One quibble about an important aspect that you perhaps inadvertently omitted. A key aspect of the romanticism of the 18th century was reconnecting with the natural world. The Romantic poets were rather obsessed with this as poet Robert Bly points out in his stellar book “News of the Universe” (I highly recommend it.) In shifting our life on a day-to-day basis into an increasingly claustrophobic and self-reinforcing digital cage, we have abandoned, not only our connection to the natural world -- which is essential to the very important human values you cite -- but also our connection to each other.
Connecting to nature also let's us tap into the mystery of the universe, which despite human folly remains nonetheless fully intact even if absurdly rationalized by Western scientific materialism and reductionism. ( Carl Sagan and Einstein were both scientists who could appreciate this. Today...not so much.)
I totally agree that a new romanticism is very necessary at this strange time in human history but am perhaps a bit less optimistic that it will happen --- at least over the next few years. The forces of technocracy seem too powerful at the moment to be countered because so much of the necessities of everyday life depend on our attachment to this digital realm. Paying bills, financial maintenance, getting a license renewed and so much more. Further, technological dependency keeps getting ratcheted up by the self-appointed masters of the universe represented by Big Tech. And finally until our educational system returns to the fundamentals of the liberal arts and humanities to balance out the insane obsession with STEM-based (i.e. utilitarian) education, we won’t have the necessary grounding to turn things around. That said, I hope I’m wrong about this although it's great to hear the hopeful signs you reference.
Ted, Since you mentioned Blake, I should like to strongly recommend a remarkable new book about him and his continuing relevance, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, by Mark Vernon (2025).
thanks for that rec Peter! we are involved with the Swedenborg Foundation, in publishing, and Blake was quite the Swedenborg enthusiast, as was Johnny Appleseed and Helen Keller. I think I need more deep dives into Blake, much more, so will get this book right away...
It’s time to choose sides. Slop, and algorithms, or humanity and creativity. Rusty Pilgrim, my record label, was one of the first to implement an anti-AI logo, or rather a ‘Human Made’ logo, on its music. And maybe some people might laugh, but the return and rising, even if niche, popularity of the Dungeon Synth genre is a symptom of what you’re describing.
This reminds me of the Authors Guild's Human Authored Certification (https://authorsguild.org/human-authored/), which I used for my last book and plan to use from now on.
Ted, #2 is the keystone: a rationalized system can price, rank, and surveil, but it cannot reliably cultivate love, trust, or friendship.
The first place you feel that is conversational: a line arrives with the wrong entry, at the wrong hour, carrying too much demand... and it simply stops being humanly answerable. That’s the mechanism I lay out in 'On Human Fluency' (EL → HR → EL).
Quite a hopeful perspective on the burgeoning insanity we are living through. Thank you.
Need for a balance between heart and "rationality" (which i put in quotes because ... a truly rational approach would seek to maximise emotional wellbeing at least as much as affluence or technological capability).
Time for another listen to the title track from Rush's 1978 album, Hemispheres. Encapsulates this topic beautifully, energising music, and it points the way to a possible way forward for humanity...
I work in a laboratory of Romanticism and I'm enormously grateful for it. The path of our work is deeply embedded in materials, in our community, and in embodied practices. I'm pretty sure I would have lost my mind by now if I were in a corporate or public sector environment. www.robinsonstudio.com
I agree that rationalism today can feel scary. For many people it has become almost a religion. “Trust the science” often means trust without understanding, without curiosity, without awareness of limits, without knowing the basic principles behind it. Rationality turns into belief rather than thinking.
At the same time, I think we should be careful not to romanticize Romanticism itself. I just want to point out that it isn’t an answer, only a counterweight. It can help restore balance, but leaning on it too much is really dangerous. I see this in some anti-AI reactions, where fear of dehumanization turns into rejection of rational thinking altogether. Though you mentioned that Romanticism can also become scary, I feel the need to repeat this thought as I see people dividing into these two war camps already.
