“The Elusive Big Idea”, Neal Gabler, New York Times, August 13, 2011
The argument is: we live in an age of overloaded social networks in which thinking has degraded or been drowned out by anti-thinking. We live in an age that has largely given up on rationality, but more than that, has largely given up on “real thought”. “Real thought” is the activity of grappling with and generating “actual ideas”, the process of synthesizing rather than collecting. In the end, it’s about paying attention rather than going with the flow.
I’ve written about the death of deep thought before. (And here, and here, and other places.) Honestly, it is a kind of anthem for the intellectual class, of which I hope to count myself a member. And there is the possibility that trying to be an intellectual is an entirely self-serving occupation, as much as we like to think that pure ideas are what really matter in the world. Mr. Gabler mentions Nietzsche. He is right to mention Nietzsche because for all the bad press he gets as Hitler’s favorite philosopher, the man who gave us the Will to Power and the Ubermensch and other such uncomfortably agressive notions of the human condition and its potential, Nietzsche was nothing if not bold, creative and strange, in the sense that Harold Bloom uses in his definition of literary greatness.
The thing about strangeness is that it is being diluted. I see this all the time. Humans have always needed to fit in – ever since we formed tribal groups, I’m sure there has been a strong pressure to fit into your group, to go with the flow, to be one of the tribe through thick and thin. You see this in children and you see this in adults. But we have never had the ability to form “tribal groups” on such a massive scale as we have today with social networks. I know that critiquing social networks is another hallmark of over-blown intellectualism, but I will persist. Social networks take the notion of fitting in and make it virtually universal. One of Kant’s Big Ideas was to define the moral value of an action by its innate characteristics. That is, an action is “good” or “right” in a moral sense if, when it is universalized, the resulting situation is also good and right. This sounds circular, but it isn’t. It boils down to the Golden Rule – do to other people the way you want them to do to you. What is the moral value of murder? Well, if everyone went around murdering each other, and I got murdered, I’d be pretty sore about it. So murder is wrong. Not because the outcome of this particular murder might be bad, but because murder is inherently wrong. With social networking we have a Kantian moral question brought to life, and the result is chilling in its apparent inexorability: If everyone were a giant tribe and everyone felt enormous pressure to “go with the flow” or “be part of the tribe”, would the result be good or bad? The answer is that no one thinks about that any more because of the pressures of the system. To consider that question requires more than 140 characters. It cannot be translated into a status update. It exceeds the current maximum bandwidth of cognition.
I like Glaber’s analogy of having too much wheat to make flour. He is a little derisive of post-Enlightenment thinking, but Kierkegaard, a giant of the post-Enlightenment, has some relevant opinions. Brace yourself for some philosophy.
“…if individuals relate to an idea merely en masse (consequently without the individual separation of inwardness), we get violence, anarchy, riotousness; but if there is no idea for the individuals en masse and no individually separating essential inwardness, either, then we have crudeness.” (Two Ages, p. 63)
In other words, there are two bad sorts of groups. One group is all dedicated to an idea but without having a sense of being individuals, of being “inward”. This group is a mob – nationalists, for example, who will blind themselves to truth in order to wage war or mayhem, for example. The other group is all part of a group, but have no real idea binding them together and no “essential inwardness” either. This group is a Facebook group. To have a harmonious, good sort of group, argues Kierkegaard, there must be a sense of self (essential inwardness) and a balanced relationship to the whole. So, patriotism without nationalism (my example). Knowing what you stand for but being willing to find the best course for the entire tribe. Or, in Kierkegaard’s words:
“The harmony of the spheres is the unity of each planet relating to itself and to the whole.”
and
“The unanimity of separation is indeed fully orchestrated music.” (I love this one.)
Glaber makes a point that the glut of information has made us full, not hungry for real ideas. More information has in fact made for a stagnant pool of bold ideas. Moving faster has brought us to a standstill. And if that analogy holds, listen to Kierkegaard only 1 page later!
“Suppose that such an age has invented the swiftest means of transportation and communication, has unlimited combined financial resources: how ironic that the velocity of the transportation system and the speed of communication stand in an inverse relationship to the dilatoriness of irresolution.” (64)
Translation: faster doesn’t mean better. The greater our ability to move fast, in physical space or in mental space, the shorter distance we end up travelling from lack of decision.
