65
" Now compare this mechanical world view, with its exclusive emphasis on the quantitative, the measurable, the external, with that of one of the most primitive of known races and cultures, the Australian aborigines. According to a recent interpreter, Kaj Birket-Smith, "The fundamental idea in the Australian's concept of life is that there is no sharp division between man and nature, between the quick and the dead, nor even a gap between past, present, and future. Nature can as little exist without man as man without nature, and yesterday and tomorrow, in a manner inexplicable to us, merge into today.
Whatever the deficiencies in the Australian aborigine's habits of observation or in his symbolic formulation of his experience, it will become plain, as the theme of this book develops, that the Australian's 'primitive' view is in fact far less primitive, biologically and culturally speaking, than that of the mechanical world picture,f or it includes those many dimensions of life that Kepler, Galileo, and their successors intentionally excluded, as spoiling the accuracy of their observations and the elegance of their descriptions. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
67
" Here, then, is the utopian life-span. Twenty-one years of nurture and education, that is, conditioning: three years of forced labor at the more disagreeable tasks and services: twenty years at a favored profession or vocation, as and where indicated by the national government; and finally, compulsory retirement after forty-five, with the remaining years of life devoted to leisure undiluted by any other duty than public work. Since there are no gradations of income in this society, the chief rewards for outstanding service are honors, status, authority, power. By taking the constitution of the United States as a model, the President of the Country became commander-in-chief of the industrial army; and since this army is in constant being, the political system is plainly that of a dictatorship: in effect, this mode of economic organization committed the country to a perpetual Cold War. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
68
" Though Cannon's study serves to sanction on biological grounds the principle of automation, it also exposes the limitation of an economy that seeks to translate man's higher functions into an automatic system that will finally be capable of making decisions and plans of action without calling upon anticipatory mental processes or memories except those that can be programmed on a computer. The path of human advance is not toward such collective automation but toward the increase of personal and communal autonomy; and any system that reverses this direction not merely turns man's most highly developed organ, his brain, into a virtual non-entity, but cuts itself off from the most precious products of the human mind: that vast storehouse and powerhouse of images, forms, ideas, institutions, and structures, through which man rises above the conditions of his immediate environment. To reduce or destroy this heritage is to inflict brain damage on the human race. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
69
" What is more, the whole apparatus of life has become so complex and the processes of production, distribution, and consumption have become so specialized and subdivided, that the individual person loses confidence in his own unaided capacities: he is increasingly subject to commands he does not understand, at the mercy of forces over which he exercises no effective control, moving to a destination he has not chosen. Unlike the taboo-ridden savage, who is often childishly over-confident in the powers of his shaman or magician to control formidable natural forces, however inimical, the machine-conditioned individual feels lost and helpless as day by day he metaphorically punches his time-card, takes his place on the assembly line, and at the end draws a pay check that proves worthless for obtaining any of the genuine goods of life. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
70
" With the natural caution of a scientist venturing outside his field, Dr. Cannon concluded his study of 'The Wisdom of the Body' with the suggestion that the model of the living organism might be applied with advantage to the larger human community. Since technologies and economic systems are themselves products of life, it is not strange that, to the degree that they work effectively at all, they have incorporated many organic devices not in line with their own abstract ideological or institutional premises. But because brain physiology, dream exploration, and linguistic analysis were all outside his are of high competence Dr. Cannon never faced the central problem that arose, at a very early point, I suspect, once the enlargement of man's neural functions enabled him to escape the automatism of his reflexes and hormones. how under those conditions to prevent the brain from succumbing to its own disorderly hyperactivity, once liberated from the bodily functions and environmental contacts and social pressures necessary for its existence? The need to recognize this special source of instability coming from the extraordinary powers of the mind, and to take measures for overcoming it, is not the least lesson to be drawn from man's historic development.
In so far as automatic systems become more lifelike as well as more powerful, they carry with them the threat of increasing human irrationality at higher levels. To follow an organic model, then, not only the system as a whole must be kept in view, but each individual part must be in a state of alertness, ready to intervene at any point in the process and take over. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
72
" The modernized megamachine has reproduced all the early features of the ancient form by pyramid building on an even larger scale. And just as the static physical structures supported the worshipper's belief in the validity of the Pharaoh's claims to divinity and immortality, so the new dynamic forms of the pyramid-complex-the skyscrapers, the atomic reactors, the nuclear weapons, the superhighways, the space rockets, the underground control centers,t he collective nuclear shelters (tombs)- seem equally to validate and exalt the new religion. No other religion has ever produced so many manifestations of power, has brought about such a complete system of control, has unified so many separate institutions, has suppressed so many independent ways of life, or for that matter has ever claimed so many worshippers, who by word and deed have testified to the kingdom, the power, and the glory of its nuclear and electronic gods. The miracles performed by the technocratic priesthood are genuine: only their claims of divinity are spurious. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
79
" With the neatness of a Euclidean demonstration, the energy of the sun was now united with the smaller concentrations of energy at man's command: thus the Sun God had in effect undergone a human incarnation, and his priests at last commanded a commensurate authority. Theirs is a Calvinist theology, only slightly revised, in which the mass of men are predestined to awful damnation, and only the elect-that is, the technocratic elite-will be saved. In short, the eschatology of Jehovah's Witnesses, brought up to date. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
80
" Bellamy leaves no doubt about the totalitarian nature of his utopia. "If a man refuses to accept the authority of the state and the inevitability of industrial service, he loses all his rights as a human being." All his rights as a human being? Did this tender-minded reformer realize what these words would mean? If not, our better-seasoned generation can tell him: for we have had before us the case of the Soviet Russian poet who was sentenced to jail as a "work-resister" because he devoted his days to translating, and to writing poetry-the 'wrong' sort of poetry of course. In tracing the grim, monolithic outlines of his perfect commonwealth, Bellamy, in his innocence, was more realistic than the anti-utopian Karl Marx, who, once socialism was installed, foresaw the State withering away. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