The hardest position is the middle one, like always. Not worshipping reason, not escaping into feeling, but staying between them without turning either into a belief system. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s probably the only place where something genuinely human can still exist.
I’ve been fighting this battle ever since I refused to carry a camera on a tour of the UK in the early 80s - those experiences are as clear in me now as they were in the moment they happened…far beyond the visuals that would fading away in a photo album somewhere. Thank you Ted for articulating what needs to become clear now.
You should check out my Rock and Romanticism books -- there are four. I use Sayre and Lowy to argue that rock music is an iteration of Romanticism in the current day. Sayre of Lowy's Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (2001) provides a theoretical framework supporting that reading.
I like what you're saying about "enchantment" and "small space of freedom." The word that comes to mind is "Wilderness." The technological imperative of total surveillance that conquers reality by constructing a simulated model of it, which applies quantity to everything, including behavior, the shadow of cognition, and quantity only, has no truck with qualitative evaluation, and so denies its existence. This is in evidence in the 'philosophies' (really just advertisements) sold by Harrari and Sapolsky.
I don't know that the term Rationalism applies itself so perfectly to what we're going through, because there is no leading philosophy of our era, only post-rational excusses and coercive advertising. What we have is the absolute quantitative expedient, which of course resembles classical Rationalism.. "Mankind makes tools, and then the tools remake mankind." We have been possessed, unwittingly and unconsciously, by the quantitative model of the computer's structure, as a default condition to which we must cope. And this has had the effect of squeezing out any domain left unconquerable by quantitative measure, leaving no wilderness, where the mental & emotional life can flourish unburdened.
Thanks for writing this, Ted. Will forward it around. -M
You mention this "Mankind makes tools, and then the tools remake mankind." Where did this come from? It is my view of evolution. Life evolves to the point where it has no evolution to speak of, until it learns to re-engineer and evolve itself. We are at this precipice now, beginning to evolve ourselves.
Harvard professor of poetry and literature, Adam Walker, is also on board with the New Renaissance, and, as I understand it, he's in the process of an early retirement from the ivory tower to establish his own independent program linked below.
2025's best films: Sinners, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Weapons, Superman, No Other Choice, Blue Moon/Nouvelle Vague, The Secret Agent -- all at their core were about putting people, family and humanity above machines, political ideologies/systems, and materialism. Rosalia literally put out an album with Operatic songs backed by the London Philharmonic. Its everywhere if you know where to look.
in fact, some of us never left this worldview and lifestyle, but it has been much more of a challenge than I initially would have anticipated, due to the exact entrenchment and expansion of Uber-Rationalism in my whole lifetime. maybe I'm a radical romanticist; an arch-sensualist.
Although, I am skeptical about your brief view in here that Romanticism can go too far -- not if it is truly holistic and thinking as Systems Thinkers would suggest. That would include lots of both/ands: near/far; whole/part; narrow/wide; immediate/long-term, etc. This is the only path towards balance, so for me within my practice of "romanticism," Harmony is both an ingredient and an outcome. It is intrinsic.
Command & Control, on the other hand, "rationalism," is, in practice, severely irrational in that it always creates an imbalance that leads to its own demise: a virus that kills all of its hosts, a parasite that dwindles its host population into collapse. In other words: humans have tried to make an art of parasitism, but even in that we have failed to study how Nature *actually* does it (i.e., intelligent parasitism, if you will), and our key error is often: complete lack of balance or understanding of cause & effect on scales both large and small
One quibble about an important aspect that you perhaps inadvertently omitted. A key aspect of the romanticism of the 18th century was reconnecting with the natural world. The Romantic poets were rather obsessed with this as poet Robert Bly points out in his stellar book “News of the Universe” (I highly recommend it.) In shifting our life on a day-to-day basis into an increasingly claustrophobic and self-reinforcing digital cage, we have abandoned, not only our connection to the natural world -- which is essential to the very important human values you cite -- but also our connection to each other.
