We Really Are Entering a New Age of Romanticism
An update on the war against algorithms and technocratic manipulation
Two hundred years ago, people got fed up with algorithms. And they went to war against them.
That’s a prototype for what we need today. And we will get it.
Buckle up, my friends, it will happen again! That’s because people now see the sterility and human waste created by a culture of brutal algorithms—imposed by a consortium of billionaires operating without accountability or constraint.
The backlash is already underway, and will gain momentum with each passing year—maybe even with each passing month.
This is the new Age of Romanticism that I predicted more than a year ago.
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Since I made this bold forecast, several other thinkers have joined with me. This is no longer a hypothesis—it’s an actual movement.
Here are some of the participants:
Ross Barkan has taken a leading role in defining the New Romanticism. He wrote about it in The Guardian shortly after my essay was published. Barkan shares my sense that it represents an inevitable backlash to overreaching tech, but he adds several new twists drawn from his own experience on the media frontlines. He revisited the subject a few days ago, in a smart assessment of how this emerging worldview is reflected in a wide range of trends and attitudes.
Dr. Anjan Chatterjee followed up a few months later with his article “The New Romantics” in Psychology Today. “Like two centuries years ago, an unlikely group of people are converging to combine science, nature, art, and aesthetics,” he declares. They are committed to the “ideas that nature can be restorative and the arts can be transformative.”
Megha Lillywhite offered her endorsement in January in an essay entitled “Rx: Romanticism.” She sees this new attitude as a valuable way of dealing with pressing problems “without devolving into the simplistic dichotomy of bipartisan politics. It addresses a “longing for the human” in an age of degrading and manipulative digital technology.
Campbell Frank Scribner added to the conversation one week later with his article “Romanticism and the Soul of Learning.” He also see Romanticism as a pathway out of current deadlocks in society. He believes that conservatives have typically opposed Romanticist worldviews, but argues that this might be the time they reconsider allegiances—especially when educating the next generation.
Kate Alexander released a video on the momentum building for a resurgent Romanticism in December. And it got almost a half million views. So clearly this is more than a fringe attitude among demented Substackers.
Recent books by prominent thinkers—Charles Taylor, Iain McGilchrist, Jonathan Haidt, Andrea Wulf, Kyle Chayka, and others—present complimentary perspectives. They each have their own specific concerns, but contribute to a sense that a new worldview is emerging.
For a quick summary (with views both pro and con), you can consult an update on the “Hopeful Romantics” published a week ago by the Wisdom of Crowds substack.
But even if you don’t read these books and articles, you can still pick up the emerging Romanticist vibe in popular culture. Just check out the (pro-Romanticist) TV shows by Taylor Sheridan and others, which are now taking over the streaming platforms, or (anti-tech) hits like Severance or Zero Day.
In the old days, movie villains were mobsters or crime syndicates. Nowadays they are tech innovators. This kind of shift in the popular imagination does not happen by chance.
Now let’s revisit the (even older) history.
Back in the 1700s, ruthless algorithms had a different name. They called them Rationalism—and the whole Western world was under the sway of the Age of Reason. But like today’s algorithms, the new systems of the Rationalists attempted to replace human wisdom and experience with intrusive and inflexible operating rules.
It didn’t work.
“This rationalistic philosophy, which had been expected to solve all the problems, had failed to rescue society from either despotism and poverty,” explains Edmund Wilson in his masterful study To the Finland Station.
“The mechanical inventions of which it had been expected that they would vastly improve the lot of humanity were obviously making many people miserable,” he continues.
(By the way, it’s no coincidence that recent tech overreach has been accompanied by a New Rationalism, championed by crypto swindler Sam Bankman-Fried and his many fellow travelers. But that subject deserves a whole article of its own….Now let’s return to history.)
The Rationalists of the 1700s (and today) put their faith in three things—and they all backfired.
(1) The most obvious failure was the attempt to impose rational rules on the political system. This led to the French Revolution, which soon collapsed in terrible bloodshed, and resulted in the dictatorship of Napoleon.
Millions of people died because the dominant algorithms didn’t work.
(2) The second obsession of the Rationalists in the 1700s was the total systematization of all knowledge. (Does that sound familiar?)
They didn’t have ChatGPT back then. But they did the best they could with the immense efforts of the French Encyclopedists and German taxonomists.
Everything got classified, codified, quantified, named, and placed on a chart. Foucault later mocked this as an “archeology of human sciences.”
That’s because this way of understanding the world failed to grasp anything that evolved or grew or changed or lived. Like the tech-gone-wild ethos of the current day, the messy human element was removed from the Rationalist systems.
(3) But the Rationalists of the 1700s made one more mistake—and it reminds us again of our current situation. They let a brutal technocracy destroy people’s lives—driven by dreams of profit maximization, and ignoring the human cost.
It wasn’t called Silicon Valley back then. The name given to the technocracy in the 1700s was the Industrial Revolution.
