An interesting and thought provoking read. It must be that the 'Moderns' contain a (now) growing body of 'Reactionary Moderns'. This group always questions the reasons for the way in which, governments, for instance, aggregate power, and use that power to the citizens' disadvantage whilst proclaiming 'safety' as a justification. Those holding the power levers (and those twisted billionaires supporting them) resent questioning - their actual 'power base' is fragile, built on flimsy justifications for One Health, or, the ever 'boiling' globe. Hence, 'they' want ever more control over information which flatly contradicts. Censorship is the big stick to wield against questioning perverse individuals....the Reactionary Moderns.
I would bet a crate of Maltesers ( let alone a box!) that our futures are not what they want, but what we are creating in front of their eyes. There are too many free thinkers and 'questioners' ( and more than is evident from looking at society as a whole), and where they exist so does optimism, ingenuity, hope, and faith....if not in Gods but each other.
I'm going to be a dissenting voice, even though I agree with the statements about the direction of increasing digital technology consequences.
First of all I dislike the term Modernity. It carries too much 'meaning' of today's circumstances to be a reliable thought tool. People used to use 'Enlightenment' but that has also become debased. If we are using the obliteration of theological justifications as the key point then Naturalism is perhaps a better word.
If you argue that theological justification adds a stabilising function to the direction of society then that may well have been true in the past. There are many people who still accept the supernatural as a foundation for their lives; although there are also many 'believers' who routinely follow their own inclinations first. But the Naturalistic world view is now seen as too effective in day to day life for there to be anything but a diminishing gap for the divine. Plus 'god free' philosophies such as Taoism and some versions of Buddhism show that non-theological justifications also work.
So the projected to absurdity thought experiment could be restated as:
1) In the year 2124 nobody will be depending on supernatural 'guidance' to regulate their lives
or
2) In the year 2124 supernatural 'guidance' will dominate societies
Whether supernatural guidance could be New Age belief, established Religions or theocracies. or some new Quantum Woo would be another interesting speculation.
Just to point out that the world is growing more religious, not less, and that your assertion about the ascendancy of naturalism (though true in some university circles) is not a fact on the ground. Naturalism is losing traction, not gaining. There are good reasons for this trend that have nothing to do with belief in what you call "the supernatural"--though I can't be sure what you mean by supernatural. The term is generally used by atheists to denote everything from psychology to divine intervention...
Yes, I think in the long term that 'diminishing gap' for the divine will reopen as religious believers simply out-reproduce non-believers. Indeed, I think what we are seeing at the moment is that secular atheism, or modernity, or naturalism, or whatever you want to call it is simply not the normal way for human beings to live, and that it is actually a cul-de-sac developmentally.
Another fun piece, here, David. Thank you! I agree with the following statement and found it well expressed:
"We are reaching an inflection point, though we have not quite got there yet, at which the cool thing to do will not to be online much, if at all, and in which indeed the only way to be free will be to not have an online presence, since the very act of online engagement will involve total surveillance and perfect censorship."
And this statement, which follows logically:
"This may very well not be a future in which digital tech is abandoned entirely. But it is one in which that technology will by and large be put in its proper place as a useful tool for certain purposes, and that alone. We will be its masters, rather than its ‘users’."
My concern with the religious future that lies ahead (after the revolution) is that it promises to be led by fanatics. Isn't it Iran that has state-mandated haircuts? Religion too deals in centripetal power, and in its worst form suffers from deep-state style bureaucracy, which tends to promote incompetent yet obedient players over talented innovators. As you are well aware, revolutions become oppressive if not downright destructive and murderous in their efforts to cleanse the society of the believers in the old regime. In short, I agree that your vision of the future is likely, but that it will be accompanied by wars of religion, in which (as usual) true spirituality is forgotten. Moreover, that technology which ought to serve us, will once again be deployed by our religious overlords to surveil us such that we are all brought in the line with the One True Truth and the One True Good.
Yes, this is indeed a danger. As I said, the potential for serious revolutionary violence is on the cards. We shouldn't expect otherwise - history is replete with it!
"No sooner are totalities closed in on themselves than they start cracking all over. The end of history is followed by history no matter what." - Bruno Latour
Hi David,
I'm enjoying you foreshadowing my May theme of 'Progress' at Stranger Worlds very much. It reminds me as when I got to be a 'warm up philosopher' for a writer friend... good times! 😂
Joking aside, it is not a coincidence that you and I, who not long ago were impossibly divided by the old political chasm, are frequently working on similar problems. We share in common that grounding in the experience of the book that produces a different kind of thought to that of the regime of 'misinformation', which has lost an essential intellectual skill and thus lacks the wherewithal to even notice this loss.
