Reflections on Modernity and Ethics of Science and Technology in Inter Ice Age 4

Based on the prediction of human survival crisis, Kobo Abe's science fiction Inter Ice Age 4 constructs a power composition of confrontation between "present" and "future", revealing the violence of collusion between technology and power, trampling on personal interests and life. On the one hand, the depiction of the collusion between science and technology products and politics contains the allegory of the political dilemma of Japan under the pattern of American Soviet hegemony in 1950s; on the other hand, under the control of modern values, "prediction machine" has become a "Fetish" over human value rationality, while the "aquatic human" transformation poses a serious challenge to the ethical scale. The hero is confronted with the conflict between the ethics of science and technology and the rights of survival and development, conservation and progress, scientific and technological rationality and value rationality, that the author's reflection on the paradox of modernity is mapped out.