ABSTRACT
Times have changed. Behavior that once would have resulted in shunning or arrest has now become common. How has society arrived at this point? Tracing this story requires a dive into philosophy. Our social conditions today are in many ways unique; nonetheless, our circumstances have been mapped by dead philosophers. Hegel, for instance, understood that there is a rhythm to events, that innovations cause rebound effects, and advances provoke their opposite. Thoughtful people have identified an array of challenges facing society: food security, climate change, pandemics, overpopulation, weapons of mass destruction, collapse of the global financial market. They have labored tirelessly to devise solutions—improved crops, more efficient sources of power, better birth control and the empowerment of women, enhanced scanning of incoming cargo, better monitoring of stock activity. These efforts have accomplished a great deal of good. But the solutions being offered are overwhelmingly technological in nature. Our passions are thought of as unmanageable; progress is defined by improving our tools rather than ourselves. This raises the danger noted by Thoreau: we may become the tool of our tools.
