Why the American Industrial Revolution Was the Worst Thing to Happen to Humanity

We cannot understand our modern world—and what’s wrong with it—until we understand how it came to be.

The Human after The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution isn’t just some historical event that took place; it fundamentally changed everything about how we live, work, and think.

The Industrial Revolution was a massive shift from hand-made, slow production in rural life to machine-based, fast, urban production. It started in the mid-1700s (around 1760) in Britain, then spreading to Europe, the U.S., and beyond.

Before it, people lived in small villages, grew their food, work depended on the season and was human-paced, and life was rooted in community and nature.

However, after the revolution, cities—characterized by dense buildings and skyscrapers—grew in size and prominence. Machines took over labor, and mass production and factory work became the norm.

While the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, the original wave that set everything else in motion, most people are familiar with the American Industrial Revolution.

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The American Industrial Revolution occurred between 1820 and 1900. It provided us with steel mills, railroads, assembly lines, and mass production, as well as cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago, and the titans known as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford.

While the Industrial Revolution is often portrayed as a positive moment in human history, I argue that it was one of the most detrimental. In this article, I’ll lay out the thesis for my statement. This includes:

1. Examining the positives that came with the Revolution,

2. Benefits that are seen as positives, but may be destructive,

3. Diving into the harmful physical ailments that arose from the Revolution,

4. Addressing the spiritual disease that was also a byproduct of the Revolution.

Without further ado, let’s review this pivotal period in human history.

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The Positive of The Industrial Revolution

Before we discuss the negatives that have come from the revolution, we’d be remiss if we didn’t call out the positives that occurred from the revolution.

To start, we have the key inventions that came to fruition. For example, we had the steam engine, which powered factories, trains, and ships, dramatically reducing the distance and time required. We also had railroads, which allowed goods and people to move faster and further.

A flood of inventions was released during this period, including the telegraph, electric light bulbs, the telephone, the assembly line, and more. These innovations made life more efficient and, in doing so, they reshaped human potential. A single person can now accomplish what once took a village—a lot faster, too.

The inventions can be seen as the best parts of the revolution, and that’s what technology is: the ability to enhance human potential.

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By the end of the 19th century, America had transitioned from a collection of countryside, rural states to a city-based, dominant industrial nation. The ability to produce steel, oil, and goods at scale gave the U.S. enormous global leverage — militarily, economically, and politically. The infrastructure built during this time still underpins much of the country today.

So, yes, these are good pieces from the Revolution. However, there are other aspects that some would see as positive, but upon closer look, have a damaging effect.

Let’s look at what those are.

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Remnants of the Revolution that Appear Positive

One of the most significant aspects of the revolution that mainstream may claim is positive is the creation of jobs.

Before the revolution, farming was the primary source of labor. However, farms were seasonal and unpredictable (droughts, floods, bad harvests). Factories created jobs on a scale never seen before.

Factories offered consistent wages, even if the work was grueling. And for many, this was the first time they earned money instead of bartering or subsistence farming¹. This growth gave rise to a massive middle class, one that could rise above the poverty class.

However, if farm work was seasonal and human-based, factory work was around-the-clock and driven by technology. The work was grueling, repetitive, and dangerous.

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Industrialization treated people like parts of a machine. Workers were packed into hazardous factories and worked 10–to 14-hour shifts. Repetitive tasks were the norm. Workers didn’t need to think—you just needed to show up and obey.

And yes, while the factories did compensate workers, who could now rise into the middle class, it still had an adverse financial effect.

While the economy grew, wealth became concentrated in the hands of a few. Men like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt controlled vast empires, crushing competition and rigging markets to maintain their dominance. Carnegie and Ford championed ideas like higher wages to boost productivity, which also contributed to the creation of consumerism.

As these corporations grew, the U.S. adopted laissez-faire capitalism—hands-off government, which has led to the technocratic oligarchy we see today.

Other mainstream benefits have a negative impact, such as moving away from the farm and rural areas to concrete cities and urban life, but that would take even longer to delve into. The takeaway here is that the American Industrial Revolution built the modern world — but at what cost?

It’s here that we dive into the negative effects, physically and spiritually, of the revolution.

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The Physical Impacts of the Revolution

First, we need to describe the physical ailments that appeared during this period that humanity had never seen before. As all of these inventions are being ushered to mankind, something else is unleashed on the earth: electricity.

The late, great,

Arthur Firstenberg

, in his book, The Invisible Rainbow², outlines this perfectly, and I pay an ode to him by starting the very first chapter of my book, An Unorthodox Truth, named after his work.

As electricity flooded the earth with all these inventions being created, the natural electricity in our bodies became affected, giving rise to a whole slew of diseases that humanity had never seen before. From Arthur’s book, we read the following:

We live today with a number of devastating diseases that do not belong here, whose origin we do not know, whose presence we take for granted and no longer question. What it feels like to be without them is a state of vitality that we have completely forgotten.

‘Anxiety disorder,’ afflicting one-sixth of humanity, did not exist before the 1860s, when telegraph wires first encircled the earth. No hint of it appears in the medical literature before 1866.

Influenza, in its present form, was invented in 1889, along with alternating current. It is with us always, like a familiar guest—so familiar that we’ve forgotten that it wasn’t always so. Many of the doctors who were flooded with the disease in 1889 had never seen a case before.

Prior to the 1860s, diabetes was so rare that few doctors saw more than one or two cases during their lifetime. It, too, has changed in character: diabetics were once skeletally thin. Obese people never developed the disease.

