NoOne said: "Ask yourself if science has explained consciousness. Do we have an objective theory of subjectivity? No, we don't. And yet, we turn a blind eye to this huge gaping hole in our worldview. Or we try and cover the hole with bandaid by using terms such as epiphenomenalism, complexity theory etc. And then we (the ones connected to science) wonder why there's so much hostility toward us."
This is a huge topic.
The brief response. I see scientists as the LEAST-hated priesthood in human history. (You have no idea what common men/women thought of their priests, most of the time, but evidence suggests that average folk have always despised the moralistic bullying and patronizing insistence on secret knowledge. Scientists actively and enthusiastically try to share their "secrets" on PBS. Still, that makes them "least-hated"... not "best liked.")
The longer (though still brief) answer? Here is a short piece on sanity that I recently sent to the organizers of a conference that I'll be attending in June, concerning future threats such as advanced WMD.
"100 years ago we were told by confident and educated men that humanity was finally entering the era of understanding the human mind. Marx, Skinner & Freud were only a few of those offering simplistic, mechanistic models of human nature. These models not only proposed to explain and predict pathways chosen by societies and individuals, but offered means to channel those choices in desired ways. e.g. toward economic justice, rational order, or 'sanity'.
Humanity has since gone through a hellish process of discovering just how complex we really are. None of the models worked! And yet, old habits die hard. We are still coaxed to accept simple explanations from a narrow list of options, most of them occupying snug niches along a hoary-ridiculous left right political axis.
The good news is that all of those oversimplistic models also proved unworkable as methods of mass social control. As Aldous Huxley pointed out in Brave New World, our nature as inconveniently diverse, complicated and variable beings should mean there will always be some way to evade ultimate and systematic tyranny, even when it is empowered by advanced tools of science.
As we descended from the naive hopes of 1905 into the 20th Century's nadir of despair, it was practical men and women who found tortuous pathways leading upward, toward a decent society. Scientists - while still occasionally tempted by grand reductionism - have generally accepted the fantastic complexity of human nature and concentrated instead on the hard work of filling in the foundations of understanding, one brick or fact at a time.
Along the way, over-arching terms like "sanity" fell into deserved disrepute, because of their former role in helping elites to repress diversity, criticism and dissent.
And yet, the premise of this conference will be fundamentally faulty if the aim is somehow to anticipate and neutralize every kind of innovative WMD or other destructive failure modes FOR ALL TIME. This is not a game that can be won indefinitely by a dedicated professional protective class. The curve of accelerating accessibility to technological tools will increasingly favor what Thomas Friedman called the "super-empowerment of the angry young man."
If the world continues to be FULL of angry young men, there is no way that efforts at anticipatory prevention can succeed over the long run. Endeavors aimed at perceiving and neutralizing potential WMD in the near term can only be effective if they are aimed at buying time, so that a more long term solution can come into play. The solution of addressing the supply of likely users of WMD.
Careful appraisal suggests that there are only two possible classes of long term solution that have any hope of success -- (1) panopticon surveillance of everybody and severe social control, limiting individual volition and access to tools, or (2) a rapid and profound increase in the general level of human sanity, empowering autonomous citizens to solve problems rapidly and independent of supervision from above.
You almost never hear the latter approach discussed. (Perhaps because such an eventuality would undermine the position and privileges of the professional protective class.) Some will deny that human nature allows for possibility #2 at all. And yet, if you step back, is any other solution even remotely plausible, over a lengthy span of years?
Is it time, after a century of decline, to bring "sanity" back to the discussion table?
Yes, the word went into exile for some very good reasons. It was used by social elites in many cultures as a bludgeon to enforce conformity. Conformity of behavior, values and emotion. Dissidents against entrenched authority have all-too often been diagnosed as mentally ill. Harmless eccentricity was treated as dangerous deviancy.
But here is the ultimate irony. We have busily built a society whose modern standards and prevalent propaganda themes promote the very opposite of stodgy conformity! I have elsewhere relentlessly pointed out that the principal moral messages in modern film, music and art are (1) suspicion of authority, (2) tolerance of diversity, and (3) romantic appreciation of individual eccentricity.
Yes, there have recently arisen social forces deeply inimical to these teachings. But such forces face a long uphill struggle in any culture war against the three messages that fill almost every movie and song.
And so we face the irony that THIS culture's core values are rapidly coalescing around diversity, eccentricity and independence as central desiderata. So, might such a culture come up with a new and appropriate definition of sanity that is consistent with such values? A definition that does NOT preach conformity but rather relishes independence and flexibility of thought? One that cherishes diversity, yet nevertheless gently encourages palliative and caring attention to focus on people who need urgent help by the standards of a laid-back and tolerant civilization?
People wracked with anguish, for example. Or rage. Or the drug-high of relentless and unreasoning indignation. Inability to plan effective measures to achieve genuine self-interest. Inability to either cooperating with others or compete with them fairly? Might it be "mentally ill" to oppress and limit the options of others? (And that might include those who are too quick to accuse others of being mentally ill!)
Any of us would likely agree that those traits are sick in ways that truly merit attention. Attention that might increase society's overall safety without quashing creativity, eccentricity or freedom to disagree.
I contend that our long term safety from the proliferation of WMD will depend upon building a civilization in which very few of society's free and mature citizens will want to use them. In a culture that does not oppress, "insanity" will essentially boil down to the very same motivations and drives that we have the most reason to fear. Drives that will propel "angry young (or old) men (or women)" to use weapons of mass destruction against their neighbors during the coming century.
What long term solution can possibly work, other than SOME version of "sanity" becoming the norm during the next few decades?
Defining that word will certainly be a matter of extensive debate. But ultimately, it must be brought back from exile andincluded in the discussion, because all other measures are mere palliatives, buying time."
.
All right, it was more of a paper than a brief note. I'll be presenting it several places this summer. One can hope.
Comments welcome.
==See the next entry on Modernism ==
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Modernism thought in gestation
Still too swamped for detailed posting on the topic at hand. Sorry. I am trying to write a review of Robert O'Harrow's new book for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist... for the pay of a mug and a T Shirt. Heh.
I did find one older item that I'll share this week, that is relevant to both recent topics... modernism and bad sci fi. It doesn't use the word "modernism" yet. WARNING: this will seem a bit repetitious so those of you who are impatient with that sort of thing should give this one a pass. But it shows how my ideas were evolving a couple of years ago.
The 18th vs 19th Centuries...
It’s been said that western civilization has spent the last hundred years trying to resolve a deep cleavage in our culture -- a continuing struggle between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries... between prescriptions offered by the Enlightenment and those of the later Romantic Movement.
For generations, a vast majority of writers, artists and academics have sided with romanticism. From Keats and Shelley to nearly all modern musicians or movie stars. Seizing every opportunity to extol emotion and put down “cold” reason has become as natural as breathing. George Lucas expressed this reflex. “I’d say the primary word for me is romantic. I like the esthetics of the Victorian age.”
With nearly all of society’s most expressive and persuasive voices raised on the romantic side of this old struggle, it is a wonder that notions of cooperative progress and confident pragmatism survive at all. Even science fiction has grown much more cynical. Noir cyberpunk images push aside much of the can-do spirit seen in earlier times. Speculation about alien life is replaced by introspection about alienation.
Scholar and author Judith Berman, in a much-discussed 2001 study, showed how this trend has penetrated the very center of Science Fiction. Focusing on the flagship Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, once a daring journal devoted to ideas. Her landmark analysis revealed that a profound change had occurred. Almost none of the stories published during a year-long period had anything to do with exploring interesting futures. Even plausible “dark warnings” were avoided in favor of pieces about nostalgia, alternate pasts or presents, or featured characters who wallowed in loathing toward technology or progress.
And, mind you, this is in science fiction. Clearly the campaign against the future must have progressed even farther, elsewhere.
There is nothing new in this, of course. Cynicism has many advantages over enthusiasm. (And make no mistake. Romanticism is not the polar opposite of cynicism. Romanticism and cynicism are deeply connected, even Janus twin faces of the same personality. Every generation of romantics, since Shelley, has believed that they invented the studded-black-leather look. The howl of rage. A poetical worship of despair. It is an easy crutch, especially for people with more verbal talent than useful skill. We can all recall from the schoolyard how easily a sneer overcomes and defeats any gushing expression of enthusiasm.
What is so amazing is how they even manage, while doing this, to portray themselves as the underdogs!
In how many popular films does a skillful nerd prevail over the romantic loner? Values like competence and egalitarian advancement are seldom defended in media...
...and yet they remain popular at a deep level -- perhaps out of gratitude for the real life-improvements wrought by people like Franklin, Edison or Salk... and in part because citizens sense the underlying themes of inequality and egotism that drive so much of the Romantic Movement.
Individualism is fine. Both enlightenment and romanticism prescribe it. This link goes back to when they were allies against feudalism and monolithic religion. This is why our great modern propaganda campaign -- Suspicion of Authority -- accompanied by memes of tolerance of difference and acceptance of eccentricity, appears to be a consensus product of BOTH enlightenment and romantic impulses.
But many of us realize a stark truth -- that not everyone can be a king or rock star or handsome loner. The rest of us need fairness more than we need egomania. We rely daily on the amiable skill of countless strangers, rich in craft and diversity, who are fellow citizens of a civilization. They are more important to us than any Leader... or any Rebel.
This contrast is distilled when George Lucas says: “...there's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled.”
Lucas has a point. I concede the great attraction of the image that his Star Wars universe offers, while opposing it with all my power. (Especially the most evil elf ever depicted, that nasty, uncooperative, smarmy, patronizing, sourpuss, unhelpful, oppressively-secretive and cynically manipulative oven mitt... Yoda.)
Indeed, the Twentieth Century has been a battleground between these two occidental visions of human life. Two great utopian idealisms that continue to wrestle over the heart of the West. Marxism and Naziism were both deeply romantic. So was the Southern Confederacy. So are the leftist postmodernists and the right wing neoconservatives. Most ideologies are, because ideology is a phenomenon fundamentally based on a romantic need to encompass all of humanity within a single, simple and compelling worldview, replete with perfect heroes and perfectly detestable villains. Given the incredible harm that’s been done in the name of dogmas, monarchs and ideologues, their absence from a progressive 21st Century will be no great loss.
With so many enemies, coming from so many directions, should we marvel that the Enlightenment achieved anything at all? That fact, alone, attests to the incredible power of science.
(The landscape can get more complicated if you step back. Intellectuals of the Confucian East and Pious South despise both Romanticism and Enlightenment as expressions of crazy euro-american-individualist egoism. Moreover there are splits within, as well. The French wing of ‘enlightenment’ - rooted in Platonism - is fundamentally different than the Scots-American wing with its fixation on pragmatism. But these complications can await another time.)
Out of this welter and confusion, I don’t know which zeitgeist will prevail. Perhaps even a synthesis?
Pragmatism would be comfortable with that notion.
Here is another way of posing the issue. A great science fiction author once said -- “Keep asking questions! The more irksome the better!”
Now who do you think would be more comfortable with that notion? Percy Shelley or Ben Franklin? Star Wars or Star Trek? A world filled with black-and-white certainties? Or one where openminded people devote their passion to finding out what works?
---
Okay... fire away. I hope to get back to the main serialized train of thought soon.
--See the next part: The Propaganda of Enlightenment--
Or return to Part 1 of this series...
I did find one older item that I'll share this week, that is relevant to both recent topics... modernism and bad sci fi. It doesn't use the word "modernism" yet. WARNING: this will seem a bit repetitious so those of you who are impatient with that sort of thing should give this one a pass. But it shows how my ideas were evolving a couple of years ago.
The 18th vs 19th Centuries...
It’s been said that western civilization has spent the last hundred years trying to resolve a deep cleavage in our culture -- a continuing struggle between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries... between prescriptions offered by the Enlightenment and those of the later Romantic Movement.
For generations, a vast majority of writers, artists and academics have sided with romanticism. From Keats and Shelley to nearly all modern musicians or movie stars. Seizing every opportunity to extol emotion and put down “cold” reason has become as natural as breathing. George Lucas expressed this reflex. “I’d say the primary word for me is romantic. I like the esthetics of the Victorian age.”
With nearly all of society’s most expressive and persuasive voices raised on the romantic side of this old struggle, it is a wonder that notions of cooperative progress and confident pragmatism survive at all. Even science fiction has grown much more cynical. Noir cyberpunk images push aside much of the can-do spirit seen in earlier times. Speculation about alien life is replaced by introspection about alienation.
Scholar and author Judith Berman, in a much-discussed 2001 study, showed how this trend has penetrated the very center of Science Fiction. Focusing on the flagship Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, once a daring journal devoted to ideas. Her landmark analysis revealed that a profound change had occurred. Almost none of the stories published during a year-long period had anything to do with exploring interesting futures. Even plausible “dark warnings” were avoided in favor of pieces about nostalgia, alternate pasts or presents, or featured characters who wallowed in loathing toward technology or progress.
And, mind you, this is in science fiction. Clearly the campaign against the future must have progressed even farther, elsewhere.
There is nothing new in this, of course. Cynicism has many advantages over enthusiasm. (And make no mistake. Romanticism is not the polar opposite of cynicism. Romanticism and cynicism are deeply connected, even Janus twin faces of the same personality. Every generation of romantics, since Shelley, has believed that they invented the studded-black-leather look. The howl of rage. A poetical worship of despair. It is an easy crutch, especially for people with more verbal talent than useful skill. We can all recall from the schoolyard how easily a sneer overcomes and defeats any gushing expression of enthusiasm.
What is so amazing is how they even manage, while doing this, to portray themselves as the underdogs!
In how many popular films does a skillful nerd prevail over the romantic loner? Values like competence and egalitarian advancement are seldom defended in media...
...and yet they remain popular at a deep level -- perhaps out of gratitude for the real life-improvements wrought by people like Franklin, Edison or Salk... and in part because citizens sense the underlying themes of inequality and egotism that drive so much of the Romantic Movement.
Individualism is fine. Both enlightenment and romanticism prescribe it. This link goes back to when they were allies against feudalism and monolithic religion. This is why our great modern propaganda campaign -- Suspicion of Authority -- accompanied by memes of tolerance of difference and acceptance of eccentricity, appears to be a consensus product of BOTH enlightenment and romantic impulses.
