Does a mechanized life make people mechanical?

Whether routine, speed, and the city turn people into automata.

Direction Machine-like humans
Span 1553–1924
Questions 3
Works 17
Languages Spanish, French, German, English, Russian

  1. Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?

    Yes2

    No2

    • 1762Rousseau, Emile

      The only habit a child should form is to have no habits, so that he keeps control of his liberty and strength.

    • 1798Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

      Habit is a physical compulsion to go on as before; it takes the moral worth from good acts because it impairs freedom of mind, so as a rule all habit is objectionable.

    Depends on whether habit is intelligent or routine1

    • 1922Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct

      Habit is not mere repetition but an acquired disposition that amounts to will; routine habit enslaves, intelligent habit is the means of action.

  2. Q21Can repeated obedience train a person to obey without judgment?

    Yes6

    • 1553Loyola, Letter on Perfect Obedience (to the Jesuits of Portugal)

      Obedience should reach the third degree, obedience of the understanding: the subject submits his own judgment to the superior's and accepts commands blindly.

    • 1784Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

      Statutes and formulas, the mechanical instruments of reason, are the shackles of permanent immaturity; he criticizes 'do not argue, obey' while allowing obedience in office.

    • 1792Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

      Standing armies and women's education both train blind obedience; strengthening the mind would end it.

    • 1849Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government

      Soldiers and officials serve the state as machines, with no free exercise of judgment or moral sense.

    • 1859Mill, On Liberty

      One who lets the world choose his plan of life needs only the ape-like faculty of imitation; the faculties of judgment are exercised only in making choices.

    • 1894Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

      Military drill, by deception, blows and vodka, turns sensible young men into soldiers who would bayonet their own fathers on command.

    No1

    • 1803Kant, Kant on Education

      Absolute obedience in childhood is necessary because it prepares the child to obey laws as a citizen; the youth later obeys rules of duty, which means obeying reason.

  3. Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?

    Weakens4

    • 1762Rousseau, Emile

      A child should not want to eat, sleep or do anything at fixed hours, so he keeps control of his own liberty.

    • 1854Dickens, Hard Times

      Coketown's people all go in and out at the same hours to do the same work, and every day is the same as the one before.

    • 1864Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

      If all acts were tabulated by rules like a table of logarithms, man would be a piano key; he will act against his interest to prove he is not.

    • 1924Zamyatin, We

      The narrator praises the Tables of Hours that fix when everyone rises, works, eats and walks, and hopes to absorb even the two personal hours; the novel shows this as the end of freedom.

    Strengthens1

    • 1791Franklin, Autobiography

      To reach moral perfection he adopted the virtue of Order and a written scheme assigning each hour of the day, which he credits with his improvement.

    Strengthens, if not worshipped1

    • 1908Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

      A daily programme gives mastery over one's time, but one must not be tied to it like a slave to a chariot.