Control Paralysis

The paradox of powerlessness in technical modernity

One recurring point on this blog, ever since I started writing in 2021, has been to emphasise that modernity and what we might call traditional or even “natural” conditions are irreconcilable opposites that cannot coexist. In other words, it is not just that we as a species are choosing to act in ways that are unnatural or untraditional and that another choice is available to us within technical modernity, but instead technical modernity is itself the negation of tradition and nature and what I name “extramodern” conditions.

“What is really needed is not to toss back and forth in a bed of agony, but to awaken and get up.”¹

It’s hardly an original idea. The man/nature and modernity/tradition dichotomies are both age old and have inspired whole literary movements. Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time, recently released a sequel that itself raked in $2.32 Bn. At heart these films are concerned precisely with the theme of nature under threat from technologically empowered humanity. But just how “empowered” really are we as a species?

To start with I will refer to Andrew Feenberg’s useful terminology of perspectives in the philosophy of technology.

Instrumentalism - the “conventional” conception of technology as a set of tools at the disposal of their user, that any broader consequences of technology are attributable to the user and how it is used.

Substantivisism - the contrary view that technology itself is laden with “valuative content”, that technologies are not neutral tools. This perspective would argue that technology itself promotes social consequences. This is the view of Heidegger, Ellul, Kaczynski and others.²

The instrumentalist view would have it that modern man is not only powerful but endowed with endless choice. The instrumentalist alleges that any negative effects of technology are solely due to its misuse at the hands of misguided men. If only someone else steered the ship, the world would be set to rights and nature could flourish unharmed. Substantivists such as Ellul and Kaczynski warn the opposite - technology has left us more powerless than ever.

These thinkers and others have written at length on our loss of freedom, of spontaneity in Ellul’s case and at an even more profound level the literal inaccessibility of Being in Heidegger, but in this article I will choose to look at the curious way in which the nominal and potential power that technology gives can act in a way that paralyses rather than liberates us. This paralysis of control creates endless new conundrums out of matters that were, I would argue, never meant to be decided by human beings.

One of the most disturbing stories to come out of the Pandemic era (a topic which I have gladly managed to avoid until now on this blog) was of a Canadian woman who chose assisted suicide instead of going through yet another lockdown. It’s hard to imagine a lower point than the prescription of death to people suffering entirely normal and predictable results of protracted house arrest. COVID amplified just about every negative aspect of modernity, but most striking of all for me was how it brought home Kaczynski’s remarks about a society that makes people miserable and tries to medicate away their correct reactions to modern conditions. Apart from serving as another demonstration of the irreconcilability that we’ve explored in the past, the subject of euthanasia and modern medical control over human life is itself a key instance of control paralysis.

Pulling the plug; the DNR; the decision to save or not save a life is a truly awful one to make. Power over life is something so sacred and terrible that all cultures have seen it as something belonging to the gods, beyond the jurisdiction of profane, mortal hands. This much was naturally mandated more or less until the advent of modern medicine allowed us to save huge numbers of lives and cure numerous diseases that were once near certain death sentences. This is commonly touted as incontrovertible evidence of the triumph of modern science over the ignorance of the past and one of mankind’s biggest achievements, but in certain respects it can be seen as one of the most harmful facets of modernity and one of its most paralysing.

It can be tempting to say in these instances that death would be better, but that misses the point - what is crucial to say is rather that death would be. That is, in the absence of modern medical technology. It is not for me to say what is better or worse - nor is it for anyone, nor should it be for us to make this choice. The choice itself is what is at fault - rather than giving us godlike power it gives us only an impossible dilemma, making us feel like foolish children. If one were to take up “nature’s side” in this debate then they would be scorned as a sociopathic eugenicist with no shred of empathy. Of course in these situations, everyone will advocate doing the utmost to save the victim - the same exact biology is at work here as in the days when we could do very little, I’m sure. Our capabilities have grown while our minds have stayed the same; an ape with godly powers in its hand. The family of the victim and all involved will beg for any chance to save their loved one’s life and then live with the miracle for years. Cute press releases can say what they will about situations like this before the news cycle forgets it in a day, it is hard to imagine the protracted suffering that this condition would actually entail.

