Technology as the True Good

...Amid all our present complaints that technology is not enough, and that it is, indeed, the major source of our woes, it is good to have a writer who respects the intellectual credentials of technology and celebrates its contributions to human well-being...

...Ayres writes: "Notwithstanding the quest for the absolute certainty of an imaginary world, man has always known that the gods help those who help themselves...

...They are, quite simply, technological values, the material devices and habits of thought and feeling that serve "the life process of mankind...

...For one thing, there is no evidence to support his view that all the values men hold are parts of integrated systems of values...

...As Ayres sees the issue, all value-systems are bound together by a common "lifeprocess,' and all rest on beliefs about the activities and arrangements that are necessary to promote that life-process...

...But I do not think that Ayres makes his case...

...In taking this point of view, Ayres does not believe that he is merely recommending his own system of values...

...On the contrary, discordance and incoherence are more noticeable...

...It is not true, therefore, that every value-system has to be accepted as valid for the people who happen to believe in it...

...In short, modem skepticism and the ancient absolutisms have the same source...

...This is an old question in philosophy, and I fear that Professor Ayres has not answered it...

...it is becoming more rational...

...Nor does it offer, despite its title, concrete recommendations for social reform...

...In addition, "the life-process," which is his ultimate test of all values, is a catch-all phrase that buries all distinctions...

...Accordingly, if men hold the wrong factual beliefs, then they hold the wrong values...

...The commonplace moral virtues like honesty and fairness are justified because they are indispensable to effective social organization...

...Technology is much misunderstood...

...In sum, it is not at all clear what we mean when we speak of "efficiency" as a final test of our values...

...and the prejudice that it is "merely" an instrument is in part responsible for the systematic neglect of its effects upon, and its promise for, our moral and esthetic capacities...

...But he is an economist in the sociological and philosophical vein of his idol, Thorstein Veblen...

...author, "The Democratic Prospect" For many years Professor C. E. Ayres of Texas has been an unreconstructed spokesman for that rugged, combative, optimistic pragmatism which once gave American liberalism its spine and drive...

...In a voice that speaks from before the wars and the disillusionments, Professor Ayres argues that nothing is wrong with our secular and industrial civilization that more secularism and industrialism cannot cure...

...Ayres is nominally an economist, of course...

...But if Ayres is right, then ritual, ceremonialism, tabus, supernatural beliefs and traditional moral dogmas are all simply instances of technology manqu...

...It rests on a number of assumptions, all of which are questionable...

...Nor are they the transcendent, immaterial "final goods" which believers in moral absolutism have traditionally cherished...

...They are, that is to say, the technologically justified values, the values that contribute to the survival and progressive improvement of the groups that practice them...

...Equality, which rejects the notion that inherited status should give one man power over another, is a contribution to efficiency...

...To take a matter of some importance today, does the forced collectivization of peasants in hungry countries contribute to "the life-process...

...The major intellectual fallacy of our time, Ayres believes, is the doctrine of the relativity of all values...

...Does Ayres prove his case...

...And they are wrong simply because they misread the actual connections of cause and effect...

...And when an elaborate technological establishment emerges in a society, then, according to Professor Ayres, that society is in the process of remaking its way of life through the systematic rectification of its beliefs about the connections of means and ends...

...In fact, "technology" itself is used so broadly that it is not plain what it does and does not designate...

...In his latest book, he examines the premises that have stood behind a lifetime's opinions and a lifetime's good fight...

...They derive from a false dichotomy between mere technique and the ultimate values of life, separating the useful and the ultimately good, the profane and the truly holy...

...Those who adopt such a point of view, moreover, will find that the values traditionally approved by liberal and democratic men are in fact the objectively correct values...

...The candor, optimism and unrepentant secularism of this book are all admirable...

...They are efforts to manipulate the world and to make it a securer habitation for human beings...

...An attempt to answer this question in Ayres' language is likely to lead to a great deal of casuistry with regard to the meaning of his basic terms...

...Freedom is simply a set of "sound working arrangements based upon true assessments of the abilities and proclivities of all...

...It is the effort to give a reasoned defense for a scheme of values...

...This book, therefore, is not a treatise in economics...

...Everyone knows," says Professor Ayres, "what better or worse mean with reference to tools, and all peoples judge such 'betterness' and 'worseness' by the same standard...

...He holds that everybody in fact thinks pragmatically, whatever he may pretend...

...The only issue is that everyone should recognize how in fact he does think, for this would permit the deliberate use of the pragmatic method to criticize the superstitions and rigidities inherited from other days...

...These values are the same for all...

...He argues that there are certain universal values, but they are not to be found where the believers in Natural Law look for them...