Ray Bradbury’s short story, The Flying Machine, attacks the modern unqualified embrace of technological advancement. The story is set in A.D. 400 in China where the Emperor is sipping tea in the garden of his palace near the Great Wall of China. A servant rushes up to him proclaiming a miracle; the Emperor asks if he means the goodness of the air, the tea, the beauty of the sea, or the fact that the sun has risen. The servant replies that he has seen a man flying in dragon shaped machine. The Emperor fortifies himself with more tea and sets out to see the “miracle.” When he does, he looks out over the town and the Great Wall and asks the servant who else has seen the flying man; the servant says that he is the only one. The servant then calls the man down to meet the Emperor.
The Emperor demands to know what the man has done. The man replies that he has flown; the Emperor repeats his demand, saying, “You have told me nothing at all.” The Emperor then asks the man if anyone else knows of his creation; the man says no and that his machine is the only one in the world. The Emperor then calls for his guards and the executioner. The man, terrified, asks, “What’s this! What have I done.”
The Emperor proceeds to give the lesson of the story. He says, “Here is the man who has made a certain machine and yet asks us what he has created. He does not know himself. It is only necessary that he create, without knowing why he has done so, or what this thing will do.” The Emperor then shows a machine he made to the man; this machine is “a garden of metal and jewels” with singing birds, fountains, and miniature people. He has created beauty. The man proclaims that he too has created beauty. The Emperor replies that one must sometimes lose a little beauty to keep the beauty that one already has; the Emperor fears the man who will use the machine to attack the Great Wall and China itself. He has the man executed, the machine burnt, and their ashes buried
together. He warns his servant on pain of death never to speak of what he saw. The servant tells the Emperor that he is very merciful. The Emperor replies, “No, not merciful, no, only very much bewildered and afraid. What is the life of one man against those of a million others? I must take solace from that thought.”
In looking at the message of this story, one must be sure to separate the wheat from the chaff. Any sort of situational utilitarian ethic must be rejected; whether such a message was the author’s intent is beside the point. This story tells of the danger of pursuing technology without purpose and without regard for the danger it poses or the beauty that it might destroy. Tolkien writes about the same theme in “The Scouring of the Shire,” and Lewis brings it up in The Last Battle. Conservatives must always be on guard against such attacks.
Of course no true conservative would argue that scientists and inventors with their heads in the clouds should be executed. I do not believe this is Bradbury’s message either. The execution of the inventor serves as an illustration of the gravity of his mistakes. Bradbury’s message about looking into the hidden costs of technological advances is a message that modern society needs desperately. Combine this technological urge with modern scientific reductionism and our humanity itself is at stake as human cloning for medical research and organ harvesting becomes increasingly accepted. Communications technology pulls us ever more fully into an inauthentic electronic existence at the expense of community.
Unfortunately, the question of preventing the technological destruction of humanity seems to be a problem without a solution. Government prohibitions on research and invention are perhaps just as destructive and, as history has demonstrated, are incapable of prevention. Church bans work similarly well. Community’s bonds have shrunk to the negligible. What exists today is the democratic call for further security and further comfort; scientists and inventors are only too willing to comply without regard for what they may be destroying.
Good analysis.
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