Cybernetic Religion
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Cybernetic Religion
The Cybernetic Religion is the secret, unacknowledged system of devotion that governs technologically advanced industrial society. In Erich Fromm's analysis, it is the religion of the Marketing Character and the cybernetic person: a frame of orientation and object of devotion centered on science, technique, and the machine, in which human beings imagine themselves omnipotent through their tools while actually becoming impotent servants of the apparatus they created. Though it may hide behind agnosticism or Christianity, it is structurally pagan, making either the human being or the machine into a god.
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Erich Fromm identifies cybernetic religion as the successor to industrial religion, emerging as technology and cybernetics transform the character structure of modern society. Where industrial religion worshipped work, property, profit, and power, cybernetic religion worships technique, information, and the machine itself. It is the secret religion of what Fromm calls "cybernetic man" or "monocerebral man": a person whose approach to the world and to themselves is purely cerebral, whose intellect operates in split from affect and will, and whose narcissism is directed at themselves as an instrument of success.
Fromm traces cybernetic religion to the marketing character, the most alienated type in his typology. The marketing character experiences themselves as a commodity to be sold, values themselves as an investment to be managed, and relates to others through exchange rather than presence. Cybernetic religion is the spiritual correlate of this character structure: it provides a frame of orientation in which everything, including human beings, is data to be processed, and an object of devotion in the machine that promises total control.
Fromm writes that "hidden behind the façade of agnosticism or Christianity is a thoroughly pagan religion, although people are not conscious of it as such." This religion can only be inferred from what people do, not from what they profess. Its central article of faith is that human beings have made themselves into gods by acquiring "the technical capacity for a 'second creation' of the world, replacing the first creation by the God of traditional religion." An equivalent formulation: "We have made the machine into a god and have become godlike by serving the machine." What matters is that "human beings, in the state of their greatest real impotence, imagine themselves in connection with science and technique to be omnipotent." [1]
Fromm distinguishes two phases of cybernetic religion. In its more hopeful period, it corresponds to genuine creativity and the expansion of human capacity through technique. But as isolation deepens, emotional response to the world atrophies, and catastrophic outcomes become more unavoidable, the religion turns malignant. "We cease to be the masters of technique and become instead its slaves—and technique, once a vital element of creation, shows its other face as the goddess of destruction (like the Indian goddess Kali), to which men and women are willing to sacrifice themselves and their children."[2]
Cybernetic religion is an authoritarian religion in Fromm's typology. People "believe only in technological progress and submit to the management of priests-technocrats" (Fromm, To Have or to Be?, 1976; cf. Lidz, 1982). The technocrat replaces the priest; data replaces dogma; efficiency replaces salvation. Yet the structure is the same: submission to an external power, abdication of one's own reason and love, and the transformation of impotence into the fantasy of omnipotence. The cybernetic person "thinks but does not feel. The most striking trait in him is the split between thought, affect and will" (Fromm, 1973). This split is not a personal failing but the religious formation of a society that has made the machine its god.
Noble's Extension
Historian David F. Noble extends Fromm's analysis with considerable historical detail and sociological sophistication in The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention.[3] Noble insists that the relationship between technology and religion is not metaphorical but literal and historical: "modern technology and religion have evolved together and that, as a result, the technological enterprise has been and remains suffused with religious belief." He traces this entanglement back roughly a thousand years, to the turn of the first millennium, when the "useful arts" first became implicated in the Christian project of redemption.
Noble's historical narrative moves from medieval monasticism—where Benedictine and Cistercian monks developed clocks, watermills, and windmills under the motto *Ora et Labora*—through the prophetic system of Joachim of Fiore, the millenarian science of Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon, the religious devotion of Isaac Newton and the Royal Society, and the Masonic transmission of the "religion of technology" into modern engineering culture. In each era, technological advancement was driven not by mere utility but by spiritual yearnings: the recovery of Eden, the reversal of the Fall, the perfection of humanity, and the approach of apocalypse.
Noble demonstrates that these religious aspirations persist into the present, though increasingly obscured by secularized vocabulary. His case studies of atomic weapons, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering show how contemporary technologists continue to pursue transcendence and salvation through their work, often without recognizing the religious character of their own devotion. The result is what Noble calls "an enduring ideological tradition" that defines the Western technological enterprise.
Where Fromm diagnoses the psychological structure of cybernetic religion, Noble supplies its genealogy. Where Fromm identifies the marketing character as its bearer, Noble shows how that character was historically produced through the fusion of monastic discipline, millenarian fervor, and the elevation of the mechanical arts. The two analyses converge on the same conclusion: "the technological pursuit of salvation has become a threat to our survival."[4] Noble's hope, like Fromm's, is that by making the religious dimension visible, we might redirect our capabilities toward more worldly and humane ends.
Quotes
"Hidden behind the façade of agnosticism or Christianity is a thoroughly pagan religion, although people are not conscious of it as such. This pagan religion is difficult to describe, since it can only be inferred from what people do (and do not do) and not from their conscious thoughts about religion or dogmas of a religious organization. Most striking, at first glance, is that Man has made himself into a god because he has acquired the technical capacity for a 'second creation' of the world, replacing the first creation by the God of traditional religion. We can also formulate: We have made the machine into a god and have become godlike by serving the machine. It matters little the formulation we choose; what matters is that human beings, in the state of their greatest real impotence, imagine themselves in connection with science and technique to be omnipotent." > — Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (1976), Chapter 9
"This aspect of cybernetic religion corresponds to a more hopeful period of development. But the more we are caught in our isolation, in our lack of emotional response to the world, and at the same time the more unavoidable a catastrophic end seems to be, the more malignant becomes the new religion. We cease to be the masters of technique and become instead its slaves—and technique, once a vital element of creation, shows its other face as the goddess of destruction (like the Indian goddess Kali), to which men and women are willing to sacrifice themselves and their children." > — Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (1976), Chapter 9
"'Cybernetic man' thinks but does not feel. The most striking trait in him is the split between thought, affect and will." > — Erich Fromm (1973), cited in Tricoli (2011)
"This is not meant in a merely metaphorical sense, to suggest that technology is similar to religion in that it evokes religious emotions of omnipotence, devotion, and awe, or that it has become a new (secular) religion in and of itself, with its own clerical caste, arcane rituals, and articles of faith. Rather, it is meant literally and historically, to indicate that modern technology and religion have evolved together and that, as a result, the technological enterprise has been and remains suffused with religious belief." > — David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology (1997)
"The thousand-year convergence of technology and transcendence has thus outlived whatever historical usefulness it might once have had... simply, the technological pursuit of salvation has become a threat to our survival." > — David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology (1997)
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Footnotes
- ↑ Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
- ↑ Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
- ↑ David Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin, 1999).
- ↑ David Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin, 1999).