Mastery over nature becomes mastery over other humans, weakening the individual.

Evidence

78. Effectively summarizing the second part of William Leiss’s The Domination of Nature, W. Warren Wagar observes: “As Bacon and his followers never understood, the struggle for mastery over nature in a world divided into rival classes and nations becomes, above all, a struggle for power over one’s fellowmen. This brutal struggle for existence negates the gains made by technical progress. ‘The more actively is the pursuit of the domination of nature undertaken, the more passive is the individual rendered; the greater the attained power over nature, the weaker the individual vis-a-vis the overwhelming presence of society.’ The central fact of our time is not wealth or freedom, but the persistence of social conflict at all levels, to which science and technology are insatiably subordinated. We are as far as ever from mastery of ourselves.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 703 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Treating language as a self-running nature reduces humans to pilots of inert forces. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1217; The individual has lost the autonomy to realize the species; Enlightenment’s mastery over nature exceeds anything nature itself threatened humans with. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 258 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Dominating nature chiefly becomes power over other humans #corroborates (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 703
• Individual identity resists destruction because it depends on nature beyond the will #complicates (0.72)