nor use technology, then they really wouldn’t have any control over the people. Assuming of course they weren’t an overt dictatorial government, rather, trying to rule through more secretive means.
Before I go forward, there are certain things I must clarify about technology in general. Increasingly I find it a necessary evil, as time has revealed the nature of technology to us, it has manifested negatively. Many of my readers will perhaps disagree with my assessment, believing that technology is a neutral agent in this world. Even if that is the case, man is not a neutral agent, accordingly, we will imbue whatever truths we hold into the technology we create. Never has this been so easily seen than with AI, a large language model that is increasingly radically left though it is claimed to be “Unbiased.”
To further clarify my position, there is a delineation between “smart” technology and utilitarian technology. Phones, watches, computers, AI systems, and the like would of course be smart technologies. These are those increasingly necessary evils, AC, medical technology, and cars, are less so. However, without the more utilitarian technology, we never would have achieved the smarter technology of today, so perhaps it is still guilty by association.
Many authors had seen this “techno” train barreling down the track, disguised as the “light at the end of the tunnel.” As shown in the meme above, JRR Tolkien was certainly one of them. CS Lewis was another one, both of their seminal works Lord of the Rings and The Space Trilogy deal very heavily with the topic. The above meme is a rather ironic depiction of that very notion from Lord of the Rings.
I am in fact a hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated).
— JRR Tolkien
Sauron was the villain of the story, the embodiment of evil, he was in many ways “the machine” itself. The fact that “Good guy” Sauron did all the same things is the ironic bit of the joke. Tolkien saw the development of industry and the mechanization of the world as an evil. Or at least a non-positive good, not a net benefit to the world. Hence Saruman and Sauron “The Two Towers” were the force of mechanization in Middle Earth. Moreover, the people of the Shire, the Hobbits, “Lovers of things that grow” who fought against it. Now do not think that Tolkien was a “tree hugger” as we conceive of them today, worshipers of Gaia or Pan. Rather, I believe that he held a Garden mentality, as in the Garden of Eden. We will address that more later on, for now, let us move on to the roots of technocracy and “the Machine.”
Scientism
The ideas of Darwin and the wholesale acceptance of evolution is a watershed moment for technocracy. Moreover, the Enlightenment rationalism that precursed Darwin and the following “scientism” has completely seeped into the Western consciousness. Carl Trueman points out in his book “Crisis of Confidence” that Science carries with it a certain bias towards the past. Evolution does the same thing on the biological level that technology does on the historical, the past is always worse than the present and the future will get even better. A hundred years ago people didn’t have AC or smartphones, so they were dumb, or 10 gazillion years ago the quasi-humanoids were banging rocks against cave walls. So it goes, assuming that just because people of the past didn’t have the technology that we have they are inferior. Evolutionarily, one could attempt to make that case from a biological level, wisdom from a few thousand years ago could be coming from “underdeveloped brains” and is therefore invalid.1
Here is a definition of Scientism by JP Moreland “Roughly, scientism is the view that the hard sciences—like chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy—provide the only genuine knowledge of reality. At the very least, this scientific knowledge is vastly superior to what we can know from any other discipline.” To echo certain famous words “Science is all that was… is… and ever will be” this is the creed of the scientists as well as the just… everyone now. The Enlightenment rational age is what we owe this debt to, a transference came at this age. A switch from the view that REVELATION is the highest thing to REASON as the highest thing to be achieved. In the Enlightenment era reason was a perfect tool that we could use to dissect the reality around us and we could do so without flaw or error. Our reason could accurately peer through the mist and come to accurate conclusions by itself.
Science has become scientism which is not real science, technically so, I come from one of the social science fields. To call Sociology science while also calling Quantum physics science is like comparing apples and oranges. There is nothing similar at all about them, Sociology is important, and the study of people and group interactions has its place. However, there is no actual studying to be done in the modern field, only dialectical treatises mascarding as scientific studies.2 However, this is how scientism arose, through the purveying of false science as legitimate. It is how America can parade a doctor onto a political stage who claims “I am the Science” because there is no longer science. Rather, we have false dialecticals and a strange obsession with “science-like thinking” as the only way to come to the truth. We now have “scientists” telling us what to do in every area of life, they speak to all walks of life, even where they have no business. Scientists have no qualifications for making policy decisions or closing churches, they cannot speak at all about the moral universe. However, Fauci makes policy, Dawkins tells us God is dead, and Sam Harris tells us we have no free will. All of these fall outside of the area of science, leastways the “hard sciences.” Yet, that is not to say that a scientific approach to them would be a bad thing, but rather that science is not a total good in and of itself
Here is a wonderful quote explaining the dangers, stating what scientism does and is, ostensibly by John G. West.3
“The wrong-headed belief that modern science supplies the only reliable method of knowledge about the world, and its corollary that scientists have the right to dictate a society’s morals, religious beliefs, and even government policies merely because of their scientific expertise.”
In the modern moment, scientism tells us that tomorrow is bound to be better than today. New technology will bring about improvements only, new technologies will be our savior, and they will bring “equitable solutions” to present problems. They will make our lives better, and cleaner, make us stronger, faster, healthier, and ultimately more efficient. If you oppose that, then you are opposed to improvement, and health, you are opposed to the future, which according to the scientific sacrament, is a theological virtue, you are a science sinner, a heretic of liberal scientism.
