Anti-Technology Resistance

In 2019, the mining industry pulled 76 billion tons of material from the Earth's crust, a figure that is expected to explode by 2050. Non-metallic minerals come out on top, followed by fossil fuels and then metal ores (source: Circle Economy).

With 24.6 billion tons of biomass extracted in 2019, agriculture and industrial plantations are responsible for nearly 90% of water stress and the erosion of biodiversity in the world, according to the UN resources panel.

Necessary for industrialization and development, the construction of buildings and infrastructures (roads, highways, bridges, ports, airports, railways, water and electricity networks, etc.) are one of the main drivers of resource extraction.

Driven by technological progress, industrialization provides unprecedented power over inert matter and living beings. The unexpected and disastrous consequences of development have shown time and again that humans are unable to control this process.

Industrial society is unable to survive without coal, gas, and oil. According to the IMF, 85% of total global energy subsidies go to fossil fuels. These will be extracted until they are exhausted before being replaced by other sources of energy that are potentially even more destructive.

For more than a century now, manufacturers have been dumping all sorts of pollutants into the environment that contaminate the air, land, rivers and oceans. There is no organic food left on Earth. Microplastics are detected in human lungs and faeces, and perfluorinated components poison the blood of fetuses. Most non-human living things are very likely to be intoxicated as well.

Diseases linked to industrial lifestyles are exploding all over the world. Two billion people are already overweight or obese, and half of the world's population is expected to be affected by 2030. Cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, asthma, allergies, obesity, depression, dementia and psychological disorders of all kinds are multiplying in urbanized and industrialized regions.

The technological system condemns the majority of humanity to a life of slaves in the service of huge industrial and bureaucratic organizations. The age of machines was supposed to lead to the emancipation of humans, but in fact these machines only increased oppression, spread infamy and destroyed Nature. Transhumanism is an update of this dangerous utopia: the fantasy of deliverance from our human and terrestrial condition.

Technological development is providing businesses and states with increasingly powerful and invasive ways to monitor, control, and suppress populations reduced to human livestock. This is a process intrinsic to industrial society where technical progress “requires the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp” (Jacques Ellul).

From China to the United States via Europe and Japan, the NBIC convergence (Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, Computer and Cognitive Sciences) is a transhumanist society project adopted without any democratic consultation by all industrial powers. It is about improving human performance and optimizing living systems. According to experts in “existential risk”, these technologies are potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons for the survival of the human species.