The Legacy of the Industrial Revolution
We live in a post-industrial age, which has been fundamentally shaped by the Industrial Revolution of the centuries past:
The Industrial Revolution … was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States, in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. The Industrial Revolution also led to an unprecedented rise in the rate of population growth.
Wikipedia contributors. “Industrial Revolution.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 18 May. 2020. Web. 1 Feb. 2026.
The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain and quickly spread to the British Empire’s global colonies, led to fundamental changes across every aspect of human experience. It led to an abundance of mass-produced commodities — the economies of scale that kicked in resulted in a plenitude of cheaply manufactured goods. It resulted in the ready availability of rapid new modes of transportation and communication — railway steam engines, which subsequently gave way to gasoline-powered automotive internal combustion engines; steamships, which subsequently gave way to aircraft; telegraphy, which subsequently gave way to telephony, wireless radio, television, and internet and cellular communication systems; hand calculators, which subsequently gave way to sophisticated computers, mobile phones, tablets, and so forth.
Needless to say, the Industrial Revolution has deeply influenced every aspect of our day-to-day lives:
The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists say that the major effect of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population in the western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history, …
Ibid.
More significantly, the Industrial Revolution has shaped our thinking in various ways. Whether we acknowledge it or not, it has led to a fundamental shift in how we think about everything. Initially, this shift in mindset was probably perceived as refreshing and enlightening, especially when one considers that it came rapidly at the heels of the so-called Age of Reason or Enlightenment — a time when rational discourse became pre-eminent over the benighted superstition, mythology, and religious dogma of prior centuries. However, while the Age of Reason may have been enlightening and uplifting, the Industrial Revolution appears to have resulted in what may be termed the Age of Conformity.
One of the most significant ways the Industrial Revolution shaped our lives is through its impact on education. Across the world, educational institutions were set up at the behest of and heavily funded by corporate entities, ostensibly to educate the public and lift them out of poverty. In reality, the idea was to educate the masses only enough to create an exploitable skilled labor force to meet industrial needs. In the British colonies, the East India Company established several educational institutions to mass-produce generations of skilled bureaucrats to manage the lower echelons of power in its sprawling overseas interests. In the United States, the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and other corporate tycoons invested in education to spawn new generations of labor and management to run their factories, and so forth.
The key point to consider is that education was provided to the public primarily to train an exploitable force of skilled workers, not necessarily to inspire any sort of awakening, enlightenment, or shift in consciousness. As such, conformity has been encouraged, and the educational systems of the industrial and post-industrial age resembled forms of mass indoctrination more than anything else.
Those whose speculations went beyond what could be exploited for revenue by the corporate elite were often savagely marginalized from society and academia. A classic example of this was the fate of the legendary Serbian-American inventor and scientific genius Nikola Tesla — a man with more scientific patents to his name than possibly anyone else in history. He was initially heavily backed by financiers such as George Westinghouse and J.P. Morgan after his research produced remarkable innovations, including alternating current and radio-controlled machines. However, when his ambitions went too far, in the estimation of his financial backers, when he failed to conform to the conceptual boxes determined by an Industrial Age educational system, he was abandoned and left to die alone and impoverished in a New York City hotel room.
It is important, in my estimation, to come to a clear understanding of the many ways that the Industrial Age and its educational systems have limited and constrained our thinking — creating boxes around our minds where, previously, there were none — indoctrinating us to serve the pervasive corporate and state machinery. Without such an understanding of the limitations and pressures that continue to be placed on our thinking, there is no way we can meaningfully expand our minds and grow individually and as a species.
Some of the many ways that the Industrial Revolution and Age have influenced our thinking at a deep, fundamental level include the following:
It has produced a consumerist mindset in the public, with the commodification of everything, including, in many cases, human beings, to various degrees. It even goes so far as to perpetuate a global industry in human trafficking and child enslavement, I would argue. As I mentioned earlier, education has been reshaped: it is now perceived as a process of manufacturing skilled professionals to fit various roles in society, rather than as a lifelong process of growth and discovery, as many of the great thinkers of the past understood it.
