The Work of Social Atomization

The common error was to believe that if the individual were liberated from the smaller organic groups he would be set free. But in actual fact, he was exposed to the influence of mass currents, to the influence of the stage, and direct integration into mass society. Finally, uprooted, the individual became much less stable.
 
Jacque Ellul
Propaganda; The Formation of Men’s Attitude
 
 
1.) Most men are chameleons. They will blend into their socio-cultural background. Strip man of the Institutional covenantal backgrounds of a decidedly Christian family, community, and church, and man will not cease to be a chameleon. Instead, man will begin to blend into the larger pagan background of the pagan state, the pagan media-cultural complex, and the pagan legal framework.
 
Paradoxically enough, the Atomization of man that Ellul chronicles here does the yeoman work of creating mass man.
 
2.) On the issue of the uprooted individual becoming much less stable, I would contend that this is creating a kind of social insanity. Social sanity requires the kind of stability of which Ellul laments the loss. This kind of stability requires long established community and familial infrastructure, customs and routines that are inter-generational, and a sense of place. All those have been largely lost.
 
The uprootedness (the social insanity) that we often see in our social order can be directly traced back to the loss of our organic groups.
 
3.) However, this uprootedness serves the interest of the heathen state
 
An unstable and uprooted people are not likely to have the foundation or moral capital upon which to rebuke and resist the tyrannical state. It is a net positive for the usurpatious state to uproot and destabilize its citizenry because in doing so there is job security for the bureaucratic class.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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