"Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game"
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Ellul is diagnosing a society in which the decisive forces are no longer arguments, conscience, or reflection, but technique: the ensemble of methods and systems that elevate efficiency to the highest value. When technique becomes autonomous, choices are made by what works best according to measurable criteria. Expertise, bureaucracy, metrics, and now algorithms compose a machinery that moves on its own momentum. Under such conditions, reflective thought retreats into the private realm. It may clarify, critique, or amuse, but it does not bind institutions or alter trajectories. The energy that once linked thinking to action dissolves, and contemplation risks becoming an elegant pastime, a game played in seminar rooms and essays that do not change how things are done.
This judgment echoes across Ellul’s larger work, from The Technological Society to Propaganda. He argues that modern propaganda integrates individuals into the technological order by supplying ready-made interpretations and emotional cues, so that the labor of judgment is pre-empted. Public discourse drifts toward spectacle and consumption; opinions are produced, circulated, and replaced at speed. Thought is performed rather than enacted, treated as content to be monetized or as sport for scoring points. When decisions must be justified by data and procedures, moral reasoning appears quaint and slow, and so reflection loses its compelling force.
Yet the lament is not anti-intellectual. Ellul is warning that thought cannot remain an interior monologue if it is to be truthful. To recover force, thinking must accept risk and responsibility: the willingness to say no to the imperatives of efficiency, to interrupt the automatic pilot of systems, to bind speech to concrete acts. He calls for a patience and freedom that technique cannot calculate, the stubborn work of conscience, attention, and neighborly fidelity. Only when reflection re-enters the arena of decision and cost does it cease to be a game and regain the power to shape a life and a society.
This judgment echoes across Ellul’s larger work, from The Technological Society to Propaganda. He argues that modern propaganda integrates individuals into the technological order by supplying ready-made interpretations and emotional cues, so that the labor of judgment is pre-empted. Public discourse drifts toward spectacle and consumption; opinions are produced, circulated, and replaced at speed. Thought is performed rather than enacted, treated as content to be monetized or as sport for scoring points. When decisions must be justified by data and procedures, moral reasoning appears quaint and slow, and so reflection loses its compelling force.
Yet the lament is not anti-intellectual. Ellul is warning that thought cannot remain an interior monologue if it is to be truthful. To recover force, thinking must accept risk and responsibility: the willingness to say no to the imperatives of efficiency, to interrupt the automatic pilot of systems, to bind speech to concrete acts. He calls for a patience and freedom that technique cannot calculate, the stubborn work of conscience, attention, and neighborly fidelity. Only when reflection re-enters the arena of decision and cost does it cease to be a game and regain the power to shape a life and a society.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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