And finally, the tid bit that rekindled my love of Kierkegaard, that made me remember that his thought, while post-Enlightenment and full of that terribly unpopular irrational religious faith, was so clear that in a previous era he might have been dubbed a prophet: Kierkegaard’s prediction of Facebook.
“The present age is an age of publicity, the age of miscellaneous announcements: nothing happens but still there is instant publicity.” (70)
May we all find time to value ideas that are strange, that shake us up or pull off balance, that shatter the dead weight of happy complacency that has always threatened the civilized life.
No related posts.
I love that you make me think so deeply. I hate that I always sound like I am defending something, the web and its tentacles, when I more often than not agree with much of what you have to say. I also apologize for leaving such a short and apparently shallow comment to such a well-thought out, well written and deep post.
I was struck by your idea of tribes: If everyone were a giant tribe and everyone felt enormous pressure to “go with the flow” or “be part of the tribe”, would the result be good or bad?
First off it is unfair to generalize that everyone who is connected via various online tools is some sort of intellectual dullard in capable of meaningful thought beyond 140 characters or a Facebook status. The argument that everyone and everything online is shallow and void of substance is in and of itself and shallow critique. Yes, much of what passes in the “feed” is best left to float away, but if one knows how to fish for it, there are many meaningful items floating down the river as well. ( My net seems to catch your posts every time it seems.)
But back to Tribes. Why does everyone have to want to be part of “the” tribe? I see the connections I make online more as an opportunity to be part of “a” tribe or several tribes for that matter. I find people I connect to based in different needs and interests. I am not interested in a group brain. Yes the Ed-Tech world often feels liek an echo-chamber, but I have carved out of that group my tribe. And these connections are proving to be as deep as I allow them to be.
I tend to spend quite a bit of time examined my inwardness, and then choose to throw it out there and find a group that shares my ideas. This is no nationalistic mob, hypnotized by group think, we are….a tribe based on common needs and interests. I have never expereinces this type of connection before.
Believe it or not, with your thought provoking posts and our meeting in Hong Kong orbit the periphery of my tribe as well.
Jabiz, the tribalist, trying to pull us all together! I’m part of a number of tribes, I get the necessity of it all. I also love the sharing, even though I advocate against it sometimes (why else would I write a freakin’ blog?).
I always feel the need to temper the sort of crazed enthusiasm of web 2.0 educators, though. I think the loss of deep thought is a reality, and if it isn’t caused by web 2.0, it is facilitated by it in many ways. Honestly, this is a continuation of all of advanced civilization and technology – Ray Bradbury wrote “Fahrenheit 451″ in response to a culture increasingly numbed by TV and less interested in books. Most people read that novel as a polemic against censorship (because it is easier to teach a “unit” on censorship, I guess), but I think it was an attack on the vapidity of television, the loss of reading, more than anything.
So, we are in the realm of Fahrenheit 451. We can name them. I hereby dub all opinions about the loss of deep thought in the advanced technological era, “The 451 Argument.”
I read your post and the source text with much interest. Thank you for writing this. I do wonder about the offered definition of intellect and how by naming it within European phi ow jovial constraints, we may well exclude what we cannot see or perhaps appreciate. I like to think of intellect as neighbor interactions–think of it as rhizomatic nodes. Ideas develop in such environments, nomadic in tendency. Twitter, blogs, journals, videos, books, etc. Are all spaces for theorizing possible worlds. I don’t see any of this as a single tribe, but rather as affinity spaces where ideas bump into ideas and take hold (or not). The ‘essential inwardness’ you reference reminds me of Bakhtin’s I for myself, myself for other that he discusses in art and answerability. The essential inwardness is not informed singularly, but rather through empathy with other.
I participate in SM. That does not mean that I limit my thinking to 140 characters. Rather, it is a method I use to engage with other and often tweets, blog posts (like yours) leads me to read, reread, remix, reconsider, make art, talk, go for walks, etc. Within those spaces,I think. It’s not so much an either/or construct as it is both/and.
Sorry that should have read European philosophical…spell check on an iPad can be tiresome.