Man and Technology

In a small essay "Man and Technology" (1931), Oswald Spengler, continuing his reflections on the cyclical nature of world history and the decline of great civilizations begun in his treatise "The Decline of the West", first raises the question of the essence of technology. Considering different stages of the development of human society, he departs from the common instrumental understanding of technology, implying any purposeful activity, a "tactic of life", related to struggle - the Nietzschean will to power. Thus, the "Faustian" culture of Western Europe and North America subjugated nature and other countries through machine technology, creating conditions for an inevitable ecological collapse. In Spengler's view, the peoples of the West themselves became victims of their technologies: "The master of the world has become the slave of the machine."