Connecting to nature also let's us tap into the mystery of the universe, which despite human folly remains nonetheless fully intact even if absurdly rationalized by Western scientific materialism and reductionism. ( Carl Sagan and Einstein were both scientists who could appreciate this. Today...not so much.)
I totally agree that a new romanticism is very necessary at this strange time in human history but am perhaps a bit less optimistic that it will happen --- at least over the next few years. The forces of technocracy seem too powerful at the moment to be countered because so much of the necessities of everyday life depend on our attachment to this digital realm. Paying bills, financial maintenance, getting a license renewed and so much more. Further, technological dependency keeps getting ratcheted up by the self-appointed masters of the universe represented by Big Tech. And finally until our educational system returns to the fundamentals of the liberal arts and humanities to balance out the insane obsession with STEM-based (i.e. utilitarian) education, we won’t have the necessary grounding to turn things around. That said, I hope I’m wrong about this although it's great to hear the hopeful signs you reference.
Good observation; I was thinking the same, but you articulated
better and faster. Cheers!
Ted, Since you mentioned Blake, I should like to strongly recommend a remarkable new book about him and his continuing relevance, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, by Mark Vernon (2025).
thanks for that rec Peter! we are involved with the Swedenborg Foundation, in publishing, and Blake was quite the Swedenborg enthusiast, as was Johnny Appleseed and Helen Keller. I think I need more deep dives into Blake, much more, so will get this book right away...
Yes! Johnny Appleseed is also a prototype for the great American weirdo.
It’s time to choose sides. Slop, and algorithms, or humanity and creativity. Rusty Pilgrim, my record label, was one of the first to implement an anti-AI logo, or rather a ‘Human Made’ logo, on its music. And maybe some people might laugh, but the return and rising, even if niche, popularity of the Dungeon Synth genre is a symptom of what you’re describing.
This reminds me of the Authors Guild's Human Authored Certification (https://authorsguild.org/human-authored/), which I used for my last book and plan to use from now on.
Ted, #2 is the keystone: a rationalized system can price, rank, and surveil, but it cannot reliably cultivate love, trust, or friendship.
The first place you feel that is conversational: a line arrives with the wrong entry, at the wrong hour, carrying too much demand... and it simply stops being humanly answerable. That’s the mechanism I lay out in 'On Human Fluency' (EL → HR → EL).
https://frenchconnections.substack.com/p/on-human-fluency
Quite a hopeful perspective on the burgeoning insanity we are living through. Thank you.
Need for a balance between heart and "rationality" (which i put in quotes because ... a truly rational approach would seek to maximise emotional wellbeing at least as much as affluence or technological capability).
Time for another listen to the title track from Rush's 1978 album, Hemispheres. Encapsulates this topic beautifully, energising music, and it points the way to a possible way forward for humanity...
"They are people you would trust with a spreadsheet" -- they also want to upload you to a spreadsheet - the transhumanist afterlife.
I work in a laboratory of Romanticism and I'm enormously grateful for it. The path of our work is deeply embedded in materials, in our community, and in embodied practices. I'm pretty sure I would have lost my mind by now if I were in a corporate or public sector environment. www.robinsonstudio.com
Wow stunning work, and so direct!, the appeal, and so intense!
I appreciated this essay and your devotion to this worthwhile corrective.
I agree that rationalism today can feel scary. For many people it has become almost a religion. “Trust the science” often means trust without understanding, without curiosity, without awareness of limits, without knowing the basic principles behind it. Rationality turns into belief rather than thinking.
At the same time, I think we should be careful not to romanticize Romanticism itself. I just want to point out that it isn’t an answer, only a counterweight. It can help restore balance, but leaning on it too much is really dangerous. I see this in some anti-AI reactions, where fear of dehumanization turns into rejection of rational thinking altogether. Though you mentioned that Romanticism can also become scary, I feel the need to repeat this thought as I see people dividing into these two war camps already.
