To your point: Peco and I just published "Welcome to the Analog Renaissance: The Future is Trust".
We are facing a major crisis of trust because so much of our work and creativity will be the product of AI. But we have a choice, we can start to build outposts of human trust in the digital wilderness. At School of the Unconformed we are introducing a analog-digtial hybrid model as a way to establish trust between writers and readers. For practical starting points see:
Also, seems we've been thinking along the same lines: in Sept 2024 my husband Peco and I discussed the impending change to our knowledge system in "The Flavors of Faux History: Preparing for the Collapse of Knowledge". As an anitdote we compiled an extensive "booklegging for history" list based on the recommendations of Substack writers and readers we collected. I've lifted the paywall for those who are interested :)https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/the-flavors-of-faux-history-preparing
I noticed a shift in the business world about twenty years ago, when client acquisition became all about trust. Performance, fees, extras all became second to trust.
When you’re in a high trust society, trust can be taken for granted. As your society degrades you have to start selecting for things that were previously a given.
I will add to Paul Hesse’s observation: These points apply almost exclusively to America. The opposite - upticks in education, reading, thinking, understanding, public discourse, science - can be observed today on clear display in Canada and China per Paul’s note, and as well in Taiwan, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Mongolia, Ecuador, Slovenia, Norway, Portugal, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Czech Republic
Well, my kids went through the public school system in Norway, and later did some university study in the US, and I can tell you the the so-called uptick in education, reading etc in Norway is closer to mixed to downticks. Reading levels of young males decline every year, we're finally going back to books in school after losing our minds over digital learning, but the elephant in the room remains the addiction to tech in all forms.
In any case, here's a good example of the west: When one of my kids was in 9th grade years ago, they thought they were doing advanced math. At an open PTA meeting a woman from China stood up and asked the board: why are 9th graders learning math we learn in China in 3rd grade?
To be fair, a laptop or a tablet is vastly easier to carry around and reference than ten different textbooks. The problem is more related to the open internet.
No. Screens are not an effective way to learn. There are mountains of evidence on this. They are pushed because they allow for even greater centralization and homogenization of the process, not to mention surveillance.
There’s been some interesting work done on the degradation in male learning. One of the points is that the gap in performance between Scandinavia and the US is mostly due to better female performance. So not only in the US degrading in academic performance but males are struggling globally.
I am a teacher in Taiwan and I have had the opposite experience. Maybe on the surface it looks like these things are growing, but innreality, Taiwan is very committed to the technological bureaucracy. Kids are in schools from 7am until 7pm, or later. They're not reading or thinking, they're learning to memorize and to be good cogs in the system, which is even more so than in America, a top down system. From my perspective, many other countries are going through these same trends, they're just happening slower and, perhaps, because these countries can see what's happening in America, with less disruption.
7am until 7pm? Cripes, you're running a chain gang, that's worse than South Korea.
Do these people not realise that Finnland gets nearly identical PISA scores with about half as many hours in the school system? Why do parents inflict this on their children?
I have also taught in South Korea, and I would say it's pretty much the same as Taiwan. From what I've heard, China and Japan are pretty similar too.
They do this because this is what was done to them. I had a parent literally tell me that about why she's so hard on her kid. "I survived, and I didn't have all these fun extracurriculars. It was only homework. He should be grateful he gets time for sports and fun reading." (I was the fun reading teacher).
That's the functional purpose of school that is that long, but it's not just babysitting. The kids are expected to be in class, or doing homework while a teacher supervises. School opens at 7 for the kids that have to be dropped off early (which is most), but classes start at 8, so there is an hour in there where you could call it just babysitting. Cram schools, or programs that keep kids at their day school later, exist because parents don't want their kids to "waste time". I even had one 4th grader that was in school all morning, came to my class twice a week from 1:30-4:30, stayed behind until 7 to do her school homework, then her mom would take her home and she's have extra workbooks to do until bed at home. I tutored another kid from 7pm to 9pm weeknight evenings. It had to be that late because the rest of his schedule was packed full with other tutors. Swimming, violin, programming, debate, basketball, and advanced math so he'd get ahead, all on top of his regular classes.
This particular family wanted their kid to have time for socialization but saw no value in letting him just... hang out, so they needed a sport or some other thing that would also build confidence and let him run around etc. All the things I listed above that the kid did were outside of the school, independent classes or activities.
Particularly egregious example of "learning" in the modern world, as we move increasingly towards an AI dominated environment (I see teacher assists but pretty much everything moving in this direction tbh).
I am certainly not against "rote learning" for some things, but those must be carefully selected and certainly not the "every subject" trend that seems to be common in East Asia. Whilst I think a TYPE of rote learning is actually handy in studying languages and becoming a proficient reader for children, once you get past that stage, it actually becomes a hindrance. It builds unhelpful habits that are set in a particular cognitive behavioral pattern, that simply must be struggled against later when learning more in-depth.
And it's particularly bad for the area we are entering.
I agree that much (thought not all) of Ted's points relate to American decline rather than anything global. Having said that, the impact of the Silicon Valley companies is global (excepting China), and everyone is online which is no doubt fuelling loneliness and dissatisfaction everywhere. That's something we all need to push back on.
Orville Schell has written convincingly on the parallels between Trump and Mao. The anti-expert and anti-science etc bent of MAGA may be more about Trump trying to consolidate power through destroying institutions and less about inherent problems in the institutions.
I think maybe that is an example of reversing the disease and the symptom. The system has become weak as Ted describes, and Trump/MAGA are able to exploit that weakness. If the system were healthier Trump wouldn't be there in the first place. Trump is symptomatic of many things, not a cause in and of himself.
In all kindness, may I ask if it was any different prior to January 2025? I think it’s disingenuous to fall back on the “Orange Man bad” argument regarding this issue.
I understand your point, but since January 2025, and for the first time in US history, the country will experience a 'brain drain' to Europe of its scientists and innovators. The EU has already put up $500 million in start-up funds to accelerate the process, and there will be much more in the future.
The knowledge system was weakened even during the 2008 campaign. MAGA was already there. Remember the emergence of Sarah Palin, and that woman who said Obama was suspect because he was a Muslim before McCain shut her down. I'm doing precisely the opposite of the "Orange Man bad" argument. (Though he is very, very bad.)
This is an utterly blockheaded take. Trump didn't destroy trust in these institutions. He's merely pointed out that they are completely untrustworthy, and they've done nothing but validate that observation. Anyone comparing Trump to Mao is an ahistorical ignoramus. Seriously, go read Frank Dikotter's "Mao Trilogy" and then get back to me. It's really hard to be this freaking dense.
Here are some bits from a recent interview with Orville Schell: "Mao saw creative power in disorder and destruction. Trump obviously hasn’t studied Mao’s works, but similarly, he finds his strength in chaos. He overturns everything, and this gives him enormous power because it keeps others uncertain. He can rage and gush within the same day, confusing people and upsetting the balance. Mao was a revolutionary who wanted to overthrow traditional culture and destroy old power structures — landlords, bourgeoisie, capitalists, imperialists, colonizers, and so on. He found creative force in destruction. Trump, in many ways, is like a child. He doesn’t have a sophisticated theory like Mao, but in practice, he acts similarly: instinctively stirring things up to gain power....Trump instinctively senses when something is out of balance or insulting to him or the United States. Whether he will be able to rebuild after destruction is doubtful. Mao could destroy but struggled to rebuild, and I fear Trump will be even less able. I think he, like Mao, doesn’t fully appreciate how much his destructive impulses undermine his country’s future." https://easternfrontier.eu/eastern-frontier/7,193611,31964195,orville-schell-trump-and-mao-both-find-power-in-chaos.html?disableRedirects=true
Casually comparing Trump to the biblical horrors of the Great Famine or the Cultural Revolution might make for good podcast conversation, but it reveals a fathomless ignorance. Mao killed 50 MILLION people! There is no comparison unless you are a complete dunce who places politics ahead of objective reality.
Institutions in the west were already corrupt. The scientific community is captured, media is captured, government spies on its citizens, elections are overturned in Europe and western enabling of atrocities in other countries continues unabated. The destruction of western society started well before Trump arrived on the scene.
Trump gained the presidency because he represents a counter to these forces. Whether he's morally good or part of the show is up for debate, but he does represent pushback to the status quo that many are dissatisfied with.
But surely he should then advocate for a DIFFERENT type of expertise, and delineate what separates a "good" expert from a "bad" expert? He appears to simply pick and choose what suits him at any given time, and he frequently changes sides with no over-arching theory.
Point is, I have never heard Trump talk about the replication crisis in science, a systematic analysis of of what is breaking down institutions, why this occurs etc. It's all just finger-pointing when it is highly politically convenient to do so.
Regarding Trump as a figurehead, this is also partly TDS. Whatever you think of him, without Trump, we would be in a uniparty downward spiral of DEI, woke academia, censorship, intersectionalism, growing unfunded spending and so on. He is an unlikely hero needed for the current moment; whether he will succeed against all the intense resistance to every single thing is unclear, but no one else would dare to try hard enough.
You can take Leibniz's view if you wish: we live in the best possible world where everything is a necessary evil. Yet, recognition is due
I don't think Trump is doing the organizing, I think the situation is more like the 1st Triumvirate of Rome, enemies turned allies out of necessity. Which will only last as long as it is convenient.
I think Trump was more of a figurehead of the zionist jews (as opposed to the globalist jews), but I'm not sure if that is true any more. I think Trump is now more of a Thermidorean figure (French Rev faction trying to back off the fanatics before total ruin happens.) He is opening a lot of peoples' eyes to just how terrible things are, and giving people hope that they can get better.
I don't think things will get better, at least not before they get a whole lot worse first.
It's silly to think that this started with Trump. The rise of the security state, government monitoring of its citizens and organized propaganda has been going on for decades.
What's worse, coordinating and abetting the entry of millions of unlawful immigrants, or attempting to rectify?
Attempting to rectify, by a country mile, since it means ‘disappearing’ people and tearing children from their parents. It’s not a difficult choice really. We can see who’s hurting most.
I mean, I think a direct and catastrophic illustration of how the Trump movement has certainly exacerbated the stigma against experts was during the tariff scenario.
A whole bunch of Trump supporters who clearly had only the vaguest understanding of the economics behind tariffs began coming up with fervent justifications for many of Team Trump's proclamations, undermining expert analysis.
I don't think they would be nearly as forthright in their proclamations, if the Trump movement itself was not so utterly dismissive of expertise or conventional expertise at least.
Except that the experts were wrong. Because 'experts' in today's world play the same role as medieval priests telling the peasants that their rulers were ordained by God to rule over them.
The “experts” did this to themselves. It turns out they aren’t experts on anything but their pet theories which flounder outside of the ivory towers of academia.
What happened to the experts is not unlike the hallucinations of LLMs. Feel free to write a post on this.
I think we have to acknowledge that some types of expertise (such as plumbing, electronics, accountancy) are much more straight-forward than others (medical, economics, public policy theory). The link between performance and expertise is stronger in the former than the latter.
But that DOES NOT mean there is no such thing as an expert in economics. Merely that the nature of the subject matter does not lend itself to the same type of performative expertise and knowledge.
I would think this break down is even applicable in sports, tbh. I would trust that a chess expert has a more direct performance measure than one in (say) poker. However, that doesn't mean the poker player is not an expert in poker, simply due to the fact that the nature of his sport means that external factors play a bigger role.
We have to start acknowledging these things, which never seems to happen.
China is having a similar experience with big tech - just from their own ecosystem of companies rather than from the Bay Area. Some of the specifics are different but the same trend is there.
I was reading about the various cases of family breakdown in Taiwan (I don't know how common this was as a % of the general population there) during the C-pandemic, because the younger generation fuelled by social media news had become extreme anti-vaxxers, as compared to their older relatives who trusted the government prescriptions on the matter e.g. a daughter in her 30s who no longer spoke to her father due to the screaming matches they had about whether to get vaccinated, the family being caught up in this etc.
So I don't think it's just the US. And being familiar with at least one other country/culture, I can tell you the informational/knowledge breakdown issues that appear so endemic to the US are certainly present in other far-flung places too.
You may be optimistic. Here in New Zealand, we are just traipsing sheepishly along behind the rest of the western world. All of Ted's trends prevail here, to varying degrees.
It is unfettered unrepentant and unhinged capitalism that is to blame.
More is better, reduce taxes for the super rich, make a buck. There is no balance or restraint anymore. No desire for sustained service to the customer. It's only about the shareholders.
And sadly a monetary system without checks and balances (talking about the "Federal" reserve and political capture). I strongly believe we wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for GFC bailouts and zero rate interest policies after it. If a system greatly rewards corruption, then that will continue until it can't anymore. Unfortunately we still haven't reached that point, and when we do, everyone in the world will feel its impact (because of the US stock market dominance and the Eurodollar system). Systemic problems in the US affects the rest of the world.
Thank you FED and other central banks. Once you have a currency with no relation to anything of value and the ability to print unlimited anounts (as debt) the inevitable consequence is what we are seeing now with private equity buying up everything and caring about nothing but the bottom line. It's really corporatism gone wild that is destoying everything. The company owners (mass of shareholders that own 80% of stock) don't really control the company- the BOD and managemrent do -think Blackrock) and they only look out for themselves, not even the shareholders. Exactly like the U.S. of A Corp.
I agree with most of that except the currency part. It has value because we say it does. It's the outside forces that are destroying our trust AND currency, which is just the medium of exchange. What is needed, is an enforced set of rules that we live by.
If politicians could not be bought, then even existing rules could be enforced.
In the Canada I live in, people aren’t as divided, but many, including me, are very suspicious of authorities. What the last election showed is that the Boomers are the only generation with a majority who still supports the status quo. The younger generations have far less faith in the expert class.
