itsthepathocrats
10-13-2008, 04:58 PM
On Diversions and Freedoms (http://oparagon.blogspot.com/2006/12/on-diversions-and-freedoms.html)
This paper seeks to clarify two important types of freedom that occur within a larger discussion of diversions in Jacque Ellul’s writings. In the end, the spiritual importance of correctly identifying these two freedoms will be apparent. Additionally, diversions will be shown to be the most dangerous ramification of the technological society with regards to an individual’s soul.
Diversions are a difficult topic to discuss. Partly because one must understand what is being diverted from and to. However, Ellul presents an extremely broad definition of diversions that is very helpful in understanding the term within Ellul’s narrow context of the spiritual health of an individual within the technological society.
Ellul derives his notion of diversions directly from Pascal’s Pensées.
“With diversions we take a giant stride along the path of abstraction and addiction by means of the technical society and fascination. We are referring to diversions not just in the sense of amusement but in the sense of Pascal: being diverted from thinking about ourselves and our human condition, and also from our high aspirations, from the meaning of life and from loftier goals.” (Bluff, 358)
With reference to “referring to diversions not just in the sense of amusement”, Ellul notes that Pascal considered his pursuit of Algebra to be this kind of diversion. Amusements, which we can easily understand as diversions, join the ranks of an almost infinitely broad definition. Anything can be this kind of diversion. The term simply becomes a placeholder for everything that an individual could use to divert himself.
Let this definition of diversions suffice. We will return to discuss the psychology of man’s diverting and the existential place he diverts from, but first we must understand the role that the technological society plays in the success of diversions.
There are two main factors for this success.
In Propaganda Ellul describes the Western man within the technological society.
“Above all he is a victim of emptiness—he is a man devoid of meaning. He is very busy, but he is emotionally empty, open to all entreaties and in search of only one thing—something to fill his inner void. To fill this void he goes to the movies—only a very temporary remedy...He is available...He is the lonely man...” (Propaganda, 147)
It is ultimately this availability and loneliness that Ellul sees to be at the heart of a man’s susceptibility to propaganda. But Ellul finds man’s emptiness to be at the very heart of modern human condition. It is from this emptiness—to fill the void—which man seeks diversions such as the movie.
Thus, the first factor in diversions success stems from the modern human condition.
The second factor can be found in technology.
Technology’s role in the success of diversions comes in the form of choices.
“Naturally, modern man can choose from a hundred automobile makes and a thousand kinds of cloth—i.e., he can choose products. On the level of consuming, the range of choice is vaster. But on the level of the role in the body social, on the level of functions and behaviors, there is a considerable reduction. The choice among technological objects is not of the same nature as the choice of human conduct...The ‘either/or’ refers to ‘either the car or the TV.’” (System, 321)
This issue of choices plays an important role in the success of diversions for Ellul. Without choices a man would be lost for distractions because diversion contains a necessary dissipation.
“...one diversion quickly has to replace another. We jump endlessly from diversion to diversion without stopping, without stepping aside, without realizing what we are doing...And thanks to technique our society has now made this possible for the first time in history.” (Bluff, 359)
In the technological society our empty, void filling man now has limitless options to divert himself with. The success of diversions finds full fruition.
Up until now we have not spoken of freedoms. But with Ellul’s notion of choices and diversions clearly understood we can move on to define the first type of freedom.
A new definition of freedom exists in the technological society. As discussed, it is a freedom of choices. However, there are some important psychological elements of this freedom that deserve discussion.
“First of all, freedom is not necessarily having lots of consumer goods to choose from.” (System, 320)
As an example, Ellul discusses the freedom of marriage. He argues that within the technological system a proponent of “free-love” is not avowing their freedom but is merely reducing marriage and their partner to a mere “object of satisfaction”—no different than any commercial choice. He argues that such a “choice” is nothing “other than what the technological system proposes.” The technological system provides a complete redefining of freedom such that man thinks that he is free because of his choices, yet has become an addict of this perverted freedom and the choices of diversions.