We are paralysed by our nominal control over the situation into making a choice that may at times be the right one and may at others be a cruelty - to extend life where it perhaps ought to end. The point once again is that the control is itself the problem here. In the past, death was allowed its proper sense of tragedy. The suffering of the victim and their loved ones was given a context of tragic reality - enforced by the fact of its being utterly out of anyone’s hands. Today there are many who live out years of extended, contextless suffering, all to stroke the vanity of a society of machine-slaves, too morally cowardly to confront the reality of death.

In fairness, however, what more can be expected of mortals? The moral strength and breadth of wisdom needed to make such harsh and terrible decisions belongs to nature; to the gods. We can make bold assertions that we are not infected with this effeminate moral cowardice; that we are Nietzschean Supermen who have gone beyond slave morality and stepped over the paralysis of control, but in reality the will to say “no” to a distraught family who know that the power to save their loved one from death is ready to be used would be something quite monstrous. Here lies the most tortuous part of the dilemma: that breaking out of our cage of ethics only creates a monster, something that the Twentieth Century ought to demonstrate well. The answer is not to try and ape the gods in their judgement, but to realise that it belongs to them and not to us.

The extension of life versus quality of life argument is incredibly sensitive and I can envision even readers as thick skinned as mine finding this a difficult topic. This was brought to a fever pitch during the pandemic as well. The defence of the vulnerable justified the total shut down of society and the loss of two years of young people’s lives. Suggesting that it is better to let people die can never be broached as a perspective - it is emotionally and politically impossible with our current medical capabilities to “let nature take its course”.

On a wider societal level, it is worth noting that the impact of modern medicine has been disastrous for the genetic health of the population at large. Edward Dutton and others have looked at length at the effects of reduced infant mortality: where the mutant genes of those who would likely die under Darwinian conditions proliferate throughout the population and cause maladaptive ideas to take hold. This “spiteful mutant” hypothesis has a huge amount of explanatory power, but what concrete actions can be taken in the knowledge of this process? Again we see these natural prerogatives thrust into mortal hands.

Are we to advocate eugenics? It was all the rage in the early 20th Century. Dutton himself cautions against doing so and so would I. Evolution is a monumentally complex system and it would be impossible to engineer outcomes without mistakenly introducing problems. Once again, we cannot replicate nature’s outcomes, setting aside the moral ugliness of eugenics itself.

Before I’m accused of moralfagging, let me make clear what I mean. In what possible world could we legislate higher infant mortality? In what possible world could that be a morally sanctionable thing to do? What human being could possibly ever choose the abstract idea of genetic health over saving their own child - or the life of the mother? Psychopaths alone can engage in this kind of thing. To reiterate, control is the problem and it leaves us paralysed into choosing what might ultimately be harmful, but that from our inescapable mortal perspective is morally necessary.

It is impossible to choose to stop any of this. We are more or less forced to always choose to extend life in this current example, or to make it less natural for the sake of comfort in others. In the most dreadful aspect of control paralysis, the willing surrender of these technological powers is never going to happen either. In a cruel irony, there has never been a time when we were more powerless.

In the end, the empowered human race is left only with a heavy dread. Our frail, mortal bodies are burdened with the responsibility of gods. Through it all we do not feel any apotheosis, but intense moral torture. Instead of the finality of death taking up its role in the shaping of Being and the making of an active world, a technological banality engorges across the world without end. The answer can only come from beyond: only a god can save us now.³

1. Julius Evola, Rivolta Contro il Mondo Moderno, pxxix.

2. Andrew Feenberg, Critical Theory of Technology, p5-7.

3. Martin Heidegger in a 1966 Interview with Der Spiegel, published posthumously.