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Are we headed towards a new dark ages?
- Thread starter slobake
- Start date
I know you are a grad student so I consider you an expert at explaining what critical thinking is. Do you believe that an unschooled person who may never have heard the expression critical thinking can still be rational and understand what makes something true?
That's a good question. I'd love if critical thinking came natural without education and practice, but that's not the case. We're not that kind of critter, we see reality instinctively, pick truths selectively, and this doesn't cut it in the information age. Critical thinking can be established only by learning about it, practicing it, and applying it in the real world. I think it's a skill to be learned and that takes continuous practice and dedication to apply it to real world problems.
That said: it's not difficult. I'm not special, nor does it takes a 4.0 GPA to get close to it. I think most people can learn this skill at least to some point that's beyond what you expect to see today. Basic intellectual honesty, critical thinking and reading comprehension can be thought to children just from having a good role model and a fun discussion every now and again. It's what it took for me. As soon as you realize that an adult might be wrong, and you ask "how do you know that", you're off to a good start. As soon as you ask yourself "how do I know that" and change your mind about something fundamental, you've reached a level beyond how most people operate. But that's all it is!
I like having fun discussions here.
I also admit that sometimes I feel like I'm in way over my head. Academics like you sometime speak in a language that I don't understand. It is good to head for deep water, the shallows are boring.
I'm pretty sure that the internet has made it much easier to find the truth than the pre-internet days. And I think that gossip, rumour and celebrity tales have existed for as long as humans have. Human society has always been plagued with issues, and every generation finds new things to blame them on. At the moment it is technology and the internet. Not too long ago it was music, or films, or fashion. Every generation thinks that society is on the verge of collapse, yet life goes on, and it's been going on for a long time.
But when we did, not everyone had access to books. And I am aware that now, internet access is not universal, but it provides cheaper and easier access to information, and therefore makes the information much more widely available than when you had to seek out a specialist book to learn anything. Plus it gives you access to sources like TalkBass, where you can get information and opinions from people who haven't got a publishing deal.
[citation needed]
...and of course before the internet no one ever believed in rumours, superstition didn't exist, and everyone was hyper-intelligent.
I don't think that society is going to collapse any time soon.
I agree, I love it here.I like having fun discussions here.
It is good to head for deep water, the shallows are boring.
Also, if there's anything you don't understand, ask. Answering questions, especially difficult ones, makes me discover myself too. It makes me think about what I know and how do I know that. And then, if I expose it and receive criticism, all the better! That's how we can learn from each other and help each other.
It's like constructing a building of knowledge. You can be as careful and methodical as you can be, spend years measuring everything, and screw up somewhere within all this detail. At the same time, any pedestrian passing by would have a perspective that will identify problems so plainly, problems that are hard to see from the inside of this building. We're confined to our minds, discussion helps us all.
Erm... as a medieval historian, may I suggest we set aside the term "Dark Ages..."
But I agree that there's a lot to be concerned about. The information revolution of the last twenty years has changed a lot, and to a great extent not for the better. Previously, there were a limited number of mainstream "gateway" outlets for news and opinion (major networks, newspapers, etc.), which meant that they were able to abide by a consensus of professional standards and respectable discourse. There was a lot of shared ground in the culture that allowed for broad agreement on what was going on, even if people with different points of view disagreed about what to do about it. Fringe views could publish their ideas but in fringe outlets. Now, blogging, social media, the interwebz, etc., all mean that people can choose whatever channel they like to get their information from, and they'll often choose those that reinforce (and amplify) their existing views rather than those that could challenge them or at least touch base with a consensus view. The center evaporates and the fringes flourish. People that once would have been the isolated oddball in town now can find all the other towns' isolated oddballs online, reinforce each other's insanity with the impression that "I'm not crazy, all these other great people think the same thing," and wind up shooting up a movie theater or something.
A lawyer friend of mine who's pretty connected with politics was telling me about state capitol building's cafeteria. He said that a couple of decades ago, in lunch breaks between legislative sessions, the state reps would go there and sit down and eat together, talk about their kids, etc. They knew each other and respected each other, regardless of what party they were from. When they went back in the chamber they would debate the bills, but they would listen to each other and negotiate and make concessions to get work done, because they respected each other as colleagues. Today, they don't eat together. One party eats on one side of the room and the other party on the other side of the room. They don't talk to each other. Why? Because now it's all white-vs-black, us-vs-them, no compromise, winner take all. Their constituencies, and consequently the reps themselves, are more extreme, more polarized.
I dare say, if nothing happens to reverse the trend, it will be the end of any semblance of democracy.