Not sure how you can say that. Canada is a woke, unproductive joke of a country at this point, and the bulk of discourse in the west is devoid of much rationality.
I'd say the global south is in much better position, with focus on family, common good and defending itself against moral decline.
As a Canadian, I would be glad to see evidence of uptick of anything you mention up here - am I missing it? You say it with such confidence but this is very far from me experience!
To support the idea that Canada is doing better than America with respect to reading, thinking, science, and maintaining an understanding of what is real (noting that there are variations across the different provinces): Certainly the immersion in the ‘world behind the flat screen’ is a worldwide problem. It originated in America but has spread most everywhere, and is seriously impacting thinking and reasoning and perception of what is real. Canada is not spared this problem. However Canadians may be more resistant. The data:
Book Net Canada reports that in 2023:
49% of Canadians read or listened to books weekly
31% daily
About half of Canadians read at least one book that year
About a quarter more than five
Over one in twenty Canadians read more than fifty books that year
American numbers, as reported in the Washington Post for 2023, are considerably worse, less than half in all categories. And only one in a hundred Americans, if that, read more than fifty books that year.
The US Dept of Education (before it was dismantled) reported that less than 50% of American adults are functionally literate - skill sufficient to manage daily tasks. In Canada that number is about 80%. (The comparison is not perfect, as the polls were looking at slightly different metrics.)
Canada consistently ranks very high in tertiary (beyond high school) education: in the top five along with South Korea and Ireland. This is not the case with the US.
Purely anecdotally: my observation of the Canadians I work with and mentor, generally in their mid to late twenties (a small data set, so perhaps not representative) is that they seem to have matured into adults. This is not evident, in general, in their peers who grew up in America.
I’m not really following this point. U.S. universities are world leaders in cutting edge science and research. God help us all if they start crumbling. People commented on lowered standards in their respective countries. I’ve heard/seen standards slide in Canada, UK and France. In Tokyo, at some schools, you are required to maintain an iPad for schooling.
I used to think so too, but I think a lot of it is simply that English-speaking countries are not really privy to the discussions (often rabid) that are going on in other language-spheres, so it always appears that the worst dichotomies are observed closer to "home". But as I became more familiar with reading translated discussions on forums, SM posts etc. it became quite clear that all these discussions and similar levels of disagreement were occurring in other far-flung places, too. And we should honestly expect as much, to be honest. These are complicated discussions we are having, and "truth" is not so easy to discern.
Voting repeatedly for Justin Castreau and importing millions of illegal and legal muzzies speaks to the ENLIGHTENMENT of Canada? Where do you buy your marijuana? I want summa dat stuff!
“Upticks” in Canada? If you mean the management class and their children becoming Manchurian Citizens then perhaps, but this is the slim slice of the population that may see the carrot disappear as the stick hits their face. The point of the essay is the other unnoticed forces are on the rise. Like ticks in the long grass working overtime while you muse on upticks in the clear blue of elite thought. What you consider to be “positive” trending in Canada is only intellectual stagnation within a populace too compliant to notice it for what it is: intellectual retardation, publicly funded for the darling class.
I'm concerned that instead of the arts and humanities assuming a larger role, religion will fill in the gaps…this is one of the worst potential horrors.
Christianity offers absolutely the most honest appraisal of the human condition ever devised, and the best and highest standards of morality. It is the only philosophy or religion which understands both good and evil, and the only one to provide both an unyielding standard and a path to redemption. You will rarely go wrong hiring a Biblically-sound Christian. They work for a higher boss.
The problem with "highest standards of morality" is that they are rarely followed especially by those who proclaim them. In the current climate they are also seen as weakness. As for hiring "Biblically-sound Christian(s)" they suffer from lack of doubt. And that is dangerous.
I'm sorry, but as a lifelong Christian, I seriously dispute the assertion that we do not suffer doubt. You must not have had close relationships with many Christians. We are human and our faith is a conscious choice, often in the face of confusion, and throughout history Christians have undertaken great and careful study and examination of their beliefs, and still (Incredibly! What a shock!) decided that Christianity is the most truthful and best path.
People of faith may well feel personal doubts. Not many centuries ago such doubts would have secured an appointment with Torquemada. But you express no doubt that your chosen Christian faith is "the most truthful and best path". Which would be of no consequence if such certainty stayed on a personal level and no effort was made to impose such claim on the rest of us.
The real trouble starts when the all Abrahamic faiths and their many offshoots feel the same certainty. History books and currently our TV and computer screens confirm this.
You would not hire me, because I claim there is absolute truth that applies not just to myself, but to all the cosmos.
The problem with this reasoning is that by attempting to persuade others, you also assume an absolute truth. You may not be trying to persuade them to follow a *religious* conviction, or an explicit moral code, but you still are laying forth expectations for their behavior. Based on your comments so far, here are a few:
1. Act as though what you do matters (i.e. life is not pointless).
1. Have integrity between what you believe and what you do.
2. Do not force others to follow your religion. (Though I think your actual philosophy is something a bit closer to "make 'no effort' to try to persuade others to follow your religion")
3. Examine your own beliefs.
I think a lot of people make the mistake of assuming they are thinking freely, without any assumptions, without imposing anything on others. But in reality, all of us have hundreds of unspoken assumptions in what we say, most of which are unexamined. We couldn't have reasoned discussion without many of these underlying assumptions! But consider this: what about the atheist who has decided to believe life is meaningless? You have already imposed on him simply by believing that people "should" or "should not." True moral relativism is impossible.
We are arguing along parallel lines. The point is made about personal doubt which I accept while I am arguing over lack of doubt when it comes down to the iron clad conviction people of deep faith have about the infallibility of their religion rejecting all others as false. I argued that such convictions have brought a lot of misery throughout history and that misery is still not letting up.
You claim I am laying forth expectations for their behaviour of people of faith with "should" or "should not". On the contrary, lacking the certainty of any faith I can make no demands on the behaviour of others. I only ask people of faith, especially of the fundamentalist variety, to make no demands on me. If that counts as a "should" or a "should not" then guilty as charged.
Someone made a point in this back and forth about a "Biblically-sound Christian". I am afraid to be enlightened on what that means.
You cannot have freedom of religion without freedom from religion. Everything else is pouring from the empty into the void.
On the contrary; Biblically-sound Christians tend to have a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between doubt and belief. It's a necessary component of being a believing and practicing, heart-converted, Christian.
I think you need to surround yourself with apostolic Christians, like Orthodox or Catholics and less the prosperity gospel Christians.
While we're all sinners and we strive to sin less the apostolic traditions have a long history of martyrdom. That is the fullest form of a Christian following their morality to the grave.
Really? Christianity also has a problem with thinking it is the only true religion, that all other paths are false, just like you said, "it is the ONLY philosophy or religion which understands both good and evil." Wrong. I'm not anti-religion, in fact I'm a universalist. I think some space needs to be made for people who have different philosophies, religions and ways of understanding the cosmos and humanities role inside it. Christianity does not have a monopoly on this, and polytheism has much to offer the contemporary seeker. One shoe doesn't have to fit everybody.
It also instills a lot of confidence and superiority in some people, to the point that they have absolute certainty that what they do is always good and in god's graces, usually completely ignoring the actual humans that sit in front of them.
Whether Christianity makes people better or not is as varied as the people that follow it.
"Whether Christianity makes people better or not is as varied as the people that follow it."
I disagree. Christianity teaches against all the negative and prideful things you mentioned above. In so far as people despise others, act self-righteous, and reject humility, those people are turning away from Christianity. Those people can still be receiving God's grace, and growing, but their failures are not a failure on the part of the Faith to "make them better." It's just a further sign of their need for God.
Sending you to 1Timothy 6:17-19 where instructions were given to Timothy from Apostle Paul regarding not placing hope on riches but on God with emphasis on working at good and be rich in fine works so that we may get a hold on the real life.
This system of things is collapsing as predicted by Jesus and reinforced by Apostle John in Revelation is coming rapidly to fruitition.
Events will all play out with government in conflict with religion.
From a science, tech, art and historical perspective it will be an interesting ride.
Christianity as a set of doctrines is fine. Christianity Inc™ is subject to the same problems, and has been for a long time. In the US at least it's mostly a proxy for partisan lean.
Well that fits in with Ted's prediction that Romanticism is making a comeback. And I'm good with that. The youngs flocking to religion are looking for a sense of community and that's certainly an improvement over the isolation of technology.
Humanities have long been intertwined with religion. You cannot explore the human experience without some level of spirituality. How did become this way? Why are these greats themes of humanity - grief, guilt, love, joy, morality - so universal across millenia and cultures?
Science will want to answer that (and other related questions) biologically, and the humanities will want to answer that spiritually. Both ways have value.
I draw a sharp distinction between spirituality and religion, the latter being a sociopolitical power structure that pretends to address the former.
I also suspect that much (though I will not say all) that is commonly thought of as spiritual is actually an emergent property of our physical nature. By bracketing the "spiritual" off from the "biological" we risk damaging our understanding of both.
I think this is a self-defeating claim. You want spirituality apart from its natural embodiment in religion, but then want to say that spirituality is also closely connected to the physical world. Can't you see that those who follow religion are seeking exactly this, a spirituality that acknowledges and nourishes their embodied existence, not merely one that treats them as a soul-receptical? Religious ceremony and rite are one of the greatest expressions of this longing. And a study of history will also reveal that many religious people throughout history (including today) have held to their beliefs and rites in the face of a completely disenfranchising socio-political structure. See: communism in every country it has ever existed; Ancient Rome; Christians in any majority Muslim country today.
Interesting. Now, Islam is also a religion. As is Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and many, many other traditions of ritual and belief. Are not Muslims in muslim-majority countries also keeping their faith?
Of course they are. Not necessarily a true faith, but a faith all the same. Religion need not *necessarily* be opposed/disenfranchised in order to be true. However, if religion can be practiced even in the midst of complete opposition, then it is more than sociopolitical power.
The tendency to view all things, especially religion, as a form of power, is Marxist in origin. And it makes for shallow philosophy. Existence is not merely a struggle for power, and religion is not merely a grasping for power. We must look deeper into human nature for our meaning. Yes, spirituality is an aspect of that, but true and sincere spirituality leads to an embrace of religion, since our spiritual nature as humans is not isolated, but communal, and not merely cognitive, but embodied.
"Existence is not merely a struggle for power, and religion is not merely a grasping for power"
You and I agree on this. We might, in fact, disagree less on other subjects than has been clear in this exchange. Regrettably, I suspect we are ever unlikely to reach accord on the balance of help versus harm wrought by humans that assume they know the truth or the true will of the Numinous (note, please the portion of my original assertion where I state "though I will not say all"). I'm prepared to walk away at this point with no ill will.
You need to make a distinction. In Christianity the High Church is thoroughly corrupted by Woke, with a succession of popes, archbishops, bishops etc having proved worldly, venal and political. The sense of crisis is causing growth in Christianity, lots of new people joining, only you won't see it in the cathedrals and trendy inner-city churches, only in small, traditional, family-oriented churches. In a way, this mirrors what Ted has written.
There's also the distinction between institutional religion and spirituality. The first is doomed. The second, however, may be entering a renaissance.
The latin community is different. They seem to have better values all around when it comes to faith and family! And work..
I'm talking rural america.. 10 churches in every village and 10 people in each.. or less.. social fabric has torn. I see a lot of judgment, gossip, condemnation all around very little "community". More a feeling of exclusivity and "do as I say" instead of real love and tolerance... holy rollers won't make it... and it's showing.
This country is in spiritual darkness ... church has failed.
Not really. Young people and those with large families are flocking in droves to the traditional Latin Mass. And the more beautiful and ornate the awe-inspiring cathedral the better. It is verified and noticed all over. Clowns in Charlotte are the dying liberal “institution.”
Young people are attending religious services more than their elders (more Gen Z go to services than Millennials). I do think it’s more about community than religious zeal, but theres nothing wrong with that from my point of view. I was raised Catholic in the 80s and 90s and the community aspect is what I remember fondly.
I’m an elder Millennial - born in 1981 - and while I’ve not regularly attended Mass since I was 16, I considered going to Mass after my move to California, just as another way to meet people and join the community. I may not be particularly religious, but Catholicism offers cultural touch points that will be familiar to anyone who was raised Catholic, just like Judaism does for non-practicing Jewish folks.
If nothing else, it probably would have made learning Spanish easier. I still basically know the Mass by heart.
There is an entire world of "alternative religion" to explore-- in fact its long been a big part of "alternative culture." These myriad spiritual paths such as druidry, gnosticism, nature spirituality, the ongoing polytheistic revival in the west, all stand to gain just as much as the churches gaining adherents because people are fleeing into fundamentalisms as a bulwark against the collapse of industrial society. The branch of philosophy known as metaphysics is as much a part of our inheritance in the west as anything else (even though it gets derided and declaimed). I hope to see a revival of metaphysics and alternative spiritual movements alongside the burgeoning romantic awakening.
You cannot have humanities and arts without religion. These things are all part of what makes us human. My guess is that you actually fear religion being wielded by the powers that be, as some kind of inquisitorial weapon. But just like the arts and humanities, religion will fill in the "gaps" left by technology (or, rather, become the new foundation) not by enforcement at government level, but through the authentic and natural growth of communities and people towards the Good, True, and Beautiful. Arts and humanities uninformed by religion and moral conviction will go just as rotten as technology.
Definitely not. Spirituality is present in religion and you could not have religion without it, but I believe that the embodied expression of spirituality is essential. That includes the whole kit and kaboodle of ritual, moral prescription, and sacrament.
I've seen exactly what you mention; but I feel differently about the implications.
I am a physician from the last generation without chatGPT. I'm trained by reading textbooks, writing notes, solving online question banks, and using the internet to stay up to date. You can call it a hybrid model of education, between old-fashioned and new.