Technocracy and Transhumanism
So, how does this then come to technocracy and transhumanism? Well, I see a natural progression from one to the other. As science supplants religion it doesn’t actually replace religion, we have not, nor will ever become perfectly free rational creatures, dispensing with “fairy tales” about God. Though atheists desperately want it, rather, as science supplants religions it just becomes a different religion, and one of the core tenets of religion is transformation.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:18
If Science is now religion, and evolution is granted to be true, then its teleology is transhuman. Humans (according to secular science) aren’t really human, we came from fish, then ape, and next, as homo deus man-gods, we will become what we create for ourselves. The Machine is what we have created, a world of robots and AI, a world where technology is the greatest good. Technology, because it is our path to the future, to the transcendent state that our scientific religion has promised us. We will have all the conveniences of AI built into our sunglasses, pills to simply make us not hungry, or to throw up so we can eat more. Soon, our cars themselves will be our chauffeurs, robots will be our professors, or even our pastors.4
Our brains will be chipped, for the convenience that this would give us a connection of our brains directly to the interwebs. Accessing AI with our brains, or information directly, think of all the research we could do with just our thoughts some will undoubtedly say. However, in truth, it will simply be used for porn and cheap entertainment. Most of all, however, what is forgotten is that we will become slaves to the Machine, to technology. What you cannot live without is truly your master, the conveniences we go out of our way for we are truly enslaved to. Soon we won’t be able to live without AI as college students progressively don’t write but use ChatGPT to do so, they won’t learn to drive because of automated cars. Technology is our master because we cannot live without it, it suffuses our life entirely.
Martine Rothblatt is the perfect encapsulation of what it means to be a slave to the Machine, the perfect transhumanist. Martine was born Martin yet in 1994 he attempted to change his sex (he was far ahead of the “transgender” curve) to that of a woman. Rothblatt is a technocracist through and through, a serial entrepreneur of many successful tech companies and biomedical companies. As just one example, take this example of his vision for the future of medicine.5
“The entrepreneur explained her plans with the help of an architect’s rendering of an organ farm set on a lush green lawn, its tube-like sections connected whimsically in a snowflake pattern. Solar panels dotted the roofs, and there were landing pads for electric drones. The structure would house a herd of a thousand genetically modified pigs, living in strict germ-free conditions. There would be a surgical theater and veterinarians to put the pigs to sleep before cutting out their hearts, kidneys, and lungs. These lifesaving organs—designed to be compatible with human bodies—would be loaded into electric copters and whisked to transplant centers.
Perhaps I am in the wrong, perhaps there is nothing weird or strange about that vision of a pig farm. A farm with genetically engineered pigs that grow human-compatible organs to be harvested and delivered via drone. Yet to be that feels rather strange, like a sci-fi dystopia realm. Yet I will articulate what I feel is off with this vision, it comes from the roots of Mr. Rothblatt’s beliefs the so-called “Trans-everything CEO” who wrote a book called “From Transgender to Transhuman.”
It is degrading to the human person to replace their parts with that of another creature genetically modified or not. Secondly, it creates a vision of man that is instrumental, a materialistic ontology of humankind. We are simply things, things that can be cut up and replaced like a computer or a car. We are instrumental in that we are just tools and items to be cut up and put together at the whims of ourselves, or others potentially. With my car, I can shop online for different branded parts, some cheaper and others premium. Perhaps with my child, I can decide that I want this gene or that gene to create this cause or effect. Say my wife gets a diseased liver, no worries, I’ll order a premium pig liver from the 3.0 model humanoid pig creature.
Such a concept may perhaps be convenient, and provide a useful tool in medicine, but at the same time to separate us from our “Manishness” as Francis Schaeffer would say. It turns us into nothing more than another machine, it prepares us to be trans-human. If we can chop ourselves and replace ourselves with pig parts, what stops our brains from being half computer? Or to create entire people artificially in pod-wombs? Mankind is a particular thing, we have an ontology and a teleology. Moreover, we also have a certain anthropology, humans ARE one thing, not just something that looks like a human. We have a beginning in the garden, we even have a way to BE human, a way to flourish, and we have an end goal to achieve. To deny that is to deny our manishness, it is to enter into the realm of despair. Such places are what leads to the denial of man, and to create an instrumentalist view of mankind. One that can ultimately lead us to the transhuman idea.
So what then can we do? Well, I would encourage you to read this article from First Things. A wonderful publication of classical thought and Christian values, I will give my thoughts on what we can do in the next installment on this topic!
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/04/miltons-apple-and-ours
Did you enjoy this article? If so please consider sharing the article with a friend or on social media! Feel free to leave a comment and discuss ideas below! Always remember we must put First Things First, Revelation over Reason, and Christ over Culture!
— Godspeed
Footnotes
I have yet to hear this exact argument, however it is not long in coming. The idea is set up perfectly by the notion of “The lizard brain” which has been argued ad nauseam.
I find it interesting that in “That Hideous Strength” one of the main characters and the catalyst of the story Mark, was a sociologist.
West, John G. “Introduction to the Magician’s Twin.” C.S. Lewis Web, August 2, 2012. https://cslewisweb.com/2012/08/02/introduction-to-the-magicians-twin.
Emily McFarlan Miller, “Could Robots Replace Pastors? This One Just Gives Blessings,” USA Today, October 11, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/10/11/could-robots-replace-pastors-one-just-gives-blessings/754999001/.
Antonio Regalado, “The Entrepreneur Dreaming of a Factory of Unlimited Organs,” MIT Technology Review, January 20, 2023, https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/11/1064800/martine-rothblatt-transplantable-organs-10-breakthrough-technologies-2023/.