Whither are we going?

Back to Ellul, after a brief hiatus.  Had to stop for a few weeks and breathe again.  Consider his assessment of our culture with regard to means and ends:

The first great fact that emerges from our civilization is that today everything has become "means."  There is no longer an "end;" we do not know whither we are going...we set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere.  The end (by this I mean the collective end of civilization, for individuals still have their own ends--for instance to succeed in a competition, or to get a higher salary, and the like) has been effaced by the means.  Thus man--who used to be the end of this whole humanist system of means--man, who is still proclaimed as an "end" in political speeches, has in reality himself become the "means" of the very means which ought to serve him: as, for instance, in economics or the State.  In order that economics should be in a good condition, man submits to the demands of an economic mechanism, becomes a total producer, and puts all his powers at the disposal of production.  He becomes an obedient consumer, and with his eyes shut he swallows everything that economics puts into his mouth.  Thus, fully persuaded that we are procuring the happiness of man, we are turning him into an instrument of these modern gods, which are our "means."

-Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, 2nd ed. (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard Publishing, 1989), p. 51.

Whither are we going?  See Revelation 21.