The Temptation of Technophobia

by Guillaume Faye

Guillaume Faye contends that Europeans need to embrace technology as an integral part of their heritage, arguing that a pro-technology stance is essential to overcoming outdated fears and reclaiming a dynamic role that harmonises technological advancements with a revitalised European identity rooted in its pagan past.

This is the fourteenth part of Guillaume Faye’s essay ‘The New Ideological Challenges’, published in 1988. Also read parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen.

Technology is not only associated with the sin of ‘pride’ (the motif of the Tower of Babel), but it was also seen in the 20th century, objectively speaking, as dangerous. Despite the atomic bomb, which is unlikely to annihilate humanity in reality, modern technology has by no means turned humans into all-destroyers. Humanity has always perceived itself as an animal destructor, as documented by the tragedies of Aeschylus.

The fear of technological risk is a sign of the ageing European mindset, which must be countered. It is entirely normal to recognise, define, and mitigate technological risks; however, it seems pathological to condemn modern technology and its inherent risks unreservedly, as, for example, the anti-nuclear movements do. Moreover, risk is not inherent to technology; since technology, as a reflection of human activity, essentially belongs to life (to the biosphere), it reflects its fundamental characteristic, which also characterises everything that exists in the cosmos: the aleatory. The sun can explode or go out before the calculated time, the Earth’s crust can open under our cities in areas of little seismic activity, or meteors can bombard our regions without vaporising in the upper atmosphere, as is usually the case. To claim that modern technology is murderous is also a gross falsehood. On the contrary, it enabled a problematic increase in the human race today. Industrial disasters are extremely rare and claim fewer lives compared to the classic famines in agricultural societies. The greatest industrial disaster of the present, which claimed two to three thousand victims in central India, was caused by a fertiliser factory that, let us not forget, had helped save hundreds of thousands of lives from malnutrition. Regarding military technology, it is relatively less devastating than traditional wars (Rome lost 80,000 of its 200,000 adult males in the Battle of Cannae) and kills, statistically, far fewer than generally assumed.