Month: November 2023

Ellul on Self-Justifying Means

This entry is part 19 of 28 in the series Presence in the Modern World

There was a time when society might grapple honestly with whether or not particular means were appropriate to a desired end. But ends have vanished into abstraction and are no longer necessary to justify means, which justify themselves in the answer to a simple question: Do they work?

“In reality, what justifies the means today is whatever succeeds,” Ellul writes as we continue Chapter 3 of Presence. “Whatever is effective, whatever possesses in itself an ‘efficiency,’ is justified. By applying means, a result is produced. This result is judged by these simplistic criteria of ‘more’: larger, faster, more precise, and so on … What succeeds is good, what fails is bad.” (emphasis added)

Value judgments relate to ends, not means. “Once the means becomes a matter of technique it knows no bounds.” Certainly some technical achievements — like atomic weapons, concentration camps, painless euthanasia of the disabled and depressed — are considered shocking and awful to most people. But not to all; as Ellul points out, a “Russian communist does not recoil from camps in Siberia, or a Nazi from extermination camps.” Citizens tend to accept whatever means are normalized within their own particular society or sub-culture, as long as those means are successful and meet their technical objectives (which are not ends, Ellul carefully points out).

The self-justification of means results, Ellul says, in three outcomes:

  1. Human beings are no longer able to choose between means. Technique chooses instead, demonstrating which means is truly effective, and there is no reason for people to refuse it.
  2. Technique is considered neutral, and so extends into all areas. His example: if a table is neutral, then so must be a machine; then so must be the state, the division of labor, propaganda, and on to nuclear missiles and concentration camps. When we say something is neutral, we mean that it is good.
  3. Since means no longer require ends, the ends that get proposed are “useless or inadequate” ones. Technique moves itself forward, step by step, and with each step, human beings create new ends to justify those means. Remember when the Internet was going to make citizens more knowledgeable, connect communities, ease loneliness, etc.? It doesn’t matter if you do or don’t; with each step technique takes, we create new ends to explain those means, which will only create new means for which we create new ends.

“Technical human beings do not need goals in life,” Ellul writes, “they are content with the instant success of means. In fact, we have got hold here of the primary reason … that the church and Christianity have lost ground. If the church no longer seems relevant in the world, it is because of the new situation of the problem of means.”

Never mind that some self-consciously moralistic people are still “scandalized” by the idea that a brutal or alienating technique might be excused by its loftily stated goal. I can’t help but return once again to the (already exhausted) example of AI. Politicians, bureaucrats, corporate leaders pretend to “grapple” with the “ramifications” of this technology. They hold conferences, issue memos, testify before Congress, propose regulations — but who has said, why should we do any of this at all? (And if they do, how can the response be anything but an eye-rolling dismissal of their naiveté? Genies, bottles, toothpaste, tubes.)

Ellul on the Disappearing End

This entry is part 18 of 28 in the series Presence in the Modern World

As we begin at long last Chapter 3 of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World, we come to his first exploration on technique, that for which he became best known and which he later explored in multiple books, most famously The Technological Society.

When one thinks of “means and ends,” the questions that come to mind are philosophical: Can the end justify the means? Are these the “right means for the right ends”? Ellul says that these questions are no longer relevant, or that at least they cannot be asked in the same way, because they no longer represent philosophical abstractions but the concrete fact of “technique.”

Ellul argues that modern life has become concretely, and specifically, about means; there is no longer any “end” in sight. With enormous and innovative means at their disposal, our modern societies have turned the human beings they were meant to serve into mere servants themselves. Politicians pay lip service to “men and women” as the beneficiaries of their programs, but who are these men and women?

What, for example, is the role of the individual human being in America today? We all know the answer: to participate in the economy. We must make things that can be bought so that we can buy things. “Thus, humanity is transformed into an instrument of these modern gods that are our means,” Ellul writes, “and we do it with the good intention of making humanity happy.” But who is this humanity we are told will benefit from our work, from the programs of politicians, bureaucrats and corporations? It doesn’t exist, and never will, as anything other than an abstraction.

But lest you think I (or Ellul) am specifically criticizing the market economy here, there is no difference to be found in socialism, either. Writing as he was in the 1940s, Ellul found as strong an example for his ideas in communism as he did in Western capitalism. In communism, he wrote that “we have an admirable political machine that perpetuates itself by means (because the dictatorship of the proletariat is also a means), with a view to illusory and hypothetical ends. And to produce the happiness of future people, those of the present day are sacrificed.”

