Most of you have heard of the Enlightenment; the Age of Reason. Some of you have heard me describe the Diminishment, the Age of Ecstasy that is currently ascendant.
This essay is about foreshortening this dark and unfortunate episode to as short-lived and small-scaled a tragedy as possible...about starting the Retrossance now.
The Enlightenment's legacy is not quite enough to cover the fast-changing, chaotic and massive ocean of information that is the basis of our current civilization in a way that even oil is not. Into the cracks has flowed a refined, sophisticated but wholly reactionary and corrosive movement -- the Diminishment -- which due to its own limitations can only destroy what exists, not bring new order into existence.
I propose something new -- a Retrossance, a revisitation of the principles of science from the Enlightenment, to assist in the building of a rational and rich culture, and of a core ethics that has a place at the table for customs and traditions and old-school values, so long as they can weather the same incessant barrage of criticism and contemplation that everyone else must.
This is not a template for a new civilization; that will come through the sorts of arguments that prevail here at DKos every night and day.
It's a message that we are going to a good place already...but it would be really good idea if we hurried the end of the Diminishment and the rise of the Retrossance along.
So - What are these `Ages', the one fading into the past, the hatching cuckoo's egg, and the rightful heir to Reason that will ultimately prevail?
Enlightenment - Empiricism is the fundamental epistemology, the validator of individual and independently-derived and -confirmed knowledge, the means of proving what is true and what is false. The highest value is universal moral right; the most cherished character trait is honesty.
Diminishment - Impulse reigns supreme; ecstatic decisionmaking, dominance of animal and herd passions, rejecting personal responsibility for judgments and actions, subservient to the passions of the collective, be it family, party, nation, or mob. The highest value is will to power, loyalty to power is prized above all things in one's fellows.
Retrossance - Probability and plausibility are the metrics of truth, the validator of massively- and swiftly-corroborated knowledge in a mutable and transient reality. The edifice of universal truths and truisms for human conduct is under constant qualification and revision, but withstands the corrosion of doubt far better than incomplete, inaccurate and insincere argumentation. The highest value is constructive transformation; the most cherished character trait is credibility.
What's Eating the Enlightenment?
Simply put, the reason why the Enlightenment is failing is not because it is decadent and wrong, but that the original precepts are not quite up to specs in the accelerated and info-saturated decisionmaking space that is the early 21st century. Because of this, long-marginalized rivals to reason have had opportunity to wedge their machine guns and miters and machetes into the gates to power, and settle a generations-old dispute on their terms - to curtail the blessings of liberty and science and individuality such that those who enjoy such things are compelled to use their freedom only in the service of traditional, even reactionary, authority structures.
But such plans will be frustrated, in either of two ways: (1) by the ascendancy of like-minded closet autocrats in more vital and ultimately more powerful competitor civilizations, such as China and India and Indonesia and Brazil, or (2) not only marginalization but extinction at the hands of the next paradigm shift in cutting-edge ethics, renewing and revitalizing the best of the Enlightenment, while asserting a core of cultural continuity that the Enlightenment disregarded (as was necessary in its day) but is essential in the fast-changing blending of physical and virtual reality that is the decisionmaking space of the 21st century and Beyond.
Why "Retrossance"?
To echo Renaissance, a renewal, a historical period of reawakening to values, to classical learning, that the Europeans had publicly rejected but gained new status and, as learning and the arts were raised in status, so the foundation was set for new advancement, building on the giants of antiquity - optics, fine machinery, unprecedented integration of visual arts and mathematics (perspective painting) that was inspired by the geometric proportions of the Greeks, etc. The term `Retrossance' is for a renaissance not of principles of culture which ultimately leads to advances in science, but a renewal of principles of science which ultimately leads to advances in culture. That, and being a Gen Xer, I'm naturally partial to the term `retro'. So there. :)
The Danger of the Diminishment...
Any time you surf the diary list, you are scanning the roll call of devastation to the values of the Republic.
