Rage against the machine

In today’s modern, everyday world, humans have been spoiled by technology. An excellent example of our spoilage can be found in the average young adult in the United States. This young adult does not deal with the horrors of what an industrial society has produced, like nuclear bombs. This young adult takes for granted everything the industrial society has constructed for them. So much has become mass produced, generalized, and packaged so prettily for us that self-identity and knowledge through experience has been seemingly lost. This idea is epitomized in the concept of Google. We type in just a few words and expect to have hundreds of thousands of pages of information pop up, numbered, ranked by the percent likelihood of a match, color-coded by keyword, and hyperlinks available, all within 0.13 seconds. By skipping the hands-on experience and cutting corners, we are missing the opportunity to enrich our lives. This predicament is further exuberated because this generation knows nothing different. We need someone to point out how there is something wrong, something lacking, in our lives. If this is not pointed out and a solution personally sought after, one can expect consequences. Our obsession with technology created through the industrial spirit will lead to our demise.

According to Tillich, man has created a problem for himself that originated from the spirit of the industry. In theory, “man is supposed to be the master of his world and of himself” (46). In practice, however, man has traveled beyond this objective and instead has made himself a mere “object among objects” in his world. As a result, man has reached a stage of “emptiness and meaninglessness, of dehumanization and estrangement” (46) leading to his eventual downfall. In short, the spirit of the industry has carried man to where he wanted to end, and then beyond into a territory of things. Things that, because of the industrial society, are over-productive. For example, what started as a crude bomb developed into an effective tool in war. If it had ended there, the world would be so different today. But the encouraging shove of the industrial spirit and movement has carried this bomb past a realistic stage, to a point where one nuclear bomb can be the downfall of entire mass-populated cities. Man’s infatuation with the industrial spirit has lead, and will continue to lead, to man’s downfall.

Tillich also believes that in order to regain meaning in life and become individuals once again, man must rely on the creativity of the courageous. Man must turn to those that turn culture into tangible representations. Man must turn to artists, authors, architectures, musicians, and the like. These select, though courageous enough to show man what is wrong, do not necessarily have all of the answers to correct the problems. They merely state the problem and man must rely on himself to seek the answers.