The 'new' method of learning is a total collapse into having 'trusted sources' feed the evidence to you. No more finding your own answers, No more criticism, no more weighing the evidence on the merits. Just ask ChatGPT. Add to that the increasing role of untrained APPs in administering medicine; and I feel that my future will be the only literate one in a sea of illiteracy. Like a medieval priest.
I feel those that subscribe to the older methods of knowledge acquisition will turn out just fine.
I'm a physician from the same generation as you. I also think we learn from rounding (discussing hospitalized patients' progress with other professionals), and seeing and learning from patients themselves. These both take time.
Now rounding is focused on how soon can this patient be discharged. Clinic visits are 10-15 minutes regardless of the problems encountered. Insurance companies and the people who pay their premiums do not value time. They value algorithms.
I’m a physician too and feel strongly that our missteps as a profession have contributed greatly to the collapse in public trust of institutions. We’ve had one medical scandal after another, accelerating over the decades until a crescendo is reached in the opiate epidemic. Before that one can properly be accounted for, we have the failures of the pandemic and, the piece de resistance, pediatric gender medicine. We’ve gone full on Mengele with that last one and do not seem to be able to put the breaks on. Something has been very wrong in medicine for a while now - some of it is financial opportunism certainly but some is just straight up intolerance of dissent. We’ve gotten alarmingly censorious in the last 10 years, to the detriment of our own reputations.
My elderly parents live with me, and it’s an abomination that I might not be able to get a COVID booster shot because I’m middle aged and healthy. That’s one lost line of defense to protect them; my mother is on oxygen full time - once bout of COVID will kill her.
People “doing their own research” is how we got measles back in the US. I’m not a research scientist and so whatever “research” I do is nonsense.
Here’s my experience - I never got the flu shot until I started working for a company that required me get it or wear a mask at work. (This was nearly a decade before COVID.)
Before I got the flu shot, I would regularly get sick two or three times every winter. Once I started getting the flu shot, I tended to get sick once per winter.
One other anecdote, which is not data, but what I’ve personally observed, is that I was very careful before we had a COVID vaccine because my elderly parents live with me. Once there was a vaccine and I got it, I stopped wearing a mask and went about my business as usual. I didn’t get COVID once until 2024. The vaccine may or may not have made my illness milder; I got Paxlovid antiviral and basically was no sicker than a cold within 36 hours, so there’s no real way to separate the two.
Meanwhile, I have a lot of friends who got COVID before the vaccine, and said “natural immunity is better,” and so didn’t get vaccinated. Nearly all of them have had COVID two or more additional times since.
So I could post my anecdotes online, people could “do their own research,” find my anecdotes, and come to the opposite conclusion as you.
The response of the medical community to covid is case in point. Complete abdication of the tenets of medical care.
The capture of the medical community by pharma is another. We don't talk about healthy living, we talk about treatment (pharma) to ills due to poor eating/lifestyle habits.
"We’ve had one medical scandal after another, accelerating over the decades until a crescendo is reached in the opiate epidemic." That's funny, wasn't there a "pandemic" since then, which represented the culmination of all these trends of abuse of trust? You can talk about it now, ARG, even Ted has mentioned it this time. Soon everyone will be able to talk about it without scandalising polite society!
All of this is only going to be exacerbated by forcing unqualified candidates into these positions for political reasons.
In fact this is one of the biggest contributors to lost of trust in experts. If your expertise is so valuable and your position deserves so much authority, then the social contract demands that only the most qualified candidates are allowed access. When you flagrantly undermine that contract you give up the game.
The problem is many of the written text are not only years behind, but over censured and editorialized. I would never ask ChatGPT to interpret anything for me but we have to be trained to look at raw data critically. I assume you have been around long enough to see so much medical ‘dogma’ fall by the wayside. But not before we have invested all those dollars and resources and lives to be the most cutting edge , up-to-date practitioners.
It's ridiculous how the whole field of cardiology has decided to abandon thinking and follow whatever is 'recommended'; despite all the evidence contrary.
Cardiology is a repeat offender. Anti-Arrhythmics to suppress PVCs, aspirin for all, aggressive stenting, calcium score.... It's ridiculous.
All this money and research and new drugs, for literally decades. And what remains the number one killer of Americans, Ischemic heart disease. Still. As if we are running in place
It gets better. HF mortality actually reversed trend and is back at 1990s level. Can’t possibly have anything to do with APPs/lazy cardiologists applying GDMT to all patients blindly without examining them + homeopathic doses of drugs because Entresto causes more hypotension for no gain. No siree.
I shouldn’t lump calcium score with the other stuff; an honest representation is that it’s still an open debate AND there’s still a variety of approaches where some cardiologists swear by it and some cardiologists hate it. Honestly; that’s an ideal way to approach something while the question is still open.
But as the second link shows, it is quickly closing as a good test. My main hang-up is; are we proving such an approach meaningfully improves survival? If not, then we’re medicalizing people earlier and exposing them to the risk of doctors. The evidence for calcium scores still is not solid enough to justify medicalizing so many people earlier.
Currently seeing a cardiologist for the first time, WF age 60, due to 106-110 resting HR along w EKG saying “poor R wave function”. Cardi Dr said the previous EKG was nothing to worry about. Just did 24 hr heart monitor and ultrasound, I declined the nuclear stress test unless we feel we really need it. I feel fine, just elevated resting HR only spuratically throughout the day. I appreciate your insights and honesty.
AI development right now seems to be a breakneck race between the acquisition of competence by AI models themselves, aspirationally ending with AGI, and the equally rapid demolition of competence in younger generations of humanity.
Which means there won't be much of a backup plan. I am furious with the people making this gamble.
I am 1000% convinced there will be no ‘AGI’ in medicine. I agree with the other side of your gamble and I think that’s the likeliest outcome.
The other option is do what Ted says and reject this Tower of Babel tech outright; before we are all dispersed into millions of languages.
Why am I convinced AGI is no threat to medicine? I could write a tome, but I’ll content myself with this: 80% of evidence appraisal is cynicism. Before I start reading a paper I need to reliably answer: ‘Why are the authors lying to me? How are they lying to me? Is this still good despite the lie?’
Notice I didn’t ask if they’re lying to me; the answer is always yes. Read through all the comments under mine and you’ll see how the physicians in here continually lament being lied to.
An AGI even in the utopian form they envision will never be able to do this. It will fall to entrenched interests like official guidelines, government bodies, and extremely famous journals did. In the blink of an eye too.
Well... an AGI is by definition capable of anything humans can do, including cynicism. It could get hoodwinked, sure, but it would eventually learn from the experience.
As long as there are instructions/prompts it has to take into account; it is not capable of the one thing that sets humanity apart from all of Creation: Free Will.
Big Pharma won’t even need to bribe legions of doctors or congressmen anymore. As simple as prompt engineering or poisoning the training data set. They are actually already hard at work doing that; see NEJM’s partnership with OpenEvidence. (The clinical AI tool prefers NEJM papers above others even when it makes no sense)
Well... setting aside the debate about free will, I'll agree there are tensions between AI being 'accountable' (i.e, enslaved) to human supervisors and also performing with superhuman rigour.
What's sad is that in Canada our healthcare is in such rough shape that I pray my physician uses ChatGPT or even Google. Oftentimes those two sources are superior to our physicians.
Canada is purely ‘you get what you pay for’. Have a young friend who had to wait 10 days for emergency surgery there that would be done almost immediately in the US.
US is quickly on that path though, thanks to the ACA and corruption
Yeah the US is not much better. Where there is the potential for grift, we get grift. Whether it's a private or public system. I hope that the US and Canadian models don't exhaust the available options because we're all effed if that's so.
A very smart friend of mine told me grift only exists where there’s a shortage; and it stuck with me. He spent his formative years in a collapsing USSR so the insights help
I have experienced health care in the US and in Canada. Canadian health care gets my vote. I was in surgery one month after an ultrasound discovered an issue. My mom in the States waited 4 months because of insurance approvals and she was relentless in dealing with her insurance company and had the money to pay for second opinions to bolster her case.
Technology is like fire. A good servant but a poor master. We have run smack dab into the limitations of technology, and it is us. My hope is that we reclaim spirituality (not sectarian dogma) as a central part of how we organize society and live our lives. The wider reality I speak about starts with acknowledging all of self--the emotional and spiritual [parts of our being along with the physical and mental.
...and that the humans are flawed and must acknowledge and forcibly mitigate their innate absence of compunction; the ease to which they will lie, cheat and steal; and their evangelized justifications to defeat moral and ethical behavior.
I would not use the same terms as you do. But then I regard self-judgment as the ultimate origin of that which you call lack of compunction. We lie, cheat, steal, and murder because we are scared. We are scared because we have lost our inner connection to our Divine source, however we imagine it. Thus we feel this world is cold and uncaring, and that our Creator is either dead or doesn't give a damn. And what we feel (about ourselves) is what we live. More compassion, maybe? Do not conflate compassion with weakness. Only the strongest allow themselves empathy and compassion for others' flaws and weaknesses--and their own.
I’m currently re-listening to an audiobook on YT on channel The Middle Book entitled “You’ve Only Been Using 5 Senses - Until Now”. It is stirring something important within me. 🙏
I think there's more truth than fiction in this, but it doesn't do enough to highlight how bad actors across all of these sectors set these dynamics up and exploit them for their own gain.
There are plenty of real-deal experts across many subjects but when there's money to be made they are shoved aside. The problem, then, isn't really the "expert" but the context within which they exist. Their "bosses" don't want to listen to them because they say things like "slow down" and "are you sure?" And the public doesn't want to listen to them because they're "experts" (aka elite, "out of touch" etc.).
Compounding the problem is the rise of celebrity scientists. Their fame may start in their expertise, but too often many begin to expound in areas well beyond their training and are taken more seriously there than is deserved. Linus Pauling and Neil DeGrasse Tyson are two examples.
There's a lot of money to be made in the attention economy by being a celebrity scientist these days, and it pains me to think that a nontrivial number of people in doctorate programs likely hope to make their mark there, rather than contributing actual knowledge and expertise to their field.
Absolutely! Another great point. Yet more bad actors ruining science and knowledge. Making matters even worse is that some universities actually incentivize and reward this pop science BS. It's just charlatans all the way down.
Get the record players going, enjoy the music in a way that they can't be nosy about, sit on your porch, memorize some parts of the Sacred Scriptures, Plant gardens of flowers and vegetables and share both with neighbors or the needy. Observe the sabbath and Lord's Day again even if you don't quite feel like it. The things that protect us, we must tend to.
Still making our garden larger. Started sharing a table full of free books outside - they're going like hotcakes! Don't use a smart phone. We do have a record player but also a CD player. Mixed bag but very fulfilling to do more reading, enjoying meals together, and visiting with the neighbors who walk by to pick up books! Loving life!
It's okay to use a CD player to listen to music. It's also okay to listen to mp3 files, and stream. The nostalgia for the record player is crazy, a fad of sorts. Most people have neither the technology (you know, a turntable or record player and a decent system to listen on. I do, but I rarely listen to records) or the records or the time to fiddle with that.
It's great that some people can do those things you're doing, but most can't or won't. Life is great if you have the ability to do things at leisure, but imagine if you had no money, a lousy job, or no "access" to health care. (By God, that evasive lying word "access" in that context drives me crazy.)
I appreciate the points you are making. Here's some background: At 78, I am now partially retired. We are still renters (45 years in this place). I earned minimum wage most of my 55+ years of working life. Gave up our car @ 25 years ago for both financial and environmental reasons, so now I ride the bus. I have had turntables most of that time. My husband's band put out their first LP in 1979 and it was just released by a company as a "collectible LP," because collectors want the old analog sound and that's why the turntable has made a comeback. I still listen to albums I purchased in the 60's and 70's. I also listen to CDs I purchased over the years. I don't use a smart phone - I use an old laptop. I can't believe how expensive smart phones are - I'm surprised anyone can afford them! I have always had access to health care if I could pay for it, and then I began receiving SS and got Medicare. I am fortunate since I don't get sick. Yes, I can now do some things at leisure because I have some extra time. I literally used to work up to 15 hours a day, but I can't do that any more due to physical changes, so I don't walk nor lift weight like I could years ago. Life changes. I roll with the punches, as they say. You are correct when you say not everyone can afford leisure time. Those of us who donate to different groups are well aware of the poverty in our country (and overseas) so we try to do what we can to help. Again I say - Loving life!
You've always had "access" to health care if you could pay for it? That means if you can't afford it, you don't get it. "Access" is irrelevant. I have "access" to a Lamborgini dealership about 20 miles from where I live; I can go in and look at the cars, touch them, but will never be able to afford them. Same too for about thirty million US citizens. Add in the people with bad insurance (it's great insurance as long as you never make a claim), and what do we have? A country in very serious moral trouble.
That just involves US citizens abominably served by a government in thrall to Finance Capital, but factor in the moral and criminal catastrophe of the Gaza genocide (plain as day, irrefutable, outrageous, ongoing, and well-documernted beyond dispute), and what do we have here? A culture in total failure on all fronts. I'm recently retired, and was fortunate to get a good job about 12 years ago, but I'm one of the lucky ones. Like you in some respects.
Thanks for the comment. I am distressed by many of the same things you are. That's why I support all of us working to make things better. There are so many ways to engage. As for your dislike of terminology, I am sorry. We don't all use/define words the same way, so sometimes the meaning we have behind our words is "lost in translation." :-) I have always been a "language champion" and made myself a pest with bringing up grammar and punctuation as well as words. I'm trying to be more tolerant these days, but it's not easy.
I don't really want to derail the conversation, but could you explain to me how the Gaza Genocide is "irrefutable"? The numbers just don't add up for me.
