Techno-Messianism: The Ouroboros of Western Liberal Democracy
Part I - The World as We Know It
“We know how much the Internet has changed America, and we are already an open society. Imagine how much it could change China.
In the knowledge economy, economic innovation and political empowerment, whether anyone likes it or not, will inevitably go hand in hand.”
“Techno-Messianism”1.
If you were to Google this term, you wouldn't find much: there’s apparently a The New Republic article from 2010 calling out the Gates Foundation for its PR “techno-messianic delusion”, hyping ‘philanthrocapitalism’ as a solution to climate change, and a more recent one from May 2022 published in Noema Magazine criticising a so-called “techno-messianic” approach to Covid (in the sense that we’re starting to focus more on “vaccination” and “cures” as the be-all, end-all for controlling epidemics, instead of also tackling the causes that lead them to occur in the first place).
Both articles use “techno-messianic” as an adjective. And while they may be on to something, and indeed deal with some of the dimensions of what I’m about to write, there’s a reason why I use capitals and a noun:
Techno-Messianism is the hidden ‘ideology’ that underpins much of the contemporary world and that took hold of the West during the fading years of liberal democracy, where it remains particularly influential. It is causally linked to both the popular perception of the successes of the Western industrial-technological society of the 19th/20th centuries, and the deindustrialisation and transition to a hyper-financialised services / knowledge economy in the late 20th century, with the consequent technocratic post-political society that followed that transition.
In fact, Techno-Messianism is the socio-cultural emanation of the very same undercurrents that brought us Post-Politics. Techno-Messianism is the unshakable belief that history always moves forward, that technology will always have a good outcome (or at least the good outcomes will always compensate for the bad ones), and that all problems can be solved by throwing more tech at it, even when the problems do not have a technical nature or solution. It’s Auguste Comte’s Law of Three Stages, but at the end of the chain, where Positivity has degenerated down back to Fetishism.
Apart from ‘Tech as Salvation’, the Messianic nature of Techno-Messianism can also be seen in how its discourse is often framed around a discourse inspired by the Great Man Theory of History, just like the messiahs and saviours of times gone.
The CEOs and ‘Disruptors’ are the new caste of Messiahs, vested with superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities or even divine inspiration. They often dress symbolic clothing like the religious figures of old, adopt para-religious imagery in public appearances (e.g. Steve Jobs' walk-in on stage), and offer promises of a better tomorrow if you just believe them.
But can there ever be an ideology that underpins a political system without it being expressly professed by its adherents?
Although many historians argue there was no such thing as a political system called ‘Feudalism’ in Medieval Europe - with each feud having its own customs and rules -, the fact is that nearly everyone agrees that all existing political systems at the time shared certain characteristics, in particular certain beliefs, and those beliefs informed political practice, which is what is conventionally referred to as ‘Feudalism’.
None of the people living in feudal times considered themselves as living under Feudalism though. The term ‘feudal’ is registered in writing for the first time in the 15th century, right around the twilight of Feudal Europe, and ‘feudalism’, in the modern understanding of the word, is used for the first time just before the French Revolution.
We therefore don’t need to name things in advance for them to exist.
But what’s the appeal? Why would people flock to something they cannot name?
Techno-Messianism is extremely appealing for a number of reasons - and these reasons differ depending on who you’re talking about.
Type A Clergy - For technocratic political decision-makers, it is a ‘polite society’ way of simplifying reality in an increasingly complex world. When you [rightfully] abhor populists, that, either out of ignorance or malice, find really easy, simple (and wrong) solutions to complex problems, but you do not have an answer to those problems yourself either (or you’re not looking forward to the hassle that comes with committing to solve them), your recourse is Techno-Messianism. “Carbon dioxide emissions? Nah, we’ll just invent carbon capture technologies”. In doing so, you also postpone any difficult solution to a future that may not come in the first place, or where you might not even be around anymore;
Type B Clergy - For economic decision-makers and their minions (e.g. the board of an FT Global 500 company, or the McKinsey consultant preparing a fancy PowerPoint for them), it’s a perfect way of obfuscating their (frequent) incompetence and/or responding to market demands for Techno-Messianic material (more on that below). Also helps with stocks, superstonks, and idiot retail investors.
For everyone else, including for the individuals above in their private lives outside of their pastoral functions in the ballot box or the boardroom, but also for the Average Joe who is neither a political or economic decider, it’s a bit of salvation and guilt while sitting on the pew at the back of the church:
On the one hand, in a world where God no longer exists, Techno-Messianism can offer us salvation in trying times, the promise of a better future for people who do not believe in divine intervention. This also explains why it often assumes so many cult-like characteristics. The future will be better because we have the technology.
On the other hand, Techno-Messianism can also serve as a way of papering over the guilt we feel over our collective inability to repeat the perceived “success story” of the West during the 20th century.
As our ‘Post-Politics’ environment does not seem to allow us to explore other political alternatives to our present challenges, the default approach is to double-down on what made the 20th century an apparent success for the West, in the hope that we can replicate it again.
Throw more technology and free market economics at it. And/or assume that the technology you have now has yet to “find a use case”, but will definitely find it at some point and bring us closer to the promised future.
This also means that it is now anathema to question technology for technology’s sake. That, I believe, has taken quite a toll on the calculus of political deciders, as they have to answer to a voting public that is enthralled to Techno-Messianism, and to the pressure of economic deciders who see in the Techno-Messianic discourse a way to make a profit and/or obfuscate their own incompetence.
