The desire for technocracy – or technécracy?
An online survey requested by VRT (the national broadcaster here in Belgium) and the newspaper De Standaard shows that 60% of Flemish people are in favor of replacing democracy with a technocracy – a form of government in which experts make decisions instead of democratically elected politicians. In fact, 35% also want a strong leader "who doesn't have to worry about parliament and elections".
A survey is just a survey, of course. In the same study, 81% of respondents also say they swear by a democratic system. These conflicting results could mean anything. That the survey should not be taken seriously. Or that man doesn’t always know what he desires.
In any case, I assume that VRT is not surprised by the population's inclination for technocracy. Have they not done exactly this in the last three years: created public broadcasting in which politicians were put behind society's school desks as children and the ‘experts’ as teachers at the front of the class? Let me add right away: I’m not surprised that the mainstream media has chosen this approach. And certainly not that part of the population goes along with it. Within the dominant view of man and the world, this choice is not only perfectly logical, it is an ethical duty.
The materialistic worldview considers the universe and everything in it as a big machine that can be rationally understood to its core. It makes perfect sense then that decision-making is left to experts – people with the most rational knowledge about the workings of the machine. On what grounds would you allow a democratically-elected politician to make decisions when the machine malfunctions, for example, during pandemics and climate crises? That's not just stupid; it would be criminal.
Technocracy is the inevitable result of a worldview according to which the essence of life can be rationally understood. So the question arises: is that correct? I see some people frown: "How would facts and laws of nature behave, other than rationally? Science’s success proves that, doesn't it?” Well, that depends on your opinion of science.
Science, on the one hand, is an impressive accumulation of rational knowledge. It has given us high-speed internet and nuclear bombs. On the other hand, it also shows us in an unparalleled way that the essence of life always eludes rational understanding and control. For example, the behavior of elementary material particles is completely absurd from a rational point of view. Nobel Prize laureate and physicist Niels Bohr expressed this with these winged words: “When it comes to atoms, language can only be used as poetry”.
Complex dynamical systems theory shows us even more clearly: every complex and dynamic system – and that includes most phenomena in nature – ultimately behaves like an irrational number. It can begin to behave chaotically at any time and then become completely rationally unpredictable.
Therefore, rational knowledge is always and eternally incomplete and in motion. What is scientifically correct today will be obsolete tomorrow. In its journey forward, science does not follow a straight line. It circles around the object it is trying to understand, swinging in an unpredictable way.
Tomorrow's scientific knowledge may say the opposite of today's scientific knowledge. According to Niels Bohr – I defer to him once again – that is characteristic of any advanced theory: it ends in paradox. Sailing on the compass of rational knowledge, therefore, is like sailing on a compass that steers north today and south tomorrow.
Science is undeniably one of the greatest achievements humanity has ever produced and we must walk the path of rational analysis to the end again and again. But rational knowledge is not the end goal of the journey. Nor can it be the guiding principle of life. The technocratic idea is incredibly naive in this regard.
So, if not technocracy, what can be that guiding principle? Scientists have already started to answer that question. In the words of Renée Thom, mathematician and founder of systems theory: if you study an object rationally long enough, you develop the ability to ‘get into the skin of it’. You get a certain feel for it, in the same way as an art student suddenly gets a feel for his craft.
It is at this point that technical-rational knowledge takes a qualitative leap and becomes a form of truth that the ancient Greeks referred to as techné. Rational knowledge is always a form of external knowledge; techné, on the other hand, corresponds to a sense of the interior, and essence, of the object.
If the object to be known is another human being, or a society, or human existence itself, then this “interior” knowledge allows people to really connect with each other in an essential and meaningful way, allows a leader to get in touch with the people he leads, and allows man to discover the essence of his own existence. As such, this kind of knowing offers a solution to the greatest ailments of our time: the loneliness and fragmentation of society, the degeneration of leadership into bureaucratic tyranny, and a growing sense of life's meaninglessness.
We can thus interpret the idea of a knowledge-led society in two ways. A technocracy is a form of government based on technological control and technical-rational knowledge; a “technécracy” is a society based on techné – a kind of intuitive knowing to which rational-technical knowledge is only the prelude.
Perhaps it is precisely this last kind of society that people are really looking for when they indicate in one and the same survey that they desire both a technocracy and a democracy.
I'm reminded of knowledge versus wisdom. As individuals we gather raw information and rational knowledge from a very early age. Slowly, as we mature, we gain experience with that knowledge and begin to know it in different contexts. Ideally we build up an associated sense of good judgement, deep insight, and "intuition" surrounding that knowledge. In other words, we become wise, and we apply our wisdom to life as we live it. We share our wisdom with those who would listen. A life guided by wisdom is a life well lived.
It strikes me that people who prefer a technocracy based solely on rational or logical thought are "voting" to live in an immature society not guided by wisdom. Any technology not guided by the morals and ethics that have proven themselves over the ages is a technology recklessly applied. In contrast, a society guided by such wisdom, and by those who would provide it, is a society worth nurturing.
Maurice Samuel makes a similar point as you when he discusses the importance of relying on his own experiences in order to grasp techné:
“There is no test or guarantee of a man's wisdom or his reliability beyond what he says about life itself. Life is the touchstone: books must be read and understood in order that we may compare our experience in life with the sincere report of the experience of others. But such a one, who has read all the books extant on history and art, is of no consequence unless they are an indirect commentary on what he feels around him.
Hence, if I have drawn chiefly on experience and contemplation and little on books - which others will discovery without my admission - this does not affect my competency, which must be judged by standards infinitely more difficult of application. Life is not so simple that you can test a man's nearness to truth by giving him a college examination. Such examinations are mere games - they have no relation to reality. You may desire some such easy standard by which you can judge whether or not a man is reliable: Does he know much history? Much biology? Much psychology? If not, he is not worth listening to. But it is part of the frivolity of our outlook to reduce life to a set of rules, and thus save ourselves the agony of constant references to first principles. No: standardized knowledge is no guarantee of truth. Put down a simple question - a living question, like this: "Should A. have killed B.?" Ask it of ten fools: five will say "Yes", five will say "No." Ask it of ten intelligent men: five will say "Yes," five will say "No." Ask it of ten scholars: five will say "Yes," five will say "No." The fools will have no reasons for their decisions: the intelligent men will have a few reasons for and as many against; the scholars will have more reasons for and against. But where does the truth lie?
What, then, should be the criterion of a man's reliability?
There is none. You cannot evade your responsibility thus by entrusting your salvation into the hands of a priest-specialist. A simpleton may bring you salvation and a great philosopher may confound you.
And so to life, as I have seen it working in others and felt it within myself, I refer the truth of what I say. And to books I refer only in so far as they are manifestations of life.”
Additionally, Ernst Jünger would ask himself during World War 2 what one could “advise a man, especially a simple man, to do in order to extricate himself from the conformity that is constantly being produced by technology?” In contrast to Carl Schmitt, the answer Jünger, an atheist, eventually settled on was: “Only prayer.” For “In situations that can cause the cleverest of us to fail and the bravest of us to look for avenues of escape, we occasionally see someone who quietly recognizes the right thing to do and does good. You can be sure that is a man who prays.” Ultimately only a recovery of a sense of the transcendent, he decided, could serve as an antidote to nihilistic modernity’s temptations. Without it, “our freedom of will and powers of resistance diminish; the appeal of demonic powers becomes more compelling, and its imperatives more terrible.”