I think you're straw-manning the person you're arguing with. He was giving beautiful examples of human activities-perhaps even the best examples of them. Just because he is promoting using a record player does not mean he is being exclusive of all other human activities. Try to understand the heart of what he is saying, not just the words.
You seem to have misunderstood what I was criticizing. How and where did I claim he was being exclusive of "all other human activities"(!) by his saying to get out the record player? Ironically, I did indeed get right to the heart of what he was saying, which was a bundle of cliches.
Thanks, but I dont feel any great need to "observe the sabbath" or "the Lord's day" (!). I just dont feel like it. That's like thinking putting "prayer back in schools" will get things on the right track. And, "get the record players going?" Memorize some lines from the "Sacred Scriptures?" Why? Your prescriptions sound like pure nostalgia for a past devoid of critical thinking, something in very short supply in this Great Land.
Use your memory, use technologies that aren't spied upon even though they are older, at least they don't emit the horrid light of this. Seek an inculcated practice of some begrudgement of electronics. Not sure why you think my "prescriptions" are nostalgic particularly for a past that was devoid of critical thinking. I think there is far less critical thinking now than when we had our turntables on and listened to the readings of sacred texts that proposed a morality with which to wrestle.
The idea that Christianity and critical thinking are mutually exclusive makes me wonder what weird Christianity do you have out West or what insane propaganda did you listen to.
A lot of people know which direction to walk, but not the exact destination. I have attempted to boil down what religion offered (specifically Christianity) that undergirded the liberal experiment that gave rise to so much of the wealth and quality of life that the western world enjoyed. It's very simple: love. Not as an emotion or flowery platitude, but as what it is in the Bible: self-sacrifice for the good of another. This is the force that protected our freedoms from disintegration. Freedom is at once our greatest gift but most exploitable weakness. Mary freedom to nihilism, and suddenly being a free-rider is rational, doing that underhanded thing to get ahead is rational.
Love, as a commitment to self-sacrifice for the good of another, is the direction. While traditions may help us to remember that, it's not the traditions themselves that are doing the good work. A lot of people know the direction but not the exact destination.
No surprises (I have sources), but solutions? I can only think of 2 (and I have been thinking for a while now): Either take your valuables and run to the most isolated spot possible or decide to work on your inner resources. Cultivate deep peace, love, and conciousness in house. Create solid community. Whatever you do though, it is time to pull our heads out from under and be physically, mentally, and emotionally prepared as best we can. The signs are gradual. They are intended to be. But the impact is full force. Because as Ted says, when the NY Times headlines it, 'Buddha' will be off and running at full speed.
It reminds me way back when with the sudden appearance of the Buzz word "DIGITAL" At the time time it was just a Lazy / Cheap marketing word that at first - meant NOTHING. Suddenly it was everywhere all at once - Digital this ,Digital that ... "Oh ,you've GOT to have it - NOW cause it's DIGITAL ! Really ? Sorry - NOT.
It was the KOOL thing to say when it was empty & meaningless. Just a Marketing Ploy.
The New thing you speak of however is now Real & starting to wreak actual Havoc on the Land of the Living. The Huge Changes you speak of most likely Won't have a good outcome for most of us.
I really Feel for you younger ones out there who will have to live with & deal with the Largest SCAM ever perpetrated on the Human Race
The younger ones will live with this mess but not sure they are capable of dealing with it as their heads are fully immersed in their phones. I guess some exceptions will deal with it and find a way thru the mess but not hopeful
Man they said the exact same shit when i was a kid. Its ALWAYS the next generation thats going to have to deal with "these" problems. And theyll manage, one way or the other. And fuck up a bunch of shit and make other problems for their kids kids. And so it goes
Walker Percy quotes Romano Guardini (from The End of the Modern World) at the beginning of his novel, The Last Gentleman: “We know now that the modern world is coming to an end … at the same time, the unbeliever will emerge from the fogs of secularism. He will cease to reap benefit from the values and forces developed by the very Revelation he denies … Loneliness in faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world, but the more precious will be that love which flows from one lonely person to another … the world to come will be filled with animosity and danger, but it will be a world open and clean.”
I don't know if it actually happened or not (irony) but in Tom Hanks' cable series "From The Earth To The Moon," I seem to recall that some of the astronauts were given literature lessons and took poetry books, the better to describe their experiences in space. They knew science and beauty needed each other.
Three cheers for blue collar experts! I, for one, make a KILLING on that basis;)
One of the most common comments from customers is that theyre so happy we showed up! And in a timely manner. Lol, idk what these other yahoos are doing..
If you are young and paying attention, learn how to DO SOMETHING. The harder the thing, the more you can make. Be honest and keep your word and you can damn near pick your price.
But they aint listening! Stupid phones lol. Real great how thats all playing out🙄
Dude you hit the nail on the head! I don’t know how some people stay in business when their (former) customers are overjoyed that I “actually showed up & did a good job.”
I tell my kids all the time…learn to do something useful, that other people don’t want to do, and get really good at it. If you do you’ll never go hungry.
Exactly! People just dont want to work, its nuts lol. And im not talking about for peanuts here. People are willing to pay well to get quality work done. It really is a great time to be skilled with ones hands.
I had a hunch when i was in highschool(class of 99) that college was not the way. Im smart enough that i couldve done well going in a white collar direction, but i knew that wasnt for me. I learned my trades well and it has paid dividens, plus, and maybe the best part, i LOVE my work. That alone would be worth less money, but im not making less money at this point. Pardon my french, but its fucking awesome.
And i do believe some of this younger generation will awake up and fill this niche. Ive met a few kids that are disillusioned with all this tech shit and are looking for a way to live a real life. Those types will go far in this brave new world
Science writer Fritjof Capra said that Leonardo's failure to publish his notebooks in his lifetime dealt a major blow to both science and art. It took 200 years for the world to get a good look at his genius, and by then science had gone one way and art another. Now we desperately need to heal the rift between the left brain and right brain, the rational and spiritual, the logical and magical. Until then, we can expect to live "not in a prison, but in a lunatic asylum," as Carl Jung predicted. Are we there yet?
Goethe would be another key figure here. He had a vision of science different than the technocratic "science" we are getting from McGovCorp and co. "The Wholeness of Nature : Goethe's Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature" by Henri Bortoft is a good book to look a long this line. We can go back from the dead end in the maze, and take a different path and see where that leads us. (I'd also add this book to my own alternate science/tech canon.)
Thanks for the book reco, Justin. I do wish that we should reverse course to the start of social media and surveillance capitalism, then choose another path. I'm starting to see signs of Ross Barkin's (and Ted Gioia's) New Romantic Age, although I'm hoping for something more like a New Renaissance to replace the soul-depleting Industrial Age.
I wish so too... though I was thinking of going back to Goethe's conception of science and starting from some of his ideas. I'd enjoy a New Renaissance as well, we need soul. One of the books I'm looking at now is "Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics" by S.K. Heninger. The only way to bring it back is to bring it back.
I am a 78-year-old retired male computer programmer who lives in California.
Your emails present some ideas that appear to be very interesting. Besides being a musician who has often played jazz guitar in public, I worked for twenty years as a computer programmer and analyst for a medical insurance company. At that time many of us were aware that science was not the only source of wisdom, but it had done so much for us. One example involved the development of computing machines and some really amazing software. Home computers were already very popular, software companies had become extremely successful, cell phones were becoming much more useful, and AI was still mostly machine learning. Now most people appear to do the majority of their research and / or make most of their connections with new knowledge through their cell phones.
Many modern problems involve the fact that it has become difficult to trust the veracity of the vast sea of virtual information that is currently washing the sand from under our feet.
Nevertheless, many of us do seem to be becoming more directly involved with a side of human awareness that does not primarily depend upon logic and analysis. In other words instead of “I think, therefore I am”, many of us are are aware that a more profound way of being involves “I am, therefore I think.” Most of us confront of this alternate side of human awareness when we have a new and profound or “ah-ha” experience. Ultimately, this alternate side of being human can lead some of us to Unity Consciousness.
Timely and helpful although these U.S.-driven trends create differential opportunities for other countries. And since you cite the Renaissance, I'm looking forward to reading this; https://www.adapalmer.com/publication/inventing-the-renaissance/ "In Inventing the Renaissance, acclaimed historian Ada Palmer provides a fresh perspective on what makes this epoch so captivating. Her witty and irreverent journey through the fantasies historians have constructed about the period show how its legend derives more from later centuries’ mythmaking than from the often-grim reality of the period itself. " To mis-quote Barth, 'history is only the first rough draft of history'.
I think this heralds not just a backlash, but a collapse into a quasi- (or complete) dark age.
Let's say we have a society that is healthily staffed with experts. Part of their function in any given society is selection and transmission of important and useful knowledge - whether government, education, blue-collar, or random philosophers.
In any given point, humanity generates an immense amount of knowledge, and these experts function as noise filters - trying to find the best and worthiest knowledge to pass along. Experts here is a broad and diffuse category, including car mechanics, artists, philosopers, teachers, scientists of various stripes, etc.
(In a way, the same was supposed to be the function of the scientific method - an attempt for a scientist to, as much as possible, filter out noise, irrelevancies, etc. and get to the heart of a matter in a way that allowed other scientists to replicate (or not) the outcomes, observations, etc...)
This works, in any given society, so long as the experts themselves are truly self-policing - truly willing to call out non-experts in their midst for unbiased reasons. However, along the recent way, elite experts decided that the only ones excluded from their midst would be those with whom they politically disagreed or those whose investigations and outcomes conflicted with a certain set of assumptions and beliefs. In short, the search for Truth was abandoned by gatekeepers, and the search for "pronoun Truth" (my truth, their truth, your truth, etc) was on. Bulverism in action - "A rhetorical fallacy in which a speaker assumes that their opponent's argument is wrong, and instead of disproving it, condescendingly explains why their opponent would have come to that conclusion."
And thus, experts failed in their functions, both of gatekeeping and of selection and transmission of good knowledge. Once these fail, necessary knowledge MUST be lost. It is not lost through burning books or other violent destruction - it is lost because those that have it can find nobody to listen to it or carry it on, and those that do not have it...cannot be aware of what is lost.
Eventually, things will break down, from simple to complex, and the world will suddenly realize that nobody is left to fix them, because some critical knowledge of a particular widget isn't there. This will continue in a chaotic spiral.
Read the recent FP post by Tyler Cowen called "Everyone's Using AI to Cheat," wherein he applauds students who use AI and professors who use AI to grade. Does this strike nobody as odd, wherein AI-generated classwork and homework is graded and corrected by AI-generated professor comments? Where is the brain in all this?
To your point: Peco and I just published "Welcome to the Analog Renaissance: The Future is Trust".
We are facing a major crisis of trust because so much of our work and creativity will be the product of AI. But we have a choice, we can start to build outposts of human trust in the digital wilderness. At School of the Unconformed we are introducing a analog-digtial hybrid model as a way to establish trust between writers and readers. For practical starting points see:
https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-analog-renaissance.
Also, seems we've been thinking along the same lines: in Sept 2024 my husband Peco and I discussed the impending change to our knowledge system in "The Flavors of Faux History: Preparing for the Collapse of Knowledge". As an anitdote we compiled an extensive "booklegging for history" list based on the recommendations of Substack writers and readers we collected. I've lifted the paywall for those who are interested :)https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/the-flavors-of-faux-history-preparing
"we can start to build outposts of human trust in the digital wilderness" was a beautiful thought that made my day! Thank you.
"booklegging for history" - brilliant phase. I look forward to reading!
This is incredible insight. Thank you for sharing.
I noticed a shift in the business world about twenty years ago, when client acquisition became all about trust. Performance, fees, extras all became second to trust.
When you’re in a high trust society, trust can be taken for granted. As your society degrades you have to start selecting for things that were previously a given.
Accurate.
To this I would add the “eternal vigilance”, meaning every individual’s responsibility to not lose the habit of NOT taking things for granted.
To me this means, at a minimum
- being educated “enough” (whatever that may come to mean) to verify those things that deserve to be verified
- having enough time to take in and digest news and information, and connect those things to our own personal stories/values/concerns
- having news and info sources that cooperate in our efforts to verify their work
- having communities and venues where open-minded discussion can take place
- having each of us maintains our own open-mindedness and willingness to continuously engage.
Wow. very providential. I’ve been thinking about something like this.
Given the countless atrocities that derived from the Renaissance period, I'm not sure "Renaissance" is good brand association :)
I will add to Paul Hesse’s observation: These points apply almost exclusively to America. The opposite - upticks in education, reading, thinking, understanding, public discourse, science - can be observed today on clear display in Canada and China per Paul’s note, and as well in Taiwan, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Mongolia, Ecuador, Slovenia, Norway, Portugal, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Czech Republic
Well, my kids went through the public school system in Norway, and later did some university study in the US, and I can tell you the the so-called uptick in education, reading etc in Norway is closer to mixed to downticks. Reading levels of young males decline every year, we're finally going back to books in school after losing our minds over digital learning, but the elephant in the room remains the addiction to tech in all forms.
In any case, here's a good example of the west: When one of my kids was in 9th grade years ago, they thought they were doing advanced math. At an open PTA meeting a woman from China stood up and asked the board: why are 9th graders learning math we learn in China in 3rd grade?
To be fair, a laptop or a tablet is vastly easier to carry around and reference than ten different textbooks. The problem is more related to the open internet.
Personally, I prefer to have both. You’re right, though, in some circumstances.
No. Screens are not an effective way to learn. There are mountains of evidence on this. They are pushed because they allow for even greater centralization and homogenization of the process, not to mention surveillance.
