Excruciatingly Large Forum
Excruciatingly Large Forum
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“Today the good life means making full use of science and technology – without succumbing to the illusion that they can make us free, reasonable, or even sane. It means seeking peace – without hoping for a world without war. It means cherishing freedom – in the knowledge that it is an interval between anarchy and tyranny.”
I haven't read Gray's book yet (though after your synopsis, I feel I must); even so, his ideas seem to correspond to the point of view I've reached after years of believing - quite passionately at times - in the idea of progress.
That is, once I chucked off religious belief - at least, the Christian variation of that universal human wish for cosmic protection and kind regard - secular 'belief', built upon modernized Euro Age of Enlightenment concepts, married to a 'Star Trek' notion of both scientific and civilizational advancement, filled the void.
Well, now it's clear to me that although science and technology can be refined and made ever more subtle as we uncover, and mimic, more of nature's methods, this doesn't mean that our speicies is moving towards any particular point (other than death, since all things, even entire worlds, eventually die).
Taking an over-used reference down from the shelf yet again, I have to say that the first time I was visually introduced to the idea of change without progress was while sitting alone in a darkened theatre watching Blade Runner.
There, onscreen, were nearly all of my childhood tech-utopia fantasies - the airborne cars, the deep space colonies, the exquisitely constructed androids. And yet, the world was a quite grim place (a lovely, small moment that sums it up for me: neo noir replicant killer Deckered is using a public vid phone to speak to someone - the phone is "futuristic" but filthy from abuse, an inadvertant counter to the sterile perfection of the "2001" vid phone from orbit moment). This truly confused my progress-fixated sensibilities for good while. Only with the pasage of time, as I've watched real advancements that once seemed like dreams become reality and yet, simultaneously witnessed the world's continued turmoil and apparent slide into a dangrous love of competing mythologies, has the visual wisdom of Blade Runner become clear to me.
One other thought about Gray...
Before buying a book, I tend to judge its purchase worthiness, so to speak, by the quality of criticism it attracts. Not only positive criticism, mind you, but also negative.
Note, for example, this Amazon.com comment thread about Gray's "Straw Dogs". Quite a few contributors have strongly negative things to say and make interesting counter-arguments ("interesting" at least, to me, a man who has yet to pick up the book).
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing." - Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialismand besides, it's fun speculating on the absurdity of it all. That's what us lot do best anyway. I wouldn't have a website if I didn't somehow believe in this species of 6.5 billion (oxy)morons.
The work needed to deliver humanity is vast. Indeed it is limitless, since as one plateau of achievement is reached another looms up. Of course this is only a mirage; but the worst of progress is not that it is an illusion. It is that it is endless.
Dr. Ophusi:
"And if indeed we managed to do something about the great imbalance of poverty and wealth between the nations, it will by no means suggest that we have ‘progressed’ – instead we’ll have solved one moral dilemma, only to fail at answering another, newer one."
.......
Yes but I must say, as an American, bombarded with messages that, with slight tweaking, could have been written by 19th century 'fire and brimstone' preachers and living with a sense of dread brought on by Washington's 19th century style war of neo-colonialism in the Middle East, I'd rather like to tackle new problems instead of re-solving old ones in new clothing.
The other day, a despairing friend, a great lover of science fiction of the "hard" kind (Asimov, Heinlein - the tough old men of sci fi who dreamed of Project Orion-esque atomic rockets sailing amongst the stars) sighed and said "you know, I didn't expect the future to be problem free, I just didn't expect the problems to be from the past."
"…control over natural phenomena gives birth to a craving for the arbitrary manipulation of men….shaped by the pattern of domination over nature…"and Rousseau commented in 'Discourse on the Origins of Inequality':
"…as every advance made by the human species removes it still farther from it's primitive state, the more discoveries we make, the more we deprive ourselves of the means of making the most important of all. Thus it is, in one sense, by our very study of man, that the knowledge of him is put out of our power."Thus the ultimate dichotomy has been drawn. To know the human - through religion, science, moral theory - is to come under the illusion of a higher level of understanding, leading to the corrosive abuse of power. Yet, in constructing a scaffolding by which to build 'better' humans, and thus a more 'progressive' society, we must turn our backs on knowledge which has a relative power issuing from instinct, and pushing us away from innate truths.
Do you think perhaps that people of ever era have thought in this way? Or was the coming of the 21st century somehow a symbolic transfiguration across worlds, into a new age of our imaginations?1 to 11 of 11