But many of us realize a stark truth -- that not everyone can be a king or rock star or handsome loner. The rest of us need fairness more than we need egomania. We rely daily on the amiable skill of countless strangers, rich in craft and diversity, who are fellow citizens of a civilization. They are more important to us than any Leader... or any Rebel.
This contrast is distilled when George Lucas says: “...there's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled.”
Lucas has a point. I concede the great attraction of the image that his Star Wars universe offers, while opposing it with all my power. (Especially the most evil elf ever depicted, that nasty, uncooperative, smarmy, patronizing, sourpuss, unhelpful, oppressively-secretive and cynically manipulative oven mitt... Yoda.)
Indeed, the Twentieth Century has been a battleground between these two occidental visions of human life. Two great utopian idealisms that continue to wrestle over the heart of the West. Marxism and Naziism were both deeply romantic. So was the Southern Confederacy. So are the leftist postmodernists and the right wing neoconservatives. Most ideologies are, because ideology is a phenomenon fundamentally based on a romantic need to encompass all of humanity within a single, simple and compelling worldview, replete with perfect heroes and perfectly detestable villains. Given the incredible harm that’s been done in the name of dogmas, monarchs and ideologues, their absence from a progressive 21st Century will be no great loss.
With so many enemies, coming from so many directions, should we marvel that the Enlightenment achieved anything at all? That fact, alone, attests to the incredible power of science.
(The landscape can get more complicated if you step back. Intellectuals of the Confucian East and Pious South despise both Romanticism and Enlightenment as expressions of crazy euro-american-individualist egoism. Moreover there are splits within, as well. The French wing of ‘enlightenment’ - rooted in Platonism - is fundamentally different than the Scots-American wing with its fixation on pragmatism. But these complications can await another time.)
Out of this welter and confusion, I don’t know which zeitgeist will prevail. Perhaps even a synthesis?
Pragmatism would be comfortable with that notion.
Here is another way of posing the issue. A great science fiction author once said -- “Keep asking questions! The more irksome the better!”
Now who do you think would be more comfortable with that notion? Percy Shelley or Ben Franklin? Star Wars or Star Trek? A world filled with black-and-white certainties? Or one where openminded people devote their passion to finding out what works?
---
Okay... fire away. I hope to get back to the main serialized train of thought soon.
--See the next part: The Propaganda of Enlightenment--
Or return to Part 1 of this series...
Friday, April 15, 2005
Star Wars redux?
First off, let me admit that "Anonymous" is right at one level. My recent screed about Star Wars is largely repetitious of earlier remarks. I was going on vacation and thought I'd quickly offer a gift - or grenade - in parting. OTOH, this is a blog, not a formal publication. It is *exactly* where a guy may rant a little at something that's happening to his culture. Even reiterating a bit.
And how can you compare MY repetition with George Lucas's? A couple of billion dollars and man-years pushing one of the most downer and anti-modernist messages of all time - with 4 out of 6 films preaching downer endings - and I am the "crank" for pointing it out?
Mark's message about the parasitical emotion-hungry, logic-destroying midichlorians was pure delight. Like me, you hunger for sense, even trying to find some way to rationalize the absurd. Anyway, you can all see where the genetic "chosen one" thing fits perfectly into the romantic obsession. The Homeric demigod may be flawed and tragic, but no one is ever allowed to question his utter superiority by nature.
Sorry, Ambi. In The Empire Strikes Back, Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasden took Lucas's BASIC idea and put words in Yoda's mouth that at least made a little sense. A knight who possesses unusual power is obliged to exercise unusual care. Anger CAN cause bad decisions - eg slaughtering all the Sand People when only a few killed your mom.
(A mom Anekin ignored for 15 years, leaving her a slave on Tatooine, when he had only to call in a favor from rich friends like Amidalah, in order to buy her freedom.)
But brief rage and bad decisions are completely different than becoming a consistently evil person. The Emperor's rant in ROTJ shows clearly what GL meant. That the Force makes you physically and psychically powerful, but morally frail. Captain Antilles showed more moral fiber in the very 1st scene than Anekin shows in the entire series. He relentlessly and CALMLY pursues the agenda of evil. (Which GL intended in the beginning by giving him that nazi helmet and name.)
I never said Yoda wanted to be a king per se... but a platonic "Philosopher King" is a phrase meaning a leader who is born into the role by nature, who faces little accountability, who is permitted to lie or manipulate (for the common good) and so on. Plato's list of traits (half of them horrific by modernist standards) fit Yoda perfectly. (You never met my real dare... to name a scene in which Y is friendly, helpful and informative.)
Note that I do not apply this to ALL Jedi! QuiJon clearly saw that something was wrong. Obiwan tries hard (tho he's a dope.) I got no probs with Luke - sweet & egalitarian... if also a dope. Mace Windoo fascinates me since in Ep2 he does the thing that Jedi are trained to do! He acts as a secret agent, infiltrates, and uses minimum force to get the job done. Had Yoda sent even one Jedi to help Mace, the whole thing would have been solved. But instead, Yoda wastes nearly all of the Jedi, hurling them into a suicidal frontal assault of insane proportions. The parsimonious explanation is that he wanted them out of the way the very moment he took delivery of his clone army.
Ambi said: Changing topics: David Brin, would it cost you much more than now to start a forum on your site? A blog is personal and passionate, but also tends to be highly partisan and one-sided. And you're not immune to it.
There is already a forum at: http://www.brin-l.com
I understand your complaint and sympathize. I started this blog at popular request knowing full well that I'd have trouble staying fair or paying enough attention to honor the bright people who check in. As you can see at http://www.davidbrin.com/ I am simply too busy for words and desperately need a dittoing machine. (As in Kiln People!)
Anyone who finds Brin-L unsuitable is welcome to explain why or suggest another forum. Again, my apologies and thanks for holding me accountable. CITOKATE.
Anders: I think my universe is better, of course. But that's not the point. My Uplift Universe is NOT the way I hope the cosmos really is. It takes a premise and tries to explore outcomes. Humanity's enlightenment civilization faces great difficulties vs a vast and overpowering Galactic culture that has many traits of romanticism for good reasons. I never thought of that before.
Yngve asks does success spoil EVERYBODY? There are times when I wish I had Spielberg's ear, to quibble a bit, but honestly, I feel he is a brilliant gift to our civilization and probably does not need my advice. (Weird - he is pals with Lucas while preaching the opposite message. Spielberg is deeply loyal to the Enlightenment.)
Same with Zemeckis. The Coen Brothers are the bravest guys around, having the most fun. Cameron - while flawed - deserves society's ongoing subsidy. The Stargate Boys need to be grabbed by the earlobe and told a thing or two... but really, they write well and know their stuff and defend enlightenment values. Glad they exist.
Sadly, the latest round of Paramount Trek-leaders absolutely ruined the franchise. They bought me dinner 3 times, picked my mind, took a few ideas (without paying)... but I would have been thrilled if they had taken my MACRO advice about story arcs and saved the series. Now that's just sad.
Eye candy? Sure. George Lucas hires the best that our civilization has patronized/subsidized - engendering artistic talent at a level that none other can begin to match. These are our cathedrals, so go enjoy their beauty. I plan to do so (though at matinee rates!)
Enjoy the cathedrals. Just don't worship the gods that Lucas plants on the altar. They are gods that hate us and our new way of working in the world.
And how can you compare MY repetition with George Lucas's? A couple of billion dollars and man-years pushing one of the most downer and anti-modernist messages of all time - with 4 out of 6 films preaching downer endings - and I am the "crank" for pointing it out?
Mark's message about the parasitical emotion-hungry, logic-destroying midichlorians was pure delight. Like me, you hunger for sense, even trying to find some way to rationalize the absurd. Anyway, you can all see where the genetic "chosen one" thing fits perfectly into the romantic obsession. The Homeric demigod may be flawed and tragic, but no one is ever allowed to question his utter superiority by nature.
(A mom Anekin ignored for 15 years, leaving her a slave on Tatooine, when he had only to call in a favor from rich friends like Amidalah, in order to buy her freedom.)
But brief rage and bad decisions are completely different than becoming a consistently evil person. The Emperor's rant in ROTJ shows clearly what GL meant. That the Force makes you physically and psychically powerful, but morally frail. Captain Antilles showed more moral fiber in the very 1st scene than Anekin shows in the entire series. He relentlessly and CALMLY pursues the agenda of evil. (Which GL intended in the beginning by giving him that nazi helmet and name.)
I never said Yoda wanted to be a king per se... but a platonic "Philosopher King" is a phrase meaning a leader who is born into the role by nature, who faces little accountability, who is permitted to lie or manipulate (for the common good) and so on. Plato's list of traits (half of them horrific by modernist standards) fit Yoda perfectly. (You never met my real dare... to name a scene in which Y is friendly, helpful and informative.)
Ambi said: Changing topics: David Brin, would it cost you much more than now to start a forum on your site? A blog is personal and passionate, but also tends to be highly partisan and one-sided. And you're not immune to it.
There is already a forum at: http://www.brin-l.com
I understand your complaint and sympathize. I started this blog at popular request knowing full well that I'd have trouble staying fair or paying enough attention to honor the bright people who check in. As you can see at http://www.davidbrin.com/ I am simply too busy for words and desperately need a dittoing machine. (As in Kiln People!)
Anders: I think my universe is better, of course. But that's not the point. My Uplift Universe is NOT the way I hope the cosmos really is. It takes a premise and tries to explore outcomes. Humanity's enlightenment civilization faces great difficulties vs a vast and overpowering Galactic culture that has many traits of romanticism for good reasons. I never thought of that before.
Yngve asks does success spoil EVERYBODY? There are times when I wish I had Spielberg's ear, to quibble a bit, but honestly, I feel he is a brilliant gift to our civilization and probably does not need my advice. (Weird - he is pals with Lucas while preaching the opposite message. Spielberg is deeply loyal to the Enlightenment.)
Same with Zemeckis. The Coen Brothers are the bravest guys around, having the most fun. Cameron - while flawed - deserves society's ongoing subsidy. The Stargate Boys need to be grabbed by the earlobe and told a thing or two... but really, they write well and know their stuff and defend enlightenment values. Glad they exist.
Sadly, the latest round of Paramount Trek-leaders absolutely ruined the franchise. They bought me dinner 3 times, picked my mind, took a few ideas (without paying)... but I would have been thrilled if they had taken my MACRO advice about story arcs and saved the series. Now that's just sad.
Eye candy? Sure. George Lucas hires the best that our civilization has patronized/subsidized - engendering artistic talent at a level that none other can begin to match. These are our cathedrals, so go enjoy their beauty. I plan to do so (though at matinee rates!)
Enjoy the cathedrals. Just don't worship the gods that Lucas plants on the altar. They are gods that hate us and our new way of working in the world.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Misc matters: Beaming Spam at the Stars
I am sorry to have been absent for some time. Been on a family vacation (with three kids!) to Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Talk about the most natural... and unnatural... wonders! I highly recommend Blue Man Group, by the way, and the Penn & Teller show (Penn is a true modernist. Any other society would have burned him alive (my biggest compliment). He'd make a large fire.
Another truly classic modernist is Stewart Brand, one of Ken Kesey's old Pranksters and a Jerry Brown guru, Brand is one of the truly eclectic thinkers of our time. See his latest on "Environmental Heresies" wherein he suggests that nuclear power and several other notions badly need re-examining by those who genuinely want to solve problems on this planet.
Also for Cory Doctorow's inimitable insights into the phenomenon we have been discussing, drop by: http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/111-6.pdf A very colorful perspective on both the "singularity" and how even techno types can dive into romantic transcendentalism. Doctorow's blog is also worth following. He and I share a stage Tuesday night at the Sci Fi Museum in Seattle.
=====
Okay.... before going back to my episodic paper on Modernism and its enemies, I gotta catch up some bits of miscellany. Things just keep getting weirder. For example, look at a recent phenomenon that absolutely typifies the romanticization of serious modern issues: http://www.talktoaliens.com/
Quoting one of the news reports - "Earth’s popular Internet classifieds site craigslist.org became the first commercial company to transmit into outer space this month. Extra-terrestrial civilizations now have the opportunity to search for apartments in Rome, look for a date in Seoul, or buy a used laptop in Denver amongst a huge variety of craigslist classifieds that anyone with internet access can view or post for free. Craigslist’s space transmissions are a reminder that “space efforts are a big deal to everyone living on Earth,” said Craig Newmark founder of
craigslist."
"Humor may have been the driver behind the nearly 139,000 craigslist
users who chose to beam their ads during the site’s first space transmission on March 11. When asked why they decided to post to outer
space several users felt like they had nothing to lose. “Most of our employees appear to be from outer space anyway,” said a human resources representative who posted a job ad for a Washington
D.C. coffee shop."
"While craigslist’s space transmissions seems to have a ‘why not, it’s fun’ rationale, there are questions about whether craigslist’s ads are appropriate messages to send to extra-terrestrial civilizations. Dr. H. Paul Shuch, executive director of the SETI League urges craigslist to join international discussion on protocols for CETI or communication with extra-terrestrial intelligence."
I mean, dang. There are so many levels. But as this is informal, let me just share with you a letter that I sent to these people.
Without ever getting a response.
.
Hello. My name is David Brin. I am an astronomer who is better known as an author of books such as The Postman (filmed by Kevin Costner in 1998) and The Transparent Society.
I am also a member of the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics (http://iaaseti.org), the advisory body that has been charged with working out protocols and conventions having to do with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. This subcommittee has drafted and circulated the main internationally accepted documents concerning recommended standards for researchers and others who might receive or initiate contact by radio or other means with extrasolar civilizations.
I am writing to inform you that this subcommittee exists. A Protocol exists. And since you have announced an intention to beam messages from Earth into interstellar space, you may wish to familiarize yourself with these matters. What you propose to do comes under the category of "active SETI" and it has implications of which you may not be aware.
A number of members of the subcommittee have called for a moratorium when it comes to deliberate beaming of messages from Earth at detection levels significantly above background. The matter - controversial both inside the committee and outside - is still being debated. In any event, enough prestigious scholars and scientists have expressed concern that it might seem reasonable to ask that you pause a little and consider.
At present there is a limited range of ways that Earth civilization has become detectable. A common belief holds that TV broadcasts have already screeched loudly enough for all to hear, but this fable has been disproved. Beyond a few light years, these signals fade into background.
It is narrowly targeted beams that will far more likely call attention to our planet. Should we transmit such beams while knowing absolutely nothing about the situation out there?
