INTRODUCTION
 
 

   1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster
   for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of
   those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have
   destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected
   human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological
   suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have
   inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued
   development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly
   subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage
   on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social
   disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased
   physical suffering even in "advanced" countries.

   2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break
   down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of
   physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a
   long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of
   permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to
   engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore,
   if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is
   no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from
   depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

   3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very
   painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the
   results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had
   best break down sooner rather than later.

   4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system.
   This revolution may or may not make use of violence: it may be sudden
   or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We
   can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the
   measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in
   order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of
   society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be
   to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis
   of the present society.

   5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative
   developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological
   system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore
   altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments
   as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our
   discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention
   or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are
   well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written
   very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild
   nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
 
 

   6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled
   society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of
   our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can
   serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern
   society in general.

   7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century
   leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today
   the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be
   called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in
   mind mainly socialists, collectivists, "politically correct" types,
   feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and
   the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these
   movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing
   leftism is not so much a movement or an ideology as a psychological
   type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by
   "leftism" will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
   leftist psychology (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

   8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less
   clear than we would wish, but there doesn't seem to be any remedy for
   this. All we are trying to do is indicate in a rough and approximate
   way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main
   driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling
   the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is
   meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of
   the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of
   the 19th and early 20th century.

   9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we
   call "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization." Feelings of
   inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while
   oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of
   modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

  FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
 
 

   10. By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings
   in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low
   self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies,
   defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend
   to have such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these
   feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

   11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said
   about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that
   he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is
   pronounced among minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong
   to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are
   hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities. The terms
   "negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick" for an African, an
   Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory
   connotation. "Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine equivalents
   of "guy," "dude" or "fellow." The negative connotations have been
   attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal
   rights advocates have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and
   insist on its replacement by "animal companion." Leftist
   anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about
   primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative.
   They want to replace the word "primitive" by "nonliterate." They seem
   almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive
   culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that
   primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the
   hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

   12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect"
   terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant,
   abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of
   whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from
   privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold
   among university professors, who have secure employment with
   comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white
   males from middle-class families.

   13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of
   groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American
   Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists
   themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit
   it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely
   because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with
   their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE
   inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

   14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as
   strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women
   may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

   15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
   good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western
   civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The
   reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not
   correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West
   because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so
   forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in
   primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he
   GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points
   out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in
   Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the
   leftist's real motive for hating America and the West. He hates
   America and the West because they are strong and successful.

   16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative",
   "enterprise," "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and
   leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic,
   pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them,
   take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense
   of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy
   his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of
   competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

   17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to
   focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an
   orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope
   of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that
   was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

   18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,
   objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally
   relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the
   foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the
   concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that
   modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians
   systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply
   involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack
   these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one
   thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent
   that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More
   importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they
   classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and
   other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's feelings
   of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification
   of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or
   inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the
   concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are
   antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior
   because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or
   inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or
   blame for an individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is
   "inferior" it is not his fault, but society's, because he has not been
   brought up properly.

   19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
   inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,
   a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith
   in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but
   he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong,
   and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant
   behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings
   of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as
   individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the
   leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization
   or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

   20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists
   protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke
   police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be
   effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but
   because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist
   trait.

   21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion
   or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the
   leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle
   cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too
   prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.
   Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of
   benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help.
   For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black
   people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or
   dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a
   diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal
   and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative
   action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take
   such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.
   Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems
   serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and
   frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black
   people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white
   majority tends to intensify race hatred.

   22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would
   have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse
   for making a fuss.

   23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
   description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only
   a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

  OVERSOCIALIZATION
 
 

   24. Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the
   process by which children are trained to think and act as society
   demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and
   obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning
   part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists
   are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel.
   Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such
   rebels as they seem.

   25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can
   think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not
   supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some
   time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are
   so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally
   imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt,
   they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives
   and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality
   have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe
   such people. [2]

   26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of
   powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means
   by which our society socializes children is by making them feel
   ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's
   expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is
   especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of
   HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized
   person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of
   the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a
   significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty
   thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate
   someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick
   to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do
   these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of
   shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even
   experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to
   the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And
   socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to
   confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading
   of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological
   leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down
   for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of
   constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest
   that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human
   beings inflict on one another.

   27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the
   modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of
   great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism.
   Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or
   members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university
   intellectuals (3) constitute the most highly socialized segment of our
   society and also the most left-wing segment.

   28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his
   psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually
   he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of
   society. Generally speaking, the goals of today's leftists are NOT in
   conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes
   an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses
   mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial
   equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed
   to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to
   animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve
   society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All
   these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of
   its middle and upper classes (4) for a long time. These values are
   explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the
   material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and
   the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the
   oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but
   justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of
   truth) that society is not living up to these principles.