But I agree that there's a lot to be concerned about. The information revolution of the last twenty years has changed a lot, and to a great extent not for the better. Previously, there were a limited number of mainstream "gateway" outlets for news and opinion (major networks, newspapers, etc.), which meant that they were able to abide by a consensus of professional standards and respectable discourse. There was a lot of shared ground in the culture that allowed for broad agreement on what was going on, even if people with different points of view disagreed about what to do about it. Fringe views could publish their ideas but in fringe outlets. Now, blogging, social media, the interwebz, etc., all mean that people can choose whatever channel they like to get their information from, and they'll often choose those that reinforce (and amplify) their existing views rather than those that could challenge them or at least touch base with a consensus view. The center evaporates and the fringes flourish. People that once would have been the isolated oddball in town now can find all the other towns' isolated oddballs online, reinforce each other's insanity with the impression that "I'm not crazy, all these other great people think the same thing," and wind up shooting up a movie theater or something.
A lawyer friend of mine who's pretty connected with politics was telling me about state capitol building's cafeteria. He said that a couple of decades ago, in lunch breaks between legislative sessions, the state reps would go there and sit down and eat together, talk about their kids, etc. They knew each other and respected each other, regardless of what party they were from. When they went back in the chamber they would debate the bills, but they would listen to each other and negotiate and make concessions to get work done, because they respected each other as colleagues. Today, they don't eat together. One party eats on one side of the room and the other party on the other side of the room. They don't talk to each other. Why? Because now it's all white-vs-black, us-vs-them, no compromise, winner take all. Their constituencies, and consequently the reps themselves, are more extreme, more polarized.
I dare say, if nothing happens to reverse the trend, it will be the end of any semblance of democracy.
Too late it already has
All the quotes you listed were from and article I linked. It is an interesting article but I don't agree with everything said. I think it is somewhat alarmist. It is way to simple too say that the internet alone is affecting our culture.
I agree that there were still crazy rumors and superstition before the internet, plus there was sarcasm too. It has never been something that encouraged thoughtful conversations.
I had a feeling it was a mistake to put that quote from the article in my post and now I know it is true. It was never my intention to have a discussion about how the internet alone may be affecting us.
Media use is changing in important ways. Much of it is good, some of it is not.
Different =/= bad.
Perhaps the most negative impacts are the increase in triviality and the tendency for people to seek out viewpoints which reinforce their existing beliefs.
In contrast, there is a great deal more information available to people who actually seek it, and the Internet which years ago was described as "miles wide but an inch deep" has become a very deep resource indeed.
Those who seek information have more resources today than ever before. This is really a great thing!
Different =/= bad.
Perhaps the most negative impacts are the increase in triviality and the tendency for people to seek out viewpoints which reinforce their existing beliefs.
In contrast, there is a great deal more information available to people who actually seek it, and the Internet which years ago was described as "miles wide but an inch deep" has become a very deep resource indeed.
Those who seek information have more resources today than ever before. This is really a great thing!
I wouldn't want to try to point to a specific date at which the human race began its decline, but I do believe we, at some point in the (possibly recent) past, reached our zenith and are now on the downward slope.
I don't mean this in a fire-and-brimstone, doom-and-gloom way. It's de-evolution. It's entropy. The Law of Thermodynamics.
Things fall apart. They move from order into chaos. The center will not hold.
It doesn't matter if we are talking about a carrot or a computer or a human heart or an entire civilization, on up to the cosmos itself.
Like an apple, things reach a certain tipping point where they are completely ripe (or as close to perfection as they can get) and AFTER that point of peak ripeness, the process of decay begins.
It's as natural as wheat grass juice.
It's also inevitable.
Everything falls apart.
I don't mean this in a fire-and-brimstone, doom-and-gloom way. It's de-evolution. It's entropy. The Law of Thermodynamics.
Things fall apart. They move from order into chaos. The center will not hold.
It doesn't matter if we are talking about a carrot or a computer or a human heart or an entire civilization, on up to the cosmos itself.
Like an apple, things reach a certain tipping point where they are completely ripe (or as close to perfection as they can get) and AFTER that point of peak ripeness, the process of decay begins.
It's as natural as wheat grass juice.
It's also inevitable.
Everything falls apart.
Based on your studies you don't think that we could return to some sort of highly stratified society where the wealthy ruling class lives well and everyone else is forced to live in grinding poverty?
It is very possible I don't really understand what Dark ages means but I know that you are my best source to find that out.
