The Adams family played a prominent role in the first century of the American republic. Founders John and Abigail's son, John Quincy, following his father's prescribed destiny would also become president, infamously losing reelection to the great unwashed Andrew Jackson. That election was a passing of the baton of federal power from Boston's patrician culture to the great anarchic uncouth plebs trampling across and reshaping the frontier, a politics culturally not so dissimilar, though much more democratic, than the disrupting Tech boys of our day.
Two of John Quincy's grandsons, Henry and Brooks became prominent writers, scribbling on the questions of democracy the adolescent American republic reinserted into the world. In 1919, Brooks wrote an introduction for Henry's posthumously published, The Degradation of Democracy. A book that in part was an interesting, though flawed attempt to tie the leading scientific thought of the day into an all encompassing historical political theory.
In his introduction, Brooks provides a wonderful insight into the politics of technology, concerns more prominent at the beginning of the industrial era than in the midst of our new technology era. Brooks writes about his grandfather John Quincy,
“He had labored all his life to bring the democratic principle of equality into such a relation with science and education that it would yield itself into becoming, or being formed into, an efficient instrument for collective administration. But this was striving after a contradiction in human nature. Education stimulated the desire for wealth, and the desire for wealth reacted on applied science.”
This is simply lost to all present political understanding, but then again, you'd be hard pressed to say we have any political understanding today. As industrialism became equated with “progress,” an always relative term, any qualitative question of how technology – applied science, should be developed or even if it should be developed at all, was completely subsumed by creating “wealth.” Far from being inherent in human nature, these are political questions, including how any given culture defines wealth.
Industrial culture defined wealth simply as more. The burning of coal, oil, and finally natural gas provided the fuel to produce more. Brooks continues,
“Mr. Adams strove to stimulate, learn 'to take for granted that man's progress in mental energy is measured by his capture of physical forces, amounting to some fifty million steam horse power from coal. . . . He cares little what becomes of all this new power, he is satisfied to know that his mind has learned to control them.'"
This perfectly defines humanity's industrial ethos, if it can be done, we should do it.
Finally, Brooks brilliantly concludes,
“In short, Mr. Adams in fact stimulated an education of waste, and what he sought for was an education of conservation. But an education of conservation was contrary to the instinct of greed which dominated the democratic mind, and impelled it to insist on the pillage of the public by the private man.”
And this is where we are today. We have codified, institutionalized, and evangelized an ethos of waste exploited for private gain. In fact, much of what we value as wealth is simply waste, most especially in regards to energy use. Two centuries of waste builds a mighty big hole to crawl out of. Humanity's future relies on abandoning our ethos of waste, using science to help us better understand how and what technologies to develop, and creating a political economy that fosters public equity, that is democracy.
"We have codified, institutionalized, and evangelized an ethos of waste exploited for private gain. In fact, much of what we value as wealth is simply waste, most especially in regards to energy use. Two centuries of waste builds a mighty big hole to crawl out of. Humanity's future relies on abandoning our ethos of waste, using science to help us better understand how and what technologies to develop, and creating a political economy that fosters public equity, that is democracy."
Yes!
Democracy and capitalism fundamentally contradict each other, hence my Marxist-Leninist take on political economy.