   29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized
   leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our
   society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists
   push for affirmative action, for moving black people into
   high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more
   money for such schools; the way of life of the black "underclass" they
   regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into
   the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just
   like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the
   last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white
   man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in
   what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It
   can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food,
   listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going
   to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express
   itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects more
   leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform
   to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical
   subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing
   the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white.
   They want to make black fathers "responsible." they want black gangs
   to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the
   industrial-technological system. The system couldn't care less what
   kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
   religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a
   respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a "responsible" parent,
   is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it,
   the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the
   system and make him adopt its values.

   30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the
   oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our
   society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have
   gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society's most important
   principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account,
   violence is for them a form of "liberation." In other words, by
   committing violence they break through the psychological restraints
   that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized
   these restraints have been more confining for them than for others;
   hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their
   rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence
   they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.

   31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing
   thumb-nail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is
   complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take
   several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim
   only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies
   in the psychology of modern leftism.

   32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our
   society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and
   defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially
   noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And
   today's society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any
   previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to
   exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.

  THE POWER PROCESS
 
 

   33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something
   that we will call the "power process." This is closely related to the
   need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same
   thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut
   of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs
   to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed
   in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more
   difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it
   autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).

   34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he
   wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will
   develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of
   fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized.
   Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that
   leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of
   fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power.
   But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert
   themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even
   though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must
   have goals toward which to exercise one's power.

   35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical
   necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are
   made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains
   these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.

   36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are
   physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals
   is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals
   throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

   37. Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human
   being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a
   reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

  SURROGATE ACTIVITIES
 
 

   38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized.
   For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent
   hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he
   became distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to
   satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for
   themselves. In many cases they then pursue these goals with the same
   energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put
   into the search for physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the
   Roman Empire had their literary pretentions; many European aristocrats
   a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting,
   though they certainly didn't need the meat; other aristocracies have
   competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few
   aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.

   39. We use the term "surrogate activity" to designate an activity that
   is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for
   themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us
   say, merely for the sake of the "fulfillment" that they get from
   pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of
   surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy
   to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most
   of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that
   effort required him to use his physical and mental facilities in a
   varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because
   he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person's
   pursuit of a goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito's studies in
   marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is
   pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at
   interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of
   life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn't know all about
   the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the
   pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity,
   because most people, even if their existence were otherwise
   satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without
   ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But
   pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can
   be a surrogate activity.)

   40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to
   satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough to go through a training
   program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on
   time and exert very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only
   requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence, and most of all,
   simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from
   cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take
   physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of
   mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is
   full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic
   achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation,
   climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods
   far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional
   physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues
   that are not important for the activist personally, as in the case of
   white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These
   are not always pure surrogate activities, since for many people they
   may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some
   goal to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive
   for prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings,
   militant social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue
   them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For
   example, the majority of scientists will probably agree that the
   "fulfillment" they get from their work is more important than the
   money and prestige they earn.

   41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less
   satisfying than the pursuit of real goals ( that is, goals that people
   would want to attain even if their need for the power process were
   already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many
   or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities
   are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly
   strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one
   problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives
   himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue
   surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from
   these activities than they do from the "mundane" business of
   satisfying their biological needs, but that it is because in our
   society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been
   reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society people do not
   satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as
   parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have
   a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities. have
   a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities.

  AUTONOMY
 
 

   42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for
   every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of
   autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be
   undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own
   direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this
   initiative, direction and control as single individuals. It is usually
   enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen
   people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint
   effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be
   served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above
   that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then
   their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true
   when decisions are made on a collective bases if the group making the
   collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is
   insignificant [5]

   43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for
   autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by
   identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they
   belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be
   satisfied with a purely physical sense of power(the good combat
   soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills
   that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).

   44. But for most people it is through the power process-having a goal,
   making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining t the goal-that self-esteem,
   self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not
   have adequate opportunity to go throughout the power process the
   consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power
   process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem,
   inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt,
   frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism,
   abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc. [6]

  SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS
 
 

   45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in
   modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We
   aren't the first to mention that the world today seems to be going
   crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is
   good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress
   and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than
   modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in
   primitive societies. Abuse of women and common among the Australian
   aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of the American
   Indian tribes. But is does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of
   problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less
   common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

   46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern
   society to the fact that that society requires people to live under
   conditions radically different from those under which the human race
   evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of
   behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier
   conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we
   consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process
   as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern
   society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing
   with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we
   will discuss some of the other sources.

   47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society
   are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature,
   excessive rapidity of social change and the break-down of natural
   small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or
   the tribe.

   48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression.
   The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from
   nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial
   societies were predominantly rural. The industrial Revolution vastly
   increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that
   lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible
   for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did
   before. (Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because
   it puts increased disruptive powers in people's hands. For example, a
   variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles,
   etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want
   peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is
   restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the
   regulations... But if these machines had never been invented there
   would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them.)

   49. For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes
   only slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of
   security. In the modern world it is human society that dominates
   nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes
   very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable
   framework.

