No question that instrumental rationality is the heartbeat of our time.

Science gave us the industrial age, — the telegraph, railroads, automobiles, radios, television, industrialized warfare, the hydrogen bomb….  There is no need to go on.

The industrial age has been eclipsed by the age of communication made possible by hyper miniaturized solid state electronics.  The transistor of my childhood is now layered in thousands onto wafer thin circuit boards, giving rise to a global communications net, with nearly every person potentially linked to every other with an iPhone.  Add to the iPhone,  lasers, smart bombs, and ….. the “Space Command.”

Ever present, change accelerates, no longer a gradual curve, perceptible over several generations.  Now every five years, the material basis for culture seems novel.  Do we not revere innovation as the key to riches and success?  And we suffer vertigo from the pace of change.

Particularly the availability of information conjures up the dark side of human nature.  Did we really think learning about individuals utterly unlike us in upbringing and habits, would cause the dawn of peace love and understanding?  Moreover we find that state-of-the-art communication tools do promote greed and egoism without limits.   So here we are, seemingly having painted ourselves into an ever shrinking corner.

“The meaning of a word is its use,” is the description of instrumental rationality published in 1922 by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.  The Tractatus sought to show the relationship between language and reality, and to show the limits of science.

Science, long regarded as the crowning achievement of Enlightenment reason, is like Pandora’s box.  When opened the container released sickness, death and many other unspecified evils into the world.  In mythological time it was and in our time it is — too late to close the box.  Left behind was hope or alternatively translated,  — deceptive expectation.

We have made a cult of reason, and by means of our scientific prowess use our methods to wring the very last drop of “value” from every natural resource that can be sold for a profit, and every human being within our reach.  I am thinking not only of the middle-aged woman who by necessity of circumstances must work for WalMart.  What about those happily using Facebook or Instagram having their habits and desires digitized, abstracted for sale to a political party?

This may not bother you.  Such features of our daily life bother me.

My first response is indignation.  I feel outrage at the injustice that results from perceiving the earth and fellow human beings as a resource, a reserve for profit taking, the monetization of everything that moves and breathes.

My second response is to recognize that humanity in aggregate is a pretty sorry lot.  There is nothing of the innocence of non verbal animals about us.  We’ve always exploited one another.  Its not until the last two hundred years that we’ve achieved enough moral sensitivity and fortitude to make slavery illegal.  Now, by many accounts human trafficking is making a comeback.  Internet porn is worth billions and no one knows the extent of the business.

My third response is one of sad irony.  I say to myself, “mankind is a silly goose.”  The silly goose principle is when you recognize how susceptible we all are to madness, being caught in a destructive obsession.  The liability can be minor such as my over-fondness for White Zinfandel wine.  How easy it would be to become comfortable with the slight buzz of one and half, maybe two glasses in the evening…..  On a more desperate and tragic scenario there is the young female who decides to work for an escort service because she has a rent deadline approaching and groceries to buy.

So yes, I’d like to drive a spike into the heart of instrumental rationality, and to drive that spike as many times as necessary.

Life is a gift and every human being matters.

And that is the spike that I would drive with all of my strength.