“Things that are only diversions are declared by the authorities and the media to be an enhancement of freedom...Do we not see that we are overwhelmed by freedom?...For diversions are always against freedom inasmuch as they are against conscience and reflection.” (Bluff, 359)
This first kind of freedom is the technological freedom. It is no longer concerned with the existential necessity of choice but merely with kinds of choices. Litanies of choices are presented to the man yet the kinds of choices have been selected by the ideals of the technological society.
Let us now turn our attention to the psychology of man’s diverting. Then the second type of freedom will become clear.
Ellul doesn’t explicitly describe the cause of man’s desire to divert. However, throughout his discussion of diversion he continually describes the modern man as defined by emptiness and loneliness and then turns to Pascal for his definition of diversions. Pascal, conversely, spends a good deal of time delving deeply into the existential place that man seeks to divert from. Like Ellul, we will turn to the Pensées for further help.
“...The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.” (Pascal, #171)
Like Ellul, Pascal describes man, when not distracted, as ultimately empty. This emptiness and wariness stems from Pascal’s notion that when a man turns inward to his soul he finds the Christian notion of brokenness. Pascal understands man to rightfully and inherently want to escape from this brokenness (“a more solid means of escaping from it”). This solid means, for Pascal, is ultimately the choice of faith and the acceptance of the message of Jesus. Conversely, diversions allow a man to have a momentary surrogate of escape. Yet this surrogate fulfills in man his desire to escape his condition but ultimately leads to avoidance.
Similarly, Ellul says, they “divert us from existential and essential truths and realities”. The deadly problem arises when man can constantly divert himself from confrontation with his broken nature. He can live eternally in a state of diverted escape. Within the technological society this kind of eternal escapism has become attainable and man can never search himself for questions of his existence or spiritual truths.
Ellul describes this fully with the example of video games.
“I am firmly convinced that the whole system of technical games...is one of the most dangerous factors of tomorrow’s people and society. It leads us into an unreal world...this unreal world is not the one that is necessary for a day...which one returned at once to real life. The unreal world here is one of fantasy from which there is no longer any reason to return...like an addiction...They divert us radically from any preoccupation with meaning, truth or values...this is for me the greatest danger that threatens us as a result of technical development.” (Bluff, 364-365)
The second type of freedom can now be discussed. We have come to understand the technical freedom as very antithetical to existential choices. Technical freedom presents man with an abundance of choices yet has sealed man off from any type of important choice. This notion of existential choice will compose our second type of freedom. We call it existential freedom.
“How could this human being...sovereignly perform what is expected of him: i.e., make choices, judgments...How and in terms of what could he give a different direction...than the one that technology gives itself...?” (System, 325)
It is clear how thinkers like Pascal or Kierkegaard would respond to Ellul’s question. Separate from any society and independent of any technology, man must avoid distractions and diversions and turn inward; find that unseen existential place and see himself for what he truly is; a fallen man in need of the Lord Jesus Christ. From this existential place, a man then has the freedom to make the important choice to follow Christ.
But Ellul comes at the answer from a different direction. He clearly would agree with the model of these Christian existentialists but is not willing to make the pure move of individualism. He is not prepared to abandon Western man in his technological plight.
Ellul’s existential freedom is simply the need for the Western man to realize that he has lost all freedom.
“If we have any chance of emerging from this ideologico-material vice, of finding an exit from this terrible swamp that is ours, above all things we must avoid the mistake of thinking that we are free. If we launch out into the skies convinced that we have infinite resources and that in the last resort we are free to choose our destiny, to choose between good and evil, to choose among the many possibilities that our thousands of technical gadgets make available...if we believe all that, then we are truly lost, for the only way to find a narrow passage...is to have enough awareness and self-criticism...to see that for a century we have been descending...we show our freedom by recognizing our nonfreedom.” (Bluff, 411)
This admittance is still deeply intertwined with the notion of diversions. For man cannot possibly face into his plight without first avoiding diversions and finding that existential place of self-criticizing. Ellul was clear about that earlier. But Ellul is a sociologist and more importantly he seems to care deeply about the Western man. He sees the working out of the individual’s turn inward to have ramifications beyond the individual’s spiritual health. He who is willing to grapple with existential questions and see that his very existential freedom has been replaced by technological freedom stands a fighting chance at helping to stop the onslaught of technology. This is Ellul’s hope.