   50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of
   traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological
   progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that
   you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the
   economy of a society with out causing rapid changes in all other
   aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably
   break down traditional values.

   51.The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the
   breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale
   social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also
   promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt
   individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their
   communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family
   ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern
   society an individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only
   secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal
   loyalties of small-scale small-scale communities were stronger than
   loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own
   advantage at the expense of the system.

   52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints
   his cousin, his friend or his co-religionist to a position rather than
   appointing the person best qualified for the job. He has permitted
   personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is
   "nepotism" or "discrimination," both of which are terrible sins in
   modern society. Would-be industrial societies that have done a poor
   job of subordinating personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the
   system are usually very inefficient. (Look at Latin America.) Thus an
   advanced industrial society can tolerate only those small-scale
   communities that are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the
   system. [7]

   53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been
   widely recognized as sources of social problems. but we do not believe
   they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are
   seen today.

   54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their
   inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems
   to the same extent as modern man. In America today there still are
   uncrowded rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban
   areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas.
   Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor.

   55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th
   century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended
   families and small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as
   these are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by
   choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles,
   that they belonged to no community at all, yet they do not seem to
   have developed problems as a result.

   56.Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and
   deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin, outside the reach
   of law and order and fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he
   arrived at old age he might be working at a regular job and living in
   an ordered community with effective law enforcement. This was a deeper
   change that that which typically occurs in the life of a modern
   individual, yet it does not seem to have led to psychological
   problems. In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and
   self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today's society. [8]

   57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense
   (largely justified) that change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th
   century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he
   created change himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a
   piece of land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his
   own effort. In those days an entire county might have only a couple of
   hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity
   than a modern county is. Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a
   member of a relatively small group in the creation of a new, ordered
   community. One may well question whether the creation of this
   community was an improvement, but at any rate it satisfied the
   pioneer's need for the power process.

   58. It would be possible to give other examples of societies in which
   there has been rapid change and/or lack of close community ties
   without he kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in
   today's industrial society. We contend that the most important cause
   of social and psychological problems in modern society is the fact
   that people have insufficient opportunity to go through the power
   process in a normal way. We don't mean to say that modern society is
   the only one in which the power process has been disrupted. Probably
   most if not all civilized societies have interfered with the power '
   process to a greater or lesser extent. But in modern industrial
   society the problem has become particularly acute. Leftism, at least
   in its recent (mid-to-late -20th century) form, is in part a symptom
   of deprivation with respect to the power process.

  DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY
 
 

   59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that
   can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied
   but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be
   adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power
   process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group.
   The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is
   frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc.

   60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be
   pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to
   consist increasingly of artificially created drives.

   61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into
   group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort.
   But modern society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to
   everyone [9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical needs
   are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement about whether the
   effort needed to hold a job is "minimal"; but usually, in lower- to
   middle-level jobs, whatever effort is required is merely that of
   obedience. You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do
   what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do
   you have to exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have hardly
   any autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not
   well served.)

   62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group
   2 in modern society, depending on the situation of the individual.
   [10] But, except for people who have a particularly strong drive for
   status, the effort required to fulfill the social drives is
   insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process.

   63. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group
   2, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and
   marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel
   they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed
   of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these
   artificial needs, hence they fall into group 2. (But see paragraphs
   80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely
   through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and
   marketing industry [11], and through surrogate activities.

   64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these
   artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that
   appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second
   half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts
   many people in modern society. (This purposelessness is often called
   by other names such as "anomic" or "middle-class vacuity.") We suggest
   that the so-called "identity crisis" is actually a search for a sense
   of purpose, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It
   may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the
   purposelessness of modern life. [12] Very widespread in modern society
   is the search for "fulfillment." But we think that for the majority of
   people an activity whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a
   surrogate activity) does not bring completely satisfactory
   fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy the need for
   the power process. (See paragraph 41.) That need can be fully
   satisfied only through activities that have some external goal, such
   as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.

   65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing
   the status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other
   way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals
   AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone else's employee as, as we
   pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they are
   told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even most people who are
   in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic
   complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands
   are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations
   are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government
   regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely
   complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on
   the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few
   years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require
   applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed
   to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such
   persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the
   franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people
   who most need autonomy.

   66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them
   or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what
   they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down
   by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system
   provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with the rules
   and regulations [13], and techniques prescribed by experts must be
   followed if there is to be a chance of success.

   67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a
   deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in pursuit of
   goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that
   fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no
   matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for
   security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have
   no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the
   people who make them. ("We live in a world in which relatively few
   people - maybe 500 or 1,00 - make the important decisions" - Philip B.
   Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York
   Times, April 21, 1995.) Our lives depend on whether safety standards
   at a nuclear power plant are properly maintained; on how much
   pesticide is allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into
   our air; on how skillful (or incompetent) our doctor is; whether we
   lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government
   economists or corporation executives; and so forth. Most individuals
   are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to
   more [than] a very limited extent. The individual's search for
   security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of
   powerlessness.