Heart disease at the time was the twenty-fifth most common illness, behind accidental drowning. It was an illness of infants and old people. It was extraordinary for anyone else to have a diseased heart.

Cancer was also exceedingly rare. Even tobacco smoking, in non-electrified times, did not cause lung cancer.

These are the diseases of civilization, that we have also inflicted on our animal and plant neighbors, diseases that we live with because of a refusal to recognize the force that we have harnessed for what it is.

So, yes, while the Revolution did give us great inventions, it came at a dramatic cost—the cost of the human physical condition.

But that’s not all. There’s also the spiritual degradation.

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The Spiritual Disease of The Revolution

As humanity shifted from a countryside living to a city-life dwelling, what you have is the conglomeration of masses of people within urban areas.

Also, during the Revolution, as mentioned, we had a laissez-faire capitalism—hands-off government—which allowed the titans of industry to do as they pleased. Not only did factories and corporations rise during this time, but the indoctrination of the population also increased. I’ve talked about this in many articles, such as:

• The Origins of Modern Public Education (Book Excerpt)

• How Millennials Were Setup To Fail

Instead of being open and connected with nature, humanity was now confined to close quarters—like rats in cages. Of course, this won’t bode well for any species, human or otherwise, and it wasn’t long before negative aspects began to emerge.

Hence, another industry, Big Pharma, comes on the scene to ensure everyone that everything is okay—and these psychiatric breakdowns were perfectly “normal.”—read my excerpt, Our Mental Reality.

Around this time, the psychiatrist Carl Jung began to examine the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the human condition. From my book, we read the following:

Jung pointed out that the development of modern mass society during the Industrial Revolution played a significant role in exacerbating the spiritual problem. As people migrated from small towns to large cities in search of work and opportunities, mass society emerged. While this brought benefits through increased division of labor, it also created issues. According to Jung, the individual in mass society became unstable, insecure, and easily influenced.

The individual’s insecurity in a mass society is a result of both the sheer number of people and the rise of a rational and scientific mindset that accompanied the Industrial Revolution. This mindset infiltrated various aspects of society, prompting social planners, politicians, and industrial leaders in the 19th and 20th centuries to believe that scientific methods could reshape society. As a consequence, society became increasingly uniform, while the importance of the individual diminished.

Jung cautioned against the perils of using science to remodel individuals and society. This approach resulted in the leveling down and blurring of the individual and all individual events, distorting reality into a conceptual average. Humans were reduced to anonymous units confined within mass formations. As a result, individuals lost their uniqueness and became insignificant numbers in the bureaucratic machinery.

A new kind of humanity emerged from the Industrial Revolution. One stripped of the essence of old, with its memory erased, to now work in factories for compensation.

This development is what has led to our modern society and the world that we live in today.

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Closing Thoughts

The impacts of the Industrial Revolution can be argued to be either positive or negative, but the key takeaway here is that this was a significant historical event that continues to affect us daily.

It gave us wealth, power, and technology, but stripped us of simplicity, presence, and connection to land and purpose. It created systems so large that the average person no longer understands or has control over them.

Worse, it created a new kind of slavery—not to a master, but to the corporation, and the myth of technocratic progress.

It was during the pandemic that I took a personal deep dive into the Industrial Revolution and explored how our modern-day world came to be. By understanding what occurred during that period, I’m able to look at our modern world and see how we’ve veered off from what is natural and authentic.

This knowledge is behind the many articles I’ve written on our modern world, like:

• Profits Over People – how our modern corporations have one purpose only: profits, no matter the cost.

• The Modern Slave Plantation – how 80% of the jobs that we work today don’t serve humanity—only investors.

• America, the Technocratic Oligarchy – America may have been a Democracy, but during the Revolution, it transformed.

When you understand the Industrial Revolution, you understand our world today.

It is for this reason that I wrote my book, An Unorthodox Truth. I’ve pulled many excerpts from it in today’s article, but this was touching the surface. In the book, I delve into other aspects to illustrate how the Revolution’s ripple effect continues to impact you today, from education to religion, to government, and even our thoughts.

We cannot understand our modern world—and what’s wrong with it—until we understand how it came to be.

If you haven’t read my book, I implore you to take this opportunity to read it. If you’d like to obtain a signed copy from me, click the link below.

If you’re outside the U.S.—which was also impacted by the American Industrial Revolution—and would like a signed copy as well, please note that you would have to pay the additional shipping fee. If not, you can buy from Amazon.

To close, you’ve probably seen me mention this multiple times, but Rudolf Steiner—like Jung—saw the perils of modern man through the Industrial Revolution.

This is why he stated that it will be harder to be human in our time than it was in the past. With the Ahrimanic force of technology reigning supreme and draining our essence, it’s critical that we develop our spiritual strength.

To help do this, I created a guide called 11 Insights for Being the Best Human Being.

This 50-page PDF delves into the metaphysical developments of our age and offers spiritual insights from all walks of life—from religion to philosophy—to provide the best insights on becoming the best human you can be in this technological world.

As always, I thank you for your time and attention in reading this work. If you have any questions or feedback, please let me know in the comments below.

Ashe,

Franklin O’Kanu

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Notes and References

1. A type of agriculture where farmers primarily grow food to feed themselves and their families, with little or no surplus for sale

2. https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Rainbow-History-Electricity-Life/dp/1645020096