Everybody has a favorite opinion about what interstellar civilizations will be like. Hollywood portrays bizarre threats. Many others feel that advanced societies will naturally be benign. These unproved opinions are not at issue.
What is at issue is the presumption that a few people may commit our world down a no-return road, without taking any time to discuss the matter with others who have pondered deeply on this subject, and who might shed light on the possibilities, both good and bad.
While smiling at the ingenuity and entertainment value of this public relations gambit, I am also hoping that you will consider dipping a little deeper into the subject. There may be ways to get the effect you desire, while still behaving as responsible citizens of a tiny planet, all alone in a dark and unknown wilderness.
With cordial regards,
David Brin
www.davidbrin.com
SEE more discussion on SETI vs Messaging to Aliens.
-----
Now of course there is a possible range of disagreement on this subject, even more than most, since SETI has long been known as a field in which one bandies around speculations that range across dozens of orders of magnitude, without a single data point (known instance of extraterrestrial life) to serve as a reality-anchor or boundary condition.
Take the following riposte to complaints about this recent beaming of trite ego messages into space:
“A community website like craigslist.org provides a good cross section of our society and therefore probably provides a fairly accurate representation of Earth today,” said Jim Lewis, vice president of Deep Space Communication Network, the company who transmitted craigslist.org’s messages into space. Craigslist.org was DSCN’s first customer when the site won its services through an on-line eBay auction in February. Commenting on the potential harm of CETI transmission, Lewis quotes Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute who said, “if you really feel that way, then you should be campaigning to have all transmissions from Earth shut down." Shostak points out that military radar installations broadcasts much stronger signals than TV antennas do, and they're on all the time. "If you're going to be paranoid, then you should be consistently paranoid," said Lewis.
Of course this is utterly specious. Seth Shostak, alas, obfuscates the distinction between detectable wide-beam leakage from a solar system like ours - of TV and radar broadcasts - vs the detectability at far greater ranges and lower sensitivities of the kind of narrow beams we are talking about here. It has been repeatedly demonstrated in recent years that 1950s broadcasts of "I Love Lucy" are probably NOT readily detectable by happenstance, at ranges beyond a few light years. But narrow beams like those sent recently by DSCN almost certainly are.
Thus, these people are peremptorily thrusting humanity into a new domain of visibility, without consultation or asking even a polite "what d'you think?" from the wide and diverse international community of people who have thought hard about this subject. A lot harder than they have.
Instead, DSCN and Craigslist behave in the typical contemporary fashion. They rationalize doing whatever they like. Typically, they quote the most radical of SETI participants and make assumptions about the nature and motivations of aliens that are not supported or justified by a single data point.
There ARE some simple ways that Craigslist and DSCN could try to address the worries of prudent people, while having their cake and doing a little harmless "Yoohoo!" beaming of adverts at the stars. If they were reasonable people, they would admit that we know little about the universe right now. They can get their publicity AND take basic precautions that our descendants (who will know the universe far better than we do now) might someday thank them for.
references:
http://iaaseti.org
Craigslist – http://www.craigslist.org
Deep Space Communication – http://deepspacecom.net
Talktoaliens.com – http://www.talktoaliens.com
==========
Sorry I've been disorganized. More soon.
Another truly classic modernist is Stewart Brand, one of Ken Kesey's old Pranksters and a Jerry Brown guru, Brand is one of the truly eclectic thinkers of our time. See his latest on "Environmental Heresies" wherein he suggests that nuclear power and several other notions badly need re-examining by those who genuinely want to solve problems on this planet.
Also for Cory Doctorow's inimitable insights into the phenomenon we have been discussing, drop by: http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/111-6.pdf A very colorful perspective on both the "singularity" and how even techno types can dive into romantic transcendentalism. Doctorow's blog is also worth following. He and I share a stage Tuesday night at the Sci Fi Museum in Seattle.
=====
Okay.... before going back to my episodic paper on Modernism and its enemies, I gotta catch up some bits of miscellany. Things just keep getting weirder. For example, look at a recent phenomenon that absolutely typifies the romanticization of serious modern issues: http://www.talktoaliens.com/
craigslist."
"Humor may have been the driver behind the nearly 139,000 craigslist
users who chose to beam their ads during the site’s first space transmission on March 11. When asked why they decided to post to outer
space several users felt like they had nothing to lose. “Most of our employees appear to be from outer space anyway,” said a human resources representative who posted a job ad for a Washington
D.C. coffee shop."
"While craigslist’s space transmissions seems to have a ‘why not, it’s fun’ rationale, there are questions about whether craigslist’s ads are appropriate messages to send to extra-terrestrial civilizations. Dr. H. Paul Shuch, executive director of the SETI League urges craigslist to join international discussion on protocols for CETI or communication with extra-terrestrial intelligence."
I mean, dang. There are so many levels. But as this is informal, let me just share with you a letter that I sent to these people.
Without ever getting a response.
.
Hello. My name is David Brin. I am an astronomer who is better known as an author of books such as The Postman (filmed by Kevin Costner in 1998) and The Transparent Society.
I am also a member of the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics (http://iaaseti.org), the advisory body that has been charged with working out protocols and conventions having to do with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. This subcommittee has drafted and circulated the main internationally accepted documents concerning recommended standards for researchers and others who might receive or initiate contact by radio or other means with extrasolar civilizations.
I am writing to inform you that this subcommittee exists. A Protocol exists. And since you have announced an intention to beam messages from Earth into interstellar space, you may wish to familiarize yourself with these matters. What you propose to do comes under the category of "active SETI" and it has implications of which you may not be aware.
A number of members of the subcommittee have called for a moratorium when it comes to deliberate beaming of messages from Earth at detection levels significantly above background. The matter - controversial both inside the committee and outside - is still being debated. In any event, enough prestigious scholars and scientists have expressed concern that it might seem reasonable to ask that you pause a little and consider.
At present there is a limited range of ways that Earth civilization has become detectable. A common belief holds that TV broadcasts have already screeched loudly enough for all to hear, but this fable has been disproved. Beyond a few light years, these signals fade into background.
It is narrowly targeted beams that will far more likely call attention to our planet. Should we transmit such beams while knowing absolutely nothing about the situation out there?
Everybody has a favorite opinion about what interstellar civilizations will be like. Hollywood portrays bizarre threats. Many others feel that advanced societies will naturally be benign. These unproved opinions are not at issue.
What is at issue is the presumption that a few people may commit our world down a no-return road, without taking any time to discuss the matter with others who have pondered deeply on this subject, and who might shed light on the possibilities, both good and bad.
While smiling at the ingenuity and entertainment value of this public relations gambit, I am also hoping that you will consider dipping a little deeper into the subject. There may be ways to get the effect you desire, while still behaving as responsible citizens of a tiny planet, all alone in a dark and unknown wilderness.
With cordial regards,
David Brin
www.davidbrin.com
SEE more discussion on SETI vs Messaging to Aliens.
-----
Now of course there is a possible range of disagreement on this subject, even more than most, since SETI has long been known as a field in which one bandies around speculations that range across dozens of orders of magnitude, without a single data point (known instance of extraterrestrial life) to serve as a reality-anchor or boundary condition.
Take the following riposte to complaints about this recent beaming of trite ego messages into space:
“A community website like craigslist.org provides a good cross section of our society and therefore probably provides a fairly accurate representation of Earth today,” said Jim Lewis, vice president of Deep Space Communication Network, the company who transmitted craigslist.org’s messages into space. Craigslist.org was DSCN’s first customer when the site won its services through an on-line eBay auction in February. Commenting on the potential harm of CETI transmission, Lewis quotes Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute who said, “if you really feel that way, then you should be campaigning to have all transmissions from Earth shut down." Shostak points out that military radar installations broadcasts much stronger signals than TV antennas do, and they're on all the time. "If you're going to be paranoid, then you should be consistently paranoid," said Lewis.
Of course this is utterly specious. Seth Shostak, alas, obfuscates the distinction between detectable wide-beam leakage from a solar system like ours - of TV and radar broadcasts - vs the detectability at far greater ranges and lower sensitivities of the kind of narrow beams we are talking about here. It has been repeatedly demonstrated in recent years that 1950s broadcasts of "I Love Lucy" are probably NOT readily detectable by happenstance, at ranges beyond a few light years. But narrow beams like those sent recently by DSCN almost certainly are.
Thus, these people are peremptorily thrusting humanity into a new domain of visibility, without consultation or asking even a polite "what d'you think?" from the wide and diverse international community of people who have thought hard about this subject. A lot harder than they have.
Instead, DSCN and Craigslist behave in the typical contemporary fashion. They rationalize doing whatever they like. Typically, they quote the most radical of SETI participants and make assumptions about the nature and motivations of aliens that are not supported or justified by a single data point.
There ARE some simple ways that Craigslist and DSCN could try to address the worries of prudent people, while having their cake and doing a little harmless "Yoohoo!" beaming of adverts at the stars. If they were reasonable people, they would admit that we know little about the universe right now. They can get their publicity AND take basic precautions that our descendants (who will know the universe far better than we do now) might someday thank them for.
references:
http://iaaseti.org
Craigslist – http://www.craigslist.org
Deep Space Communication – http://deepspacecom.net
Talktoaliens.com – http://www.talktoaliens.com
==========
Sorry I've been disorganized. More soon.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Miscellaneous Asides About Modernism....
I have been swamped lately. Too swamped to focus on the formal chapters of my work on modernity and its enemies.
But I do feel I owe you folks something, so let's offer a few informal insights.
First, this item from Rand Corporation researcher David Ronfeldt, co author of brilliant works about terrorism and western strategy like IN ATHENA'S CAMP: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age.
"David, I particularly like your turning to discuss the interplay between liberalism and modernism. For what it's worth, I've always liked Karl Mannheim's old book "Ideology And Utopia" for its discussion about how the chiliasm of the Anabaptists, the Hussites, and Thomas Munzer represented an initial, pioneering form of the modern utopian mentality. Their spiritualization of politics signified a break-through whereby previously spiritual ideals became fused with the mundane demands of the lower social strata and were said to be realizable in the here and now:
"It is at this point that politics in the modern sense of the term begins, if we here understand by politics a more or less conscious participation of all strata of society in the achievement of some mundane purpose, as contrasted with the fatalistic acceptance of events as they are, or of control from 'above.'"
Of course Ronfeldt has a point. But in fact there are many ways to "define" the transition process toward modern thinking, which has been amorphous and nonlinear. For example:
* Hobbes and Rousseau and Plato were all far more similar than many scholars will admit. All offered variations on romantic incantory purity and oversimplification of human nature. (Indeed, so do most formal mystical religious systems.) The breakout offered by Locke and Smith was to say (in effect) "you ALL are partly right, and therefore entirely wrong. It is foolish to write detailed prescriptions of human behavior that are rigidly enforced by an elite class. We must design a pragmatic society that allows each person to hold the others accountable. If it is done right, you will get all the benefits without the vile drawbacks of tyranny."
* Here's another point I raise elsewhere, having to do with literature and the weird obsession that most lit profs seem to feel toward so-called "eternal human verities"... a concept that I find utterly disgusting and chilling.
Before Thackery, almost all novels/stories/legends featured fantasy/fantastic elements. Afterwards, fantasy (and later scifi) became marginalized, as "mainstream" literature focused on contemporary minutiae of mores, conventions, personal drama and tiny variations on normality.
Why such a huge change in the format and content and topics of popular storytelling?
My theory is that the world before 1600 was always pretty much CONSTANT in its macroscopic appearance and social structures - featuring the same cast of feudal and mystical/priestly types - but unreliable in respect to individual luck. (For example, things might be going fine, then a plague or war would hit. Your kids might all die at any moment.)
At an accelerating rate after 1600, this all reversed. (At least in prosperous portions of the West.) Average people started believing that they stood a good chance of becoming grandparents. There was still an awful lot of bad luck churning around, but a majority began to feel a solid chance that war and sudden calamity just might pass them by. But meanwhile, society was growing less stable. Your kids might stand a better chance of seeing the future. But that future started to become vastly more contingent in the way it might look and feel. Your descendants would generally see a new world rocked by macro social changes that often shook elites from their perches.
This may have been what influenced the change in fiction, from being generally about fantastic subjects/situations to focusing in upon contemporary minutia, featuring a fanatical devotion to normality... a pretense that change did not matter.
.
I could go on. There are dozens of other possible ways of looking at the zeitgeist shift toward modernity. One that I contend is reaching a crisis point as we speak. The most modern nation of all is filling rapidly with panicky reactionaries of left and right who share a common anti modernist agenda.
There doesn't seem to be any sense to why this should be happening right now. For example, terrorism - the much vaunted fear of this decade - is inarguably FAR less disturbing and/or threatening than nuclear war was! There is no way that any of the most inflated estimates can suggest we are in as much immediate danger, as people and as citizens, as we were thirty years ago. (Though that may change in a decade or so, dramatically.)
In fact, evidence suggests that this panic is being engendered by the very success of modernism, bringing us to the brink of a singularity, or something like it.
Are you familiar with that term? It is a broad and marvelous topic having to do with the rapid pace by which the modernist agenda may accelerate and bring about truly fantastic transformations. For a lovely intellectual feast, drop in at: http://www.singularitywatch.com/articles/jsinterview2003.html
You'll see what I mean when I say that modernism itself is always in danger of turning weirdly romantic!
See Next entry on Modernism....
But I do feel I owe you folks something, so let's offer a few informal insights.
"David, I particularly like your turning to discuss the interplay between liberalism and modernism. For what it's worth, I've always liked Karl Mannheim's old book "Ideology And Utopia" for its discussion about how the chiliasm of the Anabaptists, the Hussites, and Thomas Munzer represented an initial, pioneering form of the modern utopian mentality. Their spiritualization of politics signified a break-through whereby previously spiritual ideals became fused with the mundane demands of the lower social strata and were said to be realizable in the here and now:
"It is at this point that politics in the modern sense of the term begins, if we here understand by politics a more or less conscious participation of all strata of society in the achievement of some mundane purpose, as contrasted with the fatalistic acceptance of events as they are, or of control from 'above.'"
