L'etat c'est moi... et vous...

The State's an ephemeral thing
Yet 'praise unto thee' we all sing,
Did you once stop to think
This thing's not so unique
What a volatile sich ist das Ding.

It's hard to believe that Dewey wrote this in 1927, because (emphasis on the role of the telegraph aside), it feels like it could have been written today. It is very challenging to come up with a specific part of the reading to talk about because there were so many different points that came out as compelling. The transformation of religion from a public to private sphere; where modern states get to involve themselves in private transactions; loyalties to family versus state; and above all that most difficult of questions... what IS a state?

While I would love to spend time exploring so much of what Dewey had to say about the evolution of democracy and the dangers of holding modern governmental forms as sacrosanct and the logical evolution of human society (and did in previous drafts of this post...), the crux of where Dewey is relevant to our studies is fairly clear, as he spends a great deal of time talking about the role of communication technology in democratic discourse and evolution. On page 144, it says "The transition from family and dynastic government supported by the loyalties of tradition to popular government was the outcome primarily of technological discoveries and inventions working a change in the customs by which men had been bound together." While he does allow that technology has been key for the advancement of democracy, he also deplores the availability of distractions and misinformation that allow people to abdicate from their own participation in democracy so easily.

Lanier would doubtless agree when Dewey says (p. 162), "Of course, there has been an enormous increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by mankind, but it does not equal, probably, the increase in the amount of errors and half-truths which have got into circulation. In social and human matters, especially, the development of a critical sense and methods of discriminating judgment has not kept pace with the growth of careless reports and of motives for positive misrepresentation." This has been a problem for humanity for the last hundred years, at least. The pace of technology has far outstripped our ability to cope with it and develop a capacity to distinguish between what is useful and what is not. Still, this brings us back to last week's reading and explorations of how we might start sorting through our huge collections of data and making some sense of it. Are we still just gathering information? Have we done ourselves a massive disservice by devoting so many resources to increasing our ability to gather information without increasing our ability to analyze and interpret it effectively?

Ultimately, the most resonant part of the Dewey, that brought me back to Pachauri's lecture and Jeffrey Sachs', was this: "Humanity is not, as was once thought, the end for which all things were formed; it is but a slight and feeble thing, perhaps an episodic one, in the vast stretch of the universe. But for man, man is the center of interest and the measure of importance." (p. 176) While it is important to try to step out of the relentless narcissism that seems to afflict our species, it is precisely that narcissism that might get us out of the mess we've created. This course so far has brought forth many dystopian and utopian looks at the future, and definitely highlighted several challenges we have to face, but I am not as of yet convinced that we're doomed. Granted, it's only February, so we'll see where the reading takes us from here.