1/4 It is a matter of technique. It is urgent, for if we do not win the stakes we will die. The stakes, which are multiple in the economic world, may finally be reduced to two that are economically dominant: redressing demographic imbalance and reorganizing the world monetary system. We certainly cannot continue indefinitely to live with aggravated monetary imbalance, especially now that the sums involved are unimaginably high. But finally at issue in each of these stakes is
@ebbot 2/4 what technique to apply here and now to win this game. In society as it now is our only recourse is to find the techniques that will enable us to evaluate the stakes and win.It is thus wagered that technical growth is the only means to overcome the present crisis and that we must use new techniques to deal with the economic crisis. It is also wagered that we will finally produce a technical culture. This is the decisive wager. In face of the crisis in modern culture, the
@ebbot 3/4 apparent conflict between culture (in the traditional sense) and technique, and the fact (noted by only a few authors)8 that in all societies up to the eighteenth-century West, techniques were integrated into a global culture, it is culture that is now dominated or marginalized by technique, so that thoughtful people believe that we must now create a new model of culture that will fully integrate technique and again subordinate it as a simple tool. --Jaques Ellul, The
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