   68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure
   than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence
   modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity
   that is normal for human beings. but psychological security does not
   closely correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL secure
   is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our
   ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a
   fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in
   search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but
   he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The
   modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things
   against which he is helpless; nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food,
   environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his
   privacy by large organizations, nation-wide social or economic
   phenomena that may disrupt his way of life.

   69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the
   things that threaten him; disease for example. But he can accept the
   risk of disease stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is
   no one's fault, unless is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal
   demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They
   are not the results of chance but are IMPOSED on him by other persons
   whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence.
   Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.

   70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own
   hands (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group)
   whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or
   organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be able
   personally to influence them. So modern man's drive for security tends
   to fall into groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food, shelter, etc.) his
   security is assured at the cost of only trivial effort, whereas in
   other areas he CANNOT attain security. (The foregoing greatly
   simplifies the real situation, but it does indicate in a rough,
   general way how the condition of modern man differs from that of
   primitive man.)

   71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessary
   frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group 3. One may become
   angry, but modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations
   it does not even permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere one
   may be in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel slowly, but one
   generally has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey
   the traffic signals. One may want to do one's work in a different way,
   but usually one can work only according to the rules laid down by
   one's employer. In many other ways as well, modern man is strapped
   down by a network of rules and regulations (explicit or implicit) that
   frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power
   process. Most of these regulations cannot be disposed with, because
   the are necessary for the functioning of industrial society.

   72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In
   matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can
   generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like
   (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the
   system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice
   "safe sex"). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT.
   But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate
   our behavior.

   73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only
   by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect
   coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by
   organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole.
   Most large organizations use some form of propaganda [14] to
   manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to
   "commercials" and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even
   consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For
   instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form
   of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that
   says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer's orders.
   Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild
   like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But
   in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room
   in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners.
   Hence most of us can survive only as someone else's employee.

   74. We suggest that modern man's obsession with longevity, and with
   maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced
   age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with
   respect to the power process. The "mid-life crisis" also is such a
   symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly
   common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies.
 

   75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs
   and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no
   particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man
   goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for
   sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food.
   (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on
   social power; we won't discuss that here.) This phase having been
   successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about
   settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In
   contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children
   because they are too busy seeking some kind of "fulfillment." We
   suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the
   power process -- with real goals instead of the artificial goals of
   surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children,
   going through the power process by providing them with the physical
   necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is
   prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many
   modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of
   death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to
   maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue
   that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they
   have never put their physical powers to any use, have never gone
   through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is
   not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical
   purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who
   has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car
   to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has been
   satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of
   that life.

   76. In response to the arguments of this section someone will say,
   "Society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through
   the power process." For such people the value of the opportunity is
   destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they
   need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system
   GIVES them their opportunities it still has them on a leash. To attain
   autonomy they must get off that leash.

  HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST
 
 

   77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from
   psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied
   with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people
   differ so greatly in their response to modern society.

   78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength of the
   drive for power. Individuals with a weak drive for power may have
   relatively little need to go through the power process, or at least
   relatively little need for autonomy in the power process. These are
   docile types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the
   Old South. (We don't mean to sneer at "plantation darkies" of the Old
   South. To their credit, most of the slaves were NOT content with their
   servitude. We do sneer at people who ARE content with servitude.)

   79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which
   they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who
   have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole
   lives climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that
   game.

   80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing
   techniques. Some people are so susceptible that, even if they make a
   great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for
   the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their
   eyes. So they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their
   income is large, and their cravings are frustrated.

   81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing
   techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money.
   Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.

   82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing
   techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for
   goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in
   overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, etc.) Thus material
   acquisition serves their need for the power process. But it does not
   necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied. They may have
   insufficient autonomy in the power process (their work may consist of
   following orders) and some of their drives may be frustrated (e.g.,
   security, aggression). (We are guilty of oversimplification in
   paragraphs 80-82 because we have assumed that the desire for material
   acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing
   industry. Of course it's not that simple.

   83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying
   themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. An
   individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization,
   adopts its goals as his own, then works toward these goals. When some
   of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal
   efforts have played only an insignificant part in the attainment of
   the goals, feels (through his identification with the movement or
   organization) as if he had gone through the power process. This
   phenomenon was exploited by the fascists, nazis and communists. Our
   society uses it, too, though less crudely. Example: Manuel Noriega was
   an irritant to the U.S. (goal: punish Noriega). The U.S. invaded
   Panama (effort) and punished Noriega (attainment of goal). The U.S.
   went through the power process and many Americans, because of their
   identification with the U.S., experienced the power process
   vicariously. Hence the widespread public approval of the Panama
   invasion; it gave people a sense of power. [15] We see the same
   phenomenon in armies, corporations, political parties, humanitarian
   organizations, religious or ideological movements. In particular,
   leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy
   their need for power. But for most people identification with a large
   organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for
   power.

