Globalization Is Necessary But Impossible: The Existential Contradictions Engineers (and Everyone Else) Are Ignoring

Abstract

A descriptive argument that globalization is both intentionally and unintentionally being created by modern engineering progress and the technical confidence of engineers is complemented by a normative argument that engineered globalization is creating existential risks that require more engineering to deal with them. Consideration is given to the distinctive nineteenth century emergence of English-speaking engineering and its collusions with capitalism as well as the twentieth century emergence of existential risk discourse. The distinctive existential contradiction in which we find ourselves is that although objectively engineering is now critical to human well-being, it is not a way of life that is able to be either epistemically or politically by the masses and thus impossible in any approximation of a democratic regime. Neither engineers nor social scientists nor humanities scholars are paying sufficient attention to this problem in the political philosophy of engineering. Quelle chimère est-ce donc que l’homme? quelle nouveauté, quel monstre, quel chaos, quel sujet de contradiction, quel prodige! — Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Fragment 164). The human condition is laced with contradictions. This essay is an effort to describe a new one in which we now find ourselves. At this stage it is little more than a ragged sketch or notes for such a description. Yet as an attempt to address a critical but too much ignored issue, perhaps it can be justified by G.K. Chesterston’s quip, that “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”