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The Modern World Is in Danger of Amusing Itself to Death

Sunday, October 27, 2019 18:25

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“The Modern World Is in Danger of Amusing Itself to Death”

by Neil Postman

“A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration. Printing created prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into an exercise in superstition. Printing assisted in the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into a sordid if not a murderous emotion.

Another way of saying this is that a new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological change, in other words, always results in winners and losers.

The Benedictine monks who invented the mechanical clock in the 12th and 13th centuries believed that such a clock would provide a precise regularity to the seven periods of devotion. Here is a great paradox: the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; and it ended as the technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money.

Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose. Gutenberg thought his invention would advance the cause of the Holy Roman See, whereas in fact, it turned out to bring a revolution which destroyed the monopoly of the Church.

The world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction. In a world without spiritual or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable; nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing comes as a particular surprise.

The medieval world was not without a sense of order. Ordinary men and women had no doubt that there was such a design, and their priests were well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make it, if not rational, at least coherent.

The situation we are presently in is much different, sadder and more confusing and certainly more mysterious. There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

In the Middle Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made it both important and usable. This began to change, as everyone knows, in the late 15th century when a goldsmith named Gutenberg, from Mainz, converted an old wine press into a printing machine, and in so doing, created what we now call an information explosion. Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since.

But what started out as a liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos. Matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems. The tie between information and action has been severed. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.

We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don’t know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives.

Did Iraq invade Kuwait because of a lack of information? If a hideous war should ensue between Iraq and the U.S., will it happen because of a lack of information? If children die of starvation in Ethiopia, does it occur because of a lack of information?

If you and your spouse are unhappy together, and end your marriage in divorce, will it happen because of a lack of information?

If your children misbehave and bring shame to your family, does it happen because of a lack of information?

If someone in your family has a mental breakdown, will it happen because of a lack of information?

What causes us the most misery and pain has nothing to do with the sort of information made accessible by computers. The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most.

The computer is a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most need to confront – spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future. Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better – best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.

In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy. Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people – perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger.

They will give us artificial intelligence, and tell us that this is the way to self-knowledge; instantaneous global communication; the way to mutual understanding; Virtual Reality; the answer to spiritual poverty. But that is only the way of the technician, the fact-mongerer, the information junkie, and the technological idiot.

Henry David Thoreau told us: “All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.” Goethe told us: “One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words.” Socrates told us: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The prophet Micah told us: “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” And I can tell you what Confucius, Isaiah, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Spinoza and Shakespeare told us… There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.”

- https://russia-insider.com/

Source: http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-modern-world-is-in-danger-of.html

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