Personal responsibility for affronts great and small are exculpated by identity and affiliation, even feted as virtues when done by those in power, while even the least of imaginary and unsubstantiated allegations is just and honorable grounds to afflict those persons on the out. It is one thing to acknowledge tacitly the realities of power; it is another matter altogether to return to cults of personality in our near past...and the trappings and customs of oriental despotism, up to and including obeisance rituals and sequestration of leaders, to protect them from their subjects.
The chilling effect on culture, science and civil discourse in a milieu where affiliation with power and privilege trumps all other considerations. Further, the willful, even gleeful attacks on culture, science and civility as values that offend the majesty of the powerful and privileged, and thus their hangers-on.
The ascendancy of an ideology that is a direct descendant of the original fundamentalist reaction against science and the Enlightenment, and like its ancestor cannot bear the scrutiny of reason, therefore by right of power reason has been handed a fatwa by the right.
The nature of this shift in perspective is so sudden, so comprehensive that it has sliced a once-unified and mighty civilization in half, one fighting a rearguard action to preserve the values of a waning age, the other attacking without surcease to destroy the Enlightenment that drove the comforting and secretive shadows of the darker half of Humanity into the cellars and closets where it belongs.
There is no possible harmonization between an ethics that supports individual reason, freedom and self-determination, and an ethics built on doctrine, obligatory participation, and group determinism, not when even one camp is so purist in its actions and words.
A world ruled by the Diminishment's adherents is one that is ruled not only by people who do not know the facts, but do not care to know them, and do not care to know how to find them if they ever do change their mind, should such information question customary practices and beliefs, or obligations within the traditional authority structure of society, or question group objectives and values.
Such authority from on high is not only hostile to external criticism, but contemplation from inside, as well. This invariably leads to reduced likelihood of any given decision avoiding bad consequences, no matter how safe or insignificant the stakes. A person who is determined to ignore self-interest cannot possibly make a long succession of choices that are good for themselves, never mind for others.
Remarking on this weakness only drives such persons deeper into their retreat - the company of equally-unreflective persons, parroting in unison the group agenda, a very intimidating but ultimately a very stupid super-being composed of many millions of persons. The Nazis had a word for this creature - a Volk. It's not a pretty sight once its incompetency to distinguish between good and bad, between useful and useless, between self-interest and self-destruction becomes manifest.
Alas, we are seeing an emerging Volk mentality here in the United States. And based on historical anecdote, that's bad.
...And The Promise of the Retrossance
Nothing succeeds like success. If many of our right-wing brethren are enthralled by a cycle of Diminishment ignorance, then it follows that many of our left-wing countrymen are entrapped by a gradually shrinking Enlightenment domain. We can neither join the Diminishment moth-dance, nor shuffle deck-chairs on the Enlightement Titanic.
It's time to move along to something newer and better and more appropriate for the age.
The Retrossance is about synthesis as much as renewal; it is neither a counter-reformation to recapture ground lost to what we see as a miscarriage of history, nor an ideological genocide against all that is traditional and folksy and customary. The Diminishment obtained its foothold for good reason - the times they have been a changin', and for an increasing proportion of people, changing far too much, and far too swiftly. One thing that terrified the original (we're talking 18th Century) conservatives was the absolute disavowal of tradition of any sort; the French Revolution represented a very serious baby-out-with-bathwater event. Even the more measured success of the American Revolution was startling to traditionalists - keep in mind that quite a few Americans fought for the Crown, though for some peculiar reason those that did so kept their war stories to themselves after independence.
In the more modern times, consider the sudden transformation of mainstream values: not only racial equality but interracial families. Not only women's suffrage but women senators. Not only homosexuality in the open, but openly accepted. Not only body and life sovereignty, but to have such rights of person and privacy and choice of life and when to end it enshrined by law and protected by courts of law. Then comes the fun stuff - cloning, stem cell research, genetic engineering, longevity research, Viagra. No one questions anything on this list when it plays to traditional dominance/power totems (especially Viagra!). But even mention birth control in a high school health class, and watch the nuts fall out of the pecan trees.