I'm a history nerd that reads a lot, so strap in:
The actual Dark Ages were caused by a collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which had splintered off from the Eastern portion as things started going bad. The decay of the Roman Empire is a whole different debate, but the effects of its collapse was to suddenly remove a strong central power that was the military, economic, infrastructure, and cultural backbone for most of Europe at the time. The Dark Ages that followed were what I suppose economists would call constructive destruction or a correction of sorts, as pieces of the Western Empire had to figure stuff out on its own.
In modern history, when large empires collapse, they have been more or less pretty tidy. When France and England gave up their holdings around the world, things went pretty smooth. When the USSR collapsed it didn't do much to a lot of its satellites because they weren't dependent on Russia anyway, they were just being subject to USSR control because the Soviets thought holding on to vast expanses of useless dirt made them cool or something.
The US is a modern Empire. Through our network of military bases, our globalized companies, and debt that we've spread around like poison pills painted to look like candy, we've made the world need us. If we were to collapse (which is different than disengage) then yes, the entire world would fall into panicked chaos like Europe did.
That wide spread collapse is a true new Dark Age. What a lot of people tend to refer to is a Dark Age mentality, which is hard to quantify, but often means regressive. Now you are looking at opening a can of worms that could only possibly result in a flame war of apocalyptic proportions. To avoid that, I would say that there broad based antagonism in the US that has really boiled down to a heavily divided, hyper partisan, bipolar form of tribalism that views everything through childishly simple left v right lenses. This is an extension of the common logical fallacy of "us against them" where these distinctions are completely artificial.
This disintegration of our cohesion leads to a paralysis in governance which is dangerous as that may in fact cause our collapse. The survival of a civilization is based on its continued movement; the moment it becomes complacent or embraces stasis it starts to die. It's like rolling a giant boulder up a hill; if you stop it is going to roll back down on you.
The things mentioned by the OP aren't themselves indicators of a new Dark Age, but may lead to one. Despite some heavily advanced tools like space travel, harnessing the power of the atom, and the internet, we seem to have started to backslide intellectually. Critical thinking is no longer valued. Spectacles, distractions and consumerism are the norm, which may be an accidental byproduct of the success of capitalism; observant, practical people aren't good consumers. It seems we aren't half as wise as we are clever.
After WWII we created weapons that could wipe all life off the planet. We weren't wise enough to not do that in the first place, but were at least clever enough to understand the theory of mutually assured destruction. That was a while ago, before smart phones and the Kardshains started melting our brains, so now in the midst of massive drought in half of our country while the other half is buried under snow, we can't seem to figure out the obvious- relying on the stone age process of waiting for rain to fall from the sky is stupid. We can move toxic black sludge from one side of the continent to the other because it is profitable, but moving water using a similar pipe system to ward off the obvious effects of climate change is somehow too hard.
To sum up, our increasing superstitious thinking, laziness, health problems, and attention erosion aren't themselves the indicator of a new Dark Age, but the disease of civilization obsolescence that these are symptoms of could lead to a new Dark Age if they carry out to their logical conclusion.
The actual Dark Ages were caused by a collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which had splintered off from the Eastern portion as things started going bad. The decay of the Roman Empire is a whole different debate, but the effects of its collapse was to suddenly remove a strong central power that was the military, economic, infrastructure, and cultural backbone for most of Europe at the time. The Dark Ages that followed were what I suppose economists would call constructive destruction or a correction of sorts, as pieces of the Western Empire had to figure stuff out on its own.
In modern history, when large empires collapse, they have been more or less pretty tidy. When France and England gave up their holdings around the world, things went pretty smooth. When the USSR collapsed it didn't do much to a lot of its satellites because they weren't dependent on Russia anyway, they were just being subject to USSR control because the Soviets thought holding on to vast expanses of useless dirt made them cool or something.
The US is a modern Empire. Through our network of military bases, our globalized companies, and debt that we've spread around like poison pills painted to look like candy, we've made the world need us. If we were to collapse (which is different than disengage) then yes, the entire world would fall into panicked chaos like Europe did.
That wide spread collapse is a true new Dark Age. What a lot of people tend to refer to is a Dark Age mentality, which is hard to quantify, but often means regressive. Now you are looking at opening a can of worms that could only possibly result in a flame war of apocalyptic proportions. To avoid that, I would say that there broad based antagonism in the US that has really boiled down to a heavily divided, hyper partisan, bipolar form of tribalism that views everything through childishly simple left v right lenses. This is an extension of the common logical fallacy of "us against them" where these distinctions are completely artificial.
This disintegration of our cohesion leads to a paralysis in governance which is dangerous as that may in fact cause our collapse. The survival of a civilization is based on its continued movement; the moment it becomes complacent or embraces stasis it starts to die. It's like rolling a giant boulder up a hill; if you stop it is going to roll back down on you.
