Technology, the Market, and the Good

The governing realities of contemporary life are technology and the market. Increasingly, man knows himself, others, and the world as a whole principally through and in these systems.

That is, one's own self, other persons, the world as a whole, are known and defined first and foremost as technological--that is, as capable of manipulation by and subjugation to the a-rational desires and ideally disembodied willings of the self, known precisely and circularly as the unlimited locus of will and desire. "The market"--conceived of as an idealized system for the unlimited production, increase, and distribution of quantified technological power, as well as the maximally efficient application of this power to all areas of existence--is an outgrowth of the same basic idea.

In a sense, these mindsets are as old as humanity itself; and they are of course capable, to varying degrees, of being moderated and integrated into larger ethical, moral, and cosmic systems. Yet what makes our time in many ways so unique is the purity and breadth of their application to the lives of human beings.

To a very great extent, these systems are taken not merely as means, or even ends--they have, rather, precisely the same force that ideas of nature and being hold in philosophical systems. Commerce and technology are treated not merely as economic, but ontic, realities. This is partly due to a general epistomological and societal breakdown; family, community, philosophical systems, and religion have all collapsed, while technology and commerce have only grown stronger. The former seem, increasingly, distant and hard to believe in; while the power of the latter is obvious, inescapable, and, in many ways, truly defining.

The perception of contemporary man, then, is that everything good (in the most basic sense of "desirable" or "perceived as a proper object of the will") is able to be either directly manipulated or purchased. In this way, objects present themselves to our wills and our minds precisely as objects of subjugation or exchange; and the basic mode of interaction between the self and all things not itself is the assertion of technological power. Of course, inasmuch as the self itself is capable of being externalized, subjugated, and exchanged, it, too, is treated in the same way.

This process, however, is essentially incoherent and self-destructive. In asserting its technological power, the self knows the objects of will and desire only as means to these appetites; in so doing, it negates their actual existence, and truly aims, not at them, but rather at itself. Yet when the actual existence and so goodness of the objects of desire and will are negated, so too are the appetites that aim at them. In willing and desiring in this way, then, the self wills and desires its own nonexistence.

In the truth, the good can only be received; that is, grasped and known as actually existing, as it is in itself. To receive the good, then, a real assimilation of the appetites to their object must take place. The will and desires must be ordered to their object, the real good existing in itself, and not vice versa; only thus are they capable of actually attaining it.

For this to take place, the self must, in a real and proper way, submit itself to the objects of its knowledge; that is, it must come to know and will all things as existing in themselves, prior to and above their existence as objects of its own will or desire. Or rather, the two operations must in a real way become one; each object must be willed precisely in its own real and proper existence and desired in precisely the same way: that is, to use the proper philosophical term, it must be loved. Only in this way can the self come to know anything as good--that is, as a true object of the will and desires. Only thus are the will and desires actually capable of fulfillment, and man himself capable of happiness.