Though I try to avoid social media these days, one can’t avoid the lust for “socialism” among many on the left today. They criticize the market for the same reasons Ellul does, that it turns humans into mere producers and consumers. But they have embraced the same mistaken notion of means versus ends. Whether capitalist or socialist or somewhere in between, everyone accepts the same abstract ends (happiness, justice, “humanity”) without question, so that they can focus on their own preferred concrete means.

But these ends (and I repeat myself here, for emphasis) simply do not exist. “We do still talk about happiness, freedom, or justice,” Ellul writes, “but we no longer know their content or conditions … Once these ends have become implicit in people’s hearts and minds, they no longer have any formative power. They no longer have any creative capacity. They are dead illusions that have been stored away among the props of the contemporary scene.”

Think about the state of AI, and the latest pointless kerfuffles over related corporate leadership. Just a few months ago, I might have used the (equally content-less) phrase “cryptocurrency” instead of AI. “Social media” would also work in exactly the same way. None of these things can be said to “matter” in any meaningful way. They are created because they can be created, not because they are doing any good. That is the nature of modern means, Ellul points out, which cannot lead to ends, but only create more means: “genius is no longer necessary for the majority of technical discoveries, but having arrived at a certain stage the next discovery comes along almost as a matter of course…”

This is true in every field — technical, financial, political, industrial. “It doesn’t matter that people do not need these new products,” Ellul wrote nearly eighty years ago, “or that these new creations are completely useless. One means generates another. A particular one is used, for why would it not be? Why would it be called useless?”

Ellul uses airplanes and medicine as further examples of the abstraction of means and ends. We congratulate ourselves when speed records are shattered, but what is the point of saving time? (I can only look through my long and extensive Amazon purchase history, or all of the unused apps in my Mac’s Applications folder, and ask myself what all the time-saving things I’ve purchased have actually meant for me.)

Or medical research that produces new cures. Ellul asks, “[W]hat is the point of the life that we take so much care to preserve? What is time for? What is life worth, when precisely through the interplay of the means set in motion through this civilization, time and life no longer have any meaning, when human beings really do not know what to do with their time, and when life is more absurd than ever, because the spiritual foundations of time and life have been destroyed in their hearts?”

In a world with a will toward suicide, whose relentless drive toward its own destruction becomes more apparent all the time, is it any wonder that “ends” have been turned into happy abstractions by those who can only see history as a series of random occurrences? “Human beings,” Ellul writes, “have set off at astronomically high speeds toward nowhere.”

Ellul on Christian Freedom

This entry is part 17 of 28 in the series Presence in the Modern World

Having declared that “everyday facts” should be approached through the lens of a specifically Christian realism, rather than any nonexistent “Christian principles,” Ellul concludes chapter two by pointing out that this realism must also extend to more than just those “facts.”

Christians, as Ellul said earlier, are always in a state of permanent revolution against the world, and that includes the civilizational structures (the bureaucratic state, technique and efficiency, etc.) that shape the modern world. In the present situation, “Christians no longer act according to this unconscious impulse that has made them, at all times in which the church was alive, the bearers of a profound revolution.” (emphasis added)

Instead, they act as if they are merely the the same “sociological beings” as the rest of the world, and “no longer seem to understand Christian freedom.” They simply accept contemporary underlying structures (the bureaucratic state, technique and efficiency, mass society, etc.) without question, believing that all they have to do is choose the “right ideas” and then try to implement them with political power. Churches themselves, Ellul writes, “have been bogged down in the lowest politics or the highest ‘spirituality’.”

Since Christians are no longer “unconscious” in their reaction against the world’s reality, Ellul says they must become conscious revolutionaries. Note an important footnote from David Gill, on page 37, referring to later clarifying writings from Ellul: “The only true and authentic revolution of today is that of the individual against mass society.”

But how can Christian individuals, as conscious as they may become, going to be able to change these fundamental structures? It will be, Ellul concedes, a “long effort.”

First, he says that Christians must become aware of the present reality and the ways in which it is manifesting the world’s will toward suicide. Then, they “must pursue a way of life that does not differentiate them from others but enables them to elude the influence of structures.” Instead of rejecting the modern world outright, Ellul calls for Christians to “sift” it; success will not come from trying to attack the structures directly, or to try and reconstruct the world “from every fragment.”

Ellul has been very clear in this book that he is not calling for either monastic withdrawal from the world, or some sort of violent struggle against it. Instead, Christians must be realistic about their situation, become conscious of the ways in which the world is working to control them, and try to lead lives of “Christian freedom” to the greatest extent possible within that world.

