FOR QUITE SOME TIME now I've been interested in the idea of progress, as well as the Enlightenment's notion that progress is automatic (and somewhat inevitable) and that history eventually unfurls forward to the benefit of society.
The history of the 20th century, if nothing else, apparently put the cabosh on the idea that history unfurls benevolently, as humanity acquires higher forms of technology and productive skills. A number of technologies (and I'm no Luddite!) operate as menaces to our well-being if not direct threats to our survival, but, overall, technological development seems to be "value neutral", allowing the society in which that technology is embedded to dictate its final uses.
I was delighted, therefore, when senior contributor Morris Berman sent us the piece I attach below. I'd be most interested to hear what the Kossacks have to say about its main points, and what they have to add to this ongoing debate, eventually to percolate in terms of public policy. By the way, we have the author's permission to do a simulpost of the material at DK and Cyrano's Journal Online.
—Patrice Greanville (pije)
“When it was hip to be hep, I was hep.”–From “I’m Hip,” by Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough
AT ONE POINT IN THE LABYRINTH OF SOLITUDE, Octavio Paz quotes the German philosopher Max Scheler, who asked, “What is progress?” It’s a crucial question, and in the United States there is basically only one answer, involving the visible expression of technological innovation and economic expansion. Paz was not impressed with this notion of progress in 1950, when he wrote his famous essay, and it is a safe bet that he was increasingly disenchanted with the American model as the years wore on. Although he saw the flaws of his own culture quite clearly, he never felt that the American Way of Life was any kind of solution for Mexico or, indeed, the rest of the world.
Paz was prescient: at a time when everyone was celebrating America as an unrivaled success, he correctly pegged it as a wounded civilization, one that saw the future strictly in terms of novelty and never questioned what it was doing.
This extremely limited notion of the good life, combined with almost total unconsciousness, presents itself as daily reality in the U.S. I recall a friend of mine telling me, a few years ago, about a train trip she took up the California coast, during which she decided to walk through the cars very slowly, from back to front, almost pretending to be an invalid, so that she could eavesdrop on conversations. Every last one of these, she said, was about some gadget, some aspect of consumer technology–software, computer attachments, iPods, cell phone variations, etc. This is where, she concluded, Americans put their attention; it is what really excites them, makes them feel alive. Nor is this limited to Americans, of course. In the mid-eighties, when I was teaching at a Canadian university, my colleagues were literally ecstatic over the introduction of personal computers, firmly believing that these machines would write papers and books for them, perhaps help them get tenure or upgrade their entire careers (promises that failed to materialize, needless to say). As for south of the border, I was recently riding around Mexico City with a colleague of mine when we saw a huge billboard ad for some cell phone, with the caption, in three-foot high block capitals (in English, for some strange reason), KILL SILENCE. “Well,” I remarked to my colleague, “at least they are being honest about it.” “Oh,” he quipped, “you are fixated on cell phones.”
It’s hard to know how to reply to a dismissive remark of this kind, since even the brightest people don’t get it, and usually have no idea what George Steiner meant when he called modernity “the systematic suppression of silence.” Silence, after all, is the source of all self-knowledge, and of much creativity as well. But it is hardly valued by societies that confuse creativity with productivity. What I am fixated on, in fact, is not technology but the fixation on technology, the obsession with it. Unfortunately, it is hard to persuade those caught up in the American model of progress that it is they who are living in an upside-down world, not Octavio Paz.
For it doesn’t have to be this way. Notions of progress might conceivably revolve around how we treat each other in social situations, for example, not around the latest electronic toy. Some years ago I taught in the sociology department of a major American university, and marveled at my colleagues, who were constantly interrupting their conversations with each other to take cell phone calls–as if a conversation with someone who was not physically present were more important than one with someone who was. They had no idea of how rude they were on a daily basis, and regarded my own views on technology as “quaint.” Considering the damage this behavior was doing to human social interaction, and the fact that these folks were sociologists, I was impressed by the irony of it all. It was like being at a convention of nutritionists, each of whom weighed more than 300 pounds. After all, if obesity is the new health, what is there left to say?
Moynihan pointed out that there was a process in American culture by which behavior traditionally regarded as selfish or vulgar–e.g., abruptly breaking off a conversation with one person to initiate one with someone else–rapidly becomes acceptable if enough people start doing it.
This brings to mind the famous phrase coined by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defining deviancy down.” Moynihan pointed out that there was a process in American culture by which behavior traditionally regarded as selfish or vulgar–e.g., abruptly breaking off a conversation with one person to initiate one with someone else–rapidly becomes acceptable if enough people start doing it. Deviancy, in short, goes down to the lowest common denominator, finally becoming the norm. Indeed, the vulgarization and “narcissization” of American society had become so widespread by the mid-1990s that books were being written on incivility, and conferences held on the subject as well. But none of this made any difference for actual behavior, as even the most casual observation of contemporary American society reveals.
I remember, some years ago, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talking about American (non)relations with Cuba, and stating that “we don’t want that model to be able to replicate itself”–the old contagion theory of communism, as it were. Well, I’m not big on dictatorships myself, but what about the danger of the American model replicating itself? When you go to New Zealand and see the Maori people talking on cell phones and watching American sitcoms, you know that Moynihan’s prediction about the world turning into trash is not very far off.
[FINISH READING HERE]
Morris Berman, a Senior Contributing Editor at Cyrano's Journal Online, is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, along with The Twilight of American Culture and Dark Ages America. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Humanities at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico City. His essays have appeared at Cyrano’s Showcase and other venues.
© Morris Berman, 2009