Did the industrial revolution make us dehumanized, or superhuman?

By Mark Horne, Contributor Monday, August 22, 2022

Many believe that “the Industrial Revolution was the most profound revolution in human history.” I think there was a more radical revolution on the first Easter Sunday, but I agree that the industrial revolution was more profound than anything that happened in the American war for independence, the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, or the Russian Revolution et cetera.

But many remain deeply ambivalent or outright hostile toward the amazing change in production that took place at that time. Despite the material improvement in the standard of living, factory production is viewed as inhuman. People want to “rage against the machine.”

All right, I get it. Monotonous labor on a production line can be unpleasant.

But are we really dealing with something intrinsically dehumanizing, or are we dealing with the fact that monotonous labor is something in which we would rather not engage? Is it possible that narratives we tell ourselves are causing more unpleasantness than the actual process?

Is the concept of “machine” entirely opposed to human existence? I wondered this when I noticed a power lifter chose the handle “Celine the Machine.” She chose the name because it rhymed, but she obviously didn’t think it was intrinsically dehumanizing. On the contrary, it denoted the capability to execute heavy lifts, heavier that almost all other females of her age and weight on the planet. “Machine” has connotations closer to the superhero Iron Man than the slaves of The Matrix.

Is being part of a production line so different? People, working through coordinated effort, are producing things in vast quantities they could never produce on their own, or without the mechanical tools that we know as machines.

And the machines are arguably modeled on human behavior and society. Think of any movie you've seen, set in the past, where a house is on fire. What do the people do? They form a line between a source of water and the burning building so they become, in essence, a human conveyor belt, transporting buckets of water far faster than any one of them could on their own. Human society is the original machine, with each person playing a role to produce an item that no one alone could produce, at least not as efficiently.

Machines are simply tools that help make the process of human cooperation more productive. Together, we make ourselves capable of feats that could never happen on our own. The human body itself is arguably analogous to a machine. Many of you have likely heard the Apostle Paul’s words describing the church as a body, but it might help us have a different perspective on the Industrial Revolution, too:

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.(1 Corinthians 12:14–26 ESV)

Mark Horne has served as a pastor and worked as a writer. He is the author of The Victory According To Mark: An Exposition of the Second Gospel, Why Baptize Babies?,J. R. R. Tolkien, and Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men. He is the Executive Director of Logo Sapiens Communications and the writer for SolomonSays.net.