I’m a fan of your way of saying it better than my own. I’m laughing over here.

You’re right about Pinker’s sweet hair :) I apologize for not watching both of these clips before, my computer at work is a bit old school but thankfully we just got new computers and I was actually able to watch them, unlike before.
You’ve got a point. Pinker brought up many things I had not thought of, such as the advancement of journalism in comparison to previous times. Today’s reporting is so advanced that we not only cover more things than were ever covered before, but we also have various ways (technologically) of telling a story. I also found Pinker’s description of people’s behavior in anarchy interesting; the concept that people do not innately want to hurt one another, but rather are worried about what the other person will do if they do not defend themselves (Pinker’s gun scenario). Very interesting.

After watching this, I understand that statistically, we are less violent. Especially in comparison to how crimes were punished in the Middle Ages. However, I guess my worry is that although numerically there may be less murderers or violent crimes, weapons are much more advanced than in the Middle Ages; so while there may only be one murderer, there is the potential that many lives could be taken at once because of the availability of better weaponry than what existed previously in history. I admit, my example is only hypothetical, it is true that the average person usually does not have access to the kind of weapon that could take away multiple lives in the matter of seconds or minutes. AND, the fact that the number of violent deaths has decreased despite the existence of more advanced weaponry does support your point. However, I guess I’m just hoping that this trend continues, because further technological advancement is inevitable. Wright mentioned technological advancement with regards to weaponry in his clip but I don’t think he addressed that issue enough.

Regardless, I have to admit that you do have me mostly convinced :)

Your rise in the perception of violence is biased by modern media’s proficient ability to report such violence. Historical human societies did not keep such accurate or daily records. For more information on the decline of human violence, please watch Pinker’s video above. Don’t forget to love his hair while you watch.

I do believe that technology has freed us from the slavery of dependence on the fields and on nature. Technology has allowed us to shift the time in our day away from fulfilling the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing, of which food is the most time consuming. This shift has allowed every person to explore the panoply of human arts. However, connection to nature is one of those arts. Most of us have lost that art and because we have lost that art, we ignore its destruction when the destruction fuels our consumerism and pursuit of arts. Robert and I might agree up to this point. We disagree about our future (if I properly understand Robert). I believe that the current system will correct itself. As Courtney and the Robert Wright video argue, humans, if for nothing else, can be relied on for the instincts of self-preservation and self-interest. The problem, as I discussed, is that the advancement of technology presents a dual track. On one track, we have more leisure time to create art and to become “more human.” On the other track, fewer and fewer people are required to overcome humanity’s instinct for survival with weapons of mass destruction.

Ultimately, I have some weird faith and optimism in us. We solve problems, perhaps not when we first notice them, but when their threat becomes imminent (i.e. as I think we will do with global warming).

The best world combines the romanticization of nature and days of old with the luxuries of technology. We should not allow those luxuries to make us lazy, rather they should allow us to devote our mental energies to callings higher than our daily subsistence. We can achieve sustainable growth. Green technologies will be paid a huge price in the marketplace when they become efficient enough to replace fossil technologies, and even before that because of the externality premium they deliver for the environment. It is the fusion of old humanity and new humanity that should guide our future development.

In so far as I would like the world to be different, it is not because of some vague, romantic notion of the distant past, nor is it a call to make great and terrible sacrifices of individual happiness for the collective good. It is my personal experience of what is good in life. I *enjoy* riding my bike through the quiet streets of the Champaign night. I *enjoy* real food, locally grown and freshly picked and prepared with bright colors and flavors reflecting the warmth of the sun and the soil rather than the chemist’s test tube, the processing plant, and the 18-wheeler. I *enjoy* the music and words of New Ruins, World’s First Flying Machine, or any number of local and/or under the radar artists far more than the inane drivel cooked up in some sound factory by people who are primarily concerned with the bottom line. I enjoy these because I think they ARE good, not just morally necessary for our continued survival. You see, there’s one thing that I really need to know about the current state and direction of things – “Quality is subversive.”

And I suggest that you *enjoy* those things because a technologically advanced society is the reason why you have sufficient time to appreciate what you perceive as the “finer” things in life, delivered to you by the modern, technologically advanced society that you question.

I hope, as you do, that those who value those things will be able to continue to consume them, even if the rest of the world decides that their taste is different.

As always, good post, Billy.

Your article strikes a chord on that…

And at the same time, I am rather uncomfortably close, geographically, to the current Honduran crisis, which I’ve been blogging about extensively. Watching the inequity of forces involved in government (a recent video showed a crowd of over a 1000 people being disbursed by a tear gas volley from the military) – and at the same time bemused by watching people, such as Eric Raymond, acting independently of the state, to provide communications resources to citizens underneath Iran’s government.

I don’t know what lessons to draw from all this except that Orwell got it wrong.

We have met the enemy, and it is us. We have met our friends, and they are we.