Category: History

Categories
Culture History Mythology Tech

Techno-worship, American-style

Likely more prescient in 2022 than it was when first published in 2011, Morris Berman cites the argument of British philosopher John Gray to support his (taboo) thesis that our unwavering, unquestioning commitment to technological progress has been a crucial factor in the downfall of American society. Whether by slow-burn or sudden death-knell, our end is certain because, as Americans, we are unwilling to abandon a myth.

Theories of progress, says Gray1, are not scientific hypotheses but rather myths, which—like the Christian myths of redemption and the Second Coming—answer to the human need for meaning. This is why we refuse to let them go, regardless of what the evidence might suggest. It is also why, in the United States, the commitment to technology goes much deeper than fueling consumerism, lubricating the socioeconomic system, and keeping a lid on class conflict. Without this belief system, Americans would have literally nothing, for it lies at the heart of the American Dream and endlessly vaunted American way of life. Strip away the illusion of unlimited growth and the country would suffer a collective nervous breakdown. (This is key to why Jimmy Carter had to go: he was pushing the limits of American psychological tolerance, asking a nation of addicts to confront their dependency and change course.) Globalization, along with neoliberalism, according to Gray, is merely the latest incarnation of this illusion, and its deep religious roots account for the ferocity of its adherents, even after the crash of 2008 gave the lie to the notion of unlimited development through the free market economy. We want to believe that the future will be better than the past, but there isn’t a shred of evidence to back this up. In particular, as I shall discuss below, scientific progress doesn’t translate into moral progress; one could reasonably argue that just the opposite is the case. Truth be told, concludes Gray, we are even more superstitious than our medieval forebears; we just don’t recognize it. Nor is it likely that we shall abandon these beliefs. It’s utopia or bust, even if the odds are heavily weighted toward bust.

Berman M., Why America Failed: the roots of imperial decline, 2011/2014, pp. 82-83 quoting Gray, J., Black Mass, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007

Categories
Behavior Experience History Philosophy

Bruno’s Expression

I came across this gem a couple of weeks ago. The impact with which the late Professor Bronowski asserted his “personal view” on science versus dogma cannot be overstated:

There are two parts to the human dilemma: one is the belief that the end justify the means. That push-button philosophy. That deliberate deafness to suffering that has become the monster in The War Machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit. The assertion of dogma that closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts [camera zooms into an open iron door to a human-sized oven]: obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.

It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn then into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself [zoom out, new scene: narrator walks toward, and into, a pond outside of a complex perimeter.]: this is the crematorium and concentration camp at Auschwitz; this is where people were turned into numbers.

Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And it was not done by gas; it was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance! When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the very brink of the known. We always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: think it possible you may be mistaken!”

I owe it as a scientist to my late friend Leo Szilard–I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here–to stand here as a survivor and as a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act.

[Slowly leaning down toward the pond, the narrator swoops in with his right hand and scoops up muck from the bottom, slowly bringing it up…]

We have to touch people.

Bronowski, J., The Ascent of Man, Episode 11, BBC, 1973
Categories
History Literature Philosophy

Kaleidosope

Concerning the major players involved in shaping the events during the first month of World War I (August 1914), Barbara W. Tuchman wrote in the prelude to the book’s list of sources:

They seemed to have known, while they lived it, that like the French Revolution, the First World War was one of the great convolutions of history, and each felt the hand of history heavily on his own shoulder.  When it was over, despite courage, skill, and sacrifice, the war they had fought proved to have been, on the whole, a monument of failure, tragedy and disillusion.  It had not led to a better world.  Men who had taken part at the command level, political and military, felt driven to explain their decisions and actions.  Men who had fallen from high command, whether for cause or as scapegoats—and these included most of the commanders of August—wrote their private justifications. As each account appeared, inevitably shifting responsibility or blame to someone else, another was provoked.

With much insight, she elucidates through metaphor the goal of the historian who

…gropes his way trying to recapture the truth of past events and find out “what really happened.” He discovers that truth is subjective and separate, made up of little bits seen, experienced and recorded by different people. It’s like the design seen through a kaleidoscope; when the cylinder is shaken the countless colored fragments form a new picture. Yet they are the same fragments that made a different picture a moment earlier.

Tuchman, Barbara W., The Guns of August, 1962, The Random House Publishing Group, First Presidio Press Mass Market edition, p. 525.