Money, machinery, algebra. The three monsters of contemporary civilization. Complete analogy. Algebra and money are essentially levelers, the first intellectually, the second effectively. The life of Provencal peasants ceased to resemble that of the Greek peasants described by Hesiod about fifty years ago. Destruction of science as the Greeks conceived it around the same period. Money and algebra triumphed simultaneously. The relationship of sign to signified perishes; the play of exchanges between signs multiplies by itself and for itself. And the growing complication requires signs of signs... Among the characteristics of the modern world, one must not forget the impossibility of thinking concretely about the relationship between effort and the result of effort. Too many intermediaries. As in other cases, this relationship which lies in no thought lies in a thing: money. Since collective thought cannot exist as thought, it passes into things (signs, machines...). Hence this paradox: it is the thing that thinks and man who is reduced to the state of a thing. There is no collective thought. On the other hand, our science is collective like our technology. Specialization. One inherits not only results but also methods one does not understand. Moreover, the two are inseparable, for the results of algebra furnish methods for the other sciences.
To take inventory of or to criticize our civilization -- what does that mean? To seek to clarify precisely the trap that has made man the slave of his own creations. Where has unconsciousness infiltrated into methodical thought and action? Escape into the wild life is a lazy solution. The original pact between mind and world must be recovered within the very civilization in which we live. This is moreover a task impossible to accomplish because of the brevity of life and the impossibility of collaboration and succession. That is no reason not to undertake it. We are all in a situation analogous to that of Socrates when he was awaiting death in his prison and was learning to play the lyre... At least one will have lived...
The mind succumbing under the weight of quantity has no other criterion than efficacy.
Modern life is given over to excess. Excess invades everything: action and thought, public and private life. Hence the decadence of art. There is no longer balance anywhere. The Catholic movement is partially a reaction against this: Catholic ceremonies, at least, have remained intact. But also they are without relation to the rest of existence.
Capitalism has achieved the emancipation of the human collectivity from nature. But this collectivity has assumed, in relation to the individual, the succession of the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.
This is true even materially. Fire, water, etc. All these forces of nature, the collectivity has seized them. Question: can one transfer to the individual this emancipation won by society?