I've gotten mixed reports about this. Alpha school doesn't seem to be exclusively paper-marked, certainly.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
There’s been some interesting work done on the degradation in male learning. One of the points is that the gap in performance between Scandinavia and the US is mostly due to better female performance. So not only in the US degrading in academic performance but males are struggling globally.
I am a teacher in Taiwan and I have had the opposite experience. Maybe on the surface it looks like these things are growing, but innreality, Taiwan is very committed to the technological bureaucracy. Kids are in schools from 7am until 7pm, or later. They're not reading or thinking, they're learning to memorize and to be good cogs in the system, which is even more so than in America, a top down system. From my perspective, many other countries are going through these same trends, they're just happening slower and, perhaps, because these countries can see what's happening in America, with less disruption.
7am until 7pm? Cripes, you're running a chain gang, that's worse than South Korea.
Do these people not realise that Finnland gets nearly identical PISA scores with about half as many hours in the school system? Why do parents inflict this on their children?
I have also taught in South Korea, and I would say it's pretty much the same as Taiwan. From what I've heard, China and Japan are pretty similar too.
They do this because this is what was done to them. I had a parent literally tell me that about why she's so hard on her kid. "I survived, and I didn't have all these fun extracurriculars. It was only homework. He should be grateful he gets time for sports and fun reading." (I was the fun reading teacher).
Is it babysitting or something? For working parents?
That's the functional purpose of school that is that long, but it's not just babysitting. The kids are expected to be in class, or doing homework while a teacher supervises. School opens at 7 for the kids that have to be dropped off early (which is most), but classes start at 8, so there is an hour in there where you could call it just babysitting. Cram schools, or programs that keep kids at their day school later, exist because parents don't want their kids to "waste time". I even had one 4th grader that was in school all morning, came to my class twice a week from 1:30-4:30, stayed behind until 7 to do her school homework, then her mom would take her home and she's have extra workbooks to do until bed at home. I tutored another kid from 7pm to 9pm weeknight evenings. It had to be that late because the rest of his schedule was packed full with other tutors. Swimming, violin, programming, debate, basketball, and advanced math so he'd get ahead, all on top of his regular classes.
They essentially force them to do basketball, LOL? Why basketball, in particular? Or is it some sort of elective?
This particular family wanted their kid to have time for socialization but saw no value in letting him just... hang out, so they needed a sport or some other thing that would also build confidence and let him run around etc. All the things I listed above that the kid did were outside of the school, independent classes or activities.
Particularly egregious example of "learning" in the modern world, as we move increasingly towards an AI dominated environment (I see teacher assists but pretty much everything moving in this direction tbh).
I am certainly not against "rote learning" for some things, but those must be carefully selected and certainly not the "every subject" trend that seems to be common in East Asia. Whilst I think a TYPE of rote learning is actually handy in studying languages and becoming a proficient reader for children, once you get past that stage, it actually becomes a hindrance. It builds unhelpful habits that are set in a particular cognitive behavioral pattern, that simply must be struggled against later when learning more in-depth.
And it's particularly bad for the area we are entering.
That is not my impression. People are just as divided and just as suspicious of authority in Canada and the UK as in the USA
I agree that much (thought not all) of Ted's points relate to American decline rather than anything global. Having said that, the impact of the Silicon Valley companies is global (excepting China), and everyone is online which is no doubt fuelling loneliness and dissatisfaction everywhere. That's something we all need to push back on.
Orville Schell has written convincingly on the parallels between Trump and Mao. The anti-expert and anti-science etc bent of MAGA may be more about Trump trying to consolidate power through destroying institutions and less about inherent problems in the institutions.
I think maybe that is an example of reversing the disease and the symptom. The system has become weak as Ted describes, and Trump/MAGA are able to exploit that weakness. If the system were healthier Trump wouldn't be there in the first place. Trump is symptomatic of many things, not a cause in and of himself.
In all kindness, may I ask if it was any different prior to January 2025? I think it’s disingenuous to fall back on the “Orange Man bad” argument regarding this issue.
I understand your point, but since January 2025, and for the first time in US history, the country will experience a 'brain drain' to Europe of its scientists and innovators. The EU has already put up $500 million in start-up funds to accelerate the process, and there will be much more in the future.
The knowledge system was weakened even during the 2008 campaign. MAGA was already there. Remember the emergence of Sarah Palin, and that woman who said Obama was suspect because he was a Muslim before McCain shut her down. I'm doing precisely the opposite of the "Orange Man bad" argument. (Though he is very, very bad.)
This is an utterly blockheaded take. Trump didn't destroy trust in these institutions. He's merely pointed out that they are completely untrustworthy, and they've done nothing but validate that observation. Anyone comparing Trump to Mao is an ahistorical ignoramus. Seriously, go read Frank Dikotter's "Mao Trilogy" and then get back to me. It's really hard to be this freaking dense.
Here are some bits from a recent interview with Orville Schell: "Mao saw creative power in disorder and destruction. Trump obviously hasn’t studied Mao’s works, but similarly, he finds his strength in chaos. He overturns everything, and this gives him enormous power because it keeps others uncertain. He can rage and gush within the same day, confusing people and upsetting the balance. Mao was a revolutionary who wanted to overthrow traditional culture and destroy old power structures — landlords, bourgeoisie, capitalists, imperialists, colonizers, and so on. He found creative force in destruction. Trump, in many ways, is like a child. He doesn’t have a sophisticated theory like Mao, but in practice, he acts similarly: instinctively stirring things up to gain power....Trump instinctively senses when something is out of balance or insulting to him or the United States. Whether he will be able to rebuild after destruction is doubtful. Mao could destroy but struggled to rebuild, and I fear Trump will be even less able. I think he, like Mao, doesn’t fully appreciate how much his destructive impulses undermine his country’s future." https://easternfrontier.eu/eastern-frontier/7,193611,31964195,orville-schell-trump-and-mao-both-find-power-in-chaos.html?disableRedirects=true
Casually comparing Trump to the biblical horrors of the Great Famine or the Cultural Revolution might make for good podcast conversation, but it reveals a fathomless ignorance. Mao killed 50 MILLION people! There is no comparison unless you are a complete dunce who places politics ahead of objective reality.
This is silly.
Institutions in the west were already corrupt. The scientific community is captured, media is captured, government spies on its citizens, elections are overturned in Europe and western enabling of atrocities in other countries continues unabated. The destruction of western society started well before Trump arrived on the scene.
Trump gained the presidency because he represents a counter to these forces. Whether he's morally good or part of the show is up for debate, but he does represent pushback to the status quo that many are dissatisfied with.
But surely he should then advocate for a DIFFERENT type of expertise, and delineate what separates a "good" expert from a "bad" expert? He appears to simply pick and choose what suits him at any given time, and he frequently changes sides with no over-arching theory.
Point is, I have never heard Trump talk about the replication crisis in science, a systematic analysis of of what is breaking down institutions, why this occurs etc. It's all just finger-pointing when it is highly politically convenient to do so.
TDS strikes again.
What does Trump or MAGA have to do with the convenient list of 10 signs? Nothing.
He and Musk are organising the technocracy that keeps all of us enslaved, with Trump as the figurehead.
Agreed on keeping us unslaved.
Regarding Trump as a figurehead, this is also partly TDS. Whatever you think of him, without Trump, we would be in a uniparty downward spiral of DEI, woke academia, censorship, intersectionalism, growing unfunded spending and so on. He is an unlikely hero needed for the current moment; whether he will succeed against all the intense resistance to every single thing is unclear, but no one else would dare to try hard enough.
You can take Leibniz's view if you wish: we live in the best possible world where everything is a necessary evil. Yet, recognition is due
I don't think Trump is doing the organizing, I think the situation is more like the 1st Triumvirate of Rome, enemies turned allies out of necessity. Which will only last as long as it is convenient.
I think Trump was more of a figurehead of the zionist jews (as opposed to the globalist jews), but I'm not sure if that is true any more. I think Trump is now more of a Thermidorean figure (French Rev faction trying to back off the fanatics before total ruin happens.) He is opening a lot of peoples' eyes to just how terrible things are, and giving people hope that they can get better.
I don't think things will get better, at least not before they get a whole lot worse first.
It's silly to think that this started with Trump. The rise of the security state, government monitoring of its citizens and organized propaganda has been going on for decades.
What's worse, coordinating and abetting the entry of millions of unlawful immigrants, or attempting to rectify?
Attempting to rectify, by a country mile, since it means ‘disappearing’ people and tearing children from their parents. It’s not a difficult choice really. We can see who’s hurting most.
They knew the risks when they came to the country illegally. They have no expectation of due process and have assumed their consequences.
So we're supposed to support them, let them vote and enroll them in medicaid/social security also?
Do you people have no pride in your country? Does doing the right thing matter any more, or it's just nonstop TDS?
I view Trump/MAGA as one of many symptoms of those 10 signs, the abandonment/vilification of expertise among the most prominent.
Except it isn't.
You are ascribing everything with a negative connotation to Trump because you are an NPC.
Except what isn't what? Also,which game am I an NPC on? My son would be interested to know!
I mean, I think a direct and catastrophic illustration of how the Trump movement has certainly exacerbated the stigma against experts was during the tariff scenario.
A whole bunch of Trump supporters who clearly had only the vaguest understanding of the economics behind tariffs began coming up with fervent justifications for many of Team Trump's proclamations, undermining expert analysis.
I don't think they would be nearly as forthright in their proclamations, if the Trump movement itself was not so utterly dismissive of expertise or conventional expertise at least.
Except that the experts were wrong. Because 'experts' in today's world play the same role as medieval priests telling the peasants that their rulers were ordained by God to rule over them.
The “experts” did this to themselves. It turns out they aren’t experts on anything but their pet theories which flounder outside of the ivory towers of academia.
What happened to the experts is not unlike the hallucinations of LLMs. Feel free to write a post on this.
I think we have to acknowledge that some types of expertise (such as plumbing, electronics, accountancy) are much more straight-forward than others (medical, economics, public policy theory). The link between performance and expertise is stronger in the former than the latter.
But that DOES NOT mean there is no such thing as an expert in economics. Merely that the nature of the subject matter does not lend itself to the same type of performative expertise and knowledge.
I would think this break down is even applicable in sports, tbh. I would trust that a chess expert has a more direct performance measure than one in (say) poker. However, that doesn't mean the poker player is not an expert in poker, simply due to the fact that the nature of his sport means that external factors play a bigger role.
We have to start acknowledging these things, which never seems to happen.
Absolutely that is the main motive for their rhetoric but those institutions are vulnerable to that rhetoric because of flaws in the institutions.
It’s global without a doubt
China is having a similar experience with big tech - just from their own ecosystem of companies rather than from the Bay Area. Some of the specifics are different but the same trend is there.
I was reading about the various cases of family breakdown in Taiwan (I don't know how common this was as a % of the general population there) during the C-pandemic, because the younger generation fuelled by social media news had become extreme anti-vaxxers, as compared to their older relatives who trusted the government prescriptions on the matter e.g. a daughter in her 30s who no longer spoke to her father due to the screaming matches they had about whether to get vaccinated, the family being caught up in this etc.
So I don't think it's just the US. And being familiar with at least one other country/culture, I can tell you the informational/knowledge breakdown issues that appear so endemic to the US are certainly present in other far-flung places too.
You may be optimistic. Here in New Zealand, we are just traipsing sheepishly along behind the rest of the western world. All of Ted's trends prevail here, to varying degrees.
It is unfettered unrepentant and unhinged capitalism that is to blame.
More is better, reduce taxes for the super rich, make a buck. There is no balance or restraint anymore. No desire for sustained service to the customer. It's only about the shareholders.
Thanks Milton Friedman!
No, it’s deeper than that. It’s unhinged liberalism, for which capitalism is only its economic logic.
Be careful what you replace liberalism with. Looks like authoritarianism at this point.
Capitalism is is ok as long as business is forced to compete.
At this time it's all hedge funds and oligarchs. That is not Capitalism.
And sadly a monetary system without checks and balances (talking about the "Federal" reserve and political capture). I strongly believe we wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for GFC bailouts and zero rate interest policies after it. If a system greatly rewards corruption, then that will continue until it can't anymore. Unfortunately we still haven't reached that point, and when we do, everyone in the world will feel its impact (because of the US stock market dominance and the Eurodollar system). Systemic problems in the US affects the rest of the world.
Thank you FED and other central banks. Once you have a currency with no relation to anything of value and the ability to print unlimited anounts (as debt) the inevitable consequence is what we are seeing now with private equity buying up everything and caring about nothing but the bottom line. It's really corporatism gone wild that is destoying everything. The company owners (mass of shareholders that own 80% of stock) don't really control the company- the BOD and managemrent do -think Blackrock) and they only look out for themselves, not even the shareholders. Exactly like the U.S. of A Corp.
I agree with most of that except the currency part. It has value because we say it does. It's the outside forces that are destroying our trust AND currency, which is just the medium of exchange. What is needed, is an enforced set of rules that we live by.
If politicians could not be bought, then even existing rules could be enforced.
Everything is for sale unfortunately.
Not in the canada I live in.
In the Canada I live in, people aren’t as divided, but many, including me, are very suspicious of authorities. What the last election showed is that the Boomers are the only generation with a majority who still supports the status quo. The younger generations have far less faith in the expert class.
Not enough are suspicious. Witness the recent federal election. Trudeau was a foppish child. Carney is the real, post-nationalist state deal.
Not sure how you can say that. Canada is a woke, unproductive joke of a country at this point, and the bulk of discourse in the west is devoid of much rationality.
I'd say the global south is in much better position, with focus on family, common good and defending itself against moral decline.
As a Canadian, I would be glad to see evidence of uptick of anything you mention up here - am I missing it? You say it with such confidence but this is very far from me experience!