Pascal concedes the most obvious problem with Ellul’s hope when he acutely defines man’s human condition to be one of constant escapism from truth. It is rare for a man to have the courage to pursue truth at this existential level. Man would find himself with a war on two fronts.
How can man ever have the courage to turn inward and fight a battle against technique?
Ellul understands this problem. It is thus not surprising that he couches man’s hope of fighting technology within man’s ability to overcome diversions and his desire to escape the truth. His response to this problem is one of hope.
In the last pages of The Technological Bluff (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080280960x/ref=dp_proddesc_1?ie=UTF8&n=283155) we see a new Ellul. We are distanced from Ellul the doomsayer of The Technological Society and are introduced to Ellul the hopeful.
Ellul concedes that his description of technique in The Technological Society has been shown to be faulty. His original excavation of modern society showed that “Technique integrates everything. It avoids shock and sensational events...The anxiety aroused in man by the turbulence of the machine is soothed by the consoling hum of a unified society.” (Society, 6)
Ellul describes how technique has not provided the technological society with the stability and planning and efficiency but has actually left “a margin of chaos, it covers gaps without filling them, it gives evidence of mistakes, and it has to multiply deceptions to veil the absence of feedback in the system.” (Bluff, 412) This is the technological bluff. The promises of technique have not been fulfilled. In a sense, these “gaps” in the system are new to the Ellul of The Technological Society.
And like the archer who found Achilles’ weakness, and with renewed hope, Ellul pounces on his enemy.
“We must be prepared to reveal the fracture lines and to discover that everything depends on the qualities of individuals...we, profit from the existence of little cracks of freedom, and install in them a trembling freedom which is not attributed to or mediated by machines...but which is truly effective, so that we may truly invent the new thing for which humanity is waiting.” (Bluff, 412)
He finds his hope of victory in the individual. It can be assumed that he demands that this individual be capable of formulating the necessary existential decisions to be able to accurately understand freedom within the technological society.
This paper seeks to clarify two important types of freedom that occur within a larger discussion of diversions in Jacque Ellul’s writings. In the end, the spiritual importance of correctly identifying these two freedoms will be apparent. Additionally, diversions will be shown to be the most dangerous ramification of the technological society with regards to an individual’s soul.
Diversions are a difficult topic to discuss. Partly because one must understand what is being diverted from and to. However, Ellul presents an extremely broad definition of diversions that is very helpful in understanding the term within Ellul’s narrow context of the spiritual health of an individual within the technological society.
Ellul derives his notion of diversions directly from Pascal’s Pensées.
“With diversions we take a giant stride along the path of abstraction and addiction by means of the technical society and fascination. We are referring to diversions not just in the sense of amusement but in the sense of Pascal: being diverted from thinking about ourselves and our human condition, and also from our high aspirations, from the meaning of life and from loftier goals.” (Bluff, 358)
With reference to “referring to diversions not just in the sense of amusement”, Ellul notes that Pascal considered his pursuit of Algebra to be this kind of diversion. Amusements, which we can easily understand as diversions, join the ranks of an almost infinitely broad definition. Anything can be this kind of diversion. The term simply becomes a placeholder for everything that an individual could use to divert himself.
Let this definition of diversions suffice. We will return to discuss the psychology of man’s diverting and the existential place he diverts from, but first we must understand the role that the technological society plays in the success of diversions.
There are two main factors for this success.
In Propaganda Ellul describes the Western man within the technological society.
“Above all he is a victim of emptiness—he is a man devoid of meaning. He is very busy, but he is emotionally empty, open to all entreaties and in search of only one thing—something to fill his inner void. To fill this void he goes to the movies—only a very temporary remedy...He is available...He is the lonely man...” (Propaganda, 147)
It is ultimately this availability and loneliness that Ellul sees to be at the heart of a man’s susceptibility to propaganda. But Ellul finds man’s emptiness to be at the very heart of modern human condition. It is from this emptiness—to fill the void—which man seeks diversions such as the movie.