Perhaps communities that follow this sort of thinking will provide the “seeds of a new civilization,” but Ellul says that Christians shouldn’t even think about that. Such thoughts are mere “enticing vistas” that will distract Christians from taking “up a revolutionary stance” and divert their attention into utopian thinking.

Ellul admits that this sounds like “an intellectual or spiritual process” but it is much more than that; he says that “it is an extremely difficult decision to make — this decision to break with the ways of the present age.”

In short, Christians are here to preserve the world, not to save it.

Ellul on Christian Realism

This entry is part 16 of 28 in the series Presence in the Modern World

In the last section, Ellul called out the fact that Christians know “how the story ends” — with the Kingdom of God. But they are still called to live fully in the world’s present reality, pointing their fellow human beings toward Christ, rather than to withdraw and wait for the end.

So Christians must live in the here and now, but as citizens of the Kingdom of God. This means that all political and social facts and proposals are to be evaluated in light of what Christians know about the Kingdom — and not in light of any particular principles and morals.

Because, and this is the bit that may surprise many American Christians, “there are no Christian principles.” (emphasis added)

“There is the person of Christ,” Ellul writes, “who is the principle of all things.” But Christianity cannot be reduced to mere principles or “philosophical doctrine” or guidelines for moral living. “The Christian life does not result from a cause but is directed toward an end. This is what changes human perspectives completely and makes the Christian life unique from any other.”

Ellul points out that the history of Christian political stances has been disastrous; throughout church history (up to and including the present day), Christians have done horrible things in the name of “Christian principles.” Ellul believes that this will always be the case whenever anyone, left or right, tries to reduce the kingdom to a political philosophy.

Instead, given their unique orientation toward the future, Christians must approach political and social situations with realism — not one based on “efficiency or success,” but on the perspective of God’s Kingdom. In any given situation, “Christians can move right or left, can be liberal or socialist, according to the circumstances and the position that seems more conformed to God’s will at this time.” (italics in original)

Christians should be “open to all human action” that can be examined in light of God’s guidance, and “questioned thoroughly.” But, Ellul says, “Christians can never consider themselves tied to a past or to a principle.”

There is no one Christian stance that must be followed in all things, for all time. In fact, “positions that seem contradictory can be equally sound” if they “express in history a faithfulness to God’s design.”

Scripture offers “main themes” of how our “action can be oriented” and the “outlines of an order”, but not any “system or political principles.” Minus those principles or any specific moralism, it falls on Christians themselves, with God’s guidance, to decide if a particular thing seems to conform with the coming of God’s Kingdom, how it looks from the perspective of that kingdom, and if it can be “used for God’s glory.”

In a footnote, David Gill explains Ellul’s viewpoint as less chaotic than it sounds at first. “We follow a Commander, not a set of abstract commands. There will be guidance, and it will be consistent with the character of God … not at all the whim of human interest and desire. But God is alive, and our situations always have novel aspects, and we are unique individuals. No stand-alone system of principles and rules can ever be allowed to threaten or replace that existential reality.” (emphasis added)

So in any particular situation, Christians might very well disagree with each other in good faith, as long as they are patiently approaching each situation independently and uniquely from the standpoint of God’s kingdom, and not merely responding to their own political and cultural biases.

Christians must live under the actuality of Christ’s Lordship. Ellul says that this “actual lordship” is the “objective element” of the Christian’s current (revolutionary) situation. In recognizing that Christ is Lord, and that God’s Kingdom is both now and not yet, Christians are called to evaluate their daily lives and existing realities through the subjective lens of “hope.”

“This is a difficult position, full of pitfalls and dangers,” Ellul writes, “but it is also the only one that appears true to the Christian life. And we have never been told that the Christian life should be easy or secure.”

Ellul on Living into the Future

Imagine you suddenly found yourself transported into the world of your favorite book or film, a new character in the midst of a story whose ending you knew very well. You would be surrounded by characters for whom that ending may not even be conceivable. Accepted by those characters as one of their own, with your own agency and role to play, would you involve yourself in the story’s action, or simply stand and observe, awaiting the inevitable outcome?

This is essentially the situation in which Christians find themselves, according to Ellul, as we continue in Chapter 2. But simply observing the story unfold, smug in our own knowledge of the ending, is not the choice we are called to make. It’s not even an option for faithful Christians, Ellul says.

Essentially, Christians know that history has a direction, and they know how it’s going to end, in the coming of Christ and the Kingdom of God. “Without this direction,” Ellul writes, “history is an explosion of insanity.”

