Jacques Ellul (et al.) seems more right than wrong in his thinking that humans have become reduced to existing as executors of technique. In trying to piece together how this came to be the case, it occurred to me that if Civilization were its own entity with its own "goals" and "desires," then the human could be analogous to a human cell, which has a certain autonomy but ultimately helps to constitute a larger entity.
It need not stop at Civilization, of course. Atoms (whatever they wind up being "made" of) create molecules, which coalesce into cells, into organs, into humans, into families, into corporations, into Civilizations, into planets, into inter-planetary Civilizations… etc.
Is this "The World" against which the ascetics react? "Satan"? "The Black Iron Prison"? "The Empire"?
Could it be that the "as above, so below" maxim is, while strictly ontologically true, more a description of the prison, another technique, than a liberating understanding of reality?