Thus, the first factor in diversions success stems from the modern human condition.
The second factor can be found in technology.
Technology’s role in the success of diversions comes in the form of choices.
“Naturally, modern man can choose from a hundred automobile makes and a thousand kinds of cloth—i.e., he can choose products. On the level of consuming, the range of choice is vaster. But on the level of the role in the body social, on the level of functions and behaviors, there is a considerable reduction. The choice among technological objects is not of the same nature as the choice of human conduct...The ‘either/or’ refers to ‘either the car or the TV.’” (System, 321)
This issue of choices plays an important role in the success of diversions for Ellul. Without choices a man would be lost for distractions because diversion contains a necessary dissipation.
“...one diversion quickly has to replace another. We jump endlessly from diversion to diversion without stopping, without stepping aside, without realizing what we are doing...And thanks to technique our society has now made this possible for the first time in history.” (Bluff, 359)
In the technological society our empty, void filling man now has limitless options to divert himself with. The success of diversions finds full fruition.
Up until now we have not spoken of freedoms. But with Ellul’s notion of choices and diversions clearly understood we can move on to define the first type of freedom.
A new definition of freedom exists in the technological society. As discussed, it is a freedom of choices. However, there are some important psychological elements of this freedom that deserve discussion.
“First of all, freedom is not necessarily having lots of consumer goods to choose from.” (System, 320)
As an example, Ellul discusses the freedom of marriage. He argues that within the technological system a proponent of “free-love” is not avowing their freedom but is merely reducing marriage and their partner to a mere “object of satisfaction”—no different than any commercial choice. He argues that such a “choice” is nothing “other than what the technological system proposes.” The technological system provides a complete redefining of freedom such that man thinks that he is free because of his choices, yet has become an addict of this perverted freedom and the choices of diversions.
“Things that are only diversions are declared by the authorities and the media to be an enhancement of freedom...Do we not see that we are overwhelmed by freedom?...For diversions are always against freedom inasmuch as they are against conscience and reflection.” (Bluff, 359)
This first kind of freedom is the technological freedom. It is no longer concerned with the existential necessity of choice but merely with kinds of choices. Litanies of choices are presented to the man yet the kinds of choices have been selected by the ideals of the technological society.
Let us now turn our attention to the psychology of man’s diverting. Then the second type of freedom will become clear.
Ellul doesn’t explicitly describe the cause of man’s desire to divert. However, throughout his discussion of diversion he continually describes the modern man as defined by emptiness and loneliness and then turns to Pascal for his definition of diversions. Pascal, conversely, spends a good deal of time delving deeply into the existential place that man seeks to divert from. Like Ellul, we will turn to the Pensées for further help.
“...The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.” (Pascal, #171)
Like Ellul, Pascal describes man, when not distracted, as ultimately empty. This emptiness and wariness stems from Pascal’s notion that when a man turns inward to his soul he finds the Christian notion of brokenness. Pascal understands man to rightfully and inherently want to escape from this brokenness (“a more solid means of escaping from it”). This solid means, for Pascal, is ultimately the choice of faith and the acceptance of the message of Jesus. Conversely, diversions allow a man to have a momentary surrogate of escape. Yet this surrogate fulfills in man his desire to escape his condition but ultimately leads to avoidance.
Similarly, Ellul says, they “divert us from existential and essential truths and realities”. The deadly problem arises when man can constantly divert himself from confrontation with his broken nature. He can live eternally in a state of diverted escape. Within the technological society this kind of eternal escapism has become attainable and man can never search himself for questions of his existence or spiritual truths.
Ellul describes this fully with the example of video games.
“I am firmly convinced that the whole system of technical games...is one of the most dangerous factors of tomorrow’s people and society. It leads us into an unreal world...this unreal world is not the one that is necessary for a day...which one returned at once to real life. The unreal world here is one of fantasy from which there is no longer any reason to return...like an addiction...They divert us radically from any preoccupation with meaning, truth or values...this is for me the greatest danger that threatens us as a result of technical development.” (Bluff, 364-365)
The second type of freedom can now be discussed. We have come to understand the technical freedom as very antithetical to existential choices. Technical freedom presents man with an abundance of choices yet has sealed man off from any type of important choice. This notion of existential choice will compose our second type of freedom. We call it existential freedom.