We don’t fully grasp the horrors of the factory sweat shops today—because the Romanticists worked on fixing the problems of industrialism in the 1820s and 1830s. This new generation of artists, humanists, and compassionate critics of the technocracy passed laws against child labor, unsafe working conditions, abusive hours, and other exploitative practices.
In other words, the Romanticists replaced the algorithm with humanist values. Rationalism on its own would never do that.
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I want to emphasize this next point—so I am putting it in boldface.
The last age of Romanticism did not destroy the technology—it merely prevented technocrats from abusing people in their pursuit of profits.
Let me give some examples—all of them occurring after the rise of Romanticism (circa 1800).
The Factory Act of 1819 made it illegal (finally!) for cotton mills to employ children under the age of nine.
The Factory Act of 1831 restricted the work day to 12 hours for those under the age of 18.
The Factory Act of 1833 limited the work day for children under the age of 13 (to 8 hours per day)—and these youngsters would would receive two hours of education daily. The law also created an inspection and enforcement mechanism.
The Chimney Sweeps Act of 1834 established a minimum age of ten for apprenticeship.
The Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 prevented women and children from working in mines.
The Factories Act of 1844 imposed safer working conditions.
It’s important to note that these necessary reforms all happened long after the Industrial Revolution—and only occurred when the whole culture had shifted to a more artistic, humanistic worldview dominated by Romanticism.
But why did it take 50-75 years before the technocracy got regulated?
We are in a similar situation today. Technology is no longer enhancing human life—if you doubt this, take a look at my list of 52 signs that tech progress is reversing.
And that’s not just my opinion. I’m hearing complaints from every direction now—even from inside the huge tech platforms. The public has awakened, and is alarmed. They just don’t know how to mobilize and constrain the billionaires who own the tech—and (seemingly) set their own rules.
Putting the brakes on tech overreach will require a whole new worldview. And it will resemble the old Romanticism—with its advocacy of human priorities in the face of algorithms gone wild.
Here’s the good news: We can have tech, and enjoy its benefits. But it can’t operate ruthlessly, without limits or constraints—much as today’s platforms do.
If we do this wisely, all parties will benefit.
Consider this important fact. Industrialization took off around 1750 (especially in Britain)—but it didn’t deliver meaningful economic benefits until the humanists and Romanticists imposed reforms in the years following 1820.
Rationalism on its own will not produce widespread wealth and prosperity. That requires a commitment to the human flourishing that spreads through the entire community—and not just benefiting a few industrialists and their bankers.
This larger prosperity only emerges with the rise of different values beyond brutal rationalism. Centralized algorithms run by the ruling class fail without these restraints.
We will see sensible reforms like this again. It’s inevitable.
What are the next steps? Here’s what I see happening in the coming months and years.
Critics of runaway tech will get much angrier and more vocal. This is already starting, and nothing can prevent the momentum from building.
The backlash will start forcing changes on a local level. Schools, for example, will impose prudent controls on AI, smartphones, social media, etc. Families will make changes in their own homes, without waiting for guidance from above.
Businesses will be slower to change—like the factories that hired child laborers in the 1700s, they are obsessed with making as much money as possible. But a backlash will occur here too, promoted by customers, employees, and community members.
Political intervention will happen later. Tech platforms have too much influence over politicians—so they will work to prevent regulation. But they won’t be able to stop it forever. Lawsuits and legislation are coming to force their hand, although we may need to wait 2-3 years before anything substantive happens.
Meanwhile, attitudes and ideologies will evolve—and the various compassionate, humanist, and creative agendas will gain strength. This kind of culture shift takes time, and I expect this to play out over a ten year period. But the whole tone of society will look and feel differently as power and prestige shifts from the technocracy to the creative class.
Left and right will find—to their surprise—that they have much to agree on here. They will join hands in surprising ways to combat tech gone wild.
As part of this, technology will start getting used in ways that benefit the creatives, not the tech elites. This is already happening in some spheres (Substack, Bandcamp, Patreon, etc.), but the next wave will reverse the entire hierarchy. Romanticist outsiders will wrest control from technocratic insiders.
Am I dreaming?
No, I don’t think so. In just the 18 months since I first started talking about this, the Romanticist spirit has picked up considerable steam. Maybe it still feels like the fringe, but it will soon enter the mainstream.
When that happens, the movement takes a life of its own. I won’t even need to act as cheerleader at that point—but, trust me, I will.
1) Anti-trust is the secret sauce here. I say this not because I want to suppress innovation or freedom, but because corporations want to. "Walled gardens" are just a way of rolling up a favourable situation into a racket (see Apple's 30% tax and Google's monopoly powers over search). And the only time you ever see Republicans and Democrats playing nice with each other and even agreeing is on this topic (see Josh Hawley, Amy Klobuchar, etc.). Also, it seems like Trump is going to have at least a semi-robust FTC so we can hope.
2) No more essays in school. Just written tests. You get a question or two, and you have to answer them during the time given.
3) And seriously people, BAN PHONES IN SCHOOL.
"Technology is no longer enhancing human life" - Ain't that the truth. A lot of us can relate to this in our daily lives.