ABSTRACT
Among the recent developments in Western culture, secularism is undoubtedly on the rise, and religious faith and the influence of Christian denominations in public discourse has declined. Technology has become, in effect, a form of magic. Its effects have been so completely developed and its inner mechanisms so enhanced that it operates seamlessly, providing not only relief from the burdens of life, but enabling us to live in a form of luxury. Watching old movies reinforces the point that one of the contradictory effects of recent technology is to make the culture static. To summarize the effects of technologization in a social sense is to say that it results in replacing reality, in other words, the lifeworld, with a photoshopped image of the real thing. In terms of contemporary ethical theory, what technologization promotes is egoism, an egoism that is somewhat like that of Nietzsche for it promotes an inflated sense of self-importance on the cosmic level.