   84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power
   process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs
   38-40, a surrogate activity that is directed toward an artificial goal
   that the individual pursues for the sake of the "fulfillment" that he
   gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal
   itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building
   enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a
   complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society
   devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp
   collecting. Some people are more "other-directed" than others, and
   therefore will more readily attack importance to a surrogate activity
   simply because the people around them treat it as important or because
   society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very
   serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or
   bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are
   more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the
   surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach
   enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process
   in that way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a
   person's way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a
   PURE surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is
   to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status
   and the luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put
   into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever
   money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a
   surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional
   investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces
   acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system,
   with negative consequences for individual freedom (see paragraph 131).
   Especially, for the most creative scientists and engineers, work tends
   to be largely a surrogate activity. This point is so important that is
   deserves a separate discussion, which we shall give in a moment
   (paragraphs 87-92).

   85. In this section we have explained how many people in modern
   society do satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or
   lesser extent. But we think that for the majority of people the need
   for the power process is not fully satisfied. In the first place,
   those who have an insatiable drive for status, or who get firmly
   "hooked" or a surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with
   a movement or organization to satisfy their need for power in that
   way, are exceptional personalities. Others are not fully satisfied
   with surrogate activities or by identification with an organization
   (see paragraphs 41, 64). In the second place, too much control is
   imposed by the system through explicit regulation or through
   socialization, which results in a deficiency of autonomy, and in
   frustration due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and
   the necessity of restraining too many impulses.

   86. But even if most people in industrial-technological society were
   well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of
   society, because (among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to
   fulfill one's need for the power process through surrogate activities
   or through identification with an organization, rather then through
   pursuit of real goals.

  THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS
 
 

   87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of
   surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by
   "curiosity," that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on
   highly specialized problem that are not the object of any normal
   curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or an
   entomologist curious about the properties of
   isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is curious
   about such a thing, and he is curious about it only because chemistry
   is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the
   appropriate classification of a new species of beetle? No. That
   question is of interest only to the entomologist, and he is interested
   in it only because entomology is his surrogate activity. If the
   chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to
   obtain the physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their
   abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific pursuit,
   then they couldn't giver a damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the
   classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate
   education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of
   a chemist. In that case he would have been very interested in
   insurance matters but would have cared nothing about
   isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal to put into
   the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that
   scientists put into their work. The "curiosity" explanation for the
   scientists' motive just doesn't stand up.

   88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't work any better.
   Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the
   human race - most of archaeology or comparative linguistics for
   example. Some other areas of science present obviously dangerous
   possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic
   about their work as those who develop vaccines or study air pollution.
   Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional
   involvement in promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement
   stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn't Dr.
   Teller get emotional about other "humanitarian" causes? If he was such
   a humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H-bomb? As with
   many other scientific achievements, it is very much open to question
   whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the
   cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and risk of
   accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side of the question. Clearly his
   emotional involvement with nuclear power arose not from a desire to
   "benefit humanity" but from a personal fulfillment he got from his
   work and from seeing it put to practical use.

   89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare
   exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit
   humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal
   (a scientific problem to solve), to make an effort (research) and to
   attain the goal (solution of the problem.) Science is a surrogate
   activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get
   out of the work itself.

   90. Of course, it's not that simple. Other motives do play a role for
   many scientists. Money and status for example. Some scientists may be
   persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see
   paragraph 79) and this may provide much of the motivation for their
   work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the
   general population, are more or less susceptible to advertising and
   marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods
   and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is
   in large part a surrogate activity.

   91. Also, science and technology constitute a mass power movement, and
   many scientists gratify their need for power through identification
   with this mass movement (see paragraph 83).

   92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real
   welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to
   the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government
   officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for
   research.

  THE NATURE OF FREEDOM
 
 

   93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot
   be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively
   narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But because "freedom" is a word
   that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what
   kind of freedom we are concerned with.

   94. By "freedom" we mean the opportunity to go through the power
   process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate
   activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from
   anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in
   control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of
   the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter
   and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's
   environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control
   other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own
   life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large
   organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently,
   tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is
   important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness (see
   paragraph 72).

   95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a
   certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are
   not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that
   exists in a society is determined more by the economic and
   technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of
   government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were
   monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were
   controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets
   the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than out
   society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient
   mechanisms for enforcing the ruler's will: There were no modern,
   well-organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communications,
   no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of
   average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control.

   96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of
   freedom of the press. We certainly don't mean to knock that right: it
   is very important tool for limiting concentration of political power
   and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly
   exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of
   very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass
   media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are
   integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have
   something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some
   such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of
   material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect.
   To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost
   impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for
   example. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the
   present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been
   accepted. If they had been accepted and published, they probably would
   not have attracted many readers, because it's more fun to watch the
   entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if
   these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon
   have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the
   mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our
   message before the public with some chance of making a lasting
   impression, we've had to kill people.

