The Waning of Humaneness (German: Der Abbau des Menschlichen) is a 1983 book by the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz.
[1] The book is an analysis of increasing artificiality under technocratic rule, where Lorenz did not see any major distinction between capitalist and totalitarian systems.
Lorenz identified an in-built human tendency to improve cultural structures, which, under technocracy, can go to extremes and remove the meaning and adaptivity in things such as specialization and functionality.
Lorenz suggested increased contact with nature, especially for young people, as a possible antidote to the destructive sides of technocracy.
[3] Publishers Weekly described the book as a "stiffly written jeremiad" and its prescribed remedy as anticlimactic, but wrote that it stands out due to its basis in animal studies.