Gotham Diary:
Not Too Early
21 January 2015
We are still in the middle of the great transformation, but it is not too early [emphasis supplied] to begin to expose the exaggerations, and to sort out the continuities from the discontinuities. The burden of proof falls on the revolutionaries, and their success in the marketplace is not sufficient proof. Presumptions of obsolescence, which are often nothing more than the marketing techniques of corporate behemoths, need to be scrupulously examined. By now we are familiar enough with the magnitude of the changes in all the spheres of our existence to move beyond the futuristic rhapsodies that characterize much of the literature on the subject. We can no longer roll over and celebrate and shop. Every phone in every pocket contains a “picture of ourselves,” and we must ascertain what that picture is and whether we should wish to resist it. Here is a humanist proposition for the age of Google: The processing of information is not the highest aim to which the human spirit can aspire, and neither is competitiveness in a global economy. The character of our society cannot be determined by engineers.
That’s Leon Wieseltier, writing in a cover story, at The New York Times Book Review, that does not involve a book review. Marilynne Robinson might put it differently, but she, too, is urging us to put up courageous resistance to the ecstatic revolutionaries.
Wieseltier’s final statement sounds, in context, like an exhortation, but it is a statement of fact. How the would-be engineers have tried and failed! Aside from a great deal of suffering, they have accomplished nothing. But no: there is one good thing. They have proved, by their consistent failure, that we are each of us unique, unlike everyone else in some way or other. Of human beings generally, only two things can be said: they are born, and they die. Beyond that rages a blizzard of particular details. We are in fact universally particular — a paradox that neutralizes two ideas that are toxic in isolation.
We used to make idiotic statements, such as “Man is a rational animal.” That’s universalism. At the same time, we stated that human beings of varying description were not really men. That’s particularism. It’s good to know that ever-fewer thinking people make these mistakes.
***
Wieseltier offers a thumbnail syllabus of humanism. He begins with the idea that it comprises a history of thought that is taught with a view to making humanists of its students. This is both elegant and important, but it is not where I should begin. I should begin where Wieseltier ends, with “a moral claim about the priority, and the universal nature, of certain values, not least tolerance and compassion.” I should try to find another word for “values”; it has become confusing, in this age of free-market economics, to speak of moral values. Values are pricetags, statements of relative desirability. I should say, “self-evident truth.”
The moral truth of tolerance and compassion is self-evident because every rigorous challenge to it breaks down. The rigorous challenge is one that does not, to quote Wieseltier quoting, depend on “the importation of another framework of judgment” — a non-human framework. Such “imported” critiques of the human condition abound. All you need do is compare the human being to something more (momentarily) attractive. In modern times, the human being has been endlessly compared to and measured against the mechanical system. Why? Mechanical systems can accomplish great things — although you do have to be on guard against noxious side-effects. The worst of these, aside from all the insults to the environment, is that mechanical systems tend to make the people who control them very rich, and when you have been made very rich by a mechanical system, it is very tempting to prefer mechanical systems to human beings. The advantages of mechanical systems seem to proliferate: not only do they make you rich, but they can be controlled. They can be turned on and off. They can be adapted to new purposes. They can be adjusted to changing circumstances. They can be duplicated precisely. Best of all, they do not talk back. With mechanical systems, you know where you stand — and, if you control them, they make you rich. They make you less like a human being and more like a god. It becomes awfully easy to fall in love with yourself — which, the best tragedians assure us, leads always to tears.
Compared to mechanical systems, human beings are something of a shambles. But the comparison fails of rigor. Rigor requires us to judge human beings as human beings. How do we do that? We scarcely know. We begin simply, naively: those who are taller, stronger, and smarter than others are judged superior. Almost immedidately, these supposedly better human beings quickly learn how to behave badly. We refine our criteria, but the result is always the same: superiority leads straight to wickedness of some kind. The only way to guard against wickedness is to suppose an essential equality: no one is superior.
And, indeed, no one is. To prize the strength of an individual is not much different from prizing a mechanical system. Human nature is not involved. The “human nature” aspect of every gifted individual’s gifts is nothing but luck or good fortune, for all gifts begin with inborn aptitude. To judge yourself superior because of your aptitudes (and the effort that you have applied in developing them) is to cut yourself off from human nature, and that in turns deprives you of the only available expertise: for no one knows how to live except as a human being. It makes much better sense to be humbly lucky.
Every so often, along comes something new, such as circumnavigation of the globe, or the iPhone, and at least some human beings envision changes to human nature. Instead, human nature, given more scope, intensifies. Circumnavigation leads to slavery, but has no impact whatever on human nature, except perhaps to show it up more clearly. I have found the iPhone to be handy to the extent that it has extended the range of convenience — but not increased the instance of it. It is what I bring to the iPhone experience, not what it brings to mine, that makes it useful.
It is certainly not too soon to challenge the engineers who want to try to monetize the mind.