The Industrial Revolution has reshaped medicine, enabling the Big Pharma takeover of the medical system worldwide and the corresponding marginalization of holistic and alternative health practitioners. It has reshaped food production through the production of agrochemicals, fertilizers, and pesticides. It has given us GMOs, synthetic fast foods, frozen dinners (laced with preservatives and sugar), factory farming with its attendant abuse of livestock, and so forth. The sugar industry and its lobby have pushed for the inclusion of “added refined sugar” in everything, resulting in the global obesity epidemic.
Most significantly, especially in the current discourse on “global warming” and “climate change,” the Industrial Revolution introduced industrial pollution on a scale previously unheard of and unimaginable. Mass industrialization has given us Chernobyl, Fukushima, and every oil spill, radioactive hazard, and toxic chemical dump in history. It has given us the hole in the ozone layer, industrial smog, elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere, the Pacific garbage patch, sea turtles stuck inside disposable plastic six-pack rings, and beached whales with bellies full of plastic waste.
Even more insidiously than all of that, however, the Industrial Revolution has given us mass media, resulting in the indoctrination of the masses at an industrial scale and the perpetuation of all manner of agendas — ultimately, limited modes of thinking and limitations placed on innovation and imagination. The proliferation of mass media has perpetuated, and continues to perpetuate, a monolithic cultural establishment with a conformist mindset. This cultural establishment actively discourages and marginalizes all dissent, originality, individuality, and innovativeness, even though, paradoxically, scientific innovation is the very backbone of the industrial engine.
Thus, we see the ultimate paradox of the Industrial Age — the very scientific, innovative spirit that made it possible, originally, is being progressively stifled out of existence by the cultural establishment it has created — until, at this point, it is hard to find anywhere, even in academic and research circles.
The consequences of this trend are numerous — it has produced a widespread loss of individuality and originality and a pervasive “groupthink” and spirit of conformity. It has resulted in a society of self-regulating “sheeple” who are afraid to step out of line for fear of being punished. Or, is it more accurate to describe our society as lemmings going off a cliff? The public is now easily manipulated by unscrupulous “elites” — political and cultural leaders — because it fails to question authority meaningfully, even when it is deliberately misled, kept in the dark, and lied to. The public is increasingly willing to acquiesce to invasive surveillance imposed by the state and corporate bodies in the interest, supposedly, of “security.” Alternative thinkers are widely ridiculed, marginalized, and labeled as “conspiracy theorists” because their ideas are perceived as being far-fetched, incomprehensible, and unbelievable. There is no general objection even when such personalities are censored on social media platforms and their rights are stripped.
Thanks to this pervasive post-Industrial Age culture of conformity and acquiescence, the public does not object even to the general rollout of demonstrably hazardous technologies such as 5G cellular towers and influenza vaccines. Instead, the public is easily distracted and kept preoccupied and in the dark by shallow media spectacle — spectator sports and television sitcoms — the “bread and circuses” of our time. Furthermore, we see the elevation in status of corporate CEOs and entrepreneurs, who are often perceived as mythic figures — highly paid and widely revered. Simultaneously, thanks to mass media, we see a rise in the status of media personalities — television anchors, film actors, stand-up comedians, and other performers — who are regarded as superhuman, larger-than-life celebrities, though this is obviously no more than an illusion perpetuated by the media machine.
Ultimately, one has to come to realize how deeply the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent industrial and post-industrial ages have shaped our lives and our thinking — often beyond our ability to recognize. So much of what we take for granted in this modern, twenty-first-century age of convenience and abundance has been made possible thanks to the Industrial Revolution. But though it has made life much easier in a number of ways — for example, in the creation of the experience of leisure, which was previously hard to come by — it has, nevertheless, constrained, limited, and boxed-in our thinking and our experience of life in a number of crucial ways, and continues to do so to this day.
It is only when we collectively experience something like the global shutdown caused by the recent Coronavirus outbreak, which has resulted in a pause in the perpetually running engine of the global economic system, that we are able to stop and take a moment to appreciate and understand the impact that the Industrial Revolution has had — and continues to have — on our lives. And we can begin to question whether it is a positive, healthy trend; whether we can or should change things in some way going forward; and whether we can think outside the box and question our reality in fundamental ways, with an eye toward improving circumstances for future generations.
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