Passage 1
To attribute these two great developments to the Central Committee, is to take a very narrow view of civilisation. The Central Committee announced the developments, it is true, but they were no more the cause of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period the cause of war. Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
Dependence, succession, and replacementLabour and mechanizationProgress and declinedependence · advanceslimited servant · rejectssuccessor · advancesCharacter and human developmentEconomic and material powerConsequences and welfareDiminishes autonomy
The passage presents the Machine as an increasingly opaque system that people serve without understanding as a whole. Specialization and inherited instructions reduce shared human knowledge, while the pursuit of comfort and exploitation of nature produce dependence and decadence. Calling this process “progress” is treated as a warning that technological progress has displaced human development.
Local word range 9586–10010