“How could this human being...sovereignly perform what is expected of him: i.e., make choices, judgments...How and in terms of what could he give a different direction...than the one that technology gives itself...?” (System, 325)
It is clear how thinkers like Pascal or Kierkegaard would respond to Ellul’s question. Separate from any society and independent of any technology, man must avoid distractions and diversions and turn inward; find that unseen existential place and see himself for what he truly is; a fallen man in need of the Lord Jesus Christ. From this existential place, a man then has the freedom to make the important choice to follow Christ.
But Ellul comes at the answer from a different direction. He clearly would agree with the model of these Christian existentialists but is not willing to make the pure move of individualism. He is not prepared to abandon Western man in his technological plight.
Ellul’s existential freedom is simply the need for the Western man to realize that he has lost all freedom.
“If we have any chance of emerging from this ideologico-material vice, of finding an exit from this terrible swamp that is ours, above all things we must avoid the mistake of thinking that we are free. If we launch out into the skies convinced that we have infinite resources and that in the last resort we are free to choose our destiny, to choose between good and evil, to choose among the many possibilities that our thousands of technical gadgets make available...if we believe all that, then we are truly lost, for the only way to find a narrow passage...is to have enough awareness and self-criticism...to see that for a century we have been descending...we show our freedom by recognizing our nonfreedom.” (Bluff, 411)
This admittance is still deeply intertwined with the notion of diversions. For man cannot possibly face into his plight without first avoiding diversions and finding that existential place of self-criticizing. Ellul was clear about that earlier. But Ellul is a sociologist and more importantly he seems to care deeply about the Western man. He sees the working out of the individual’s turn inward to have ramifications beyond the individual’s spiritual health. He who is willing to grapple with existential questions and see that his very existential freedom has been replaced by technological freedom stands a fighting chance at helping to stop the onslaught of technology. This is Ellul’s hope.
Pascal concedes the most obvious problem with Ellul’s hope when he acutely defines man’s human condition to be one of constant escapism from truth. It is rare for a man to have the courage to pursue truth at this existential level. Man would find himself with a war on two fronts.
How can man ever have the courage to turn inward and fight a battle against technique?
Ellul understands this problem. It is thus not surprising that he couches man’s hope of fighting technology within man’s ability to overcome diversions and his desire to escape the truth. His response to this problem is one of hope.
In the last pages of The Technological Bluff (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080280960x/ref=dp_proddesc_1?ie=UTF8&n=283155) we see a new Ellul. We are distanced from Ellul the doomsayer of The Technological Society and are introduced to Ellul the hopeful.
Ellul concedes that his description of technique in The Technological Society has been shown to be faulty. His original excavation of modern society showed that “Technique integrates everything. It avoids shock and sensational events...The anxiety aroused in man by the turbulence of the machine is soothed by the consoling hum of a unified society.” (Society, 6)
Ellul describes how technique has not provided the technological society with the stability and planning and efficiency but has actually left “a margin of chaos, it covers gaps without filling them, it gives evidence of mistakes, and it has to multiply deceptions to veil the absence of feedback in the system.” (Bluff, 412) This is the technological bluff. The promises of technique have not been fulfilled. In a sense, these “gaps” in the system are new to the Ellul of The Technological Society.
And like the archer who found Achilles’ weakness, and with renewed hope, Ellul pounces on his enemy.
“We must be prepared to reveal the fracture lines and to discover that everything depends on the qualities of individuals...we, profit from the existence of little cracks of freedom, and install in them a trembling freedom which is not attributed to or mediated by machines...but which is truly effective, so that we may truly invent the new thing for which humanity is waiting.” (Bluff, 412)
He finds his hope of victory in the individual. It can be assumed that he demands that this individual be capable of formulating the necessary existential decisions to be able to accurately understand freedom within the technological society.