from Descartes, we see the image of man moving
from a man as being subject to god…to becoming
a machine… for Descartes does treat man as a machine…
and then Newton came along and the universe seemed to be a machine
and to be a “natural” part of the universe meant to follow the universe
which is a machine, so we must be machines…it is being a part of the
universe that is machine with man must being a machine…
and that was the understanding in the 17 and 18 century…
man as machine… then in the 19 century, people actually
understood what that meant and that understanding cause
a great deal of anguish…the Romantics of the 19 century
suddenly discovered what it was to actually be a machine…
they felt horror… and discussed this in books like
“Frankenstein” in which man can be created like a
machine…
the anguish of a writer like Kierkegaard can now be understood…
we are not machines… we are human beings and this means…
Nietzsche wrote about morality… what does morality look
like when it isn’t defined or created by god…
what does a man made morality look like?
what values are important when we no longer
have god to create values for us…
but Nietzsche wrote as a man living in the midst
of the industrial revolution…the devaluation
of man was the theme of the 19 and 20the century…
and Nietzsche wanted to save human beings from being
devalued because of the industrial revolution…
this is why he was so concerned with values…
what values are important in a modern world that
automatically devalues anything that is not values of the machine…
does a good man have value in our modern world that only values
time, as time is money… or so goes the saying… so we have
another formula… energy is matter… time is money…
we can say that matter is energy and money is time and still be correct…
and we discover that in our formula of time is money…
the values of a human being is not admitted…
for a human being is nether time or money and thus
is not in the equation…and thus devalued…
and after this devaluation of the human being comes the 20th century…
and its great wars and the Holocaust and the dropping of the atomic bombs…
think they are isolated and separate the two… this devaluation and the events
of the 20th century? this is why we must discover what is the value of the human
being…otherwise, we shall have more nihilism and despair and the alienation
that exists today… it is because we don’t have any value in the modern world
when we have the human values of love and peace and hope and charity and justice
and equality… those values don’t have any meaning in a world that has
accepted only the value of profits… which is our formula of time = money…
if you don’t have anguish about our modern times… you just
don’t understand what is at stake… you are alienated
and you don’t even know it… such a sad state of affairs…
when we human beings are devalued and denied and alienated
and we think it is the “modern” condition…and perfectly normal…
Kropotkin