Sure seems like the (maybe just “a”) apocalypse is looming
Jonathan Haidt has bad news for us. In a much discussed Atlantic piece called “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” he lays out a view of our situation that’s grimmer than that grim title suggests—even if you throw in the grim subtitle: “It’s not just a phase.”
From ~2000
“While I’m basically optimistic, an extremely bleak outcome is obviously possible.” And even if we avoid a truly apocalyptic fate, I added, “several moderately bleak outcomes are possible.”
I don’t see quite as much bleakness as Haidt seems to see. And one reason, I think, is that I don’t see the causes of our current troubles as being quite as novel as he does. We’ve been here before, and humankind survived.
Robert WrightBy “here” I mean a time when a big change in information technology has implications for social structure too dramatic to play out without turbulence. In Nonzero I discussed a number of such thresholds, including the invention of writing and the invention of the printing press.
Some of these thresholds look more like the current era than you might think. Though my book is often depicted (accurately but incompletely) as Haidt depicts it—as emphasizing the tendency of information technology to unite people—it also emphasizes the tendency of information technology to divide people, to deepen the bounds between tribes of various kinds, and to facilitate the creation of new, narrower tribes.
The inexorable march of information technology, combined with the psychology of tribalism, has heightened turbulence, loathing, and delusion before, and it’s doing that now.