I frequently find the term 'modernity' terribly unhelpful (it rankles me that 'the modern period' is approaching half a millennia now but 'modern' still means 'new' to most people), but your ideas translate well into Charles Taylor's remarks about secularity. One of the qualities of our time is that different ideals for 'the secular' have come into conflict without much capacity for people to tell the difference.
On the one hand, 'secularism' means to certain people a banishment of religion... which of course, inevitably means the establishment of new pseudo-religions that deny they have anything in common with religion (Asa is ploughing this furrow heavily right now). But on the other is the idea of a secular society in which no single version of metaphysics, religious or non-religious, is allowed primacy within democratic discourse. I think it far easier for people to defend this latter ideal when they already know they have metaphysical beliefs, as religious folk do...
The contemporary crisis remains, for me, one of denying metaphysics and therefore being enslaved by it.
Once again, I am grateful to David for driving home the feeling of optimism!!
This was a much needed counter to the sense of pessimism which, occasionally, sweeps over me when I consider the ongoing direction of travel on which humanity has embarked with its embrace of a digital future.
It is a well argued case, founded, as ever, on the continual push towards a global centralisation of governance and its consequential justification for existence by means of gradually assuming as many of our own individual duties/responsibilities to societal administration as possible and thus providing the illusion that it is indispensable.
The creation of a global society of individuals which “can in the end tolerate nothing other than perfect substantive equality: all of us moving forward, but only in total lock-step”. Essentially, a perfect description of communism! An ‘undermining of self-reliance and autonomy’.
So, a welcome read at the start of another day, in which we continue to grapple with the results of evermore foolish AND incompetent governments, in the sure and certain knowledge that the next version will be no improvement.
That prediction about 2124 is a bit silly. Just consider an equivalent prediction about 2024 made in 1924: In a hundred years no-one will handwrite or in a hundred years no-one will type. Alternatively, consider a third prediction about 2124; that no-one will read any text because we will only receive information in audio and/or video format.
Yes, agreed, but I accounted for that in the post. It’s not a genuine prediction either way - it’s just a thought experiment. (The human race may even have died out by then.)
A fabulous articulation of my garbled feelings about these things! I recently read 'Start-up Factory: Haier's RenDanHeYi model and the end of management as we know it' by Joost Minnaar and I found it fascinating what's going on there. A company of 80,000 run along the lines of a 'neural network, and as nimble as the most dynamic start-up.'
Although not, I believe, formally a religious man, Wittgenstein has some things to say in On Certainty that I think are relevant here. ‘Modernity’s’ objection to “Because God says so” is that in putting an end to argument it seems anti-rational. After all, what could be more reasonable than to ask for reasons? But is it reasonable to ask for them endlessly? Is there no limit to the grounds we can reasonably ask for? Upon what grounds would you make a demand for grounds that had no end or limit? Is our search for justifications – along with the scepticism it expresses – to have no end?
Wittgenstein’s answer seems to have been that it has to have an end, some end, just as a condition of our believing anything at all: “justification comes to an end”, the “groundlessness of our believing”, “At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not well-founded,” “Giving grounds … justifying the evidence comes to an end;—but the end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting which lies at the bottom of the language-game.” And by the “language-game” I take it he means the exchanges in which we ask for reasons, give grounds, accept justifications and so on. It is not, ultimately, that our acting rests on grounds but that the “game” in which we give grounds rests upon our acting, a whole form of life which is itself groundless, which is the condition of our having any grounds to give at all and which sets a limit to the grounds we can reasonably ask for. “ Because God says so” is then, from such a viewpoint, infinitely more reasonable than any limitless search for reasons.
An interesting and thought provoking read. It must be that the 'Moderns' contain a (now) growing body of 'Reactionary Moderns'. This group always questions the reasons for the way in which, governments, for instance, aggregate power, and use that power to the citizens' disadvantage whilst proclaiming 'safety' as a justification. Those holding the power levers (and those twisted billionaires supporting them) resent questioning - their actual 'power base' is fragile, built on flimsy justifications for One Health, or, the ever 'boiling' globe. Hence, 'they' want ever more control over information which flatly contradicts. Censorship is the big stick to wield against questioning perverse individuals....the Reactionary Moderns.
