GR 'Father Rapier'

[s~Z]

>From Chardin's _The Human Phenomenon_:

At no previous period of history has mankind been so well equipped nor made
such efforts to reduce its multitudes to order. We have 'mass
movements' ---no longer the hordes streaming down from the forests of the
north or the steppes of Asia, but 'the Million' scientifically assembled.
The Million in rank and file on the parade ground; the Million standardised
in the factory; the Million motorised---and all this only ending up with
Communism and National-Socialism and the most ghastly fetters. So we get the
crystal instead of the cell; the ant-hill instead of the brotherhood.
Instead of the upsurge of consciousness which we expected, it is
mechanisation that seems to emerge inevitably from totalisation.

'Eppur si muove!'

In the presence of such a profound perversion of the rules of noogenesis, I
hold that our reaction should  be not
one of despair but of a determination to re-examine ourselves. When an
energy runs amok, the engineer, far from questioning the power itself,
simply works out his calculations afresh to see how it can be brought better
under control. Monstrous as it is, is not modern totalitarianism really the
distortion of something magnificent, and thus quite near to the truth? There
can be no doubt of it: the great human machine is designed to work and MUST
work---by producing a super-abundance of mind. If it does not work, or
rather if it produces only matter, this means it has gone into reverse.