To support the idea that Canada is doing better than America with respect to reading, thinking, science, and maintaining an understanding of what is real (noting that there are variations across the different provinces): Certainly the immersion in the ‘world behind the flat screen’ is a worldwide problem. It originated in America but has spread most everywhere, and is seriously impacting thinking and reasoning and perception of what is real. Canada is not spared this problem. However Canadians may be more resistant. The data:
Book Net Canada reports that in 2023:
49% of Canadians read or listened to books weekly
31% daily
About half of Canadians read at least one book that year
About a quarter more than five
Over one in twenty Canadians read more than fifty books that year
American numbers, as reported in the Washington Post for 2023, are considerably worse, less than half in all categories. And only one in a hundred Americans, if that, read more than fifty books that year.
The US Dept of Education (before it was dismantled) reported that less than 50% of American adults are functionally literate - skill sufficient to manage daily tasks. In Canada that number is about 80%. (The comparison is not perfect, as the polls were looking at slightly different metrics.)
Canada consistently ranks very high in tertiary (beyond high school) education: in the top five along with South Korea and Ireland. This is not the case with the US.
Purely anecdotally: my observation of the Canadians I work with and mentor, generally in their mid to late twenties (a small data set, so perhaps not representative) is that they seem to have matured into adults. This is not evident, in general, in their peers who grew up in America.
The CBC? Most of what I have read about it in the last few years says that only 4-5% of Canadians ever watch or listen to it.
I stand corrected. Misinterpreted a poll looking beyond the CBC. Thanks.
You owned it. That's so rare. Well done.
Yip was about the make that point.
I’m not really following this point. U.S. universities are world leaders in cutting edge science and research. God help us all if they start crumbling. People commented on lowered standards in their respective countries. I’ve heard/seen standards slide in Canada, UK and France. In Tokyo, at some schools, you are required to maintain an iPad for schooling.
I used to think so too, but I think a lot of it is simply that English-speaking countries are not really privy to the discussions (often rabid) that are going on in other language-spheres, so it always appears that the worst dichotomies are observed closer to "home". But as I became more familiar with reading translated discussions on forums, SM posts etc. it became quite clear that all these discussions and similar levels of disagreement were occurring in other far-flung places, too. And we should honestly expect as much, to be honest. These are complicated discussions we are having, and "truth" is not so easy to discern.
Voting repeatedly for Justin Castreau and importing millions of illegal and legal muzzies speaks to the ENLIGHTENMENT of Canada? Where do you buy your marijuana? I want summa dat stuff!
CNN level take. Laughable.
“Upticks” in Canada? If you mean the management class and their children becoming Manchurian Citizens then perhaps, but this is the slim slice of the population that may see the carrot disappear as the stick hits their face. The point of the essay is the other unnoticed forces are on the rise. Like ticks in the long grass working overtime while you muse on upticks in the clear blue of elite thought. What you consider to be “positive” trending in Canada is only intellectual stagnation within a populace too compliant to notice it for what it is: intellectual retardation, publicly funded for the darling class.
Canada and China don’t strike me as,for example, bastions of open discourse and untainted science contributing to upticks anything good…
I'm concerned that instead of the arts and humanities assuming a larger role, religion will fill in the gaps…this is one of the worst potential horrors.
Christianity offers absolutely the most honest appraisal of the human condition ever devised, and the best and highest standards of morality. It is the only philosophy or religion which understands both good and evil, and the only one to provide both an unyielding standard and a path to redemption. You will rarely go wrong hiring a Biblically-sound Christian. They work for a higher boss.
The problem with "highest standards of morality" is that they are rarely followed especially by those who proclaim them. In the current climate they are also seen as weakness. As for hiring "Biblically-sound Christian(s)" they suffer from lack of doubt. And that is dangerous.
I'm sorry, but as a lifelong Christian, I seriously dispute the assertion that we do not suffer doubt. You must not have had close relationships with many Christians. We are human and our faith is a conscious choice, often in the face of confusion, and throughout history Christians have undertaken great and careful study and examination of their beliefs, and still (Incredibly! What a shock!) decided that Christianity is the most truthful and best path.
People of faith may well feel personal doubts. Not many centuries ago such doubts would have secured an appointment with Torquemada. But you express no doubt that your chosen Christian faith is "the most truthful and best path". Which would be of no consequence if such certainty stayed on a personal level and no effort was made to impose such claim on the rest of us.
The real trouble starts when the all Abrahamic faiths and their many offshoots feel the same certainty. History books and currently our TV and computer screens confirm this.
You would not hire me, because I claim there is absolute truth that applies not just to myself, but to all the cosmos.
The problem with this reasoning is that by attempting to persuade others, you also assume an absolute truth. You may not be trying to persuade them to follow a *religious* conviction, or an explicit moral code, but you still are laying forth expectations for their behavior. Based on your comments so far, here are a few:
1. Act as though what you do matters (i.e. life is not pointless).
1. Have integrity between what you believe and what you do.
2. Do not force others to follow your religion. (Though I think your actual philosophy is something a bit closer to "make 'no effort' to try to persuade others to follow your religion")
3. Examine your own beliefs.
I think a lot of people make the mistake of assuming they are thinking freely, without any assumptions, without imposing anything on others. But in reality, all of us have hundreds of unspoken assumptions in what we say, most of which are unexamined. We couldn't have reasoned discussion without many of these underlying assumptions! But consider this: what about the atheist who has decided to believe life is meaningless? You have already imposed on him simply by believing that people "should" or "should not." True moral relativism is impossible.
We are arguing along parallel lines. The point is made about personal doubt which I accept while I am arguing over lack of doubt when it comes down to the iron clad conviction people of deep faith have about the infallibility of their religion rejecting all others as false. I argued that such convictions have brought a lot of misery throughout history and that misery is still not letting up.
You claim I am laying forth expectations for their behaviour of people of faith with "should" or "should not". On the contrary, lacking the certainty of any faith I can make no demands on the behaviour of others. I only ask people of faith, especially of the fundamentalist variety, to make no demands on me. If that counts as a "should" or a "should not" then guilty as charged.
Someone made a point in this back and forth about a "Biblically-sound Christian". I am afraid to be enlightened on what that means.
You cannot have freedom of religion without freedom from religion. Everything else is pouring from the empty into the void.
And then you vote for Trump
No I didn't. I studied enough history to know what he represents.
On the contrary; Biblically-sound Christians tend to have a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between doubt and belief. It's a necessary component of being a believing and practicing, heart-converted, Christian.
I think you need to surround yourself with apostolic Christians, like Orthodox or Catholics and less the prosperity gospel Christians.
While we're all sinners and we strive to sin less the apostolic traditions have a long history of martyrdom. That is the fullest form of a Christian following their morality to the grave.
Christian societies are the only high functioning societies on the planet. As they have become less Christian they have become more dysfunctional.
So-called “humanist progressives” are only able to exist in the shadow of a larger Christian culture.
Buddhism and Taoism seem to have done pretty well for themselves as well
Buddhism is based on logic whereas Christianity is based on faith.
Really? Christianity also has a problem with thinking it is the only true religion, that all other paths are false, just like you said, "it is the ONLY philosophy or religion which understands both good and evil." Wrong. I'm not anti-religion, in fact I'm a universalist. I think some space needs to be made for people who have different philosophies, religions and ways of understanding the cosmos and humanities role inside it. Christianity does not have a monopoly on this, and polytheism has much to offer the contemporary seeker. One shoe doesn't have to fit everybody.
It also instills a lot of confidence and superiority in some people, to the point that they have absolute certainty that what they do is always good and in god's graces, usually completely ignoring the actual humans that sit in front of them.
Whether Christianity makes people better or not is as varied as the people that follow it.
Amen
"Whether Christianity makes people better or not is as varied as the people that follow it."
I disagree. Christianity teaches against all the negative and prideful things you mentioned above. In so far as people despise others, act self-righteous, and reject humility, those people are turning away from Christianity. Those people can still be receiving God's grace, and growing, but their failures are not a failure on the part of the Faith to "make them better." It's just a further sign of their need for God.
Absolutely.
Sending you to 1Timothy 6:17-19 where instructions were given to Timothy from Apostle Paul regarding not placing hope on riches but on God with emphasis on working at good and be rich in fine works so that we may get a hold on the real life.
This system of things is collapsing as predicted by Jesus and reinforced by Apostle John in Revelation is coming rapidly to fruitition.
Events will all play out with government in conflict with religion.
From a science, tech, art and historical perspective it will be an interesting ride.
Christianity as a set of doctrines is fine. Christianity Inc™ is subject to the same problems, and has been for a long time. In the US at least it's mostly a proxy for partisan lean.
I wish I could restack this comment! I've been saying this all over the place
Well that fits in with Ted's prediction that Romanticism is making a comeback. And I'm good with that. The youngs flocking to religion are looking for a sense of community and that's certainly an improvement over the isolation of technology.
Humanities have long been intertwined with religion. You cannot explore the human experience without some level of spirituality. How did become this way? Why are these greats themes of humanity - grief, guilt, love, joy, morality - so universal across millenia and cultures?
Science will want to answer that (and other related questions) biologically, and the humanities will want to answer that spiritually. Both ways have value.
I draw a sharp distinction between spirituality and religion, the latter being a sociopolitical power structure that pretends to address the former.
I also suspect that much (though I will not say all) that is commonly thought of as spiritual is actually an emergent property of our physical nature. By bracketing the "spiritual" off from the "biological" we risk damaging our understanding of both.
I think this is a self-defeating claim. You want spirituality apart from its natural embodiment in religion, but then want to say that spirituality is also closely connected to the physical world. Can't you see that those who follow religion are seeking exactly this, a spirituality that acknowledges and nourishes their embodied existence, not merely one that treats them as a soul-receptical? Religious ceremony and rite are one of the greatest expressions of this longing. And a study of history will also reveal that many religious people throughout history (including today) have held to their beliefs and rites in the face of a completely disenfranchising socio-political structure. See: communism in every country it has ever existed; Ancient Rome; Christians in any majority Muslim country today.
Interesting. Now, Islam is also a religion. As is Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and many, many other traditions of ritual and belief. Are not Muslims in muslim-majority countries also keeping their faith?
Of course they are. Not necessarily a true faith, but a faith all the same. Religion need not *necessarily* be opposed/disenfranchised in order to be true. However, if religion can be practiced even in the midst of complete opposition, then it is more than sociopolitical power.
The tendency to view all things, especially religion, as a form of power, is Marxist in origin. And it makes for shallow philosophy. Existence is not merely a struggle for power, and religion is not merely a grasping for power. We must look deeper into human nature for our meaning. Yes, spirituality is an aspect of that, but true and sincere spirituality leads to an embrace of religion, since our spiritual nature as humans is not isolated, but communal, and not merely cognitive, but embodied.
"Existence is not merely a struggle for power, and religion is not merely a grasping for power"
You and I agree on this. We might, in fact, disagree less on other subjects than has been clear in this exchange. Regrettably, I suspect we are ever unlikely to reach accord on the balance of help versus harm wrought by humans that assume they know the truth or the true will of the Numinous (note, please the portion of my original assertion where I state "though I will not say all"). I'm prepared to walk away at this point with no ill will.
Hahaha, heeheehee!
The Laughing Gnome has entered the building. How are, Mr. Jones?
You need to make a distinction. In Christianity the High Church is thoroughly corrupted by Woke, with a succession of popes, archbishops, bishops etc having proved worldly, venal and political. The sense of crisis is causing growth in Christianity, lots of new people joining, only you won't see it in the cathedrals and trendy inner-city churches, only in small, traditional, family-oriented churches. In a way, this mirrors what Ted has written.
There's also the distinction between institutional religion and spirituality. The first is doomed. The second, however, may be entering a renaissance.
The latin community is different. They seem to have better values all around when it comes to faith and family! And work..
I'm talking rural america.. 10 churches in every village and 10 people in each.. or less.. social fabric has torn. I see a lot of judgment, gossip, condemnation all around very little "community". More a feeling of exclusivity and "do as I say" instead of real love and tolerance... holy rollers won't make it... and it's showing.
This country is in spiritual darkness ... church has failed.
I agree. We don't need a middle man to talk to our creator and to act "neighborly".
Having a supporive comunity is vital.
Follow your soul, it knows the way.
Love and kindness are the "religion".
I seriously doubt it. People are fed up with religion. Church has seen a decline
Not really. Young people and those with large families are flocking in droves to the traditional Latin Mass. And the more beautiful and ornate the awe-inspiring cathedral the better. It is verified and noticed all over. Clowns in Charlotte are the dying liberal “institution.”
Exactly this.
Young people are attending religious services more than their elders (more Gen Z go to services than Millennials). I do think it’s more about community than religious zeal, but theres nothing wrong with that from my point of view. I was raised Catholic in the 80s and 90s and the community aspect is what I remember fondly.
I’m an elder Millennial - born in 1981 - and while I’ve not regularly attended Mass since I was 16, I considered going to Mass after my move to California, just as another way to meet people and join the community. I may not be particularly religious, but Catholicism offers cultural touch points that will be familiar to anyone who was raised Catholic, just like Judaism does for non-practicing Jewish folks.
If nothing else, it probably would have made learning Spanish easier. I still basically know the Mass by heart.
There is an entire world of "alternative religion" to explore-- in fact its long been a big part of "alternative culture." These myriad spiritual paths such as druidry, gnosticism, nature spirituality, the ongoing polytheistic revival in the west, all stand to gain just as much as the churches gaining adherents because people are fleeing into fundamentalisms as a bulwark against the collapse of industrial society. The branch of philosophy known as metaphysics is as much a part of our inheritance in the west as anything else (even though it gets derided and declaimed). I hope to see a revival of metaphysics and alternative spiritual movements alongside the burgeoning romantic awakening.