Think, just as an example, of the countless number of politicians / regulators reluctant to regulate cryptocurrency out of existence for fear of “stifling innovation”, and the media’s unexplainable silence over the huge conceptual scam that cryptocurrencies quite simply are, and also over what is ultimately a mass industry for sanctions evasion and money-laundering (with the consequent security implications).
This, in my opinion, was a side-effect of the Techno-Messianism we live in. Generally speaking (exceptions will exist), it was not corruption: it’s much deeper than that.
But Techno-Messianism is not universal. It leaves a lot of people behind who do not adhere to it. But in our Post-Political environment, it is not like the people who are left behind have the ability to resist in any constructive manner.
The result is a reemergence of old, often millennial, forces that cater to this ignored audience:
Populism
They’re your blue-collar workers of yesteryear, who were left without a job (or underemployed) after our general transition to a services economy; they’re the rural inhabitants of France, the UK, the US Midwest, the East Germans who see their children leaving for the big cities to work as silly professional PowerPoint makers and tech buzzword consultants, or, worse, working at a crypto startup, as the hospitals around them crumble and the local police station is only manned twice a week for lack of resources and people to man them.
They see their kids living lives they cannot comprehend. They see scams everywhere, often with a technological veneer (e.g. crypto, betting apps, bonafide online scams), and no one being punished. They are frequently victimised online and have little to no legal recourse.
They see billionaires launching rockets while zero-hour contracts become the norm again, and the Social Democratic party they voted for (EU) or the Trade Union they belonged to (US) is simply no more, or, if it is, it has either gone full Techno-Messianic (e.g. most Social Democratic parties in Europe) or lost any relevance they might have had (Trade Unions in the US).
Techno-Messianism sparks hatred for those who are “in” among the outsiders, the new haves and the have-nots. It is a powerful gateway to populism.
Religious extremism
As we saw above, Techno-Messianism drains much of its ‘vital energy’ from a cult-like hope in ‘The Tomorrow’ that assumes religious undertones.
It’s only evident that religious extremisms see in it a direct threat to its “monopoly of belief”. They might not even be fighting the same battle, but Techno-Messianism does occupy part of the same collective brainwave previously occupied by religious fundamentalism.
This is particularly powerful if said fundamentalists are scientifically illiterate and do not understand the technological part of Techno-Messianism, as there is then a feedback loop with regards to science denialism.
Science Denialism
With Techno-Messianism, comes a lot of hand-waving. Fake promises, miraculous solutions, “fake it till you make it” - it’s not Theranos, or Sam Bankman-Fried, or Elon Musk’s hyperloop or whatever. It’s all over the place in Silicon Valley.
Holmes did not find a way to revolutionise blood testing. Everyone you knew who got into the much touted crypto after all the advertising and web propaganda lost their money. Elon Musk has been selling cars and promising autonomous driving for almost 10 years now. Elon Musk’s The Boring Company is a Scam Company, and he’s also not going to Mars, nor even offering you a Full Self-Driving capability in a Tesla, ever. The examples are countless. There is so much, but so much grift in the tech sector.
Scientific denialism in its many forms, ironically enough supercharged by the tech sector’s social media (or perhaps it’s not that ironic - it’s just a feedback loop), is augmented by this.
If “this Theranos thing everyone is talking about, and that even Henry Kissinger invested in, is a fraud, then WHAT isn’t?”.
In a way or another, omnipresent tech fraud ends up casting a shadow on legitimate technology.
After all, in the Average Joe’s mind, that nebulous concept called “pharma / healthcare company” does not offer much distinction between Theranos and Pfizer.
Techno-Messianism is not exclusive to the West. It’s very much alive, including in China, the second-in-line behind the US.
But either because of the fact Techno-Messianism emerged there, somewhere in the West Coast, as a result of factors that were unique to the West / US, or simply because of the fact that the West remains the only geo-political region of the world where public opinion has more of a direct political impact (vis-a-vis autocracies), the reality is that Techno-Messianism holds a much greater political sway in the West than it does elsewhere in most of the World.
Techno-Messianism is a perfect example of the West becoming a victim of its own success. The very own things that put our (relative) prosperity in motion - i.e. the building up of our capitalist societies and markets, later on representative democracy, but, let’s be honest, also the winner-takes-all historic exploitation of other peoples - are also the things from which Techno-Messianism emerged.
And, more recently, with the hyperfinancialisation of our economy, the readoption of the view that monopolies do not need to be broken if they “benefit the market”, and the removal en masse of our industrial core to (then) developing markets, our old capitalist model has been completely overhauled and fine-tuned to work as a lean, short-term machine. We live in the age of M&As, Private Equity, and slash-and-burn corporate acquisitions.
This short-term machine, working alongside a short-term-based society that votes with short-term interests and whatever is the latest hot topic that is on its mind, is not fit for the increasingly complex world we live in - particularly in an increasingly divided world where autocracies, as tight-knit and internationally assertive as they’ve never been, resort to tools and mechanisms that exploit the weaknesses of Western liberal democracies.
This is an expanded version of a comment originally published by the author on Reddit in September 2022. It will serve as the starting point for a weekly series titled 'The Ouroboros of Western Liberal Democracy' throughout September 2024.