Reading From Here to Eternity by James Jones and there was an interesting conversation about authority in the modern world. There is a discussion among the officers about the fact that most officers are as afraid of their superior officers as the enlisted men are. This pervades all the way through. One of the officers remarks that it has always been that way, and another says it wasn’t like that before, but he has a theory about why things have changed.

“In the past, this fear of authority was only the negative side of a positive moral code of "Honor, Patriotism, and Service”. In the past, men sought to achieve the positives of the code, rather than simply avoid the negatives. But the advent of materialism and the machine age changed all that. The machine destroyed the meaning of the old positive code. Obviously you can’t make a man voluntarily chain himself to a machine because it’s ‘Honorable’. The man knows better.

All that is left is the standardized negative side of the code as expressed in the law. The fear of authority which was once a side issue but today is the main issue, because it’s the only issue left. You can’t make a man believe it’s honorable, so you have no choice but to make him afraid of not chaining himself to his machine. You can do it by making him afraid of his friends’ disapproval. You can shame him because he is a social drone. You can make him afraid of starving unless he works for his machine. You can threaten him with imprisonment, or in the highest efficiency, you can make him afraid of death by execution. But you can’t tell him it is honorable any more. You have to make him afraid.  

The machine won its first inevitable victory over the individual. Honor died.“

This makes perfect sense, but I’m not sure what the "machine” is. They had been speaking of the officers fear of superiors in the army, so the natural thing would be to consider the modern army the machine referenced. But while the modern army certainly has more machinery, I would think the same appeals to patriotism and honor would be applicable as positive inducements. That said, I’ve never been in the army, and I’ve certainly never been in the army during a time of war, so maybe I’m missing something.

Perhaps there IS something less honorable in sending men into battle with machines. Perhaps the men really do feel like the machine is doing the work, what then do I need to do? There is a removal of oneself from the being the front line, the true wielder of the sword, the one through whom personal bravery, courage, and strength will win the day, to a mere pilot of machinery, or worse, one who simply helps move a machine into place.
Perhaps the machine is just the overwhelming size and bureaucracy of modern armies- it felt like the entire thing was too big for anyone to control, and was therefore like a machine running itself.

Whatever the understanding of machine is, perhaps the real linchpin in this philosophical understanding is the underlying materialism coupled with the machinery. If life consists of purely mechanistic movements, and is ultimately only an exceedingly complex machine, then what place honor? What place courage? Aren’t we just moving through a deterministic role-play?

The principle remains though: there are two ways to motivate people- rewards for the positive, punishment for the negative. If they won’t or can’t buy into the positive, then they must be coerced with the negative.