To reason this is to separate technical elements with no justification. Techniques of peace and alongside them other and different techniques of war simply do not exist, despite what good folk think to the contrary. It is the multiplication of men who are exluded from working which provokes war. We ought at least to bear this in mind when we boast of the continual decrease in human participation in technical operations. It involves a psychological adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods, supervision of family life, and training family life for military or industrial service.
Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization.
Everything is its concern. On the contrary, social plasticity and a clear technical consciousness are the general terms which it forcibly imposes on every area of the world. It dissociates the sociological forms, destroys the moral framework, desacralizes men and things, explodes social and religious taboos, and reduces the body social to a collection of individuals. Communities break up into their component parts. But no new communities form.