Of course Ronfeldt has a point. But in fact there are many ways to "define" the transition process toward modern thinking, which has been amorphous and nonlinear. For example:
* Hobbes and Rousseau and Plato were all far more similar than many scholars will admit. All offered variations on romantic incantory purity and oversimplification of human nature. (Indeed, so do most formal mystical religious systems.) The breakout offered by Locke and Smith was to say (in effect) "you ALL are partly right, and therefore entirely wrong. It is foolish to write detailed prescriptions of human behavior that are rigidly enforced by an elite class. We must design a pragmatic society that allows each person to hold the others accountable. If it is done right, you will get all the benefits without the vile drawbacks of tyranny."
* Here's another point I raise elsewhere, having to do with literature and the weird obsession that most lit profs seem to feel toward so-called "eternal human verities"... a concept that I find utterly disgusting and chilling.
Before Thackery, almost all novels/stories/legends featured fantasy/fantastic elements. Afterwards, fantasy (and later scifi) became marginalized, as "mainstream" literature focused on contemporary minutiae of mores, conventions, personal drama and tiny variations on normality.
Why such a huge change in the format and content and topics of popular storytelling?
My theory is that the world before 1600 was always pretty much CONSTANT in its macroscopic appearance and social structures - featuring the same cast of feudal and mystical/priestly types - but unreliable in respect to individual luck. (For example, things might be going fine, then a plague or war would hit. Your kids might all die at any moment.)
At an accelerating rate after 1600, this all reversed. (At least in prosperous portions of the West.) Average people started believing that they stood a good chance of becoming grandparents. There was still an awful lot of bad luck churning around, but a majority began to feel a solid chance that war and sudden calamity just might pass them by. But meanwhile, society was growing less stable. Your kids might stand a better chance of seeing the future. But that future started to become vastly more contingent in the way it might look and feel. Your descendants would generally see a new world rocked by macro social changes that often shook elites from their perches.
This may have been what influenced the change in fiction, from being generally about fantastic subjects/situations to focusing in upon contemporary minutia, featuring a fanatical devotion to normality... a pretense that change did not matter.
.
I could go on. There are dozens of other possible ways of looking at the zeitgeist shift toward modernity. One that I contend is reaching a crisis point as we speak. The most modern nation of all is filling rapidly with panicky reactionaries of left and right who share a common anti modernist agenda.
There doesn't seem to be any sense to why this should be happening right now. For example, terrorism - the much vaunted fear of this decade - is inarguably FAR less disturbing and/or threatening than nuclear war was! There is no way that any of the most inflated estimates can suggest we are in as much immediate danger, as people and as citizens, as we were thirty years ago. (Though that may change in a decade or so, dramatically.)
In fact, evidence suggests that this panic is being engendered by the very success of modernism, bringing us to the brink of a singularity, or something like it.
Are you familiar with that term? It is a broad and marvelous topic having to do with the rapid pace by which the modernist agenda may accelerate and bring about truly fantastic transformations. For a lovely intellectual feast, drop in at: http://www.singularitywatch.com/articles/jsinterview2003.html
You'll see what I mean when I say that modernism itself is always in danger of turning weirdly romantic!
See Next entry on Modernism....
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Modernism Part 17: Addicted to Mysteries...
In the last section I admitted that this dichotomy (Modernism vs Romantic enemies of the Enlightenment) is flawed... as are all dichotomies... even though it explains the behavior of polemical people far better than the superficial "left-right political axis."
But pause a moment. I can't help it. I must reiterate one aspect of all this, yet again, lest it be missed.
The romantics' classic fixation on snobbish secrecy.
Before science, the chief traditions of knowledge were magic, religion, craft guilds and scholasticism. For all of their differences, these general systems seem to have shared some very consistent buttressing attributes. For example, they generally tended to emphasize the mysterious nature of their close-held procedures and arcana. All raised obstacles against unsanctioned outsiders who might attempt mastery of the inner lore.
All spoke of how daunting or dangerous it would be for the masses to know what the lay in the locked grimoires of hierarchical authorities - be they mages, shamans, guildmasters, priests... all the way to platonist or confucian philosophers.
Today you can see a plethora of new or upstart groups that have risen in varied forms to join these older ones. They come in bewildering variety of styles and specifics - while sharing this ancient legacy of secretive exclusivity. The particular paranoia can range from UFO cults to Straussian neocons, yet if you scratch below the surface veneer, all display startlingly similar character traits. Especially a nearly identical need to rationalize contempt for the masses while withholding vital information for use by a special and worthy elect.
I am NOT saying that all of these groups are equally right or wrong about the specifics of their beliefs! Today, either liberals or conservatives may offer better arguments on this or that issue. Moreover, religion certainly delivers benefits that are attested to by millions. My remarks here are not aimed at particular notions but at an all-too common trait of human beings who like to hold notions.
Whether the surface dogma is quality or dross, there remains this underlying shared current - something psychological that is separate from the surface details. Indeed, this deeper agenda can push in a direction diametrically opposite to what a person or group claims superficially to believe. Take, for example, those who, in the name of promoting freedom/democracy, all-too often seem to foster behaviors that undermine both.
One telltale sign of underlying romanticism is a deep fealty to mysteries. To secret codes hidden in the Bible, or in UFO-spun wheat fields, or conspiracy theories, or a desperate need to control mass media and clamp down on government information flows. From the sublime to the ridiculous and all across the range of intellect, what they all cater to is the most delicious, voluptuously attractive self-image of all. The notion that - "I know what's going on in the world and all you clueless fools do not."
This classic human way of viewing the world is one of the reasons that romanticism is... well... romantic! The appeal offered by mystery is very much in the tradition described by Joseph Campbell. And it may be the biggest reason why romantic writers, no matter how much science education they claim, simply never get what science is really about.
Writers like Michael Crichton and Margaret Atwood (to use our earlier examples from the far right and far left) are inherently - probably at the level of unchanging personality - unable to perceive that secrecy - not science - underlies nearly all of the failure modes that they draw out in their dire tales. Their scenarios would evaporate in the presence of CITOKATE. Is there even a chance that someday they will perceive their shared, incredibly consistent and predictable pattern? While secrecy is 'bad' when practiced by their villains, it is never villainous per se. Because secrecy is romantically delectable, and it dramatically empowers hubristic mistakes to go out of control.
As for dry accountability ... that's a pallid modernist thing. (Who else but a modernist would find anything appealing in an acronym like CITOKATE? ;-)
In order to see just how alien the scientific worldview is from pre-enlightenment ways of dealing with knowledge, take a look at how many scientists compete with each other in order to get shows on PBS, the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, the History Channel and so on. Listen as they gush and fizz as eagerly as some school kid, excitedly sharing what they know with fellow citizens who (after all) paid for the research with their taxes.
It's a very public manifestation of what goes on every day, on 10,000 university campuses, where ideas ferment and snotty grad students stand up to professors, sometimes gleefully proving them wrong. (Admittedly at some minor risk.)
This is not a revised version of magical and guild systems, with abject apprentices serving domineering masters (though some professors - being human - try to act that way). At best, science is the polar opposite of such systems. Scientists understand this. But romantics cannot even perceive it.
According to both Atwood and Crichton, - and to those on all sides who share their underlying world view - those scientific boffins are dangerous and need to be controlled, lest they unleash demons to wreck the world. Never mind that an open society should find the errors faster than any elite ever could, enabling (as we have seen time and again) modern society to both have its cake and eat it. Instead of trusting openness, we should turn instead to more secrecy. Leave policy to those who have worked out The Truth from basic principles. To ideologues who know what’s right by their very nature as philosopher kings, sages, priestesses... whatever... without having to prove anything at all.
Above all, do not look upon the future as a realm that can and should be improved by the active will of assertive, pragmatic human effort.
Accept the benefits of past modernism, without ever acknowledging a possibility that the best may be yet to come.
...Next posting... how this relates to science fiction...
PS... one of you spoke of my participating in a web ring or such on this topic. I certainly am willing to try to promote the concept of pragmatic modernism as an alternative to insipid Left-Right cliches... On the other hand, my productivity as a science fiction author has suffered badly of late. My wife wants me to do less of this, not more. Especially with a lot of happy but frenetic activities, of late.
So yes, I'll contribute to any such discussion. But others must do the organizing. The only REGULAR participation I can promise is what I'm doing right now. Scribbling a draft minifesto for grownup humans who don't need manifestos....
But pause a moment. I can't help it. I must reiterate one aspect of all this, yet again, lest it be missed.
The romantics' classic fixation on snobbish secrecy.
Before science, the chief traditions of knowledge were magic, religion, craft guilds and scholasticism. For all of their differences, these general systems seem to have shared some very consistent buttressing attributes. For example, they generally tended to emphasize the mysterious nature of their close-held procedures and arcana. All raised obstacles against unsanctioned outsiders who might attempt mastery of the inner lore.
All spoke of how daunting or dangerous it would be for the masses to know what the lay in the locked grimoires of hierarchical authorities - be they mages, shamans, guildmasters, priests... all the way to platonist or confucian philosophers.
Today you can see a plethora of new or upstart groups that have risen in varied forms to join these older ones. They come in bewildering variety of styles and specifics - while sharing this ancient legacy of secretive exclusivity. The particular paranoia can range from UFO cults to Straussian neocons, yet if you scratch below the surface veneer, all display startlingly similar character traits. Especially a nearly identical need to rationalize contempt for the masses while withholding vital information for use by a special and worthy elect.
I am NOT saying that all of these groups are equally right or wrong about the specifics of their beliefs! Today, either liberals or conservatives may offer better arguments on this or that issue. Moreover, religion certainly delivers benefits that are attested to by millions. My remarks here are not aimed at particular notions but at an all-too common trait of human beings who like to hold notions.
Whether the surface dogma is quality or dross, there remains this underlying shared current - something psychological that is separate from the surface details. Indeed, this deeper agenda can push in a direction diametrically opposite to what a person or group claims superficially to believe. Take, for example, those who, in the name of promoting freedom/democracy, all-too often seem to foster behaviors that undermine both.
One telltale sign of underlying romanticism is a deep fealty to mysteries. To secret codes hidden in the Bible, or in UFO-spun wheat fields, or conspiracy theories, or a desperate need to control mass media and clamp down on government information flows. From the sublime to the ridiculous and all across the range of intellect, what they all cater to is the most delicious, voluptuously attractive self-image of all. The notion that - "I know what's going on in the world and all you clueless fools do not."
This classic human way of viewing the world is one of the reasons that romanticism is... well... romantic! The appeal offered by mystery is very much in the tradition described by Joseph Campbell. And it may be the biggest reason why romantic writers, no matter how much science education they claim, simply never get what science is really about.
As for dry accountability ... that's a pallid modernist thing. (Who else but a modernist would find anything appealing in an acronym like CITOKATE? ;-)
In order to see just how alien the scientific worldview is from pre-enlightenment ways of dealing with knowledge, take a look at how many scientists compete with each other in order to get shows on PBS, the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, the History Channel and so on. Listen as they gush and fizz as eagerly as some school kid, excitedly sharing what they know with fellow citizens who (after all) paid for the research with their taxes.
It's a very public manifestation of what goes on every day, on 10,000 university campuses, where ideas ferment and snotty grad students stand up to professors, sometimes gleefully proving them wrong. (Admittedly at some minor risk.)
This is not a revised version of magical and guild systems, with abject apprentices serving domineering masters (though some professors - being human - try to act that way). At best, science is the polar opposite of such systems. Scientists understand this. But romantics cannot even perceive it.
According to both Atwood and Crichton, - and to those on all sides who share their underlying world view - those scientific boffins are dangerous and need to be controlled, lest they unleash demons to wreck the world. Never mind that an open society should find the errors faster than any elite ever could, enabling (as we have seen time and again) modern society to both have its cake and eat it. Instead of trusting openness, we should turn instead to more secrecy. Leave policy to those who have worked out The Truth from basic principles. To ideologues who know what’s right by their very nature as philosopher kings, sages, priestesses... whatever... without having to prove anything at all.
Above all, do not look upon the future as a realm that can and should be improved by the active will of assertive, pragmatic human effort.
Accept the benefits of past modernism, without ever acknowledging a possibility that the best may be yet to come.
...Next posting... how this relates to science fiction...
PS... one of you spoke of my participating in a web ring or such on this topic. I certainly am willing to try to promote the concept of pragmatic modernism as an alternative to insipid Left-Right cliches... On the other hand, my productivity as a science fiction author has suffered badly of late. My wife wants me to do less of this, not more. Especially with a lot of happy but frenetic activities, of late.
So yes, I'll contribute to any such discussion. But others must do the organizing. The only REGULAR participation I can promise is what I'm doing right now. Scribbling a draft minifesto for grownup humans who don't need manifestos....
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Modernism 16b: An Aside About "Human Nature"
Apologies. Family matters have me frazzled to the bone. Only snippets of time for this blog.
But here's a bone for those eager for something to chew over...
An Aside about Human Nature
Before continuing with my overall points about Modernism and its enemies, let me suggest that we should always drop back now and then and contemplate that minefield topic: "human nature".
All ideologues - and indeed all modernist-pragmatists - base their arguments and agendas upon assumptions about human nature, often explicitly stated, but far too often not. A worst-case example was Karl Marx, whose marvelously ingenious just so stories about destiny and society began with excellent foundation in contemporary economics... then marched right off a cliff of Tex Avery ditziness an teleological determinism that ignored any reference to evolution or real science.
Ayn Rand is just as bad, doing exactly the same things that Marx did, casting romantic incantations without ever offering falsifiable statements or opening her ornate reasoning to CITOKATE (Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error.)
When it comes to "human nature," I am skeptical of all explanations of human nature that leave out the neolithic.
By far a majority of human generations took place, strove, endured hardship and evolved during that long epoch. We may have adapted and developed a lot of sophisticated culture since then, but the UNDERLYING genetic predispositions nearly all arose in a context of migratory hunters gatherers, chipping clever stone tools and singing by camp fires, interacting with each other at a level similar to LORD OF THE FLIES.
Neolithic people had very sophisticated minds and tremendous strengths. They had minds basically as good as ours. But they almost certainly lived all that time in systems of power and interaction that were not democratic. Our knowledge of more recent tribal societies suggests that we are internally wired for some degree of fealty to chiefs and shamans. A distressting image, but sobering.
I do believe that we are genetically different from neolithic people is a few ways. The discovery of beer probably unleashed a very rapid culling of drunks, resulting in the astoundingly high percentage (at least 2/3) of humans who can "just say no". (This glass-half-full way of looking at human addiction is rare, but worth pondering.) Likewise, the effectiveness of kings at utilizing harems has been shown to have had a notable genetic effect. (8% of Chinese people are descended from Ghengiz Khan, apparently.)
