[...] He uses the metaphor of "mechanical petrifaction" to convey the sense that by instrumentalizing our actions in the pursuit of efficiency we have effectively deprived ourselves of any reason for acting in the first place. Weber's thesis is that modernity is the cultural experience of abstraction; it is life in a uniquely ordered, regimented society in which formal rule-following overrides any attachment to substantive principles or values that are not susceptible to rational, scientific analysis. [...]