The hardest position is the middle one, like always. Not worshipping reason, not escaping into feeling, but staying between them without turning either into a belief system. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s probably the only place where something genuinely human can still exist.
These days you cannot be exceptional or a high achiever unless you are out of balance.
I’ve been fighting this battle ever since I refused to carry a camera on a tour of the UK in the early 80s - those experiences are as clear in me now as they were in the moment they happened…far beyond the visuals that would fading away in a photo album somewhere. Thank you Ted for articulating what needs to become clear now.
You should check out my Rock and Romanticism books -- there are four. I use Sayre and Lowy to argue that rock music is an iteration of Romanticism in the current day. Sayre of Lowy's Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (2001) provides a theoretical framework supporting that reading.
Escape "the dead-end of a data-driven life" and lead a Dada driven life.
Dada not data.
HAHA love it.
I like what you're saying about "enchantment" and "small space of freedom." The word that comes to mind is "Wilderness." The technological imperative of total surveillance that conquers reality by constructing a simulated model of it, which applies quantity to everything, including behavior, the shadow of cognition, and quantity only, has no truck with qualitative evaluation, and so denies its existence. This is in evidence in the 'philosophies' (really just advertisements) sold by Harrari and Sapolsky.
I don't know that the term Rationalism applies itself so perfectly to what we're going through, because there is no leading philosophy of our era, only post-rational excusses and coercive advertising. What we have is the absolute quantitative expedient, which of course resembles classical Rationalism.. "Mankind makes tools, and then the tools remake mankind." We have been possessed, unwittingly and unconsciously, by the quantitative model of the computer's structure, as a default condition to which we must cope. And this has had the effect of squeezing out any domain left unconquerable by quantitative measure, leaving no wilderness, where the mental & emotional life can flourish unburdened.
Thanks for writing this, Ted. Will forward it around. -M
You mention this "Mankind makes tools, and then the tools remake mankind." Where did this come from? It is my view of evolution. Life evolves to the point where it has no evolution to speak of, until it learns to re-engineer and evolve itself. We are at this precipice now, beginning to evolve ourselves.
Harvard professor of poetry and literature, Adam Walker, is also on board with the New Renaissance, and, as I understand it, he's in the process of an early retirement from the ivory tower to establish his own independent program linked below.
https://adamgagewalker.substack.com/archive
https://versedcommunity.mn.co/
https://www.youtube.com/@closereadingpoetry
2025's best films: Sinners, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Weapons, Superman, No Other Choice, Blue Moon/Nouvelle Vague, The Secret Agent -- all at their core were about putting people, family and humanity above machines, political ideologies/systems, and materialism. Rosalia literally put out an album with Operatic songs backed by the London Philharmonic. Its everywhere if you know where to look.
fantastic. sign me up Ted!
in fact, some of us never left this worldview and lifestyle, but it has been much more of a challenge than I initially would have anticipated, due to the exact entrenchment and expansion of Uber-Rationalism in my whole lifetime. maybe I'm a radical romanticist; an arch-sensualist.
Although, I am skeptical about your brief view in here that Romanticism can go too far -- not if it is truly holistic and thinking as Systems Thinkers would suggest. That would include lots of both/ands: near/far; whole/part; narrow/wide; immediate/long-term, etc. This is the only path towards balance, so for me within my practice of "romanticism," Harmony is both an ingredient and an outcome. It is intrinsic.
Command & Control, on the other hand, "rationalism," is, in practice, severely irrational in that it always creates an imbalance that leads to its own demise: a virus that kills all of its hosts, a parasite that dwindles its host population into collapse. In other words: humans have tried to make an art of parasitism, but even in that we have failed to study how Nature *actually* does it (i.e., intelligent parasitism, if you will), and our key error is often: complete lack of balance or understanding of cause & effect on scales both large and small