   97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not
   serve to guarantee much more than what could be called the bourgeois
   conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a "free"
   man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a
   certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are
   designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of
   the individual. Thus the bourgeois's "free" man has economic freedom
   because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press
   because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders;
   he has a rights to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of
   the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the
   attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if
   they used it to promote progress (progress as conceived by the
   bourgeois). Other bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of
   freedom as a mere means to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, "Chinese
   Political Thought in the Twentieth Century," page 202, explains the
   philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu Han-min: "An individual is
   granted rights because he is a member of society and his community
   life requires such rights. By community Hu meant the whole society of
   the nation." And on page 259 Tan states that according to Carsum Chang
   (Chang Chun-mai, head of the State Socialist Party in China) freedom
   had to be used in the interest of the state and of the people as a
   whole. But what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only
   as someone else prescribes? FC's conception of freedom is not that of
   Bolivar, Hu, Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such
   theorists is that they have made the development and application of
   social theories their surrogate activity. Consequently the theories
   are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs
   of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which
   the theories are imposed.

   98. One more point to be made in this section: It should not be
   assumed that a person has enough freedom just because he SAYS he has
   enough. Freedom is restricted in part by psychological control of
   which people are unconscious, and moreover many people's ideas of what
   constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention than by
   their real needs. For example, it's likely that many leftists of the
   oversocialized type would say that most people, including themselves
   are socialized too little rather than too much, yet the oversocialized
   leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of
   socialization.

  SOME PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY
 
 

   99. Think of history as being the sum of two components: an erratic
   component that consists of unpredictable events that follow no
   discernible pattern, and a regular component that consists of
   long-term historical trends. Here we are concerned with the long-term
   trends.

   100. FIRST PRINCIPLE. If a SMALL change is made that affects a
   long-term historical trend, then the effect of that change will almost
   always be transitory - the trend will soon revert to its original
   state. (Example: A reform movement designed to clean up political
   corruption in a society rarely has more than a short-term effect;
   sooner or later the reformers relax and corruption creeps back in. The
   level of political corruption in a given society tends to remain
   constant, or to change only slowly with the evolution of the society.
   Normally, a political cleanup will be permanent only if accompanied by
   widespread social changes; a SMALL change in the society won't be
   enough.) If a small change in a long-term historical trend appears to
   be permanent, it is only because the change acts in the direction in
   which the trend is already moving, so that the trend is not altered
   but only pushed a step ahead.

   101. The first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not
   stable with respect to small changes, it would wander at random rather
   than following a definite direction; in other words it would not be a
   long-term trend at all.

   102. SECOND PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is sufficiently large
   to alter permanently a long-term historical trend, than it will alter
   the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which
   all parts are interrelated, and you can't permanently change any
   important part without change all the other parts as well.

   103. THIRD PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is large enough to
   alter permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the
   society as a whole cannot be predicted in advance. (Unless various
   other societies have passed through the same change and have all
   experienced the same consequences, in which case one can predict on
   empirical grounds that another society that passes through the same
   change will be like to experience similar consequences.)

   104. FOURTH PRINCIPLE. A new kind of society cannot be designed on
   paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance,
   then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to.

   105. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of
   human societies. A change in human behavior will affect the economy of
   a society and its physical environment; the economy will affect the
   environment and vice versa, and the changes in the economy and the
   environment will affect human behavior in complex, unpredictable ways;
   and so forth. The network of causes and effects is far too complex to
   be untangled and understood.

   106. FIFTH PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and rationally choose
   the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of
   social evolution that are not under rational human control.

   107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.

   108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally speaking an
   attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in which the
   society is developing anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change
   that would have occurred in any case) or else it only has a transitory
   effect, so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To
   make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important
   aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and revolution is
   required. (A revolution does not necessarily involve an armed uprising
   or the overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a
   revolution never changes only one aspect of a society; and by the
   third principle changes occur that were never expected or desired by
   the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or
   utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.

   109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The
   American "Revolution" was not a revolution in our sense of the word,
   but a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching political
   reform. The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of
   development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They
   only freed the development of American society from the retarding
   effect of British rule. Their political reform did not change any
   basic trend, but only pushed American political culture along its
   natural direction of development. British society, of which American
   society was an off-shoot, had been moving for a long time in the
   direction of representative democracy. And prior to the War of
   Independence the Americans were already practicing a significant
   degree of representative democracy in the colonial assemblies. The
   political system established by the Constitution was modeled on the
   British system and on the colonial assemblies. With major alteration,
   to be sure - there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very
   important step. But it was a step along the road the English-speaking
   world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its
   colonies that were populated predominantly by people of British
   descent ended up with systems of representative democracy essentially
   similar to that of the United States. If the Founding Fathers had lost
   their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, our
   way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe
   we would have had somewhat closer ties to Britain, and would have had
   a Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President.
   No big deal. Thus the American Revolution provides not a
   counterexample to our principles but a good illustration of them.

   110. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles.
   They are expressed in imprecise language that allows latitude for
   interpretation, and exceptions to them can be found. So we present
   these principles not as inviolable laws but as rules of thumb, or
   guides to thinking, that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas
   about the future of society. The principles should be borne constantly
   in mind, and whenever one reaches a conclusion that conflicts with
   them one should carefully reexamine one's thinking and retain the
   conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.

