The Anti-System That Defies All Technique: Vital humility and its continual dismantling of the Principalities and Powers of this age

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When Aldous Huxley was asked, “What is the most important book of the later half of the 20th century,” he immediately replied, “Jaques Ellul’s The Technological Society” (La Technique in the original French title). Huxley’s Brave New World could be argued to have been the most important book of the first half of the 20th century. His arguments, however, could also be said to ground important aspects of Ellul’s central theses in his sociological synthesis of the direction of Western culture in the second half of last century. The following words, composed in a survey of “Brave New World at 75,” could, therefore, be equally applied to Ellul’s later sociological summation of modernity (now hypermodernity):

“Welcome to the World State, where “all men are physico-chemically equal” and “everybody’s happy now.” People are conditioned by genetic engineering, electric shocks, and hypnopaedic repetition to accept these and other mantras as the sum of their identities, to promote complacency and simple desires.”

What Ellul will later argue is that all of this functionally represents “Technique”—that which, in Robert Merton’s summary definition of “technique” in the Foreword to the first edition of the English translation, is “any complex of standardized means to obtaining a predetermined result. The technical man is fascinated by results; by the immediate consequences of setting standardized devices into motion…” Richard Stivers will add that
“Technique transforms ends into means. What was prized in its own right now becomes important only if it can help achieve something else. And conversely, technique turns means into ends. No-how takes on an ultimate value.”

Much more can be said on this point but in the following few paragraphs we will extend this analysis one step further, asking one question:

Could it be the case that the technique of enlightened modern man which seeks to guarantee some predetermined result may, in actuality, best be encapsulated in the centuries-long mindset of fallen man? That is to say, is this way of viewing life the exact mentality which mitigates against the grace and beauty and wonder and infinite complexity of the Kingdom of God, wherein persona est existentia incommunicabilis—where each human person has an infinitely unique existence which can never be controlled, replicated or overcome?

(Note: The above statement comes from a 12th century theologian’s work in which he redefines personhood within the bonds of Love within the Holy Trinity—that is to say, the uniqueness that we see in each human personality is given to us—almost as an icon—of the creative, continually new and life-giving operations that exist within the Trinity itself. Such uniqueness, then, has its source within the Eternal Trinity—not in some sort of static, controlled, coopted 21st century Western individualism…)

And can such a technique of control, therefore, truly operate within the Kingdom of God?

Is there technique at all within this dimension?

Or is it, rather, a way of life; a living Reality that must be experienced; that must be learned; that must be tested in the fires of life?

Is it something that is not to be taken but given; not regulated but received?

Humility: The anti-virtue of the anti-system

This may a reason why the entire Christian tradition has focused on one word, despised for aeons before, but which ascended to the level of a chief virtue in the early church amidst the massively effective (at least, temporarily…) technique of control of the Roman empire, becoming that which encapsulated the Christian life and pilgrimage.

We begin with the desert communities of the 4th century,

Abba Anthony

‘I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, “What can get through from such snares?”

(i.e. what technique must I apply to ensure my survival?

Answer

“Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Humility.’”

Then the Desert Mother, Amma Theodora

She also said that neither asceticism, nor vigils nor any kind of suffering (That is to say, any human technique) are able to save—only true humility can do that.  

There was an anchorite who was able to banish the demons; and he asked them,

‘What makes you go away?  Is it fasting?’

They replied, ‘We do not eat or drink.’  

‘Is it vigils?’

They replied, ‘We do not sleep.’  

‘Is it separation from the world?’

‘We live in deserts.’  

‘What power sends you away then?’  

They said, ‘Nothing can overcome us, but only humility.’

We could go on to mention Augustine or John Climachus (step 25), or the Rule of St. Benedict or the medievals or the mystics:

“The remedy is to be aware of our wretchedness, and to fly to our Lord.

The greater our need, the more important it is to draw near to Him.”

Or (on the Reformation spectrum) Calvin:

I have always been exceedingly delighted with the words of Chrysostom, “The foundation of our philosophy is humility”;

And still more with those of Augustine, “As the orator, when asked, What is the first precept in eloquence? answered, Delivery: What is the second? Delivery: What the third? Delivery:

So, if you ask me in regard to the precepts of the Christian Religion, I will answer, first, second, and third, Humility.”

By humility he means not when a man, with a consciousness of some virtue, refrains from pride, but when he truly feels that he has no refuge but in humility.

Or Ignatius of Loyola (on the counter-Reformation end of the spectrum):

The third is most perfect Humility; namely, when—including the first and second, and the praise and glory of the Divine Majesty being equal—in order to imitate and be more actually like Christ our Lord, I want and choose poverty with Christ, poverty rather than riches, opprobrium with Christ replete with it rather than honors; and to desire to be rated as worthless and a fool for Christ, Who first was held as such, rather than wise or prudent in this world.

And the list goes on testifying to our continual need of vital humility in order to endure the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune, in Shakespeare’s words; or, in Paul’s the “flaming arrows” of τοῦ πονηροῦ which not only strike our hearts but set them on fire.

And Why?

Because this is, somehow, our counter-technique?

No, not a technique.

This is a reality. This is the “mind (nous, in Greek) of Christ”—

The only One Whose heart was truly meek (πραΰς) and lowly (ταπεινὸς);

Who emptied Himself (ἐκένωσεν), taking the form of a slave;

Who lived as a servant to all and humbled Himself (ἐταπείνωσεν) becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

In the words of Melito of Sardis (late 2nd c.), the Creator of the Universe, Who hung the stars in the sky is now hanging upon the cross.

And as Gregory so rightly says, one drop of His blood recreates the cosmos.

In bringing this to a close, we could say that there is something about this great anti-virtue of humility that not only tears down our inner, pharisaical techniques towards righteousness but also dismantles and banishes the principalities and powers (ἀρχάς & ἐξουσίας) of this age, opening us up to the vivifying Reality of the Kingdom of God.

Or, as one physician recently commented, which synthesizes all of this into one sentence, bringing it into the present moment:

“I wonder if our greatest weapon is our own weakness and our greatest weakness is our own pride.”

May the Lord work this understanding into the experiential depths of our person hour by hour.