Then comes the nature of news, the Amazon (as in the world's largest river, not the book distributor) of data, much of it harried, hurried and unoriginal and uncoordinated (like a lot of my posts!), that assails out senses and offends our flaming fingers as they scorch responses back across the fiber-optic miasma that science fiction author Vernor Vinge once called "the web of lies".
There needs to be an anchor, not only within web-based communities, but among them. I originally rejected the concept of a bloggers' code of conduct, since I think that sort of thing will sort itself out. But there need to be standards of proof, and comparable standards of smackdown when such standards aren't met...attributed quotations, for starters. Full disclosure of relations with public figures under discussion for another. My view is that the truth weathers critical thinking far better than lies, and this sort of thing will reassert itself, but I wouldn't mind hurrying the Retrossance along, and getting it going. So perhaps informal promotion of good practices will suit, as opposed to some sort of formal covenant that not everyone will sign, nor honor should they do so.
In a fast-changing cyber-battleground, where the truth is decided by iteration and accreditation and affiliation, a person needs their options. They also need to exercise them wisely, for the currency of the cyber-realm is credibility, and the power that it purchases is influence to promote constructive change. To inspire.
I think what is worth preserving from the past will sort itself out, as well, though I think that what will expedite the Retrossance is for Enlightenment holdouts to revisit their views on customary traditions, institutions, beliefs and practices and consider the power that having a common frame of reference, a common iconography can have, in many ways including the ability to frame disputation and harmonize individual perspectives into common action. While common values for common values' sake leads to herd-think, and I am the last person who will surrender the right to be irreverent to anything (ex: My last Communion, I had to fight back the urge to say:
"Hit me again, bartender!") Regardless, there is such a thing (I think) as universal moral right, and massive consensus on certain behaviors being good and others being evil, that I am confident that over time, a set of robust Big Tent "pegs" will come into being. The thing is, such core values cannot be revealed, a la the Ten Commandments, but must be derived empirically - the hard way.
Why I Wrote This Opus, Today
I consider the recent hullabaloo over the ascendancy of the new pope to be not a crisis in Kos, but symptomatic of the transformation that is happening in our community and in cybernetic civilization at large. For my own part, I don't especially like the selection, said some quick and woefully-underresearched comments on the topic, and pretty much acted like a Diminishment person on this subject. Apologies on that score.
But I am trying to reform, and this opus here is my own response - if I am not asserting good ethics on a consistent basis, and part of that inconsistency is attributable to the inconsistency of the `space' in which I make such judgment calls, what can I do to improve myself, and my relations with others in that space?
So, I took stock of several old diaries prognosticating on future values and the current sociological situation, and this is treatise is what happened.
Wrap
The Diminishment will fall apart, since by its very intransigency it is even less appropriate for the 21st Century cyberverse than Enlightenment thinking, and in fact Diminishment persons and institutions such as the Republican Party and certain archaic organizations within the Democratic Party spend as much time co-opting reason and empiricism and objectivity, albeit clumsily, as they spend on destroying such goods, for keeps. It goes to the Diminishment credo - that which you do for your team is good, that which the others do is bad.
However, the Diminishment can do severe damage; we have seen in harrowing detail what a Diminishment society looks like in history - it looks just like the Third Reich.
Now, perhaps one might think that since World War II ended up okay, that if there's a new round of fascist dictatorships, that it will suck but the world will turn out okay, too.
That would overlook one salient detail, among others, but one that is worth mentioning:
Nuclear weapons, very primitive and ineffectual ones, were invented at the end of the last world war.
Their descendants, some thousands of times more powerful, far faster, far more accurate, far easier to order into action, are everywhere now.
Suffice to say it is a different age now. And we must change not only ourselves but our values to suit it, for the prescriptions of the Enlightenment are not quite enough to fill the gaps...and what the Diminishment offers to fill the void is, based on past precedent and extant risk, nothing less than Death itself.