The things mentioned by the OP aren't themselves indicators of a new Dark Age, but may lead to one. Despite some heavily advanced tools like space travel, harnessing the power of the atom, and the internet, we seem to have started to backslide intellectually. Critical thinking is no longer valued. Spectacles, distractions and consumerism are the norm, which may be an accidental byproduct of the success of capitalism; observant, practical people aren't good consumers. It seems we aren't half as wise as we are clever.
After WWII we created weapons that could wipe all life off the planet. We weren't wise enough to not do that in the first place, but were at least clever enough to understand the theory of mutually assured destruction. That was a while ago, before smart phones and the Kardshains started melting our brains, so now in the midst of massive drought in half of our country while the other half is buried under snow, we can't seem to figure out the obvious- relying on the stone age process of waiting for rain to fall from the sky is stupid. We can move toxic black sludge from one side of the continent to the other because it is profitable, but moving water using a similar pipe system to ward off the obvious effects of climate change is somehow too hard.
To sum up, our increasing superstitious thinking, laziness, health problems, and attention erosion aren't themselves the indicator of a new Dark Age, but the disease of civilization obsolescence that these are symptoms of could lead to a new Dark Age if they carry out to their logical conclusion.
That's feudalism which was common during the time period we call the Dark Ages, or Middle Ages. Aristocracies existed long before that though.
Would it be an unstoppable downward slide or could things turn around and start moving in the opposite direction again?
Well, I'm not a deity; just an observer.
I guess it is possible that rather than things moving from order to chaos (or, if you will, from growth to decay, or life to death) we could look at them as more cyclical...a circle instead of a spectrum. A "loop" in which things constantly moved from order to chaos to order again.
Who knows?
Although for many reasons (not all of them the province or product of humanity and human activity) I personally feel we only have a few centuries to a millennium left of human civilization.
After that, there may well be humans; but I don't think civilizations as we think of them today will exist.
It may be that well before we slide that far, people will be killing each other for water and food in mass numbers.
Cheers!
You can't tell Dark Ages or Enlightenments from within one. In 100 or so years, historians will look back and decree which this is. I think from the late 80s on will be regarded as the dark ages, or maybe earlier. Hopefully it's peaking now, we could stand some peace and harmony.
Things happen in cycles. While the remains of the Western Roman Empire fell into Chaos, the Eastern Empire had a renaissance of their own. They were technologically and medically more advanced than most of Europe for centuries.
China had also hit a very high water mark before that but was in a state of decay by the time Europe got around to sending ships there. Now they are growing again.
India has also begun to be a world player after centuries of decay.
Not all collapses need to be catastrophic either. When England started to unravel its Empire they were able to do it in an organized way. They largely play America's sidekick these days, but look at where they are now and were Italy (Rome) is today.
However if we make our own planet unlivable, all bets are off. There is land under Antarctica but none under the ice of the Arctic, so when sea levels rise (which they are, man made or not) people are going to need to find somewhere to live. Of course millions will have to drown or die of starvation first.
I would call that "the normal state of humanity for 97% of its recorded history."
The actual "Dark Ages" haven't been called that by scholars of the period for some decades now. There was a far-reaching chain reaction of effects set off by the breakup of the Western Empire, but the main trend of current scholarship has been to suggest that they weren't actually as drastic as used to be made out. But I don't think Slobake created the thread to launch a history debate. Anyway, the phrase isn't very useful as an objective description of anything; it was popularized by 18th century philosophes to denigrate a period of history for which they had neither sympathy nor much understanding.
A whole lot of different pieces here. To be sure, we live in something much more like Brave New World than 1984. I agree with you there.
But I have doubts about statements like, "we seem to have backslidden intellectually." The question is, who is the "we?" More students go to college than ever. Percentage-wise, it seems like a smaller and smaller proportion of them show serious intellectual curiosity. But is that because there are fewer intellectuals, or because more people with no particular intellectual aspirations are flooding the colleges? Even in the college student bodies of fifty years ago, a lot of students wrote humdrum papers, graduated with a C, and went to work in an office job somewhere. Nowadays with grade inflation we give them a B+, but their papers are still humdrum and they still go work in the office jobs. Today's scientists seem to be just as smart as they ever were, nor lacking in numbers. I still see a lot of extremely bright and motivated students in my classes, no fewer than before in absolute numbers. It's just that they're mixed in with a lot of mediocrities. You can still find great writing in the media, even on television. It's just that the explosion in the number of media channels has created room for larger floods of dreck alongside it.
