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is always th e same. 1 h ave no generalaim save this."

Menden's chief problem ";as, ofcourse, his prodigious vanity, Fromtime to time the great man wouldtell friends that he was engaged "i na diagnosis of the democraCc disease." His Notes 011 Democracy, published ill 1926, revealed that he h:l.dno visible philosophy other th:m hboft-repeated theme that mankind wascomposed of "gentlE!men" an d"boobs," - just what the differencewas between -the "inferi()r four-fifthsvf mankind" and the superior onefifth Menden never bothe:::ed to define. His one du'bious contributiorwas the creation of a Frankenstein,the all-American :Boob - a moronicignramus wh o "doesn't know whata Doric column is . or an etching, or afugue. He is as ignorant of sonnetsan d th e Gothic style as he is of ecclesias tical politics in Abyssinia.Homer, Virgil, Cervantes, Each,Raphael, Rubens, Beethoven - 'allsuch colossal names are emptysounds to him," Sinclair Lewis, whoWTote Ma.in Street largely under theinfluence of too much Mencken,would alImost' certainly have flunkedth e entrance examination of Men

c k E ~ n ' s superior one-fifth academy.By We late 1920s, Menden and his

magazine, Th e American Mercury,were a spent force. Like a bro'kendown vaudevillian who never quiteknows wben .to ge t off the stage,Mencken lingered on doing his "act"until th e depression came along. Thenth e mi]]i.(ms who were ou t of workturned t

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technical apparatus. an d this determjnism becomes more rigorous as itgrows e\'er more c o m p l e ~ c . This is no tequivalent-according to my way ofthinking - with socialization in thetraditional sense of the term, as :iVIr.Theobald seems to believe. The resuLwill be a great'er integratiun of theindividual into a society rigorouslyorganized, no t on an ideological bu ton a technical basis. using technicalmeans. In this society the individual'sapparent wider possibilities for actionan d self-expression will be basicallyillusory.

Technique would no t be modifiedby changing the external factors whichpresently affect it . These external factors. give technical society it s second-ar y characteristics, which are sometimes excessive, This is what I wantedto show when I spoke of the concentration camp, ,but I also said in thelast chapter that this is an accidentalresult which we C2n expect to disappear. However, while we ca n expectthe secondary characteristics to disappear, this will no t . result in anyfundamental change in the nature of

problem,My second point bears on lVIJ:.

Theobald's correct view of my bookas a descliption of what has happened because man ha s remainedlargely unconscious of the many implications of technique and hassought only to profit from it. Bv extrapolation, my book is also a warn,in g of what may happen i f man doesno t come to understand what is happening and makes no attempt to con

. trol the situation. I never denied thattechnique ha s brought some elements01' well-lbeing an d happiness. I f Ifailed to discuss this, i t is because i tseemed to me so obvious an d so wellknown as scarcely to bear repeatingthat, thanks to technique, man is bette r fed an d enjoys many improvements in hi s lot.

On the other hand, I never intendedto describe an y inexorable process oririevitable doom. I simply declaredthat because man does no t seem torealize the extent of the problem, because our l'eedom of choice an d ofjudgment is being reduced, becauseou r technical milieu is becomingmore complex, the evolution that Idescribed seems increasingly likely.I t is therefore only the. ever-increasingprobability of this development thatI sought to emphasize.

When i t is argued that man canac t effectively when confronted with[hi; situation and can find mc:tns to5GB

c h a n L ~ C the course of c\'olut:cn intechnical society, I would like to believe it. But the problem must be posedin concrete tonn;: Of whom are wespeaking when we say "man"? ! my -self do no t believe in the existence of"man" in the abstract. ,\VI:-;rJm. the,1')The intellectu"ls? Th e technicial1s?The politicians? E ~ a c t analysis showsto what degl.'ee they are powerlesssince it is they who are most invol vcdin this evolution. NO T could any in dividual be effective because his personal decisions could no t possibly in fluence the source of society. Philosophers an d artists are completelyeliminated from the reckoning by themere fact of their being nontechnicalmen. (All that obviously callS fo rlengthy proof!) Thus, what is neededis a, kind of psychological an d spiritual revolution affecting a considerablegroup of people. Bu t at present, itseems to me that this has not ye tbegun an d that it is no t scientificallypredictable.

The worst of illusions, however,would be to believe that, one way oranother. the problem will resolve itself. The Marxists live in a utopiandream which claims that all technicaldifficulties will automatically be re .solved by the transition to a Communist society. However, i t is equallyillusOTY to think that any historicalor economic evolution will automati

cally c,-,U rOl'th. a positin' respoit s challenges; or 'yet to believmany do- tha t teebllical progt'sdf will resoh'e the pl'01JJems cby techllique. In fact. only thobvious, fragmented problems wsO r e s o 1 v ~ d . For i n s ( a n ~ e , "1'!1ilcmatio:1 frees m

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lim only :,rgujnj; Ih::lt m ~ J l Y types ofsystems ::lre comp:1ti

with the tech!lologkal cnvironwhich is so xapidlygrowing up

arQuqd us , and f1 at man will deter~ whether by conscious choicet, !>!iriq default - tbe 'type of socio

which d.eveloys., 1 find Ellurs posi tiOll on this i S S l l ~ mbiguous: he seems 8t n18ny points

the oo.ok ami in hi s l'eply '0 denypOI'Ver to influerlce the tech

Indeed, atimes, be appears to believe in a

eX,treme technological deter in spite of this, at th e

nd of hi s reply, he quite clearlytates thalt man ca n find "the pa:}1o a ne w freedom."

While Ellul and r may disagree onpoint, we al'e in complete agree

that "man does not seem toextent of th e problem" an d

l m ~ i l :be does so , technique - ordeteIminism-will guidefuture. However, EJlul is far more

t!lan I am ab()ut th e possif perceiving th e gr3Vity of th eand acting effectively to coun

r it.Ellul dismisses the intellectuals,

the politicial1S, the the artists as sources

f undEJ'standing: an d leadership.dismisses the individual on

e groulu!s tllat "one man's pel'sonalcould no t influence the

of society,"T:his is surely a total misunderof the function and poten

of individual leadership. As Toyne and many otbers have pointedt, societY' has always been changedth e wisdom an d courage of a very

The need for leadership ha sbeen greater than i t is today,

d the potential f()r effective leaderha s also never been greater.

Many social sdentists who are coned witth th e pIohlel l1s of achiev

g social ell ange woul d deny thisclaiming ihat society has

been so hard to change, thatindivicIu81 h:J s never ha d so Ii ttlc

These social scientists ignorel'caHties: first. th a [ many ,of the

of in tereSE groups m'e no longerbtlt are unstead open toem the basis of J21]On31 argusccO]J([, that the new means of

are immensely power] ii \'Ve w (mid Jearn to use them

\-el y ,Cbange .::an only he ~ l { ' , h i e v e d one basis of individual leadershipwm !:!hen crea te thelal'ge-scale1J:i,' 2.4, 1965

movcmen t which Ellul conccllj" seesJS essential for major ch()uts:not one of it s early modernists heldup longer than a in'lef im tant againstthe figllratil-e an d parochial - 8] though not, for an that, debilitating- flavor of their environmellt, Oneresult was that defensive he-m::mpsychology, that poorly disguised cultof masculinity, which ha s p e n ~ a d e d our art until only v ~ r y reeell tly. Another was the belligerence and defiance of philistia which so often tookth e place of self-criticism.

The A n n o r ~ ' Show (1913)