You cannot have humanities and arts without religion. These things are all part of what makes us human. My guess is that you actually fear religion being wielded by the powers that be, as some kind of inquisitorial weapon. But just like the arts and humanities, religion will fill in the "gaps" left by technology (or, rather, become the new foundation) not by enforcement at government level, but through the authentic and natural growth of communities and people towards the Good, True, and Beautiful. Arts and humanities uninformed by religion and moral conviction will go just as rotten as technology.
There is a huge difference between spirituality and religion.
What you're talking about is spirituality.
Definitely not. Spirituality is present in religion and you could not have religion without it, but I believe that the embodied expression of spirituality is essential. That includes the whole kit and kaboodle of ritual, moral prescription, and sacrament.
I've seen exactly what you mention; but I feel differently about the implications.
I am a physician from the last generation without chatGPT. I'm trained by reading textbooks, writing notes, solving online question banks, and using the internet to stay up to date. You can call it a hybrid model of education, between old-fashioned and new.
The 'new' method of learning is a total collapse into having 'trusted sources' feed the evidence to you. No more finding your own answers, No more criticism, no more weighing the evidence on the merits. Just ask ChatGPT. Add to that the increasing role of untrained APPs in administering medicine; and I feel that my future will be the only literate one in a sea of illiteracy. Like a medieval priest.
I feel those that subscribe to the older methods of knowledge acquisition will turn out just fine.
I'm a physician from the same generation as you. I also think we learn from rounding (discussing hospitalized patients' progress with other professionals), and seeing and learning from patients themselves. These both take time.
Now rounding is focused on how soon can this patient be discharged. Clinic visits are 10-15 minutes regardless of the problems encountered. Insurance companies and the people who pay their premiums do not value time. They value algorithms.
I’m a physician too and feel strongly that our missteps as a profession have contributed greatly to the collapse in public trust of institutions. We’ve had one medical scandal after another, accelerating over the decades until a crescendo is reached in the opiate epidemic. Before that one can properly be accounted for, we have the failures of the pandemic and, the piece de resistance, pediatric gender medicine. We’ve gone full on Mengele with that last one and do not seem to be able to put the breaks on. Something has been very wrong in medicine for a while now - some of it is financial opportunism certainly but some is just straight up intolerance of dissent. We’ve gotten alarmingly censorious in the last 10 years, to the detriment of our own reputations.
100%
Most recently the forever boosters. All conveniently forgotten now; see if you find one colleague advocating a 7th booster these days
My elderly parents live with me, and it’s an abomination that I might not be able to get a COVID booster shot because I’m middle aged and healthy. That’s one lost line of defense to protect them; my mother is on oxygen full time - once bout of COVID will kill her.
Yah. No.
Do some reading. covid shots are a sham.
The information is out there. Spend 10 minutes doing your own research.
People “doing their own research” is how we got measles back in the US. I’m not a research scientist and so whatever “research” I do is nonsense.
Here’s my experience - I never got the flu shot until I started working for a company that required me get it or wear a mask at work. (This was nearly a decade before COVID.)
Before I got the flu shot, I would regularly get sick two or three times every winter. Once I started getting the flu shot, I tended to get sick once per winter.
One other anecdote, which is not data, but what I’ve personally observed, is that I was very careful before we had a COVID vaccine because my elderly parents live with me. Once there was a vaccine and I got it, I stopped wearing a mask and went about my business as usual. I didn’t get COVID once until 2024. The vaccine may or may not have made my illness milder; I got Paxlovid antiviral and basically was no sicker than a cold within 36 hours, so there’s no real way to separate the two.
Meanwhile, I have a lot of friends who got COVID before the vaccine, and said “natural immunity is better,” and so didn’t get vaccinated. Nearly all of them have had COVID two or more additional times since.
So I could post my anecdotes online, people could “do their own research,” find my anecdotes, and come to the opposite conclusion as you.
This.
The response of the medical community to covid is case in point. Complete abdication of the tenets of medical care.
The capture of the medical community by pharma is another. We don't talk about healthy living, we talk about treatment (pharma) to ills due to poor eating/lifestyle habits.
"We’ve had one medical scandal after another, accelerating over the decades until a crescendo is reached in the opiate epidemic." That's funny, wasn't there a "pandemic" since then, which represented the culmination of all these trends of abuse of trust? You can talk about it now, ARG, even Ted has mentioned it this time. Soon everyone will be able to talk about it without scandalising polite society!
Who are you arguing with? It literally says “pandemic” in the sentence after the one you quoted.
You're right, my mistake, sorry!
Absolutely. And quality of care is down the drain as a result
At least you all have plenty of Expert administrators!
All of this is only going to be exacerbated by forcing unqualified candidates into these positions for political reasons.
In fact this is one of the biggest contributors to lost of trust in experts. If your expertise is so valuable and your position deserves so much authority, then the social contract demands that only the most qualified candidates are allowed access. When you flagrantly undermine that contract you give up the game.
The problem is many of the written text are not only years behind, but over censured and editorialized. I would never ask ChatGPT to interpret anything for me but we have to be trained to look at raw data critically. I assume you have been around long enough to see so much medical ‘dogma’ fall by the wayside. But not before we have invested all those dollars and resources and lives to be the most cutting edge , up-to-date practitioners.
My current crusade is against Entresto and GDMT.
It's ridiculous how the whole field of cardiology has decided to abandon thinking and follow whatever is 'recommended'; despite all the evidence contrary.
Cardiology is a repeat offender. Anti-Arrhythmics to suppress PVCs, aspirin for all, aggressive stenting, calcium score.... It's ridiculous.
All this money and research and new drugs, for literally decades. And what remains the number one killer of Americans, Ischemic heart disease. Still. As if we are running in place
It gets better. HF mortality actually reversed trend and is back at 1990s level. Can’t possibly have anything to do with APPs/lazy cardiologists applying GDMT to all patients blindly without examining them + homeopathic doses of drugs because Entresto causes more hypotension for no gain. No siree.
What’s your disconnect with calcium scores? Im Allied Health and I’m curious
Here’s a good pro-argument: https://open.substack.com/pub/theskepticalcardiologist/p/the-skeptical-cardiologists-guide
Here are good antis: https://www.sensible-med.com/p/coronary-artery-calcium-trial-fails
https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2019/1215/p734.html
I shouldn’t lump calcium score with the other stuff; an honest representation is that it’s still an open debate AND there’s still a variety of approaches where some cardiologists swear by it and some cardiologists hate it. Honestly; that’s an ideal way to approach something while the question is still open.
But as the second link shows, it is quickly closing as a good test. My main hang-up is; are we proving such an approach meaningfully improves survival? If not, then we’re medicalizing people earlier and exposing them to the risk of doctors. The evidence for calcium scores still is not solid enough to justify medicalizing so many people earlier.
Also, I’m on no medications and try hard not to be. 🙏
Currently seeing a cardiologist for the first time, WF age 60, due to 106-110 resting HR along w EKG saying “poor R wave function”. Cardi Dr said the previous EKG was nothing to worry about. Just did 24 hr heart monitor and ultrasound, I declined the nuclear stress test unless we feel we really need it. I feel fine, just elevated resting HR only spuratically throughout the day. I appreciate your insights and honesty.
AI development right now seems to be a breakneck race between the acquisition of competence by AI models themselves, aspirationally ending with AGI, and the equally rapid demolition of competence in younger generations of humanity.
Which means there won't be much of a backup plan. I am furious with the people making this gamble.
I am 1000% convinced there will be no ‘AGI’ in medicine. I agree with the other side of your gamble and I think that’s the likeliest outcome.
The other option is do what Ted says and reject this Tower of Babel tech outright; before we are all dispersed into millions of languages.
Why am I convinced AGI is no threat to medicine? I could write a tome, but I’ll content myself with this: 80% of evidence appraisal is cynicism. Before I start reading a paper I need to reliably answer: ‘Why are the authors lying to me? How are they lying to me? Is this still good despite the lie?’
Notice I didn’t ask if they’re lying to me; the answer is always yes. Read through all the comments under mine and you’ll see how the physicians in here continually lament being lied to.
An AGI even in the utopian form they envision will never be able to do this. It will fall to entrenched interests like official guidelines, government bodies, and extremely famous journals did. In the blink of an eye too.
Well... an AGI is by definition capable of anything humans can do, including cynicism. It could get hoodwinked, sure, but it would eventually learn from the experience.
As long as there are instructions/prompts it has to take into account; it is not capable of the one thing that sets humanity apart from all of Creation: Free Will.
Big Pharma won’t even need to bribe legions of doctors or congressmen anymore. As simple as prompt engineering or poisoning the training data set. They are actually already hard at work doing that; see NEJM’s partnership with OpenEvidence. (The clinical AI tool prefers NEJM papers above others even when it makes no sense)
Well... setting aside the debate about free will, I'll agree there are tensions between AI being 'accountable' (i.e, enslaved) to human supervisors and also performing with superhuman rigour.
What's sad is that in Canada our healthcare is in such rough shape that I pray my physician uses ChatGPT or even Google. Oftentimes those two sources are superior to our physicians.
Canada is purely ‘you get what you pay for’. Have a young friend who had to wait 10 days for emergency surgery there that would be done almost immediately in the US.
US is quickly on that path though, thanks to the ACA and corruption
Yeah the US is not much better. Where there is the potential for grift, we get grift. Whether it's a private or public system. I hope that the US and Canadian models don't exhaust the available options because we're all effed if that's so.
A very smart friend of mine told me grift only exists where there’s a shortage; and it stuck with me. He spent his formative years in a collapsing USSR so the insights help
I have experienced health care in the US and in Canada. Canadian health care gets my vote. I was in surgery one month after an ultrasound discovered an issue. My mom in the States waited 4 months because of insurance approvals and she was relentless in dealing with her insurance company and had the money to pay for second opinions to bolster her case.
Technology is like fire. A good servant but a poor master. We have run smack dab into the limitations of technology, and it is us. My hope is that we reclaim spirituality (not sectarian dogma) as a central part of how we organize society and live our lives. The wider reality I speak about starts with acknowledging all of self--the emotional and spiritual [parts of our being along with the physical and mental.
...and that the humans are flawed and must acknowledge and forcibly mitigate their innate absence of compunction; the ease to which they will lie, cheat and steal; and their evangelized justifications to defeat moral and ethical behavior.
I would not use the same terms as you do. But then I regard self-judgment as the ultimate origin of that which you call lack of compunction. We lie, cheat, steal, and murder because we are scared. We are scared because we have lost our inner connection to our Divine source, however we imagine it. Thus we feel this world is cold and uncaring, and that our Creator is either dead or doesn't give a damn. And what we feel (about ourselves) is what we live. More compassion, maybe? Do not conflate compassion with weakness. Only the strongest allow themselves empathy and compassion for others' flaws and weaknesses--and their own.
Some people do it because they're scared. Some are just psychopaths.
Agree!
I’m currently re-listening to an audiobook on YT on channel The Middle Book entitled “You’ve Only Been Using 5 Senses - Until Now”. It is stirring something important within me. 🙏
Amen 🙏
I think there's more truth than fiction in this, but it doesn't do enough to highlight how bad actors across all of these sectors set these dynamics up and exploit them for their own gain.
There are plenty of real-deal experts across many subjects but when there's money to be made they are shoved aside. The problem, then, isn't really the "expert" but the context within which they exist. Their "bosses" don't want to listen to them because they say things like "slow down" and "are you sure?" And the public doesn't want to listen to them because they're "experts" (aka elite, "out of touch" etc.).
Compounding the problem is the rise of celebrity scientists. Their fame may start in their expertise, but too often many begin to expound in areas well beyond their training and are taken more seriously there than is deserved. Linus Pauling and Neil DeGrasse Tyson are two examples.
There's a lot of money to be made in the attention economy by being a celebrity scientist these days, and it pains me to think that a nontrivial number of people in doctorate programs likely hope to make their mark there, rather than contributing actual knowledge and expertise to their field.
Absolutely! Another great point. Yet more bad actors ruining science and knowledge. Making matters even worse is that some universities actually incentivize and reward this pop science BS. It's just charlatans all the way down.
Space is the place.
Folks,
Get the record players going, enjoy the music in a way that they can't be nosy about, sit on your porch, memorize some parts of the Sacred Scriptures, Plant gardens of flowers and vegetables and share both with neighbors or the needy. Observe the sabbath and Lord's Day again even if you don't quite feel like it. The things that protect us, we must tend to.
Still making our garden larger. Started sharing a table full of free books outside - they're going like hotcakes! Don't use a smart phone. We do have a record player but also a CD player. Mixed bag but very fulfilling to do more reading, enjoying meals together, and visiting with the neighbors who walk by to pick up books! Loving life!
It's okay to use a CD player to listen to music. It's also okay to listen to mp3 files, and stream. The nostalgia for the record player is crazy, a fad of sorts. Most people have neither the technology (you know, a turntable or record player and a decent system to listen on. I do, but I rarely listen to records) or the records or the time to fiddle with that.
It's great that some people can do those things you're doing, but most can't or won't. Life is great if you have the ability to do things at leisure, but imagine if you had no money, a lousy job, or no "access" to health care. (By God, that evasive lying word "access" in that context drives me crazy.)
