Ouroboros or The Mechanical Extension of Mankind by Garet Garrett

Author:Garet Garrett [Garrett, Garet]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781610165709

V

THE PARADOX OF SURPLUS

What does it mean? Can there be too many desirable and useful things? Can things be too cheap? You would say no. Surely, so long as any human want remains unsatisfied, things cannot be either too plentiful or too cheap. But there is another dimension.

Everything that is not still or dead must exist in a state of rhythmic tension. It is true of the plant, it is true of the animal, it is true of each race of plants and each race of animals, it is true of the kingdom of plants against the kingdom of animals. It is true of people, as individuals, as races, as a species. And it is true, also, of the machine.

In the living organism growth of tissue at a normal rate consonant with the rhythm is vital. A wild growth of that same tissue will be fatal. In the aggregate of life there is equilibrium among millions of different forms, each form striving but never succeeding to dispossess every other form and take the world. The oyster, if unhindered, would displace every other living thing on the earth in maybe ten generations and then, of course, perish for want of space in which to contain itself. What hinders the oyster and at the same time preserves it is that principle of tension in nature without which it would be impossible for innumerable forms and varieties of life, the relations of which to one another are reciprocal, neutral, hostile, anonymous, to exist together all in one great taut pattern.

Now regard the third kingdom, artificial, implanted with mechanical beasts, that contains civilization. Life in this environment is economic. Its characteristic behaviour is a progressive differentiation of labor. Tasks are divided and subdivided until, at length, there are countless separate groups of people, each one performing a singular function to which it is trained and tending to become unable to perform any other. The subdivisions are beyond enumeration. They multiply so fast that the book of the census cannot keep up with them.

The shoe industry, for example, does not consist in shoemakers. You might search it in vain for a shoemaker—that is, one who should know how to raise a pair of shoes from flat leather. In the shoe factory the material passes through a train of machines. Each machine is minded by an operative who performs one little specialized part of the work in endless multiple. The product is shoes by thousands of gross.

But who determines what kinds of shoe and how many shoes shall be made? What becomes of them when they are made? Who knows they can be sold? What if they are not saleable?

If you address these questions to one of the operatives minding a machine you will find him dumb. He knows only his own function.

It is very complicated. There are two industries here. One is the shoe industry; the other is the shoe machine industry. One could not exist without the other, yet they are separate and very unlike.

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