---
title: Von Hildebrand on Machine Culture
tags: [Quote, Personalism]
summary: Dietrich von Hildebrand objects to the mechanization of the person.
---


> [The true Christian] must firmly refuse to let himself be dragged
> into a whirlpool of activities in which he is driven incessantly
> from one task to another, purpose succeeding purpose, without a
> pause.  The present period of perpetual unrest, in which the
> machine has come to be the model, the *causa expemplaris*, of
> well-nigh all things, in which everything is caught in a process
> of instrumentalization, in which *Leistung* ("achievement") with
> the emphasis on quantity and mere technical perfection, has
> assumed priority over *being* in a substantial and meaningful
> sense---this period of shallow hyperactivity is only too apt to
> drag us into that whirlpool of outward preoccupations.
> [@hildebrand90 138]