Needless to say, this did not turn out to be the case. But as to why we continued to live under the thumb of public health after they'd seemingly voided their authority, well, that's a rich topic. It's one that Matthew Crawford addresses here, suggesting that both COVID and the racial reckoning shared a common purpose. A new―or at least unfamiliar to us―ethic was being put into place, placing the utmost importance on deference to authority.
This antihumanism, as Crawford calls it, also extends to the apocalyptic embrace of artificial intelligence in recent years, which is based on the concept that human thinking and mechanical computation are in essence the same thing, a task the machines do better. In the opening anecdote a Google engineer sees the malfunction of one of the company's autonomous cars as prove that humans need to become "less idiotic." Sadly this does not seem to have been self-deprecation on his part.
2 comments:
I noticed he mentioned C.S. Lewis's characterization of, let's say management types, as 'the conditioners' who disabuse people of their assumed specialness. I remember when we were taught that believers hold a position superior to angels, a description far preferable to one that tells us we're inferior to computers. Talk about insulting.. I've long felt that 'scientism' usurped religion despite the fact that science is a tool and not an ideology. But that's not exactly what he was getting at, is it? What he's representing is just how domineering the authoritarians around us have become.. and the excuses they make for their excesses.
That humans need to be "less idiotic" as the lesson learned from the malfunctioning of an autonomous car pretty much says it all well before we even get to the subject of artificial intelligence.. which is certainly artificial but far from intelligent.
I liked the quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn he related: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”
We need more of that kind of thinking. The bottom of the
barrel is very apparent these days.
That Hideous Strength is such an insightful book as well as being fun to read. When I read it during the W. years I knew that Lewis was onto something with the Progressive Faction. They still have a big rooting interest in social development, of course. And they're the top wielders of science, or really scientism, enhances your mental and emotional power over some people so that you can tell them what to do outright with no pushback. But that's not a power you should general have over other adults.
"People are stupid because they don't think like this machine I just spent five weeks programming. It comes right down to that for a lot of these guys.
That is a very wise quote from Solzhenitsyn. I wouldn't have wished his experiences as a political prisoner on anyone, but he learned from them.
It's not nearly as much fun as a barrel of monkeys.
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