The role of Christians is to bring this eschaton into the present day. Christians are able to view current political and social realities, somewhat objectively, in the light of what is “more authentic, more real” — Christ’s imminent return. (As noted earlier, as far as Christians are concerned, the end times are always imminent.) And they are supposed to live out this reality in their daily lives.

This does not mean, as has already been said over and over again in these chapters, that Christians are supposed to try and turn the world into the Kingdom of God. It won’t work, and it’s not their role anyway — instead, Christians play a prophetic role. Note that prophets did not merely announce the coming events, Ellul writes: “Prophets are those who live out the event now and who make it real and present to the world around them.”

Which means what, exactly?

Well, so far Ellul has told us that Christians live in a state of permanent revolution — one that may indirectly lead to government or economic changes, but not “necessarily lead to direct conflict with authority” — by virtue of the fact that their ultimate loyalty lies with the Kingdom of God, and not the world. Yet they they still must live and work and act within the world’s present realities. Now we see that Christians must do this living and working and acting, with an orientation to the future — the future coming of the Kingdom of God.

Christians are not to be oriented toward the past. Ellul writes that “those who know they are saved by Christ are not people attached jealously or fearfully to a past, however glorious it may be.” (So, it’s a big “no” to the right-wing movements openly longing for the culture and economy of 1950s America, no matter how distorted their vision of that decade.)

Instead, Christians are to “judge the present time by virtue of a meta-historical fact. This fact’s intervention in the present time is the only thing capable of freeing civilization from the suffocating social and political structures under which it is slowly weakening and dying.”

In a world where we have seen that all existing institutions, parties and governments accept the underlying structures of modern civilization, then one wonders exactly how Christians can live their lives challenging these structures. And not privately challenging them, but challenging in such a way that they “make it real and present to the world around them.”

Perhaps it will become clearer as we continue with Chapter 2.

Ellul on Living into the Future

This entry is part 15 of 28 in the series Presence in the Modern World

Imagine you suddenly found yourself transported into the world of your favorite book or film, a new character in the midst of a story whose ending you knew very well. You would be surrounded by characters for whom that ending may not even be conceivable. Accepted by those characters as one of their own, with your own agency and role to play, would you involve yourself in the story’s action, or simply stand and observe, awaiting the inevitable outcome?

This is essentially the situation in which Christians find themselves, according to Ellul, as we continue in Chapter 2. But simply observing the story unfold, smug in our own knowledge of the ending, is not the choice we are called to make. It’s not even an option for faithful Christians, Ellul says.

Essentially, Christians know that history has a direction, and they know how it’s going to end, in the coming of Christ and the Kingdom of God. “Without this direction,” Ellul writes, “history is an explosion of insanity.”

The role of Christians is to bring this eschaton into the present day. Christians are able to view current political and social realities, somewhat objectively, in the light of what is “more authentic, more real” — Christ’s imminent return. (As noted earlier, as far as Christians are concerned, the end times are always imminent.) And they are supposed to live out this reality in their daily lives.

This does not mean, as has already been said over and over again in these chapters, that Christians are supposed to try and turn the world into the Kingdom of God. It won’t work, and it’s not their role anyway — instead, Christians play a prophetic role. Note that prophets did not merely announce the coming events, Ellul writes: “Prophets are those who live out the event now and who make it real and present to the world around them.”

Which means what, exactly?

Well, so far Ellul has told us that Christians live in a state of permanent revolution — one that may indirectly lead to government or economic changes, but not “necessarily lead to direct conflict with authority” — by virtue of the fact that their ultimate loyalty lies with the Kingdom of God, and not the world. Yet they they still must live and work and act within the world’s present realities. Now we see that Christians must do this living and working and acting, with an orientation to the future — the future coming of the Kingdom of God.

Christians are not to be oriented toward the past. Ellul writes that “those who know they are saved by Christ are not people attached jealously or fearfully to a past, however glorious it may be.” (So, it’s a big “no” to the right-wing movements openly longing for the culture and economy of 1950s America, no matter how distorted their vision of that decade.)

Instead, Christians are to “judge the present time by virtue of a meta-historical fact. This fact’s intervention in the present time is the only thing capable of freeing civilization from the suffocating social and political structures under which it is slowly weakening and dying.”

In a world where we have seen that all existing institutions, parties and governments accept the underlying structures of modern civilization, then one wonders exactly how Christians can live their lives challenging these structures. And not privately challenging them, but challenging in such a way that they “make it real and present to the world around them.”

Perhaps it will become clearer as we continue with Chapter 2.