nomorefakenews | January 31 2013
The ability to separate components of a machine, to increase the efficiency and power of each component, to link up all the elements in smoother ways; this is one of the hallmarks of the technological society.
And when the current machine is superseded by a new one, the process of improving efficiency starts all over again.
But a human being is not a machine, because consciousness is not a machine.
The rise of what has been called industrial psychology, or scientific management, tries to overcome that “flaw.” This is described well in Scott Noble’s film, Social Engineering in the 20th Century (posted at YouTube).
For example, the modern factory assembly line, in which workers did multiple tasks and functioned as skilled artisans, was overthrown in favor of a system in which each worker performed the same severely restricted, specialized task over and over again. A machine making machines.
And not just in America. In Russia, in the early stages of the revolution, worker-owned companies were on the rise. But that development was too conscious, too participatory. Lenin imposed his top-down version of human machines making machines, all in the service of constructing a super-state.
In the same way, the rise of psychology and psychiatry reflect the impulse to treat the mind as a machine. The expanding concoction of so-called mental disorders are arbitrary attempts at categorizing human thought, desire, and behavior as diseases.