If interested in how culture may continue evolution, see CHILDREN OF PROMETHEUS: The Accelerating Pace of Human Evolution, by Chris Wills.
Still, most of our proclivities arise out of neolithic people who were almost genetically the same as us. Leaving me amazed at how MUCH democracy and enlightenment and science we actually turn out to be capable of! The paramount trait of those neolithtic folks seems to have been adaptability.
In the end, though, we are foolish to ignore the fact that we still carry buttons that can be pushed, often cynically, to get us reacting to tribal totemic images and threats etc.
Chiefdoms became feudal societies because that transition is an easy extrapolation, while democracy (as the Athenians found) is hard. Really hard.
Modernism and the enlightenment are hard. They do not come easy. Today there are many, left and-right, who are busy pushing neolothic buttons to try and end the modernist experiment.
Example: I think one reason for the anti-modernists' hostility is the fact that our current high priests and shamans don't behave as mysteriously and in the domineering but reassuring way that they used to (and that they are depicted doing in fantasy: e.g. Gandalf and that horrible demon, Yoda.) Many people do not like the way today's high priests of knowledge fizz and pop on PBS about our steadily growing knowledge & power, eager to share it with all, unlike every other priestly class.
Far deeper inside us is the expectation that priests should keep secrets, domineer, and cast incantations. Very authoritative and convincing. Far more than watching some TV physicist gush "we don't know! Ain't it great?"
Finally, let me correct a notion that anti-modernists never look forward in time. As described by Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic: "Utopianism is back. We are exhorted from all sides to believe in happy endings. Russell Jacoby has just written Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti Utopian Age, a woozy and peculiarly unpolitical volume in which he demands that the old liberal anxiety about the consequences of the belief in the perfectibility of the human world be retired."
Another example is The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, in which he calls for "ending poverty in our time"- specifically, "by the year 2025." This is also the goal set in a report released last month by the United Nations Millennium Project, led by Sachs. Both modernists and anti-modernists can share GOALS, and even short term political desires.
The difference (and culture war) lies deeper down.
soon... addicted to mysteries...
But here's a bone for those eager for something to chew over...
An Aside about Human Nature
Before continuing with my overall points about Modernism and its enemies, let me suggest that we should always drop back now and then and contemplate that minefield topic: "human nature".
All ideologues - and indeed all modernist-pragmatists - base their arguments and agendas upon assumptions about human nature, often explicitly stated, but far too often not. A worst-case example was Karl Marx, whose marvelously ingenious just so stories about destiny and society began with excellent foundation in contemporary economics... then marched right off a cliff of Tex Avery ditziness an teleological determinism that ignored any reference to evolution or real science.
Ayn Rand is just as bad, doing exactly the same things that Marx did, casting romantic incantations without ever offering falsifiable statements or opening her ornate reasoning to CITOKATE (Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error.)
When it comes to "human nature," I am skeptical of all explanations of human nature that leave out the neolithic.
By far a majority of human generations took place, strove, endured hardship and evolved during that long epoch. We may have adapted and developed a lot of sophisticated culture since then, but the UNDERLYING genetic predispositions nearly all arose in a context of migratory hunters gatherers, chipping clever stone tools and singing by camp fires, interacting with each other at a level similar to LORD OF THE FLIES.
Neolithic people had very sophisticated minds and tremendous strengths. They had minds basically as good as ours. But they almost certainly lived all that time in systems of power and interaction that were not democratic. Our knowledge of more recent tribal societies suggests that we are internally wired for some degree of fealty to chiefs and shamans. A distressting image, but sobering.
I do believe that we are genetically different from neolithic people is a few ways. The discovery of beer probably unleashed a very rapid culling of drunks, resulting in the astoundingly high percentage (at least 2/3) of humans who can "just say no". (This glass-half-full way of looking at human addiction is rare, but worth pondering.) Likewise, the effectiveness of kings at utilizing harems has been shown to have had a notable genetic effect. (8% of Chinese people are descended from Ghengiz Khan, apparently.)
If interested in how culture may continue evolution, see CHILDREN OF PROMETHEUS: The Accelerating Pace of Human Evolution, by Chris Wills.Still, most of our proclivities arise out of neolithic people who were almost genetically the same as us. Leaving me amazed at how MUCH democracy and enlightenment and science we actually turn out to be capable of! The paramount trait of those neolithtic folks seems to have been adaptability.
In the end, though, we are foolish to ignore the fact that we still carry buttons that can be pushed, often cynically, to get us reacting to tribal totemic images and threats etc.
Chiefdoms became feudal societies because that transition is an easy extrapolation, while democracy (as the Athenians found) is hard. Really hard.
Modernism and the enlightenment are hard. They do not come easy. Today there are many, left and-right, who are busy pushing neolothic buttons to try and end the modernist experiment.
Example: I think one reason for the anti-modernists' hostility is the fact that our current high priests and shamans don't behave as mysteriously and in the domineering but reassuring way that they used to (and that they are depicted doing in fantasy: e.g. Gandalf and that horrible demon, Yoda.) Many people do not like the way today's high priests of knowledge fizz and pop on PBS about our steadily growing knowledge & power, eager to share it with all, unlike every other priestly class.
Far deeper inside us is the expectation that priests should keep secrets, domineer, and cast incantations. Very authoritative and convincing. Far more than watching some TV physicist gush "we don't know! Ain't it great?"
Finally, let me correct a notion that anti-modernists never look forward in time. As described by Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic: "Utopianism is back. We are exhorted from all sides to believe in happy endings. Russell Jacoby has just written Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti Utopian Age, a woozy and peculiarly unpolitical volume in which he demands that the old liberal anxiety about the consequences of the belief in the perfectibility of the human world be retired."
Another example is The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, in which he calls for "ending poverty in our time"- specifically, "by the year 2025." This is also the goal set in a report released last month by the United Nations Millennium Project, led by Sachs. Both modernists and anti-modernists can share GOALS, and even short term political desires.The difference (and culture war) lies deeper down.
soon... addicted to mysteries...
Friday, March 11, 2005
Aside: How the U.S. Saved the World by Buying Vast Amounts of Stuff...
Sorry, here's a topical aside. There's so much in the news.
Of course it all relates to the modernist agenda and its enemies.
Saving the World Through Walmart?...
Every year, Warren Buffett (probably the world’s greatest investor personally writes a letter to the shareholders of the company he controls, Berkshire Hathaway. The following excerpt is from a section that concerns the US trade deficit, in which Buffett explains why he is diversifying into currencies other than the US dollar.
"If the U.S. was running a $.6 trillion current-account surplus, commentators worldwide would violently condemn our policy, viewing it as an extreme form of “mercantilism” – a long discredited economic strategy under which countries fostered exports, discouraged imports, and piled up treasure. I would condemn such a policy as well. But, in effect if not in intent, the rest of the world is practicing mercantilism in respect to the U.S., an act made possible by our vast store of assets and our pristine credit history. Indeed, the world would never let any other country use a credit card denominated in its own currency to the insatiable extent we are employing ours. Presently, most foreign investors are sanguine: they may view us as spending junkies, but they know we are rich junkies as well.
"Our spendthrift behavior won’t, however, be tolerated indefinitely. And though it’s impossible to forecast just when and how the trade problem will be resolved, it’s improbable that the resolution will foster an increase in the value of our currency relative to that of our trading partners. "
While I respect and admire Buffett in many ways, I think that things may be a little more complicated that he portrays them to be.
I have a perspective I'd like to add. It does require "stepping back a bit" and taking in an even wider context, so hold on.
Many periods in history have seen one empire or another achieve enough power to establish and enforce the rules of trade - nearly always to their own advantage. It happened under Pax Romana. Britain did it with the Triangular Trade in 1770s. Ghandi's biggest complaint against the Raj was the way Indian industries were crushed in favor of exports from British mills. As Buffett says, it is called mercantilism.
Only now comes a funny thing that happened in our lifetimes. It is probably the biggest fact about world civilization in the last sixty years, yet I do not know of anyone explicitly or openly discussing it.
After WWII, the United States had an overwhelmingly superior position in the world, with an economy that had benefitted prodigiously from war, rather than suffering from it. By any measure we had become the latest "pax" or imperium, able to set rules and establish patterns that others could only follow.
But something surprising and historically unprecedented happened. For the first time, this kind of power was held by a nation and people whose value system was colored by both satiation and lessons of the Enlightenment. (The two are, of course, related.) Moreover, we were guided at this time - with respect to international matters - by arguably the greatest man of the Twentieth Century, George Marshall, who ensured that the U.S. would use all this power in ways diametrically opposite to any other historical imperium.
Motivated by a strangely pragmatic version of utopianism - called Modernism - we set about the ambitious goal of reshaping the world.
Most people today know Marshall only for his "plan" to rebuild European cities and farms in the immediate aftermath of war. But that was only one small part of a far greater scheme. More significant, in the long run was the establishment of trade policies that reversed mercantilism.
Instead of the Central Kingdom (Chung Kuo) forcing satrapies to buy manufactured goods from the center, the U.S. allowed client states to set up barriers against US manufactures while facing negligible duties to their goods imported to America.
Chief results?
#1 - a huge U.S. balance of payments deficit. This has been discussed relentlessly ever since the sixties - offering grist and nourishment for pessimists, predicting disaster. Indeed, it is becoming hard even for optimists to imagine happy outcomes for America, with the trade deficit now reaching more than half a trillion dollars a year!
Keen observers such as Warren Buffett predict a major reconfiguring of currencies in the near future, with another dolorous outcome -- the U.S. becoming an extreme debtor nation. And they are probably right. This is mismanagement on a collosal scale.
Okay. That's pretty clear. So far. But there is another side. A completely nother side.
#2 - The 60 year anti-mercantilist trade pattern established by America also resulted in the greatest transfer of real wealth in world history. The effects, first in Europe and Japan, then Taiwan and Korea, then the smaller "Asian Tigers" and parts of Latin America, have been staggering.
Out of the world's six billion people, more than two billion have been lifted into some kind of middle class existence - with modest but clean homes, access to water, power, education and hope - as a direct or indirect result of Americans buying trillions of dollars worth of goods we never needed.
Another billion or so appear to be on the same track, only a little behind.
We are told that the world is a devastatingly sad and oppressive place, filled with poverty and hopelessness. And, indeed, the raw numbers of people who suffer malnourishment and/or oppression, can only tear at the heart. Ideally, this awareness will spread and make us feel determined to do better.
But the irony is that only people who are relatively satiated can indulge in empathy and feel the pain of others, for whom satiation is but a dream.
In fact, the percentage of human beings who live in some degree of comfort and safety, with secure hope that their increasingly educated children will do better, has been rising spectacularly for two generations. And the principal driver of this change has been the U.S. consumer, purchasing the output of tens of thousands of foreign factories, wherein the same pattern gets repeated from one country to the next. Workers systematically move from exploited peons to hard-pressed semi-skilled assemblers, to unionized skilled labor... while roads and infrastructure get built all around them and their kids go to school, graduating into the bourgeoisie.
Let me reiterate this point. Far outweighing all "aid" the world ever saw, the greatest force for good in the world has consisted of Americans purchasing megatons of crap we never had to buy in the first place, under trade rules designed to favor those thousand of foreign factories.
Alas, we'll never get a scintilla of credit for this vast beneficence. Because it did not blossom out of motivations like guilt or generosity. To a large part, it flowed out of a childishly spendthrift love of shopping.
Indeed, when viewed from this unusual angle, America looks even more impressive than ever. After single-handedly lifting up Europe and Japan, in the wake of WWII, then hauling Korea and Taiwan into the middle class with the helpful voraciousness of our appetites and wallets, we proceeded thereupon to offer this same bounteous good deed to dozens of other nations and peoples until, today, we are accomplishing what no one would have imagined possible.
We are SIMULTANEOUSLY lifting both China and India toward prosperity. Nations amassing more than two billion people. At the same time.
Now this view may infuriate liberals, who believe that doing good should feel like doing good, ideally motivated by sacrifice, guilt... and maybe some paternalism.)
It also won't please conservatives, who would just hate to picture George Marshall saving the world. (They certainly give Ronald Reagan all the credit for calling the final plays in Marshall's long and patient game.)
It seems to be in nobody's interest, left or right, to acknowledge either that the world is being saved, or that it has been accomplished by good-natured American extravagance. Is this why such a blatant fact is so ignored?
Oh, but it is NOT being ignored... in Beijing.
The Chinese leadership is painfully aware how much they have at stake in continuing the American buying spree. If their present transition were to stall short of the halfway point, with most of the rural population poised at an especially dangerous phase - aware of possibilities that have not yet been realized - then social disruption could wrack the nation on a seismic scale. Beijing needs confident Americans to buy plenty more unneeded goods with strong dollars, for the foreseeable future.
Can this be achieved, while our current accounts deficit shatters all records? Yes, if a sufficient counterflow is maintained. The Chinese and others could buy more American goods, for example. (Unlikely.) Or they could pay for intellectual property (even less likely).
Or they'll buy more American capital. The latter will be done even with complete awareness that US investments must depreciate eventually. They don't have any choice. They must buy our bonds and banks and skyscrapers and golf courses, as the Japanese did, at an expected long term loss.
Shall we derive some small satisfaction from that?
I don't see it as an issue of us-them quite as much as some do. Had we played this as a competitive game on that basis, Marshall would have set up a traditional mercantilist trade pattern and we would right now be not only the richest nation but the Great Creditor, owning debt in every other country... and the world would be a raging storm of rebellion against a genuine American Imperium, with billions more suffering in angry poverty than do now.
As I see it, we ARE getting something. We are getting cheap Asian goods and a better world. High quality Japanese cars and a vast majority of Earth's children going to school. A cornucopia at Walmart, and four billion people rushing toward the middle class.
(With concomitant ecological crises that will challenge the NEXT generation. Don't think for a minute that I've forgotten THAT part of things... or the way we are betraying our role as R&D department for efficient and sustainable growth.)
The ironies pile up higher and higher. If America fades somewhat because of all this, will we be taunted because a great empire let itself slip from the pinnacle through spendthrift ways?
Or will we be given credit we deserve? We spent and spent and spent, and in the long run, what we bought was hope for the world.
For follow-up, see: How Americans Spent Themselves into Ruin, but Saved the World
...next, a return to modernism...
