Eschatologist #3: Turning the Knobs of Society
If you prefer to listen rather than read, this blog is available as a podcast here. Or if you want to listen to just this post:
When I ended my last newsletter, I promised to name the hurricane of change and disruption which is currently sitting just off the coast gathering strength. Indeed “Change” and “Disruption” could both serve as names for this hurricane. But I want to dig deeper.
This change and disruption haven’t arisen from nowhere, it’s clearly driven by the ever accelerating pace of technology and progress. Which is to say this isn’t a natural hurricane. It’s something new, something we have created.
This is in part why naming it is so difficult. New phenomena require new words, new ways of thinking.
Perhaps a metaphor would help. I want you to imagine that we’re explorers, that we’re somewhere in the depths of the Amazon, or in a remote Siberian valley. In the course of our exploration we come across an ancient temple, barely recognizable after the passage of the centuries. As we clear away the vegetation we uncover some symbols. They are related to a language we know, but are otherwise very ancient. We can’t be entirely sure, but after consulting the experts in our group we think the symbols identify it as a place where one can control the weather. This seems unbelievable, but when we finally clear enough of the vegetation and rubble away to enter the building, we discover a wall covered in simple knobs. Each of these knobs can be turned to the right or the left, and each is labeled with another set of faded symbols.
An overeager graduate student sees the symbol for “rain” above one of the knobs. He runs over and turns it slightly to the right. Almost immediately, through the still open portal, you see rain drops begin to fall. The grad student turns it back to the left, and the rain stops. He then turns it as far as he can to the right, and suddenly water pours from the sky and thunder crashes in the distance.
Technology and progress are like finding that abandoned temple with its wall full of knobs, but instead of allowing us to control the weather, the temple of progress and technology seems to contain knobs for nearly anything we can imagine. It allows us to control the weather of civilization. But just like our imaginary explorers the symbols are unclear. Sometimes we have an idea, sometimes we just have to turn the knob and see what happens.
One of the first knobs we found was labeled with the symbol for energy. Or at least that was our hope. We immediately turned it to the right, and we’ve been turning it to the right ever since. As we did so, coal was mined, and oil gushed out of the ground. It was only later we realized that the knob also spewed CO2 into the air, and pollution into the skies.
More recently we’ve translated the symbol for social connectivity. Mark Zuckerberg and other overeager graduate students turned that knob all the way to the right, giving us a worldwide community, but also echo chambers of misinformation and anger.
As time goes on, we interpret more symbols, and uncover more knobs. And if the knob seems good we always start by turning it all the way to the right. And if the knob seems bad we always turn it all the way to the left. Why wouldn’t we want to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad? But very few things are either all good or all bad, and perhaps the knobs were set in the position we found them in for a reason.
One thing is clear, no one has the patience to wait until we completely understand the function of the knobs and the meaning of the mysterious symbols, least of all overeager grad students.
Both civilization and weather are complicated and chaotic things. It has been said that a butterfly flapping its wings in Indonesia might cause a hurricane in the Atlantic. If that’s what a butterfly can do, what do you think the effect of turning hundreds of knobs in a weather control temple will be?
Essentially that’s what we’ve done. We shouldn’t be surprised that we’ve generated a hurricane. And perhaps the simplest name for this hurricane is hubris.
It might surprise you to find out that extended metaphors aren’t cheap. Sure they may seem essentially free, but there’s a lot of hidden costs, not the least of which is the ongoing pension to the widows left behind by those who go too deep into a metaphor and never return. If you’d like to help support those left behind by these tragedies consider donating.