READ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_cage
This expression (iron cage, stahlhartes Gehäuse) has a convoluted story: from a 17th century mystic to Max Weber on rationalization to Talcott Parsons's translation to Philip K. Dick with his 'Empire which never ended' and 'Black Iron Prison'. In any case, the idea is of something which weighs heavily on human souls and bodies, which creates a whole totality of constrictions- inner and outer-, which molds an objective reality with a congruence of its own- but a congruence both limited and limiting. There is little wonder that a whole variety of remedies has been proposed and tried- against something which does not seem to automatically pertain to the human condition per se, but superimposed on it. I am reminded of the memorable beginning of 'One-Dimensional Man':
"A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive corporations; the regulation of free competition
among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of prerogatives and national sovereignties which impede the international organization of resources. That this technological order also involves a political and intellectual coordination may be a regrettable and yet promising development.
The rights and liberties which were such vital factors in the origins and earlier stages of industrial society yield to a higher stage of this society: they are losing their traditional rationale and content. Freedom of thought, speech, and conscience were - just as free enterprise, which they served to promote and protect - essentially critical ideas, designed to replace an obsolescent material and intellectual culture by a more productive and rational one. Once institutionalized, these rights and liberties shared the fate of the society of which they had become an integral part. The achievement cancels the premises.
To the degree to which freedom from want, the concrete substance of all freedom, is becoming a real possibility, the liberties which pertain to a state of lower productivity are losing their former content. Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the Individuals through the way in which it is organized. Such a society may justly demand acceptance of its principles and institutions, and reduce the opposition to the discussion and promotion of alternative policies within the status quo. In this respect, it seems to make little difference whether the increasing satisfaction of needs is accomplished by an authoritarian or a non-authoritarian system. Under the conditions of a rising standard of living, non-conformity with the system itself appears to be socially useless, and the more so when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole. Indeed, at least in so far as the necessities of life are involved, there seems to be no reason why the production and distribution of goods and services should proceed through the competitive concurrence of individual liberties."
Food for fire, food for thought- like in Robert Duncan's poem. G.C.
DOCUMENTS 1: 'The modern world as a monolithic Iron Cage?...'. Stephen Kalberg, MWS, 1.2 (2001), 178-195 (save on the desktop the various pages, so that they can ben enlarged)
DOCUMENTS 2:
"The Empire never ended," Fat quoted to himself. That one sentence appeared over and over again in his exegesis; it had become his tag line. Originally the sentence had been revealed to him in a great dream. In the dream he again was a child, searching dusty used-book stores for rare old science fiction magazines, in particular Astoundings. In the dream he had looked through countless tattered issues, stacks upon stacks, for the priceless serial entitled "The Empire Never Ended." If he could find it and read it he would know everything; that had been the burden of the dream. Prior to that, during the interval in which he had experienced the two-world superimposition, had seen not only California, U.S.A., of the year 1974 but also ancient Rome, he had discerned within the superimposition a Gestalt shared by both space-time continua, their common element: a Black Iron Prison. This is what the dream referred to as "the Empire." He knew it because, upon seeing the Black Iron Prison, he had recognized it. Everyone dwelt in it without realizing it. The Black Iron Prison was their world.
Who had built the prison -- and why -- he could not say. But he could discern one good thing: the prison lay under attack. [VALIS]
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