Technological rationality neutralizes guilt and conscience under reification

Evidence

In this general necessity, guilt has no place. One man can give the signal that liquidates hundreds and thousands of people, then declare himself free from all pangs of conscience, and live happily ever after. The antifascist powers who beat fascism on the battlefields reap the benefits of the Nazi scientists, generals, and engineers; they have the historical advantage of the late-comer. What begins as the horror of the concentration camps turns into the practice of training people for abnormal conditions—a subterranean human existence and the daily intake of radioactive nourishment. A Christian minister declares that it does not contradict Christian principles to prevent with all available means your neighbor from entering your bomb shelter. Another Christian minister contradicts his colleague and says it does. Who is right? Again, the neutrality of technological rationality shows forth over and above politics, and again it shows forth as spurious, for in both cases, it serves the politics of domination. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 346

Categorization

• XREF: Direct line to modern debates about bureaucratic genocide, drone warfare, and the banality-of-evil thesis. — connects to: Technologically educated masses paradoxically exhibit readiness to accept despotism; Technological and social progress produces psychological regression and instinctual fixation.; Technological rationality erodes individual critical reason and produces mechanical conformity — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 23 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Technological rule substitutes causality for choice and effaces the Other #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 623
• Technical remoteness from victims enables moral substitution #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 459
• Functional task separation replaces moral responsibility with technical responsibility #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 293
• Diffusion of responsibility, distortion of harm, and dehumanization each neutralize moral restraint #corroborates (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 62
• Electronic harms carried out remotely escape personal moral control because outcomes stay diffuse #exemplifies (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 477
• Moral self-regulation is not a fixed conscience but can be selectively disengaged #corroborates (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3940
• Conscience can be selectively disengaged without psychological instability #corroborates (0.72)