Scientific Progress and Rationality

Given the tragic and structural nature of the nation-state, it is clear what the ultimate purpose of science and technology and modern forms of bureaucratic rationality consists in:  a means of mass producing increasing numbers of weapons of mass destruction.  It is clear that our scientific age will not likely end until there is a large-scale nuclear exchange destroying the infrastructure of modern science, engineering, and economy.

Once humanity figured out that the scientific method could be harnessed for the production of better weaponry, which would give one nation a military advantage over another, the age of science dawned on the world.  Likewise, once human beings figured out techniques of mass production, by reducing workers from craftsmen and designers to widgets on an assembly line, without freedom or creativity, human beings became enslaved in a dehumanizing system of production.  These revolutions cannot be undone, because science and bureaucracy are the root causes of the modern arms race, and the modern economy is necessary to support the arms race, and no nation can defect without jeopardizing its sovereign power.  Obviously, the long-term ecological consequences of the environmental degradations of modern economy fueled by STEM research will not be addressed, because no nation will defect and endanger its national security.

We have built an iron cage, and we have locked ourselves within it, and there we shall remain until we succeed at destroying ourselves.  Secular rationalists, look to the morning star and give thanks for our enlightened progress over the forms of the past. Speak with contempt for those sustainable, pre-modern forms of life that were rooted in communities devoted to a real ethical ideal and grounded on a real spiritual principle. 

As Wittgenstein noted:

The hysterical fear over the atom bomb now being experienced, or at any rate expressed, by the public almost suggests that at last something really salutary has been invented.  The fright at least gives the impression of a really effective bitter medicine.  I can't help thinking:  if this didn't have something good about it the philistines wouldn't be making an outcry.  But perhaps this too is a childish idea.  Because really all I can mean is that the bomb offers a prospect of the end, the destruction, of an evil,--our disgusting soapy water science.  And certainly that's not an unpleasant thought; but who can say what would come after this destruction?  The people now making speeches against producing the bomb are undoubtedly the scum of intellectuals, but even that does not prove beyond question that what they abominate is to be welcomed.