  INDUSTRIAL-TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY CANNOT BE REFORMED
 
 

   111. The foregoing principles help to show how hopelessly difficult it
   would be to reform the industrial system in such a way as to prevent
   it from progressively narrowing our sphere of freedom. There has been
   a consistent tendency, going back at least to the Industrial
   Revolution for technology to strengthen the system at a high cost in
   individual freedom and local autonomy. Hence any change designed to
   protect freedom from technology would be contrary to a fundamental
   trend in the development of our society.

   Consequently, such a change either would be a transitory one -- soon
   swamped by the tide of history -- or, if large enough to be permanent
   would alter the nature of our whole society. This by the first and
   second principles. Moreover, since society would be altered in a way
   that could not be predicted in advance (third principle) there would
   be great risk. Changes large enough to make a lasting difference in
   favor of freedom would not be initiated because it would realized that
   they would gravely disrupt the system. So any attempts at reform would
   be too timid to be effective. Even if changes large enough to make a
   lasting difference were initiated, they would be retracted when their
   disruptive effects became apparent. Thus, permanent changes in favor
   of freedom could be brought about only by persons prepared to accept
   radical, dangerous and unpredictable alteration of the entire system.
   In other words, by revolutionaries, not reformers.

   112. People anxious to rescue freedom without sacrificing the supposed
   benefits of technology will suggest naive schemes for some new form of
   society that would reconcile freedom with technology. Apart from the
   fact that people who make suggestions seldom propose any practical
   means by which the new form of society could be set up in the first
   place, it follows from the fourth principle that even if the new form
   of society could be once established, it either would collapse or
   would give results very different from those expected.

   113. So even on very general grounds it seems highly improbably that
   any way of changing society could be found that would reconcile
   freedom with modern technology. In the next few sections we will give
   more specific reasons for concluding that freedom and technological
   progress are incompatible.
 
 

  RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM IS UNAVOIDABLE IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
 
 

   114. As explained in paragraph 65-67, 70-73, modern man is strapped
   down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on
   the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot
   influence. This is not accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of
   arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any
   technologically advanced society. The system HAS TO regulate human
   behavior closely in order to function. At work, people have to do what
   they are told to do, otherwise production would be thrown into chaos.
   Bureaucracies HAVE TO be run according to rigid rules. To allow any
   substantial personal discretion to lower-level bureaucrats would
   disrupt the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to
   differences in the way individual bureaucrats exercised their
   discretion. It is true that some restrictions on our freedom could be
   eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING the regulation of our lives by
   large organizations is necessary for the functioning of
   industrial-technological society. The result is a sense of
   powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however,
   that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by
   psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires
   of us. (Propaganda [14], educational techniques, "mental health"
   programs, etc.)

   115. The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are
   increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior. For
   example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It
   can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to
   excel in these fields. It isn't natural for an adolescent human being
   to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A
   normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the
   real world. Among primitive peoples the things that children are
   trained to do are in natural harmony with natural human impulses.
   Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active
   outdoor pursuits -- just the sort of things that boys like. But in our
   society children are pushed into studying technical subjects, which
   most do grudgingly.

   116. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify
   human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people
   who cannot or will not adjust to society's requirements: welfare
   leeches, youth-gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical
   environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds.

   117. In any technologically advanced society the individual's fate
   MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any
   great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into
   small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the
   cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a
   society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that
   affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a
   million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the
   average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision. What
   usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public
   officials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, but
   even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters
   ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be
   significant. [17] Thus most individuals are unable to influence
   measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. Their is no
   conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society.
   The system tries to "solve" this problem by using propaganda to make
   people WANT the decisions that have been made for them, but even if
   this "solution" were completely successful in making people feel
   better, it would be demeaning.

   118 Conservatives and some others advocate more "local autonomy."
   Local communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes
   less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with
   and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer
   networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern
   health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that
   technology applied in one location often affects people at other
   locations far away. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may
   contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the
   greenhouse effect affects the whole world.

   119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs.
   Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs
   of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social
   ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the
   fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but
   by technical necessity. [18] Of course the system does satisfy many
   human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extent
   that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of
   the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For
   example, the system provides people with food because the system
   couldn't function if everyone starved; it attends to people's
   psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it
   couldn't function if too many people became depressed or rebellious.
   But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert
   constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the
   system. Too much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the
   educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a
   mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A
   chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask
   whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their
   time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put
   out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo "retraining,"
   no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in
   this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to
   technical necessity and for good reason: If human needs were put
   before technical necessity there would be economic problems,
   unemployment, shortages or worse. The concept of "mental health" in
   our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual
   behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without
   showing signs of stress.

