|
To
the extent that men have escaped the control of nature they must submit
to the control of society. ~
Lewis Mumford, Technics
and Civilization One hundred and sixty-four years ago yesterday, on July 8, 1839, a woman in upstate New York bore a son who would revolutionize not only the way in which almost all Americans and, indeed, many people all over the world lived their everyday lives, but who would also change, perhaps forever, the nature of government and people’s relationship to it. His
name was John Davison Rockefeller, and his
obituary in the New York Times the day after he died almost 98 years
later said that he “was the richest man in the world at the height of
his active career. Starting his business life as a poor boy in an
office, with little formal education and no capital except what he saved
by strict economy out of meager earnings, he became the pioneer of
efficient business organization and of the modern corporation, the most
powerful capitalist of his age, and the greatest philanthropist and
patron of higher education, scientific research and public health in the
history of the world.” His
father was a farmer and they lived near a town that even today qualifies
as rural. The family, of
course, had no access to electricity and thus had no electric lights, no
electric stove, no television or radio.
They had no access to recorded music or to film, to either CDs or
DVDs. They had no telephone
or telegraph. They had no
automobiles. Their home was
heated by a stove, probably in the kitchen, that burned either coal or
wood or, depending on circumstances, whatever happened to be available.
Their lives, in short, were bounded by nature, not technology.
They depended upon the food grown either on their farm or in the
relatively immediate area. In
fact, young Rockefeller’s first business enterprise was selling
turkeys. He learned early
the importance of hard work, economy, and thrift – qualities that
would later serve him well. He
once wrote of his upbringing that "I had a peculiar training in my
home. I cannot remember when
hard work was new or strange to me. We were taught to work, to save and
to give. Ours seemed to be a business training from the beginning. We
were encouraged to be self-reliant. I was taught to do as much business
at the age of 10 or 11 as it was possible for me to do. I was sent over
the hills to buy cordwood. I did not require the presence of anybody to
enable me to secure good measure of good wood from the men who sold it.
It was good training for me." When
he was 16, he got his first job as a clerk and assistant bookkeeper.
Three years later, at the age of 19, he put up $2000 to form what
his obituary called “a commission business” with a partner ten years
older than him – half of it came from his savings, and the other half
he borrowed from his father. It
was the money that he made through this job that enabled him four years
later, in 1862, to enter the oil business, and it was the oil business,
of course, that made him his fabulous fortune.
According to the Times
obituary, “it was estimated after Mr. Rockefeller retired from
business that he had accumulated close to $1,500,000,000 out of the
earnings of the Standard Oil trust and out of his other investments.
This was probably the greatest amount of wealth that any private citizen
had ever been able to accumulate by his own efforts.” That
fortune came to him, of course, because Rockefeller cheaply and
efficiently provided a product that drastically changed the way people
lived. Oil was in many ways
the foundation of the nascent industrial civilization.
It made possible a life that millions upon millions not only
wanted but could literally afford to buy into.
Among so many other things, it provided cheap, efficient heat,
making it far easier and much more convenient to have a warm home.
It helped pave the way for the mass distribution of electricity
and the industrialization of Primarily
because of Rockefeller, oil became cheaply and widely available, and
that undeniably helped make life in countless ways easier and more
pleasant for millions of people. But,
as always, we pay a price for such things – a hidden price, one that
goes far beyond the mere money that we spend ever day on gas, on oil, on
electricity. Yes, we have
many things that the Rockefeller family lacked when they lived about 20
miles from where I do today: hot and cold running water, indoor toilets,
gas ovens, oil furnaces, telephones, televisions, automobiles, computers
– all convenient, all useful, certainly.
But remember, too, that the Rockefeller home was not physically
connected to any other home: no electric wires, no television cable, no
water pipes, no gas lines. They
did not have a paved road in front of their house that connected them
with every other house not only in their town but also in their county,
their state, their country. Our
comforts, however, our ease of life, has forced a very literal and very
real connection to millions of strangers, and its resultant need for
some kind of ordered co-existence, upon us.
What happens to an individual’s liberty when he’s dependent
upon so many for so much? In
1839, the Rockefellers had – and they paid for – their way of life:
their independence, their liberty, their freedom.
What price do we pay in 2003 for our way of life, for our interdependence? Think
for a moment of the automobile. We
tend to think only of the immediate costs to us: car payments, insurance
fees, gasoline, maintenance, repairs.
But as Mumford wrote in 1934, “Had anyone asked in cold
blood…whether this new form of transportation would be worth the
yearly sacrifice of 30,000 lives in the United States alone, to say
nothing of the injured and maimed, the answer would doubtless have been
No” (p. 237). That annual
cost, of course, is now almost twice what it was then.
It’s one of the hidden prices we pay for the speed and
convenience of the automobile – a price that we are apparently not
only willing but eager to pay. Another
hidden cost, larger and potentially much more dangerous, that, again,
we’re apparently not only willing but eager to pay is the cost for
this increasingly totalitarian government which questions and threatens
not only our individual rights but individuality itself.
Some of us may perhaps find the term “totalitarian” a little
harsh, but this objection comes to mind mostly because our concept of
“totalitarian” as Nazi- or Soviet-related is now somewhat dated.
As Aldous Huxley wrote in a foreword to his Brave
New World, “There is, of course, no reason why the new
totalitarianisms should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing
squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is
not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is
demonstrably inefficient and, in an age of advanced technology,
inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient
totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of
political bosses and their army of managers control a population of
slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian
states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors, and school
teachers.” Many, if not
most, of us don’t mind losing our rights as long as we’re taken care
of in some way – as long as we remain fat and happy and entertained to
distraction. As long as that
happens, we will love our servitude.
We will love Big Brother for the many things he provides us, for
the ease and happiness he gives us.
Can we have both this easy life and liberty?
Or does freedom require toil, the possibility of failure, of
pain, effort, suffering – even death? In
his 1964 essay Authoritarian
and Democratic Technics, Mumford said of modern life that “the
bargain we are being asked to ratify takes the form of a magnificent
bribe. Under the democratic-authoritarian social contract, each member
of the community may claim every material advantage, every intellectual
and emotional stimulus he may desire, in quantities hardly available
hitherto even for a restricted minority: food, housing, swift
transportation, instantaneous communication, medical care,
entertainment, education. But on one condition: that one must not merely
ask for nothing that the system does not provide, but likewise agree to
take everything offered, duly processed and fabricated, homogenized and
equalized, in the precise quantities that the system, rather than the
person, requires. Once one opts for the system, no further choice
remains. In a word, if one surrenders one's life at source,
authoritarian technics will give back as much of it as can be
mechanically graded, quantitatively multiplied, collectively manipulated
and magnified.” Rockefeller, of course, could not have known, could not even have imagined, his part in this “magnificent bribe.” He could not have known what the world would turn into partly as a result of his efforts to satisfy the desire of millions for an easier way of life. In fact, many of us even today fail (or refuse) to see this as a bribe – to see the dangers and consequences of our eager, unquestioning acceptance of the technology that, in return for material comforts, gives the State such control and authority over us. But even as we decry the actions of this State, we have to examine ourselves, our minds and our souls, to determine to what extent we may be responsible for these actions. Only then will we have the intelligence – and, more importantly, only then will we have the wisdom – first to discern, and then to do, what desperately needs doing. |
