What is euphemistically called production is really consumption. The gigantic technical apparatus, that masterpiece of human ingenuity, could not rea… - Friedrich Georg Jünger
" "What is euphemistically called production is really consumption. The gigantic technical apparatus, that masterpiece of human ingenuity, could not reach perfection if technological thought were to be contained within an economic scheme, if the destructive power of technical progress were to be arrested. But this progress becomes all the more impetuous, the larger the resources at its disposal, and the more energetically it devours them. This is shown by the concentration of men and machines in the great mining centers where the mechanization of work and the organization of man are most advanced. The rationality of technology, so impressively displayed here, becomes intelligible only when one has understood the conditions on which it depends. Its concomitant is waste and contempt for all rationality in the exploitation of the resources on whose existence technology depends, as the lungs depend on air.
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About Friedrich Georg Jünger
Friedrich Georg Jünger (1 September 1898 – 20 July 1977) was a German writer and lawyer. He wrote poetry, cultural criticism and novels. He was the younger brother of Ernst Jünger. TOC
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Additional quotes by Friedrich Georg Jünger
In the early days of the machine age, the days when the amount of work done mechanically was small, it was not recognized that mechanization must lead to a new organization of work, a planning to which man himself would be forcibly subjected. But with the advance of technology, the consequences of increasing mechanization of work become more and more apparent. Not only are more and more men employed mechanically, but their work also becomes more and more specialized. To scientific specialization is added technical specialization. The growing specialization of the sciences, which creates artificial isolation and departmental walls, has its counterpart in technology as it breaks down and cuts up human work.
And the rational mind which stands behind the machine and keeps watch over its automatic, mechanical motion–it too is hungry, and hunger follows it everywhere. It cannot shake off hunger; it cannot free itself from it; it cannot be stilled, however hard it may try. And how, indeed, could that be possible! This mind itself is consuming, gluttonous, and it has no access to riches; it cannot conjure up abundance. No effort of ingenuity, not all the inventive power that is brought to bear here can do it. For rationalization only sharpens hunger and actually increases consumption. This growing consumption is a sign not of abundance but of poverty; it is bound up with worry, want, and toil.
When we study the apparatus and the human organization that have been created by our technology in step with its evolution, it becomes clear that they too depend on the mechanical concept of time, the only concept which can guarantee technical progress. How clockwork-like is not the whole order of modern civilization, how relentlessly does not technical progress strive to subject everything to this clocklike precision: man's sleep, his work, his rest, and his pleasures!
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