Of course it all relates to the modernist agenda and its enemies.
Saving the World Through Walmart?...
"If the U.S. was running a $.6 trillion current-account surplus, commentators worldwide would violently condemn our policy, viewing it as an extreme form of “mercantilism” – a long discredited economic strategy under which countries fostered exports, discouraged imports, and piled up treasure. I would condemn such a policy as well. But, in effect if not in intent, the rest of the world is practicing mercantilism in respect to the U.S., an act made possible by our vast store of assets and our pristine credit history. Indeed, the world would never let any other country use a credit card denominated in its own currency to the insatiable extent we are employing ours. Presently, most foreign investors are sanguine: they may view us as spending junkies, but they know we are rich junkies as well.
"Our spendthrift behavior won’t, however, be tolerated indefinitely. And though it’s impossible to forecast just when and how the trade problem will be resolved, it’s improbable that the resolution will foster an increase in the value of our currency relative to that of our trading partners. "
While I respect and admire Buffett in many ways, I think that things may be a little more complicated that he portrays them to be.
I have a perspective I'd like to add. It does require "stepping back a bit" and taking in an even wider context, so hold on.
Many periods in history have seen one empire or another achieve enough power to establish and enforce the rules of trade - nearly always to their own advantage. It happened under Pax Romana. Britain did it with the Triangular Trade in 1770s. Ghandi's biggest complaint against the Raj was the way Indian industries were crushed in favor of exports from British mills. As Buffett says, it is called mercantilism.
Only now comes a funny thing that happened in our lifetimes. It is probably the biggest fact about world civilization in the last sixty years, yet I do not know of anyone explicitly or openly discussing it.
After WWII, the United States had an overwhelmingly superior position in the world, with an economy that had benefitted prodigiously from war, rather than suffering from it. By any measure we had become the latest "pax" or imperium, able to set rules and establish patterns that others could only follow.
Motivated by a strangely pragmatic version of utopianism - called Modernism - we set about the ambitious goal of reshaping the world.
Most people today know Marshall only for his "plan" to rebuild European cities and farms in the immediate aftermath of war. But that was only one small part of a far greater scheme. More significant, in the long run was the establishment of trade policies that reversed mercantilism.
Instead of the Central Kingdom (Chung Kuo) forcing satrapies to buy manufactured goods from the center, the U.S. allowed client states to set up barriers against US manufactures while facing negligible duties to their goods imported to America.
Chief results?
#1 - a huge U.S. balance of payments deficit. This has been discussed relentlessly ever since the sixties - offering grist and nourishment for pessimists, predicting disaster. Indeed, it is becoming hard even for optimists to imagine happy outcomes for America, with the trade deficit now reaching more than half a trillion dollars a year!
Keen observers such as Warren Buffett predict a major reconfiguring of currencies in the near future, with another dolorous outcome -- the U.S. becoming an extreme debtor nation. And they are probably right. This is mismanagement on a collosal scale.
Okay. That's pretty clear. So far. But there is another side. A completely nother side.
#2 - The 60 year anti-mercantilist trade pattern established by America also resulted in the greatest transfer of real wealth in world history. The effects, first in Europe and Japan, then Taiwan and Korea, then the smaller "Asian Tigers" and parts of Latin America, have been staggering.
Out of the world's six billion people, more than two billion have been lifted into some kind of middle class existence - with modest but clean homes, access to water, power, education and hope - as a direct or indirect result of Americans buying trillions of dollars worth of goods we never needed.
Another billion or so appear to be on the same track, only a little behind.
We are told that the world is a devastatingly sad and oppressive place, filled with poverty and hopelessness. And, indeed, the raw numbers of people who suffer malnourishment and/or oppression, can only tear at the heart. Ideally, this awareness will spread and make us feel determined to do better.
But the irony is that only people who are relatively satiated can indulge in empathy and feel the pain of others, for whom satiation is but a dream.
In fact, the percentage of human beings who live in some degree of comfort and safety, with secure hope that their increasingly educated children will do better, has been rising spectacularly for two generations. And the principal driver of this change has been the U.S. consumer, purchasing the output of tens of thousands of foreign factories, wherein the same pattern gets repeated from one country to the next. Workers systematically move from exploited peons to hard-pressed semi-skilled assemblers, to unionized skilled labor... while roads and infrastructure get built all around them and their kids go to school, graduating into the bourgeoisie.
Alas, we'll never get a scintilla of credit for this vast beneficence. Because it did not blossom out of motivations like guilt or generosity. To a large part, it flowed out of a childishly spendthrift love of shopping.
Indeed, when viewed from this unusual angle, America looks even more impressive than ever. After single-handedly lifting up Europe and Japan, in the wake of WWII, then hauling Korea and Taiwan into the middle class with the helpful voraciousness of our appetites and wallets, we proceeded thereupon to offer this same bounteous good deed to dozens of other nations and peoples until, today, we are accomplishing what no one would have imagined possible.
We are SIMULTANEOUSLY lifting both China and India toward prosperity. Nations amassing more than two billion people. At the same time.
Now this view may infuriate liberals, who believe that doing good should feel like doing good, ideally motivated by sacrifice, guilt... and maybe some paternalism.)
It also won't please conservatives, who would just hate to picture George Marshall saving the world. (They certainly give Ronald Reagan all the credit for calling the final plays in Marshall's long and patient game.)
It seems to be in nobody's interest, left or right, to acknowledge either that the world is being saved, or that it has been accomplished by good-natured American extravagance. Is this why such a blatant fact is so ignored?
Oh, but it is NOT being ignored... in Beijing.
The Chinese leadership is painfully aware how much they have at stake in continuing the American buying spree. If their present transition were to stall short of the halfway point, with most of the rural population poised at an especially dangerous phase - aware of possibilities that have not yet been realized - then social disruption could wrack the nation on a seismic scale. Beijing needs confident Americans to buy plenty more unneeded goods with strong dollars, for the foreseeable future.
Can this be achieved, while our current accounts deficit shatters all records? Yes, if a sufficient counterflow is maintained. The Chinese and others could buy more American goods, for example. (Unlikely.) Or they could pay for intellectual property (even less likely).
Or they'll buy more American capital. The latter will be done even with complete awareness that US investments must depreciate eventually. They don't have any choice. They must buy our bonds and banks and skyscrapers and golf courses, as the Japanese did, at an expected long term loss.
Shall we derive some small satisfaction from that?
I don't see it as an issue of us-them quite as much as some do. Had we played this as a competitive game on that basis, Marshall would have set up a traditional mercantilist trade pattern and we would right now be not only the richest nation but the Great Creditor, owning debt in every other country... and the world would be a raging storm of rebellion against a genuine American Imperium, with billions more suffering in angry poverty than do now.
(With concomitant ecological crises that will challenge the NEXT generation. Don't think for a minute that I've forgotten THAT part of things... or the way we are betraying our role as R&D department for efficient and sustainable growth.)
The ironies pile up higher and higher. If America fades somewhat because of all this, will we be taunted because a great empire let itself slip from the pinnacle through spendthrift ways?
Or will we be given credit we deserve? We spent and spent and spent, and in the long run, what we bought was hope for the world.
For follow-up, see: How Americans Spent Themselves into Ruin, but Saved the World
...next, a return to modernism...
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Modernism Part 16: It goes beyond the arts...
And now, part 16 of "Modernism and its enemies."
Modernism Part 16. Putting it all in context.
In part 15, I compared author Michael Crichton to one of his left-wing counterparts, Margaret Atwood, revealing underlying agendas that are remarkably similar, despite superficial differences of politics, heroes and villains. Relentlessly and point by-point, they reject the modernist notion that we can and should improve both humanity and the world through calmly-negotiated, pragmatic advancement in realms of commerce, society and science, in an era of openly shared knowledge.
Of course, each of them would deny this, since both claim to be "progressive" and scientific in their own ways. But I contend that a long checklist of traits argues otherwise. For example, they seldom, if ever, show either society or science utilizing sophisticated enlightenment processes for error-discovery and correction. While praising diversity in principle, they never show diverse competing interests actually engaging in a mature process of reciprocal accountability or negotiation.
True, a good fiction tale can thrive upon situations when such mature processes fail. Exciting drama may revolve around a few heroes opposing terrible errors or oppressive opponents. But these errors and opponents are portrayed by romantic authors in simplistic, polemical fashion, demonizing straw-man villain groups for the purpose of making a political point. Never to illustrate mature processes in action.
In almost every case, the fictional failure mode seems to arise out of secrecy that prevented society and science from functioning properly. And yet, secrecy itself is never shown to be a core mistake! Rather, hubris is the classic character flaw that these authors bemoan. With typical elitism, they cast unalloyed dread toward the possibility that common citizens may seize new powers to remake society, their own lives, and even the lives of their children.
You can find the same loathing all across the arts, from fantasy novels that despise democracy and extol feudalism to rock videos that foster egotism as a primary human virtue.
Of course, the situation is not as simple as I've described so far. Dichotomies are inherently untrustworthy, (a decidedly modernist position, by the way.) Indeed, romantic polemics conveyed via the arts can often overlap with messages of the Enlightenment. They may even agree over specific or surface issues.
This shouldn't be surprising. Romantics and modernists were once allies, after all. Two centuries ago, until a great rift tore apart these worldviews, they briefly stood shoulder-to-shoulder through the American and French Revolutions -- before spilling apart in violent fraternal dispute. (Thomas Jefferson would seem to be the perfect blending of modernism and romanticism.)
For example, both movements claim credit for what seems to be the universal propaganda message, pervading nearly all recent movies and dramas. That message is Suspicion of Authority or SOA. (Name a popular film you've enjoyed in the last 30 years that does not feature it.) Both also claim to champion tolerance and admiration of human eccentricity/diversity.
Only with a key difference. Modernism calls for mild suspicion toward all centers of authority, including any that include you or me. An omni directional accountability, enforced by open and freely-accessible knowledge.
Romanticism nearly always manifests SOA as fervid hatred of some particular authoritarianism... while making excuses for its polar opposite. Romantics seldom see anything wrong with unaccountable power in the hands of their favorite authorities. Indeed, they make many excuses for why the masses cannot be trusted to take care of themselves.
And yet, after all this going on and on about romanticism in the arts, it may surprise you to learn that I find such artistic expression to be the least bothersome aspect of an ancient worldview. Indeed, the romantic impulse is deeply and naturally human. I exploit and foster it in myself, when writing a dramatic scene in one my own novels -- though I try to do so with open eyes and some awareness of the inevitable tradeoffs.
Even within the arts, romanticism has long waged war on the nerdy, cautious, cooperative and reasonable, in favor of extravagance, emotion, lusts and love-at first-sight. Indeed, can you even begin to count the number of times that films or novels have posed a dichotomy between logic and love? Between passion and reason? Between calculated risk and that bold roll of the dice? And how often has passionate illogic been portrayed as wrong? The nearly universal reflex does seem to indicate something driven, consistent, like a concerted campaign.
And I don't really mind. Again, we all grew up with this relentless romantic propaganda in the arts, and it sure has its good side. Certainly we will never abandon the richly emotional and voluptuous power that romantic posturing can offer through the arts, from Shelley, screaming at the heavens with lighting flashing all around, to Slim Pickens riding a hydrogen bomb like a bucking bronco, in Dr. Strangelove. The arts are where romanticism thrives and feeds us. In art, it can inspire and stir or replenish the soul.
Unfortunately, it goes far beyond fiction and the arts. If you look across six thousand years of recorded history, nearly all cultures were led by romantic thinking in their centers of policy and power. And that's where inestimable damage has been done.
Oh, there are more than enough superficial differences that allow anti-modernists of "left" and "right" to pontificate and rage at each other... while colluding over a deeper agenda. Certainly the left has been more direct and honest in its intellectually assault, fostering an entire movement called postmodernism, implying that their foe (modernism) is already finished off, a relic, even dead.
It should be no surprise that many of the leading figures in postmodernism, such as Derrida, Lacan and Foucault, emerged from the French wing of the Enlightenment... the wing that got suckered away from pragmatism and back into the arms of Plantoic mysticism.
Proclaiming that nothing is objectively true - that only subjective texts matter - they preach (in-effect) for a return to the era of persuasive magical incantations. By claiming that science is just another incantory system, they hope to downgrade its authority, denying this era's masters of wisdom any authority to "prove or disprove" anything at all. (More on this, in part 18.)
The hostility of rightwing intellectuals can be much more cryptic, and yet easy to understand. The retro-romantic impulse of the neoconservatives is not to restore the authority of magicians, but rather to re-empower aristocratic lords and priests.
...on to part 17... about the need for mysteries...
Modernism Part 16. Putting it all in context.
In part 15, I compared author Michael Crichton to one of his left-wing counterparts, Margaret Atwood, revealing underlying agendas that are remarkably similar, despite superficial differences of politics, heroes and villains. Relentlessly and point by-point, they reject the modernist notion that we can and should improve both humanity and the world through calmly-negotiated, pragmatic advancement in realms of commerce, society and science, in an era of openly shared knowledge.
Of course, each of them would deny this, since both claim to be "progressive" and scientific in their own ways. But I contend that a long checklist of traits argues otherwise. For example, they seldom, if ever, show either society or science utilizing sophisticated enlightenment processes for error-discovery and correction. While praising diversity in principle, they never show diverse competing interests actually engaging in a mature process of reciprocal accountability or negotiation.
True, a good fiction tale can thrive upon situations when such mature processes fail. Exciting drama may revolve around a few heroes opposing terrible errors or oppressive opponents. But these errors and opponents are portrayed by romantic authors in simplistic, polemical fashion, demonizing straw-man villain groups for the purpose of making a political point. Never to illustrate mature processes in action.
In almost every case, the fictional failure mode seems to arise out of secrecy that prevented society and science from functioning properly. And yet, secrecy itself is never shown to be a core mistake! Rather, hubris is the classic character flaw that these authors bemoan. With typical elitism, they cast unalloyed dread toward the possibility that common citizens may seize new powers to remake society, their own lives, and even the lives of their children.
You can find the same loathing all across the arts, from fantasy novels that despise democracy and extol feudalism to rock videos that foster egotism as a primary human virtue.
Of course, the situation is not as simple as I've described so far. Dichotomies are inherently untrustworthy, (a decidedly modernist position, by the way.) Indeed, romantic polemics conveyed via the arts can often overlap with messages of the Enlightenment. They may even agree over specific or surface issues.
