The Human Way Out

by Lewis Mumford

Overview

Our age has been characterized as the Nuclear Age or the Space Age, to celebrate modern man's sudden command of time, space, and energy, in a fashion more absolute than he ever before dared to dream. But this bright side of science and invention has a dark face. As never before, ours has proved to be an age of mass extermination and mass destruction; and in the conflicts that now threaten between great states, extermination, too, may become absolute and universal. There is no mechanical escape from the dangers mankind as a whole now confronts: no rocket missiles or counter-missiles will save us. We must find the human way out. Instead of planting our flag on the moon, we must quickly move to reclaim this planet for humanity.

One fact should be plain at last to all open-eyed citizens. Our national policy of exploiting nuclear energy and developing nuclear weapons was conceived on false premises and has been directed toward unsound, and ultimately inhuman and morally repulsive objectives. As a result, the dangers we now face threaten not only ourselves and our children, not only the Russians and their children, but the very existence of the human race. What seemed only a distant possibility of danger to potential enemies in 1945, now lurks ominously in the shadows by our own doorstep; or, to speak more accurately, boldly circles over our heads.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940158700361
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	06/28/2017
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #97
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	106 KB

About the Author

Lewis Mumford, KBE (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford.

When Mumford described biotechnics, automotive and industrial pollution had become dominant technological concerns, along with the fear of nuclear annihilation. Mumford recognized, however, that technology had even earlier produced a plethora of hazards, and that it would do so into the future. For Mumford, human hazards are rooted in a power-oriented technology that does not adequately respect and accommodate the essential nature of humanity. Effectively, Mumford is stating, as others would later state explicitly, that contemporary human life, understood in its ecological sense, is out of balance, because the technical parts of its ecology (guns, bombs, cars, drugs) have spiralled out of control, driven by forces peculiar to them rather than constrained by the needs of the species that created them. He believed that biotechnics was the emerging answer, then, the only hope that could be set out against the problem of megatechnics, an answer that, he believed, was already beginning to assert itself in his time.

He served as the architectural critic for The New Yorker magazine for over 30 years. His 1961 book, The City in History, received the National Book Award. Lewis Mumford died at the age of 94 at his home in Amenia, New York on January 26, 1990.
[Adapted from the Wikipedia essay]