30All judgments of value[...] implies that you believe yourself to be free, that you represent yourself as speaking freely rather than as being in the grip of unconscious forces which talk across you, so to speak, without your being aware of the fact.
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31The problem is, however, that I have yet to meet anyone, materialist or otherwise, who was able to dispense with value judgments.
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32It is important to note that, before all else, technique contains means and not ends, that is, it can be placed in the service of different ends, but does not of itself choose the end. Essentially the same technique will serve a pianist playing classical or jazz, traditional or modern, but the question of choosing which works to play does not in any sense derive from technical competence.
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33[Technique] generally designates the ensemble of means required in order to achieve a given end. It is in this sense, for example, that we say of a painter or a pianist that s/he possesses a "good technique;" to indicate that they mastered their art sufficiently to be able to paint or play whatever they wish.
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34In the technological world which from now on means the world as such, since technology is a planetary phenomenon without limits, it is no longer a question of dominating nature or society in order to be more free or more happy, but of mastery for mastery's sake, of domination for the sake of domination. Why? For no end, precisely, or rather, because it is quite simply impossible to do otherwise given the nature of societies entirely governed by competition, by the absolute imperative to "advance or perish."
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