See also Copthorne Macdonald's review of this book
Excerpt
from AN AGE OF PROGRESS? Clashing Twentieth-Century Global Forces Copyright
© Walter
G. Moss, 2008
By
the end of the century, it was indeed evident how difficult it was for
people’s prudence, wisdom, and morality to keep pace with technological
change. In traditional societies where technology had
changed slowly, the moral ideas of older generations had more relevance
for younger people. The world
that children grew up in was more similar to that in which their mothers
and fathers had been raised. As
the twentieth century advanced and the rate of technological change
accelerated, many younger people believed that their parents and older
people generally had little of moral and cultural value to pass on to
them. In the 1960s one of the
heroes of the young, Bob Dylan, in his song “The Times They Are A-Changin,”
told parents that their “old road” was rapidly aging and that their
children were beyond their command.
He advised them to make way for their sons and daughters and
not to criticize what they couldn’t understand.
In the final decades of the century,
the values of teenage children in the advanced industrialized countries
were increasingly shaped less by parents and more by an ever-expanding
media and by peers influenced by that media.
Many social critics placed much of the blame on television, especially
criticizing its impact on young people.
According to his friend Thomas Langan, the famous media observer
Marshall McLuhan once said about televisions, “If you want to save a
single shred of Hebrew-Hellenistic-Roman-Christian humanist civilization,
take an axe and smash those infernal machines.”[i] U. S. humorist Dave Barry once said: “Another
possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television's
message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace
pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter
teeth and fresher breath.”[ii] And Zbigniew
Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to U. S. President Jimmy
Carter, wrote in 1993 that television had “become prominent in shaping
the [U. S.] national culture and its basic beliefs,” that it “had a
particularly important effect in disrupting generational continuity
in the transfer of traditions and values,” and that it helped produce
“a mass culture, driven by profiteers who exploit the hunger for vulgarity,
pornography, and even barbarism.”[iii] In such an atmosphere old people and their life experiences were little
valued by youth-centric popular cultures, and wisdom, whether from older people or other sources, was an undervalued
virtue. The Oxford English Dictionary
(2d ed., 1989) defines wisdom as “the capacity for judging rightly in
matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgment in the choice
of means and ends,” and the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza
indicated that wisdom implied viewing life sub specie eternitatis, that
is, from the perspective of eternity.
As early as the 1930’s the poet T. S. Eliot had written: Where
is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where
is the knowledge we have lost in information?” (from “The Rock”, Chorus 1). The exclusion of wisdom from economics, science, and technology
was something which we could perhaps get away with for a little while,
as long as we were relatively unsuccessful; but now that we have become
very successful, the problem of spiritual and moral truth moves into
the central position. . . . . . . Ever-bigger machines,
entailing ever-bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting
ever-greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress:
they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom
demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic,
the gentle, the nonviolent, the elegant and beautiful.[vi]
By the end of the twentieth century, however, it was clear that Schumacher’s
ideas were having little impact on the global economy. Fed by expanded advertising and globalization,
“needs” had continued expanding, contributing to worsening environmental
conditions. At the same time,
increased freedoms and choices had made it more crucial than ever for
governments and people to possess the wisdom to make correct choices. This could most readily be seen in regard to
environmental policies and leisure time.
Cable and satellite television, the World Wide Web, and cell
phones, to take just a few examples, had greatly expanded people’s choices
of how to spend their free time. Sports
viewers, for example, could spend weekends on their couches watching
one sporting event after another. Although there were notable exceptions like South Africa’s Nelson Mandela,
who indicated his appreciation of wisdom in his autobiography, in general
it became less valued as the twentieth century advanced.[vii] Nevertheless, this virtue had once been highly
appreciated. One scholar, writing
mainly of the West, noted that “wisdom was a virtue highly and consistently
prized in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.”[viii] Many non-Western religions also emphasized
the importance of wisdom. The
ancient Hindu book The Bhagavad-Gida
tells us “there is no purifier in this world like wisdom. . . .
The man who is full of faith obtaineth wisdom, and he also who hath
mastery over his senses; and having obtained wisdom, he goeth swiftly
to the supreme peace.” Buddhist scriptures also praised wisdom and
declared that obtaining perfect wisdom was the key to achieving blissful
Nirvana, that state where suffering and individual craving and dissatisfaction
ceased to exist. Into the twentieth
century, some of Asia’s most prominent thinkers such as Tagore and Gandhi,
continued being influenced by the Asian religious respect for wisdom. For example, Tagore wrote: When the heat and motion of blind impulses and passions distract it on
all sides, we can neither give nor receive anything truly. But when we find our centre in our soul by
the power of self-restraint, by the force that harmonises all warring
elements and unifies those that are apart, then all our isolated impressions
reduce themselves to wisdom, and all our momentary impulses of heart
find their completion in love; then all the petty details of our life
reveal an infinite purpose, and all our thoughts and deeds unite themselves
inseparably in an internal harmony.[ix]
At various times during the twentieth century, some Western individuals sought wisdom by turning to Eastern religious traditions or gurus. In general, however, from the seventeenth century forward, technology gradually gained momentum in influencing Western people’s perspectives on life. Just as gradually, respect for wisdom declined, as the modern world with all of its technological wonders and explosion of information came into being. And if respect for wisdom was in decline, could there be much moral progress?
[i] Thomas Langan, Surviving the Age of Virtual Reality (Columbia, MO, 2000), 131, n. 10. [ii] http://www.comedy-zone.net/quotes/Comedians/barry-dave.htm (accessed April 9, 2007). [iii] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century (New
York, 1993), 112. [iv] In the Shadow of Tomorrow, Norton reprint ed. (New York, 1964), 78. [v] http://www.quoteworld.org/category/wisdom/author/general_omar_nelson_bradley (accessed April 9, 2007). [vi] Small Is Beautiful:
Economics as if People Mattered, Perennial Library ed. (New York, 1975), 33-34. [vii] On Mandela’s appreciation of wisdom see, for example, his Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Boston, 1994), 18, 88, 397, 466, 499, 542. [viii] Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 1. [ix] Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana: The Realization of Life (Tucson, 1972), 35. |