This shouldn't be surprising. Romantics and modernists were once allies, after all. Two centuries ago, until a great rift tore apart these worldviews, they briefly stood shoulder-to-shoulder through the American and French Revolutions -- before spilling apart in violent fraternal dispute. (Thomas Jefferson would seem to be the perfect blending of modernism and romanticism.)
For example, both movements claim credit for what seems to be the universal propaganda message, pervading nearly all recent movies and dramas. That message is Suspicion of Authority or SOA. (Name a popular film you've enjoyed in the last 30 years that does not feature it.) Both also claim to champion tolerance and admiration of human eccentricity/diversity.
Only with a key difference. Modernism calls for mild suspicion toward all centers of authority, including any that include you or me. An omni directional accountability, enforced by open and freely-accessible knowledge.
Romanticism nearly always manifests SOA as fervid hatred of some particular authoritarianism... while making excuses for its polar opposite. Romantics seldom see anything wrong with unaccountable power in the hands of their favorite authorities. Indeed, they make many excuses for why the masses cannot be trusted to take care of themselves.
And yet, after all this going on and on about romanticism in the arts, it may surprise you to learn that I find such artistic expression to be the least bothersome aspect of an ancient worldview. Indeed, the romantic impulse is deeply and naturally human. I exploit and foster it in myself, when writing a dramatic scene in one my own novels -- though I try to do so with open eyes and some awareness of the inevitable tradeoffs.
Even within the arts, romanticism has long waged war on the nerdy, cautious, cooperative and reasonable, in favor of extravagance, emotion, lusts and love-at first-sight. Indeed, can you even begin to count the number of times that films or novels have posed a dichotomy between logic and love? Between passion and reason? Between calculated risk and that bold roll of the dice? And how often has passionate illogic been portrayed as wrong? The nearly universal reflex does seem to indicate something driven, consistent, like a concerted campaign.
And I don't really mind. Again, we all grew up with this relentless romantic propaganda in the arts, and it sure has its good side. Certainly we will never abandon the richly emotional and voluptuous power that romantic posturing can offer through the arts, from Shelley, screaming at the heavens with lighting flashing all around, to Slim Pickens riding a hydrogen bomb like a bucking bronco, in Dr. Strangelove. The arts are where romanticism thrives and feeds us. In art, it can inspire and stir or replenish the soul.
Unfortunately, it goes far beyond fiction and the arts. If you look across six thousand years of recorded history, nearly all cultures were led by romantic thinking in their centers of policy and power. And that's where inestimable damage has been done.
Oh, there are more than enough superficial differences that allow anti-modernists of "left" and "right" to pontificate and rage at each other... while colluding over a deeper agenda. Certainly the left has been more direct and honest in its intellectually assault, fostering an entire movement called postmodernism, implying that their foe (modernism) is already finished off, a relic, even dead.
It should be no surprise that many of the leading figures in postmodernism, such as Derrida, Lacan and Foucault, emerged from the French wing of the Enlightenment... the wing that got suckered away from pragmatism and back into the arms of Plantoic mysticism.
Proclaiming that nothing is objectively true - that only subjective texts matter - they preach (in-effect) for a return to the era of persuasive magical incantations. By claiming that science is just another incantory system, they hope to downgrade its authority, denying this era's masters of wisdom any authority to "prove or disprove" anything at all. (More on this, in part 18.)
The hostility of rightwing intellectuals can be much more cryptic, and yet easy to understand. The retro-romantic impulse of the neoconservatives is not to restore the authority of magicians, but rather to re-empower aristocratic lords and priests.
...on to part 17... about the need for mysteries...
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Modernism Part 15: Modernism & Science are assaulted from all sides...
Before resuming this long essay about modernism, here's a link to my big speech about libertarianism. It's a cult classic... among the very few pragmatists in that sadly loopy movement. Sad because they could not even do to Bush what Nader did to Gore, even though their type of "conservatism" is far closer to the meaning of the word held by a majority of GOP voters. They could have become a strong force for freedom while undermining the drift of the New Right toward aristocratism. But year after year, libertarian purists blame the customers for not buying, instead of re-examining their product. It is pathetic, and a real betrayal of the movement's deeper potential. (Romanticism strikes again.)
Now onward.
***
Monsters to the Left of Us...
After Part 14, which discussed the obsessive neoconservative campaign against science and modernity, can we take it that the Enlightenment is principally under attack from the "right"?
Far from it! Let's take another example of this all-out reactionary frenzy, this time from the political "left."
Michael Crichton's apparent polar opposite would seem to be Margaret Atwood, the doyen of feminist fiction and well-known for her attacks on the white-male-financier power structure, in both fiction and polemical nonfiction. Oryx and Crake, Atwood's latest novel, portrays yet another world devastated by human greed, incompetence, and brutish oppression, this time nearly denuded of human life by scientific innovations gone awry.
Of course this is a familiar premise and one that I have used myself. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with some vivid extrapolative exaggeration in trying to make a point. The greatest 'self-preventing prophecies' have done it by showing how much we'd lose "if this goes on."
And yet, this motif can also become hackneyed, cliched, even a crutch. For example, nearly all feminist science fiction tales seem to begin with a scenario based on some (literally) manmade catastrophe. One can easily see why. The End of the World is such a bad thing - the very worst thing - that it offers a moral excuse for any author to pour opprobrium upon whole types who might be assigned blanket group-culpability. A neat trick, since you aren't really supposed to judge people in straw-man type-categories.
But that's what romantics inherently do, whether their particular ire is aimed left or right, at all commies or all capitalists or at all males. (See my article on Tolkien and the Modern Age) Romanticism is about one side being pure and good while the opposition is all-bad. And the attraction of this way of thinking is clear. Indignation feels good! It's lovely to disdain your opponents as-a class that is inherently immoral.
But even when your worldview officially promotes poilitically-correct hypertolerance? One way around this bind is to portray the enemy class (males, plutocrats, whatever) as all-powerful, and determined to bring about the end of the world.
(I expect grief from these paragraphs, so let me say very clearly that I consider myself to be a feminist and have written my own feminist utopia, Glory Season. Moreover, creating a cliched world holocaust and then assigning venal blame to conspiring corporate lords can seem less preposterous than Michael Crichton's recent attempt to call ecological activists the Great Illuminati! Here my criticism of the standard feminist fictional scenario is not aimed at the surface agenda of universal tolerance and opportunity - of which I deeply approve - but at a nasty undercurrent that many authors may not even be aware of.)
As part of this tradition, Oryx and Crake doesn't hold back. One of the book's key themes is the corrupting influence of commerce on science. When business interests dominate "you enter a skewed universe where science can no longer operate as science," Atwood says.
The book takes this to extremes. For example, biotech company HelthWyzer puts "hostile bioforms" into vitamin pills while at the same time marketing antidotes. "The best diseases, from a business point of view," the author writes with irony, "would be those that cause a lingering illness."
And it all goes to hell from there. Talk about a penalty for man's arrogance! The destruction of all art, all love, all hope. This is portrayed as the ultimate and likely outcome if we continue plunging forward with our insolent program of meddling with Nature's wisdom.
The crux: science cannot be trusted. Not while money or competition or self-interest are involved. (In other words, not while we are human.) Not anywhere as well as certain self-appointed artistic-elite guardians of Truth.
In effect, this is exactly the same lesson as that preached by Michael Crichton. Except replace "artistic" with "aristocratic." (The words even sound similar.)
Till now, I'd wager very few critics have even typed the names Michael Crichton and Margaret Atwood in the same article, let alone calling them allies and co belligerents in the same cause. And yet, having come this far in a lengthy essay, the reader can now see why I present them, side-by-side. True, they have probably never supported the same politicians, and never will. Their particular choice of villains will always be surficially different; so will their heroes and heroines. But those are superficialities and distractions.
Indeed, this pair of authors show countless eerie parallels. Both claim relentlessly, and rather defensively, to be pro-science. Crichton avows a scientific education while Atwood often refers to her father and brother, biologists of some prominence. Both Crichton and Atwood mourn that modern science is relentlessly corrupted by corrupt interests that destroy its credibility. Even the unscrupulous conspiracies are remarkably similar, differing only in the cosmetic surfaces that distinguish left-wing authoritarian bogeymen from right-wing authoritarian bogeymen.
Both offer doomsday scenarios that arise almost entirely because of secrecy that stifles the natural corrective, error-prevention of open accountability in a free, democratic and scientific society.
And yet they never call secrecy the culprit, per se.
No, it is always hubris.
Dig down, and you will find that these authors, and a myriad others like them, tap the mythic current described by Joseph Campbell. A river of tradition, nostalgia and fear of the future that watered nearly all of the great literature in our tortured past, from Homer and Murusaki to Joyce. A despairing sense of loss. A belief in eternal verities and traditional values under threat. The rightful superiority of a wise or all-knowing class. A sense that the past knew better and that today's citizens cannot be trusted with bold new tools to "improve" the world. To improve their children and themselves.
Don't be distracted by minor differences. While lefty postmodernists express contempt for money-polluted, power-driven science in principle, Crichton and his neoconservative friends rail against what they perceive as a liberal-activist tilt on the part of the modern scientific community in practice, proclaiming that humanity's smartest and best trained minds -- the entire vast and amorphous marketplace of skilled scientific competitors -- have been polluted and discredited by outrageously unprofessional mysticism and consensual bias.
These two positions are seldom laid side-by-side. The common aim of antimodernists - both neoconservative and ultraliberal - is to discredit the process and credibility of science itself, a process that benefits from relentless criticism of specifics , but that is undermined by broadbrush general condemnations, hurled without supporting analysis from fanatical extremes of both left and right.
...on to Part 16... how it spreads outward from the arts...
.
Now onward.
***
Monsters to the Left of Us...
After Part 14, which discussed the obsessive neoconservative campaign against science and modernity, can we take it that the Enlightenment is principally under attack from the "right"?
Far from it! Let's take another example of this all-out reactionary frenzy, this time from the political "left."
Michael Crichton's apparent polar opposite would seem to be Margaret Atwood, the doyen of feminist fiction and well-known for her attacks on the white-male-financier power structure, in both fiction and polemical nonfiction. Oryx and Crake, Atwood's latest novel, portrays yet another world devastated by human greed, incompetence, and brutish oppression, this time nearly denuded of human life by scientific innovations gone awry. Of course this is a familiar premise and one that I have used myself. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with some vivid extrapolative exaggeration in trying to make a point. The greatest 'self-preventing prophecies' have done it by showing how much we'd lose "if this goes on."
And yet, this motif can also become hackneyed, cliched, even a crutch. For example, nearly all feminist science fiction tales seem to begin with a scenario based on some (literally) manmade catastrophe. One can easily see why. The End of the World is such a bad thing - the very worst thing - that it offers a moral excuse for any author to pour opprobrium upon whole types who might be assigned blanket group-culpability. A neat trick, since you aren't really supposed to judge people in straw-man type-categories.
But that's what romantics inherently do, whether their particular ire is aimed left or right, at all commies or all capitalists or at all males. (See my article on Tolkien and the Modern Age) Romanticism is about one side being pure and good while the opposition is all-bad. And the attraction of this way of thinking is clear. Indignation feels good! It's lovely to disdain your opponents as-a class that is inherently immoral.
But even when your worldview officially promotes poilitically-correct hypertolerance? One way around this bind is to portray the enemy class (males, plutocrats, whatever) as all-powerful, and determined to bring about the end of the world.
(I expect grief from these paragraphs, so let me say very clearly that I consider myself to be a feminist and have written my own feminist utopia, Glory Season. Moreover, creating a cliched world holocaust and then assigning venal blame to conspiring corporate lords can seem less preposterous than Michael Crichton's recent attempt to call ecological activists the Great Illuminati! Here my criticism of the standard feminist fictional scenario is not aimed at the surface agenda of universal tolerance and opportunity - of which I deeply approve - but at a nasty undercurrent that many authors may not even be aware of.)
As part of this tradition, Oryx and Crake doesn't hold back. One of the book's key themes is the corrupting influence of commerce on science. When business interests dominate "you enter a skewed universe where science can no longer operate as science," Atwood says.
The book takes this to extremes. For example, biotech company HelthWyzer puts "hostile bioforms" into vitamin pills while at the same time marketing antidotes. "The best diseases, from a business point of view," the author writes with irony, "would be those that cause a lingering illness."
And it all goes to hell from there. Talk about a penalty for man's arrogance! The destruction of all art, all love, all hope. This is portrayed as the ultimate and likely outcome if we continue plunging forward with our insolent program of meddling with Nature's wisdom.
The crux: science cannot be trusted. Not while money or competition or self-interest are involved. (In other words, not while we are human.) Not anywhere as well as certain self-appointed artistic-elite guardians of Truth.
In effect, this is exactly the same lesson as that preached by Michael Crichton. Except replace "artistic" with "aristocratic." (The words even sound similar.)
Till now, I'd wager very few critics have even typed the names Michael Crichton and Margaret Atwood in the same article, let alone calling them allies and co belligerents in the same cause. And yet, having come this far in a lengthy essay, the reader can now see why I present them, side-by-side. True, they have probably never supported the same politicians, and never will. Their particular choice of villains will always be surficially different; so will their heroes and heroines. But those are superficialities and distractions. Indeed, this pair of authors show countless eerie parallels. Both claim relentlessly, and rather defensively, to be pro-science. Crichton avows a scientific education while Atwood often refers to her father and brother, biologists of some prominence. Both Crichton and Atwood mourn that modern science is relentlessly corrupted by corrupt interests that destroy its credibility. Even the unscrupulous conspiracies are remarkably similar, differing only in the cosmetic surfaces that distinguish left-wing authoritarian bogeymen from right-wing authoritarian bogeymen.
Both offer doomsday scenarios that arise almost entirely because of secrecy that stifles the natural corrective, error-prevention of open accountability in a free, democratic and scientific society.
And yet they never call secrecy the culprit, per se.
No, it is always hubris.
Dig down, and you will find that these authors, and a myriad others like them, tap the mythic current described by Joseph Campbell. A river of tradition, nostalgia and fear of the future that watered nearly all of the great literature in our tortured past, from Homer and Murusaki to Joyce. A despairing sense of loss. A belief in eternal verities and traditional values under threat. The rightful superiority of a wise or all-knowing class. A sense that the past knew better and that today's citizens cannot be trusted with bold new tools to "improve" the world. To improve their children and themselves.