   120. Efforts to make room for a sense of purpose and for autonomy
   within the system are no better than a joke. For example, one company,
   instead of having each of its employees assemble only one section of a
   catalogue, had each assemble a whole catalogue, and this was supposed
   to give them a sense of purpose and achievement. Some companies have
   tried to give their employees more autonomy in their work, but for
   practical reasons this usually can be done only to a very limited
   extent, and in any case employees are never given autonomy as to
   ultimate goals -- their "autonomous" efforts can never be directed
   toward goals that they select personally, but only toward their
   employer's goals, such as the survival and growth of the company. Any
   company would soon go out of business if it permitted its employees to
   act otherwise. Similarly, in any enterprise within a socialist system,
   workers must direct their efforts toward the goals of the enterprise,
   otherwise the enterprise will not serve its purpose as part of the
   system. Once again, for purely technical reasons it is not possible
   for most individuals or small groups to have much autonomy in
   industrial society. Even the small-business owner commonly has only
   limited autonomy. Apart from the necessity of government regulation,
   he is restricted by the fact that he must fit into the economic system
   and conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone develops a
   new technology, the small-business person often has to use that
   technology whether he wants to or not, in order to remain competitive.
 
 

  THE 'BAD' PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE 'GOOD' PARTS
 
 

   121. A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in
   favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in
   which all parts are dependent on one another. You can't get rid of the
   "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "good" parts. Take
   modern medicine, for example. Progress in medical science depends on
   progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other
   fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech
   equipment that can be made available only by a technologically
   progressive, economically rich society. Clearly you can't have much
   progress in medicine without the whole technological system and
   everything that goes with it.

   122. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of
   the technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils.
   Suppose for example that a cure for diabetes is discovered. People
   with a genetic tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and
   reproduce as well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for
   diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout the
   population. (This may be occurring to some extent already, since
   diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled through the use of
   insulin.) The same thing will happen with many other diseases
   susceptibility to which is affected by genetic degradation of the
   population. The only solution will be some sort of eugenics program or
   extensive genetic engineering of human beings, so that man in the
   future will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God
   (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions), but a
   manufactured product.

   123. If you think that big government interferes in your life too much
   NOW, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic
   constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow
   the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the
   consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous.
   [19]

   124. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about "medical
   ethics." But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in
   the face of medical progress; it would only make matters worse. A code
   of ethics applicable to genetic engineering would be in effect a means
   of regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. Somebody
   (probably the upper-middle class, mostly) would decide that such and
   such applications of genetic engineering were "ethical" and others
   were not, so that in effect they would be imposing their own values on
   the genetic constitution of the population at large. Even if a code of
   ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the majority
   would be imposing their own values on any minorities who might have a
   different idea of what constituted an "ethical" use of genetic
   engineering. The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom
   would be one that prohibited ANY genetic engineering of human beings,
   and you can be sure that no such code will ever be applied in a
   technological society. No code that reduced genetic engineering to a
   minor role could stand up for long, because the temptation presented
   by the immense power of biotechnology would be irresistible,
   especially since to the majority of people many of its applications
   will seem obviously and unequivocally good (eliminating physical and
   mental diseases, giving people the abilities they need to get along in
   today's world). Inevitably, genetic engineering will be used
   extensively, but only in ways consistent with the needs of the
   industrial-technological system. [20]

  TECHNOLOGY IS A MORE POWERFUL SOCIAL FORCE THAN THE ASPIRATION FOR FREEDOM

   125. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between
   technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful
   social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED
   compromises. Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom at the
   outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful
   than the other. The powerful one demands a piece of the other's land.
   The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, "OK, let's compromise.
   Give me half of what I asked." The weak one has little choice but to
   give in. Some time later the powerful neighbor demands another piece
   of land, again there is a compromise, and so forth. By forcing a long
   series of compromises on the weaker man, the powerful one eventually
   gets all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between technology
   and freedom.

   126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force
   than the aspiration for freedom.

   127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom
   often turns out to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it
   very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A
   walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace
   without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of
   technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced
   they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took no freedom away
   from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn't
   want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel
   much faster than the walking man. But the introduction of motorized
   transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly
   man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it
   became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car,
   especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one
   likes at one's own pace one's movement is governed by the flow of
   traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various
   obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration,
   insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on
   purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer
   optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the
   arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority
   of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of
   employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that
   they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they
   must use public transportation, in which case they have even less
   control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the
   walker's freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually
   has to stop and wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to
   serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous
   and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note the important point we
   have illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item
   of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept
   or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many
   cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people
   eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)

   128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our
   sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF
   appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid
   long-distance communications . . . how could one argue against any of
   these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical
   advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to
   resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many
   advantages and no disadvantages. Yet as we explained in paragraphs
   59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created world
   in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in
   the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians,
   corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and
   bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence. [21]
   The same process will continue in the future. Take genetic
   engineering, for example. Few people will resist the introduction of a
   genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease It does no
   apparent harm and prevents much suffering. Yet a large number of
   genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an
   engineered product rather than a free creation of chance (or of God,
   or whatever, depending on your religious beliefs).

   129 Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is
   that, within the context of a given society, technological progress
   marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a
   technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become
   dependent on it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced
   innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a
   new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes
   dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to the system today if
   computers, for example, were eliminated.) Thus the system can move in
   only one direction, toward greater technologization. Technology
   repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back -- short of the
   overthrow of the whole technological system.

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