I would bet a crate of Maltesers ( let alone a box!) that our futures are not what they want, but what we are creating in front of their eyes. There are too many free thinkers and 'questioners' ( and more than is evident from looking at society as a whole), and where they exist so does optimism, ingenuity, hope, and faith....if not in Gods but each other.
I'm going to be a dissenting voice, even though I agree with the statements about the direction of increasing digital technology consequences.
First of all I dislike the term Modernity. It carries too much 'meaning' of today's circumstances to be a reliable thought tool. People used to use 'Enlightenment' but that has also become debased. If we are using the obliteration of theological justifications as the key point then Naturalism is perhaps a better word.
If you argue that theological justification adds a stabilising function to the direction of society then that may well have been true in the past. There are many people who still accept the supernatural as a foundation for their lives; although there are also many 'believers' who routinely follow their own inclinations first. But the Naturalistic world view is now seen as too effective in day to day life for there to be anything but a diminishing gap for the divine. Plus 'god free' philosophies such as Taoism and some versions of Buddhism show that non-theological justifications also work.
So the projected to absurdity thought experiment could be restated as:
1) In the year 2124 nobody will be depending on supernatural 'guidance' to regulate their lives
or
2) In the year 2124 supernatural 'guidance' will dominate societies
Whether supernatural guidance could be New Age belief, established Religions or theocracies. or some new Quantum Woo would be another interesting speculation.
Just to point out that the world is growing more religious, not less, and that your assertion about the ascendancy of naturalism (though true in some university circles) is not a fact on the ground. Naturalism is losing traction, not gaining. There are good reasons for this trend that have nothing to do with belief in what you call "the supernatural"--though I can't be sure what you mean by supernatural. The term is generally used by atheists to denote everything from psychology to divine intervention...
Yes, I think in the long term that 'diminishing gap' for the divine will reopen as religious believers simply out-reproduce non-believers. Indeed, I think what we are seeing at the moment is that secular atheism, or modernity, or naturalism, or whatever you want to call it is simply not the normal way for human beings to live, and that it is actually a cul-de-sac developmentally.
Another fun piece, here, David. Thank you! I agree with the following statement and found it well expressed:
"We are reaching an inflection point, though we have not quite got there yet, at which the cool thing to do will not to be online much, if at all, and in which indeed the only way to be free will be to not have an online presence, since the very act of online engagement will involve total surveillance and perfect censorship."
And this statement, which follows logically:
"This may very well not be a future in which digital tech is abandoned entirely. But it is one in which that technology will by and large be put in its proper place as a useful tool for certain purposes, and that alone. We will be its masters, rather than its ‘users’."
My concern with the religious future that lies ahead (after the revolution) is that it promises to be led by fanatics. Isn't it Iran that has state-mandated haircuts? Religion too deals in centripetal power, and in its worst form suffers from deep-state style bureaucracy, which tends to promote incompetent yet obedient players over talented innovators. As you are well aware, revolutions become oppressive if not downright destructive and murderous in their efforts to cleanse the society of the believers in the old regime. In short, I agree that your vision of the future is likely, but that it will be accompanied by wars of religion, in which (as usual) true spirituality is forgotten. Moreover, that technology which ought to serve us, will once again be deployed by our religious overlords to surveil us such that we are all brought in the line with the One True Truth and the One True Good.
Yes, this is indeed a danger. As I said, the potential for serious revolutionary violence is on the cards. We shouldn't expect otherwise - history is replete with it!
"No sooner are totalities closed in on themselves than they start cracking all over. The end of history is followed by history no matter what." - Bruno Latour
Hi David,
I'm enjoying you foreshadowing my May theme of 'Progress' at Stranger Worlds very much. It reminds me as when I got to be a 'warm up philosopher' for a writer friend... good times! 😂
Joking aside, it is not a coincidence that you and I, who not long ago were impossibly divided by the old political chasm, are frequently working on similar problems. We share in common that grounding in the experience of the book that produces a different kind of thought to that of the regime of 'misinformation', which has lost an essential intellectual skill and thus lacks the wherewithal to even notice this loss.
I frequently find the term 'modernity' terribly unhelpful (it rankles me that 'the modern period' is approaching half a millennia now but 'modern' still means 'new' to most people), but your ideas translate well into Charles Taylor's remarks about secularity. One of the qualities of our time is that different ideals for 'the secular' have come into conflict without much capacity for people to tell the difference.