Don't be distracted by minor differences. While lefty postmodernists express contempt for money-polluted, power-driven science in principle, Crichton and his neoconservative friends rail against what they perceive as a liberal-activist tilt on the part of the modern scientific community in practice, proclaiming that humanity's smartest and best trained minds -- the entire vast and amorphous marketplace of skilled scientific competitors -- have been polluted and discredited by outrageously unprofessional mysticism and consensual bias.
These two positions are seldom laid side-by-side. The common aim of antimodernists - both neoconservative and ultraliberal - is to discredit the process and credibility of science itself, a process that benefits from relentless criticism of specifics , but that is undermined by broadbrush general condemnations, hurled without supporting analysis from fanatical extremes of both left and right.
...on to Part 16... how it spreads outward from the arts...
.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Modernism Part 14: more on Crichton vs science
Let me preface the following installment with this - I met Michael Crichton only once, when we were on a television program together. He seemed a thoroughly nice fellow and my impression was of someone who cared sincerely about human success in a dangerous era. 
Moreover, as you may read in other essays, I have no problem with people writing dire warning stories, about potential failure modes, or ways that technology might go awry. Indeed, the highest form of science fiction is arguably the self preventing prophecy, which causes enough thoughtful discussion that a particular worst-path is avoided. Best example? Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, though one could make similar cases for The China Syndrome, Soylent Green, and Silent Spring.
Certainly, if we ever do build robot or dinosaur theme parks, I am sure MC will get credit for warning us not to do it in the stupidest imaginable way.
But none of this has anything to do with my key point here, which concerns the bitter war for survival that modernism must now fight against enemies on all sides - romantics who cannot bear the fundamental assumptions of the Enlightenment. Especially that openness, pragmatism, accountability and rising human maturity may make us worthy - using good will and our own skilled hands - to remake a better world.
Moreover, while I respect the storytelling skills and breadth of interests shown by Michael Crichton... much as I respect the intellect and honesty of the late JRR Tolkien... there is simply no question which side of this struggle they both consistently chose.
Onward to part 14, taking up where we left off....
14: The agenda of the new-right does not want interference from Nobel-winning boffins...
If criticism is the only known antidote to error, that means we are certainly behooved to listen when intelligent and articulate critics like Michael Crichton - or his left-wing, postmodernist counterparts - assail what may be faulty or premature conclusions, accepted too readily by “consensus science.” (See Michael Crichton's The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming, also in his fiction, State of Fear.
The beauty and magic of criticism is that it can be right at the level of details, even if the overall argument is inane.
For example, I have elsewhere said things similar to what Crichton says about the excessively dramatic environmental jeremiads of Paul Ehrlich and Carl Sagan who, for example, cut corners and did inaccurate science while predicting imminent mass starvation and/or nuclear winter by the century’s turn. (Other examples chosen by Crichton are singled-out unfairly.)
(For more on achieving a balanced and vigorously pragmatic view toward environmental crises, see: My review of Jared Diamond's Collapse and my review of Greg Easterbrook's The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better Why People Feel Worse. Or, of course, my novel Earth.)
But while pot-shotting easy targets, Crichton makes no effort to actually do what he recommends -- engage in the dispassionate and careful scientific work of proving his own case. For example, he is rich enough to fund a panel of neutral experts to statistically appraise how many politically tendentious or biased studies there are, compared to the surrounding sea-tide of accumulating human knowledge that is the general process of worldwide science. Or whether the biases of left and right counterbalance in some reasonably pragmatic corrective process.
He might even have suggested methods of appraisal that would catch sophistries perpetrated by paid-off scientists of both the left and right. Many such methods have been contemplated, for example "science courts" that would expose controversial notions to harsh criticism and cautiously evaluate their credibility. Elsewhere (Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict for Society's Benefit) I describe why this notion is unnecessary and potentially harmful. But Crichton should certainly have discussed a range of possible ways to fix the problem he describes. After all, he surficially claims to revere science, while bemoaning its fallen state.
![Prey [Hardcover]-Michael Crichton](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ujQnWEB6SpnC-vDdi3Lxqo50hnhviVwuofzpGIRhbgHS_U3fKy-1nQdp2W2ZypB841l4IjLdtT609_fN9qE1Gp8JRtj-elXi07G-LDYEx0n0GlKai49Nqx-YUy18XG--md3vBNowg7eAIc7qTa7d-qx-EBshaZE-69=s0-d)
Alas, he is not interested in such processes or potential solutions, especially any that would enhance the validity and influence of science in public affairs. In fact, by cherry-picking anecdotal bad-examples - and misquoting those sources that he does cite - he demonstrates that his real aim is to besmirch the entire vast community of science, doing quite-blatantly the very thing that he derides.
The political agenda is very clear, of course. With a vast and growing scientific consensus building over the issue of Climate Change, and letters appearing in the press signed by scores of Nobel Prize winners, the deniers of global warming and other environmental threats face a deepening credibility gap. They must discredit the very notion of "scientific consensus" at a basic level, so that - no matter how many respected experts sign on to a petition - they can be prevented from influencing policy.
One of the commentors on Part 13 put it this way: Crichton says: "Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way." I contend that this is exactly how scientists would speak IF the distance to the sun or the energy equivalent of a kg were being disputed by non-scientists with a political agenda. This is precisely what is happening with Darwinian Evolution, which biologists regard as being on as solid a footing as Relativity or Orbital Mechanics, and their response is to invoke consensus.
In effect, by disdaining "consensus science", and offering no alternative, this branch of an obstinate aristocratic clade is - through Crichton - telling civilization's finest minds to return to their labs and tend their own business. As "boffins" they should stick to test tubes and leave policy to whichever self-chosen elite of aristocrats, politicos and/or philosopher kings happens to sit at the pinnacle of government and finance.
But then, look at Crichton’s novels, most of which follow a startlingly consistent plot outline.
First, a gosh-wow technological breakthrough is pursued by some cryptic entity (government agency, corporate lab, mad scientist or, lately, eco-fanatics) in total secrecy, evading the corrective effects of criticism. Errors are made due to a combination of hubris, profound stupidity, overweening pride and the utter absence of oversight by an obtuse civilization. And then (of course) hubris is compounded by more hubris. These errors very nearly lead to calamity while a solitary goodguy demigod berates the team efforts and the entire ignoramus culture that brought us to the brink.
Alas, not one of these lecturing heroes ever mentions the one corrective prescription that might actually work - general openness. The way we have often managed to get so many advances without hubristic calamities. (The almost perfect correlation between secrecy and catastrophe is a major point in The Transparent Society.)
Amid all the lectures in each Crichton novel, the plot - punctuated by gruesome deaths - does often build a lovely, reckless and heartpounding pace, hurtling toward a precipice of man-wrought doom...
...whereupon (more often than not) a miraculous salvation not only nullifies the error but then puts everything and everybody (except the dead) back where they came from, restoring a comfortable (but worried) status quo.
Try watching Jurassic Park again. Then murmur to both the hubristic strawman of a Disney-mogul and the smarmy-lectury-romantic mathematician -- "Duh... let's start out by making only herbivores!" Crichton’s dire warnings about misused science would go away in nearly every novel, but for an assumption of venal stupidity compounded by unnecessary (if convenient) secrecy.
Let there be no mistake, this plot outline is not modernist. It is romantic at every level that I describe elsewhere. Despite Crichton’s speech before a meeting of the AAAS , claiming “I am not anti-science!” -- he most definitely is. You can see it clearly in the following statement from his lecture at Caltech.
“In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. “
Of course he does. As I alluded earlier, every foe of the Enlightenment must eventually converge on the same destination.
No specific scientific error is really at issue, since those can be fixed with tools of science, especially open and reciprocal accountability. No, the deep agenda and aim is to generally discredit the smartest members of our civilization, so that nothing they say can be used against other elites who have decidedly LESS respect for objective evidence than scientists do.
...Next: It ain't just the right-wing. Margaret Atwood and lefty postmodernists wage their own war against modernism....
Moreover, as you may read in other essays, I have no problem with people writing dire warning stories, about potential failure modes, or ways that technology might go awry. Indeed, the highest form of science fiction is arguably the self preventing prophecy, which causes enough thoughtful discussion that a particular worst-path is avoided. Best example? Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, though one could make similar cases for The China Syndrome, Soylent Green, and Silent Spring.Certainly, if we ever do build robot or dinosaur theme parks, I am sure MC will get credit for warning us not to do it in the stupidest imaginable way.
But none of this has anything to do with my key point here, which concerns the bitter war for survival that modernism must now fight against enemies on all sides - romantics who cannot bear the fundamental assumptions of the Enlightenment. Especially that openness, pragmatism, accountability and rising human maturity may make us worthy - using good will and our own skilled hands - to remake a better world.
Moreover, while I respect the storytelling skills and breadth of interests shown by Michael Crichton... much as I respect the intellect and honesty of the late JRR Tolkien... there is simply no question which side of this struggle they both consistently chose.
Onward to part 14, taking up where we left off....
14: The agenda of the new-right does not want interference from Nobel-winning boffins...
If criticism is the only known antidote to error, that means we are certainly behooved to listen when intelligent and articulate critics like Michael Crichton - or his left-wing, postmodernist counterparts - assail what may be faulty or premature conclusions, accepted too readily by “consensus science.” (See Michael Crichton's The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming, also in his fiction, State of Fear.The beauty and magic of criticism is that it can be right at the level of details, even if the overall argument is inane.
For example, I have elsewhere said things similar to what Crichton says about the excessively dramatic environmental jeremiads of Paul Ehrlich and Carl Sagan who, for example, cut corners and did inaccurate science while predicting imminent mass starvation and/or nuclear winter by the century’s turn. (Other examples chosen by Crichton are singled-out unfairly.)
(For more on achieving a balanced and vigorously pragmatic view toward environmental crises, see: My review of Jared Diamond's Collapse and my review of Greg Easterbrook's The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better Why People Feel Worse. Or, of course, my novel Earth.)
But while pot-shotting easy targets, Crichton makes no effort to actually do what he recommends -- engage in the dispassionate and careful scientific work of proving his own case. For example, he is rich enough to fund a panel of neutral experts to statistically appraise how many politically tendentious or biased studies there are, compared to the surrounding sea-tide of accumulating human knowledge that is the general process of worldwide science. Or whether the biases of left and right counterbalance in some reasonably pragmatic corrective process.
He might even have suggested methods of appraisal that would catch sophistries perpetrated by paid-off scientists of both the left and right. Many such methods have been contemplated, for example "science courts" that would expose controversial notions to harsh criticism and cautiously evaluate their credibility. Elsewhere (Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict for Society's Benefit) I describe why this notion is unnecessary and potentially harmful. But Crichton should certainly have discussed a range of possible ways to fix the problem he describes. After all, he surficially claims to revere science, while bemoaning its fallen state.
Alas, he is not interested in such processes or potential solutions, especially any that would enhance the validity and influence of science in public affairs. In fact, by cherry-picking anecdotal bad-examples - and misquoting those sources that he does cite - he demonstrates that his real aim is to besmirch the entire vast community of science, doing quite-blatantly the very thing that he derides. The political agenda is very clear, of course. With a vast and growing scientific consensus building over the issue of Climate Change, and letters appearing in the press signed by scores of Nobel Prize winners, the deniers of global warming and other environmental threats face a deepening credibility gap. They must discredit the very notion of "scientific consensus" at a basic level, so that - no matter how many respected experts sign on to a petition - they can be prevented from influencing policy.
One of the commentors on Part 13 put it this way: Crichton says: "Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way." I contend that this is exactly how scientists would speak IF the distance to the sun or the energy equivalent of a kg were being disputed by non-scientists with a political agenda. This is precisely what is happening with Darwinian Evolution, which biologists regard as being on as solid a footing as Relativity or Orbital Mechanics, and their response is to invoke consensus.
In effect, by disdaining "consensus science", and offering no alternative, this branch of an obstinate aristocratic clade is - through Crichton - telling civilization's finest minds to return to their labs and tend their own business. As "boffins" they should stick to test tubes and leave policy to whichever self-chosen elite of aristocrats, politicos and/or philosopher kings happens to sit at the pinnacle of government and finance.
But then, look at Crichton’s novels, most of which follow a startlingly consistent plot outline.
First, a gosh-wow technological breakthrough is pursued by some cryptic entity (government agency, corporate lab, mad scientist or, lately, eco-fanatics) in total secrecy, evading the corrective effects of criticism. Errors are made due to a combination of hubris, profound stupidity, overweening pride and the utter absence of oversight by an obtuse civilization. And then (of course) hubris is compounded by more hubris. These errors very nearly lead to calamity while a solitary goodguy demigod berates the team efforts and the entire ignoramus culture that brought us to the brink.
Alas, not one of these lecturing heroes ever mentions the one corrective prescription that might actually work - general openness. The way we have often managed to get so many advances without hubristic calamities. (The almost perfect correlation between secrecy and catastrophe is a major point in The Transparent Society.)
Amid all the lectures in each Crichton novel, the plot - punctuated by gruesome deaths - does often build a lovely, reckless and heartpounding pace, hurtling toward a precipice of man-wrought doom...
...whereupon (more often than not) a miraculous salvation not only nullifies the error but then puts everything and everybody (except the dead) back where they came from, restoring a comfortable (but worried) status quo.
Try watching Jurassic Park again. Then murmur to both the hubristic strawman of a Disney-mogul and the smarmy-lectury-romantic mathematician -- "Duh... let's start out by making only herbivores!" Crichton’s dire warnings about misused science would go away in nearly every novel, but for an assumption of venal stupidity compounded by unnecessary (if convenient) secrecy.
Let there be no mistake, this plot outline is not modernist. It is romantic at every level that I describe elsewhere. Despite Crichton’s speech before a meeting of the AAAS , claiming “I am not anti-science!” -- he most definitely is. You can see it clearly in the following statement from his lecture at Caltech.
“In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. “
Of course he does. As I alluded earlier, every foe of the Enlightenment must eventually converge on the same destination.
No specific scientific error is really at issue, since those can be fixed with tools of science, especially open and reciprocal accountability. No, the deep agenda and aim is to generally discredit the smartest members of our civilization, so that nothing they say can be used against other elites who have decidedly LESS respect for objective evidence than scientists do.
...Next: It ain't just the right-wing. Margaret Atwood and lefty postmodernists wage their own war against modernism....
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