I appreciate the points you are making. Here's some background: At 78, I am now partially retired. We are still renters (45 years in this place). I earned minimum wage most of my 55+ years of working life. Gave up our car @ 25 years ago for both financial and environmental reasons, so now I ride the bus. I have had turntables most of that time. My husband's band put out their first LP in 1979 and it was just released by a company as a "collectible LP," because collectors want the old analog sound and that's why the turntable has made a comeback. I still listen to albums I purchased in the 60's and 70's. I also listen to CDs I purchased over the years. I don't use a smart phone - I use an old laptop. I can't believe how expensive smart phones are - I'm surprised anyone can afford them! I have always had access to health care if I could pay for it, and then I began receiving SS and got Medicare. I am fortunate since I don't get sick. Yes, I can now do some things at leisure because I have some extra time. I literally used to work up to 15 hours a day, but I can't do that any more due to physical changes, so I don't walk nor lift weight like I could years ago. Life changes. I roll with the punches, as they say. You are correct when you say not everyone can afford leisure time. Those of us who donate to different groups are well aware of the poverty in our country (and overseas) so we try to do what we can to help. Again I say - Loving life!
You've always had "access" to health care if you could pay for it? That means if you can't afford it, you don't get it. "Access" is irrelevant. I have "access" to a Lamborgini dealership about 20 miles from where I live; I can go in and look at the cars, touch them, but will never be able to afford them. Same too for about thirty million US citizens. Add in the people with bad insurance (it's great insurance as long as you never make a claim), and what do we have? A country in very serious moral trouble.
That just involves US citizens abominably served by a government in thrall to Finance Capital, but factor in the moral and criminal catastrophe of the Gaza genocide (plain as day, irrefutable, outrageous, ongoing, and well-documernted beyond dispute), and what do we have here? A culture in total failure on all fronts. I'm recently retired, and was fortunate to get a good job about 12 years ago, but I'm one of the lucky ones. Like you in some respects.
Thanks for the comment. I am distressed by many of the same things you are. That's why I support all of us working to make things better. There are so many ways to engage. As for your dislike of terminology, I am sorry. We don't all use/define words the same way, so sometimes the meaning we have behind our words is "lost in translation." :-) I have always been a "language champion" and made myself a pest with bringing up grammar and punctuation as well as words. I'm trying to be more tolerant these days, but it's not easy.
I don't really want to derail the conversation, but could you explain to me how the Gaza Genocide is "irrefutable"? The numbers just don't add up for me.
https://substack.com/@mabrowsing/note/c-120616718
The "numbers don't up for you?"
I think you're straw-manning the person you're arguing with. He was giving beautiful examples of human activities-perhaps even the best examples of them. Just because he is promoting using a record player does not mean he is being exclusive of all other human activities. Try to understand the heart of what he is saying, not just the words.
You seem to have misunderstood what I was criticizing. How and where did I claim he was being exclusive of "all other human activities"(!) by his saying to get out the record player? Ironically, I did indeed get right to the heart of what he was saying, which was a bundle of cliches.
Thanks, but I dont feel any great need to "observe the sabbath" or "the Lord's day" (!). I just dont feel like it. That's like thinking putting "prayer back in schools" will get things on the right track. And, "get the record players going?" Memorize some lines from the "Sacred Scriptures?" Why? Your prescriptions sound like pure nostalgia for a past devoid of critical thinking, something in very short supply in this Great Land.
Use your memory, use technologies that aren't spied upon even though they are older, at least they don't emit the horrid light of this. Seek an inculcated practice of some begrudgement of electronics. Not sure why you think my "prescriptions" are nostalgic particularly for a past that was devoid of critical thinking. I think there is far less critical thinking now than when we had our turntables on and listened to the readings of sacred texts that proposed a morality with which to wrestle.
The idea that Christianity and critical thinking are mutually exclusive makes me wonder what weird Christianity do you have out West or what insane propaganda did you listen to.
A lot of people know which direction to walk, but not the exact destination. I have attempted to boil down what religion offered (specifically Christianity) that undergirded the liberal experiment that gave rise to so much of the wealth and quality of life that the western world enjoyed. It's very simple: love. Not as an emotion or flowery platitude, but as what it is in the Bible: self-sacrifice for the good of another. This is the force that protected our freedoms from disintegration. Freedom is at once our greatest gift but most exploitable weakness. Mary freedom to nihilism, and suddenly being a free-rider is rational, doing that underhanded thing to get ahead is rational.
Love, as a commitment to self-sacrifice for the good of another, is the direction. While traditions may help us to remember that, it's not the traditions themselves that are doing the good work. A lot of people know the direction but not the exact destination.
No surprises (I have sources), but solutions? I can only think of 2 (and I have been thinking for a while now): Either take your valuables and run to the most isolated spot possible or decide to work on your inner resources. Cultivate deep peace, love, and conciousness in house. Create solid community. Whatever you do though, it is time to pull our heads out from under and be physically, mentally, and emotionally prepared as best we can. The signs are gradual. They are intended to be. But the impact is full force. Because as Ted says, when the NY Times headlines it, 'Buddha' will be off and running at full speed.
It reminds me way back when with the sudden appearance of the Buzz word "DIGITAL" At the time time it was just a Lazy / Cheap marketing word that at first - meant NOTHING. Suddenly it was everywhere all at once - Digital this ,Digital that ... "Oh ,you've GOT to have it - NOW cause it's DIGITAL ! Really ? Sorry - NOT.
It was the KOOL thing to say when it was empty & meaningless. Just a Marketing Ploy.
The New thing you speak of however is now Real & starting to wreak actual Havoc on the Land of the Living. The Huge Changes you speak of most likely Won't have a good outcome for most of us.
I really Feel for you younger ones out there who will have to live with & deal with the Largest SCAM ever perpetrated on the Human Race
The younger ones will live with this mess but not sure they are capable of dealing with it as their heads are fully immersed in their phones. I guess some exceptions will deal with it and find a way thru the mess but not hopeful
There is a homeschool surge happening… look to these children to bring the “real” back!
Good point. Hopefully that happens
Man they said the exact same shit when i was a kid. Its ALWAYS the next generation thats going to have to deal with "these" problems. And theyll manage, one way or the other. And fuck up a bunch of shit and make other problems for their kids kids. And so it goes
My kids are way less on their phones than us parents
Walker Percy quotes Romano Guardini (from The End of the Modern World) at the beginning of his novel, The Last Gentleman: “We know now that the modern world is coming to an end … at the same time, the unbeliever will emerge from the fogs of secularism. He will cease to reap benefit from the values and forces developed by the very Revelation he denies … Loneliness in faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world, but the more precious will be that love which flows from one lonely person to another … the world to come will be filled with animosity and danger, but it will be a world open and clean.”
Walker Percy knows what’s up.
Todd, I am curious about Percy quoting Guardini. Is that in an intro or the body of the text? Thanks.
Gerald, it’s the epigraph, along with a quote from Kierkegaard’s Either/Or: “If a man cannot forget, he will never amount to much.”
As a scientist and educator, I have felt this, especially in the US. Thank you for your excellent reporting, Ted. This is an eye-opening happening.
I don't know if it actually happened or not (irony) but in Tom Hanks' cable series "From The Earth To The Moon," I seem to recall that some of the astronauts were given literature lessons and took poetry books, the better to describe their experiences in space. They knew science and beauty needed each other.
Smacks of Contact: "They should have sent a poet".
Three cheers for blue collar experts! I, for one, make a KILLING on that basis;)
One of the most common comments from customers is that theyre so happy we showed up! And in a timely manner. Lol, idk what these other yahoos are doing..
If you are young and paying attention, learn how to DO SOMETHING. The harder the thing, the more you can make. Be honest and keep your word and you can damn near pick your price.
But they aint listening! Stupid phones lol. Real great how thats all playing out🙄
Dude you hit the nail on the head! I don’t know how some people stay in business when their (former) customers are overjoyed that I “actually showed up & did a good job.”
I tell my kids all the time…learn to do something useful, that other people don’t want to do, and get really good at it. If you do you’ll never go hungry.
Exactly! People just dont want to work, its nuts lol. And im not talking about for peanuts here. People are willing to pay well to get quality work done. It really is a great time to be skilled with ones hands.
I had a hunch when i was in highschool(class of 99) that college was not the way. Im smart enough that i couldve done well going in a white collar direction, but i knew that wasnt for me. I learned my trades well and it has paid dividens, plus, and maybe the best part, i LOVE my work. That alone would be worth less money, but im not making less money at this point. Pardon my french, but its fucking awesome.
And i do believe some of this younger generation will awake up and fill this niche. Ive met a few kids that are disillusioned with all this tech shit and are looking for a way to live a real life. Those types will go far in this brave new world
Science writer Fritjof Capra said that Leonardo's failure to publish his notebooks in his lifetime dealt a major blow to both science and art. It took 200 years for the world to get a good look at his genius, and by then science had gone one way and art another. Now we desperately need to heal the rift between the left brain and right brain, the rational and spiritual, the logical and magical. Until then, we can expect to live "not in a prison, but in a lunatic asylum," as Carl Jung predicted. Are we there yet?
Goethe would be another key figure here. He had a vision of science different than the technocratic "science" we are getting from McGovCorp and co. "The Wholeness of Nature : Goethe's Way Toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature" by Henri Bortoft is a good book to look a long this line. We can go back from the dead end in the maze, and take a different path and see where that leads us. (I'd also add this book to my own alternate science/tech canon.)
Thanks for the book reco, Justin. I do wish that we should reverse course to the start of social media and surveillance capitalism, then choose another path. I'm starting to see signs of Ross Barkin's (and Ted Gioia's) New Romantic Age, although I'm hoping for something more like a New Renaissance to replace the soul-depleting Industrial Age.
I wish so too... though I was thinking of going back to Goethe's conception of science and starting from some of his ideas. I'd enjoy a New Renaissance as well, we need soul. One of the books I'm looking at now is "Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics" by S.K. Heninger. The only way to bring it back is to bring it back.
I am a 78-year-old retired male computer programmer who lives in California.
Your emails present some ideas that appear to be very interesting. Besides being a musician who has often played jazz guitar in public, I worked for twenty years as a computer programmer and analyst for a medical insurance company. At that time many of us were aware that science was not the only source of wisdom, but it had done so much for us. One example involved the development of computing machines and some really amazing software. Home computers were already very popular, software companies had become extremely successful, cell phones were becoming much more useful, and AI was still mostly machine learning. Now most people appear to do the majority of their research and / or make most of their connections with new knowledge through their cell phones.
Many modern problems involve the fact that it has become difficult to trust the veracity of the vast sea of virtual information that is currently washing the sand from under our feet.
Nevertheless, many of us do seem to be becoming more directly involved with a side of human awareness that does not primarily depend upon logic and analysis. In other words instead of “I think, therefore I am”, many of us are are aware that a more profound way of being involves “I am, therefore I think.” Most of us confront of this alternate side of human awareness when we have a new and profound or “ah-ha” experience. Ultimately, this alternate side of being human can lead some of us to Unity Consciousness.
Timely and helpful although these U.S.-driven trends create differential opportunities for other countries. And since you cite the Renaissance, I'm looking forward to reading this; https://www.adapalmer.com/publication/inventing-the-renaissance/ "In Inventing the Renaissance, acclaimed historian Ada Palmer provides a fresh perspective on what makes this epoch so captivating. Her witty and irreverent journey through the fantasies historians have constructed about the period show how its legend derives more from later centuries’ mythmaking than from the often-grim reality of the period itself. " To mis-quote Barth, 'history is only the first rough draft of history'.
Wasn't that a good interview with Krugman?? I'm definitely looking forward to reading Ada Palmer's book, as well.
I'm here for the 'Ubiquitous Paul' era! https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/inventing-the-renaissance-ada-palmer?r=2mhcy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Funny. He is!
I think this heralds not just a backlash, but a collapse into a quasi- (or complete) dark age.
Let's say we have a society that is healthily staffed with experts. Part of their function in any given society is selection and transmission of important and useful knowledge - whether government, education, blue-collar, or random philosophers.
In any given point, humanity generates an immense amount of knowledge, and these experts function as noise filters - trying to find the best and worthiest knowledge to pass along. Experts here is a broad and diffuse category, including car mechanics, artists, philosopers, teachers, scientists of various stripes, etc.
(In a way, the same was supposed to be the function of the scientific method - an attempt for a scientist to, as much as possible, filter out noise, irrelevancies, etc. and get to the heart of a matter in a way that allowed other scientists to replicate (or not) the outcomes, observations, etc...)
This works, in any given society, so long as the experts themselves are truly self-policing - truly willing to call out non-experts in their midst for unbiased reasons. However, along the recent way, elite experts decided that the only ones excluded from their midst would be those with whom they politically disagreed or those whose investigations and outcomes conflicted with a certain set of assumptions and beliefs. In short, the search for Truth was abandoned by gatekeepers, and the search for "pronoun Truth" (my truth, their truth, your truth, etc) was on. Bulverism in action - "A rhetorical fallacy in which a speaker assumes that their opponent's argument is wrong, and instead of disproving it, condescendingly explains why their opponent would have come to that conclusion."
And thus, experts failed in their functions, both of gatekeeping and of selection and transmission of good knowledge. Once these fail, necessary knowledge MUST be lost. It is not lost through burning books or other violent destruction - it is lost because those that have it can find nobody to listen to it or carry it on, and those that do not have it...cannot be aware of what is lost.
Eventually, things will break down, from simple to complex, and the world will suddenly realize that nobody is left to fix them, because some critical knowledge of a particular widget isn't there. This will continue in a chaotic spiral.
Read the recent FP post by Tyler Cowen called "Everyone's Using AI to Cheat," wherein he applauds students who use AI and professors who use AI to grade. Does this strike nobody as odd, wherein AI-generated classwork and homework is graded and corrected by AI-generated professor comments? Where is the brain in all this?
“Pronoun truth” - that’s good. But somewhat presupposes that there is really A truth.
I say, “The one truth is no truth, and no truth is the one truth, and this one truth may be no truth.” Or something like that.
Funny word truth. Doesn’t bear repeating too often.
"Pronoun Clarity" is more ambiguous than "Pronoun Truth" but it does peel a few more layers off the onion.
Onions, tears, I’m seeing a connection.