On the one hand, 'secularism' means to certain people a banishment of religion... which of course, inevitably means the establishment of new pseudo-religions that deny they have anything in common with religion (Asa is ploughing this furrow heavily right now). But on the other is the idea of a secular society in which no single version of metaphysics, religious or non-religious, is allowed primacy within democratic discourse. I think it far easier for people to defend this latter ideal when they already know they have metaphysical beliefs, as religious folk do...
The contemporary crisis remains, for me, one of denying metaphysics and therefore being enslaved by it.
Stay wonderful!
Chris.
"The contemporary crisis remains, for me, one of denying metaphysics and therefore being enslaved by it." Put that on a t-shirt, Chris.
Ha ha! Sadly, not as punchy as, say, 'Make 1984 Fiction Again'. 🙂
Once again, I am grateful to David for driving home the feeling of optimism!!
This was a much needed counter to the sense of pessimism which, occasionally, sweeps over me when I consider the ongoing direction of travel on which humanity has embarked with its embrace of a digital future.
It is a well argued case, founded, as ever, on the continual push towards a global centralisation of governance and its consequential justification for existence by means of gradually assuming as many of our own individual duties/responsibilities to societal administration as possible and thus providing the illusion that it is indispensable.
The creation of a global society of individuals which “can in the end tolerate nothing other than perfect substantive equality: all of us moving forward, but only in total lock-step”. Essentially, a perfect description of communism! An ‘undermining of self-reliance and autonomy’.
So, a welcome read at the start of another day, in which we continue to grapple with the results of evermore foolish AND incompetent governments, in the sure and certain knowledge that the next version will be no improvement.
Well, the global governors have something in mind:
https://www.un.org/en/common-agenda/summit-of-the-future
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/our-common-agenda-summit-of-the-future-what-would-it-deliver.pdf
And these will be after the WHO with its IHRs end May.
Follow the money, study Fascism and fight to stay healthy and free.
That prediction about 2124 is a bit silly. Just consider an equivalent prediction about 2024 made in 1924: In a hundred years no-one will handwrite or in a hundred years no-one will type. Alternatively, consider a third prediction about 2124; that no-one will read any text because we will only receive information in audio and/or video format.
Yes, agreed, but I accounted for that in the post. It’s not a genuine prediction either way - it’s just a thought experiment. (The human race may even have died out by then.)
A fabulous articulation of my garbled feelings about these things! I recently read 'Start-up Factory: Haier's RenDanHeYi model and the end of management as we know it' by Joost Minnaar and I found it fascinating what's going on there. A company of 80,000 run along the lines of a 'neural network, and as nimble as the most dynamic start-up.'
Sounds really interesting - thanks for the recommendation.
Although not, I believe, formally a religious man, Wittgenstein has some things to say in On Certainty that I think are relevant here. ‘Modernity’s’ objection to “Because God says so” is that in putting an end to argument it seems anti-rational. After all, what could be more reasonable than to ask for reasons? But is it reasonable to ask for them endlessly? Is there no limit to the grounds we can reasonably ask for? Upon what grounds would you make a demand for grounds that had no end or limit? Is our search for justifications – along with the scepticism it expresses – to have no end?
Wittgenstein’s answer seems to have been that it has to have an end, some end, just as a condition of our believing anything at all: “justification comes to an end”, the “groundlessness of our believing”, “At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not well-founded,” “Giving grounds … justifying the evidence comes to an end;—but the end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting which lies at the bottom of the language-game.” And by the “language-game” I take it he means the exchanges in which we ask for reasons, give grounds, accept justifications and so on. It is not, ultimately, that our acting rests on grounds but that the “game” in which we give grounds rests upon our acting, a whole form of life which is itself groundless, which is the condition of our having any grounds to give at all and which sets a limit to the grounds we can reasonably ask for. “ Because God says so” is then, from such a viewpoint, infinitely more reasonable than any limitless search for reasons.
Thanks for the great comment.
https://youtu.be/zKQfxi8V5FA
Zager and Evans come to mind.
The physical, the tangible, the substantive; more grounded, more real, more human.
https://ukresponse.substack.com/p/what-beauty-is-and-why-we-need-it
https://ukresponse.substack.com/p/reservoirs-of-meaning
Thanks! That sounds fascinating.