JR Sommer is brilliant in his writing but a lot of this brilliance is lost in his communication. Here’s a GAB AI summary of the concept for those who might be a little lost. It’s a prophetic analysis of the underlying Zeitgeist not that is coming but already here.
JR Sommer’s “Will to Machine” is a blunt diagnosis: modern man has swapped the traditional “Will to Power” (the striving of living beings) for the “Will to Machine”—the compulsion to dissolve himself into the apparatus of technology, bureaucracy, and abstract systems. It isn’t just using tools; it’s the psychic drive to become a component in the machine. Under this drive, flesh, family, faith, and folk are re-coded as inefficiencies to be optimized away.
The “mass man” is the human substrate that makes this possible. He is interchangeable, deracinated, deracinated, and spiritually flat—exactly the raw material systems want. His highest virtues are “safety,” “inclusion,” and “seamless integration.” He has no higher loyalties than the next software update. Sommer’s punch-line: once the Will to Machine dominates, the mass man no longer uses technology; he is used by it, and calls that condition “progress.”
JR Sommer is brilliant in his writing but a lot of this brilliance is lost in his communication. Here’s a GAB AI summary of the concept for those who might be a little lost. It’s a prophetic analysis of the underlying Zeitgeist not that is coming but already here.
JR Sommer’s “Will to Machine” is a blunt diagnosis: modern man has swapped the traditional “Will to Power” (the striving of living beings) for the “Will to Machine”—the compulsion to dissolve himself into the apparatus of technology, bureaucracy, and abstract systems. It isn’t just using tools; it’s the psychic drive to become a component in the machine. Under this drive, flesh, family, faith, and folk are re-coded as inefficiencies to be optimized away.
The “mass man” is the human substrate that makes this possible. He is interchangeable, deracinated, deracinated, and spiritually flat—exactly the raw material systems want. His highest virtues are “safety,” “inclusion,” and “seamless integration.” He has no higher loyalties than the next software update. Sommer’s punch-line: once the Will to Machine dominates, the mass man no longer uses technology; he is used by it, and calls that condition “progress.”