Mythology Archives - Daily Record of the Most Boringest Life on Earth

Techno-worship, American-style

Likely more prescient in 2022 than it was when first published in 2011, Morris Berman cites the argument of British philosopher John Gray to support his (taboo) thesis that our unwavering, unquestioning commitment to technological progress has been a crucial factor in the downfall of American society. Whether by slow-burn or sudden death-knell, our end is certain because, as Americans, we are unwilling to abandon a myth.

Theories of progress, says Gray¹, are not scientific hypotheses but rather myths, which—like the Christian myths of redemption and the Second Coming—answer to the human need for meaning. This is why we refuse to let them go, regardless of what the evidence might suggest. It is also why, in the United States, the commitment to technology goes much deeper than fueling consumerism, lubricating the socioeconomic system, and keeping a lid on class conflict. Without this belief system, Americans would have literally nothing, for it lies at the heart of the American Dream and endlessly vaunted American way of life. Strip away the illusion of unlimited growth and the country would suffer a collective nervous breakdown. (This is key to why Jimmy Carter had to go: he was pushing the limits of American psychological tolerance, asking a nation of addicts to confront their dependency and change course.) Globalization, along with neoliberalism, according to Gray, is merely the latest incarnation of this illusion, and its deep religious roots account for the ferocity of its adherents, even after the crash of 2008 gave the lie to the notion of unlimited development through the free market economy. We want to believe that the future will be better than the past, but there isn’t a shred of evidence to back this up. In particular, as I shall discuss below, scientific progress doesn’t translate into moral progress; one could reasonably argue that just the opposite is the case. Truth be told, concludes Gray, we are even more superstitious than our medieval forebears; we just don’t recognize it. Nor is it likely that we shall abandon these beliefs. It’s utopia or bust, even if the odds are heavily weighted toward bust.
Berman M., Why America Failed: the roots of imperial decline, 2011/2014, pp. 82-83 quoting Gray, J., Black Mass, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007

Sound like anybody you know?

The figure of the tyrant-monster is known to the mythologies, folk traditions, legends, and even nightmares of the world; and his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same. He is the hoarder of the general benefit. He is the monster avid for the greedy rights of “my and mine.” The havoc wrought by him is described in mythology and fairy tale as being universal throughout his domain. This may be no more than his household, his own tortured psyche, or the lives that he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization. The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world–no matter how his affairs seem to prosper. Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses of acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world’s messenger of disaster, even through, in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions. Wherever he sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops, then–more miserably–within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence will liberate the land.
-Campbell, Joseph. The hero with a thousand faces. Third edition. Joseph Campbell Foundation 2008. p.11