This is a deeply important and resonant line of thought. Appreciate your lucid exploration of it
Are you familiar with John David Ebert's THE NEW MEDIA INVASION? Ebert frames his incisive study of the undermining of old media by new media in terms of dematerialization.
I’m surprised you didn’t call on that deep student of apparitions, William James. In “The Variety of Religious Experience,” James sawtwo types of minds, tender and tough. The tough-minded are the empirical, the scientific. But a baffling, image-sated world is too tough for most minds, hence the “tender-minded,” who desperately need visions, mysticism, and alas, demons to explain what they have no chance of understanding.
"I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the re-enchantment of sensory perception is happening just as people are habituating themselves to living in a technologically mediated world, a world constructed of images rather than things."
Clearly, these two things are happening at the same time, and yet I hadn't connected the dots that this is so. What a prescient realization.
"We viewed the information age as an age of reason, governed by the scientist and the mathematician. We’re now coming to realize it’s altogether different — an enchanted age, governed by the myth-maker and the mystic."
This reminds me of Goya's "El Sueno de la Razon Produce Monstruous" (Reason's Slumber Creates Monsters, my own translation). Goya was a Spaniard who lived at the time of the European Enlightenment, or La Ilustracion in Castilian, and while I'm no formal expert on his paintings, I feel the same way about paintings as I do about words: once their creator puts them out into the universe, I have the prerogative of creating out of them what I will. In this case, I am guessing that Goya felt similarly to our author: if we put "reason" to bed, we'll get monsters. Or demons, as you will.
Onto the next.
When I think of demons, I think of mythological thinking. And when I think of mythological thinking, I think back to 2004 when Ron Suskind did an interview with a White House aide (speculated, but not confirmed, to be Karl Rove). The unnamed aide said this:
"...that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do".
So again, we have the reality-based community (those of us who believe reality can and should be observed, analyzed, and that then we draw conclusions about how to proceed), and those who belong to the community that makes up fabrications. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality". Is this phenomena connected to the fact that we're a late-stage empire, as it were?
"When everything’s mediated, when images take precedence over “a reality whose nature we are less and less able to grasp,” the hyperreality of the mythical and the mystical seems deeper, truer, than the tepid reality of the actual."
This reminds me of Bishop Honore of Autun, who wrote in the 12th century that "pictures are the literature of the laity". Since most medieval French peasants were illiterate, it made sense that the Church should present important narratives in picture format (stained glass images, icons, breviaries, etc.).
But while that worked for medieval peasants, it won't work for us: most of us are literate and many of us can think critically. So although the comparison isn't exactly the same, I sense a similarity in the "enchanting" religious images favored by Honore and the "fantastical" stories of Tucker Carlson and Rod Dreher.
They should know better. And we need to hold these fools to account.
I'd love to hear anyone's comments and/or critiques of my ideas.
I am new to Nicholas Carr's work, and I'm impressed by it. I just picked up his new book, too, and am looking forward to reading it.
K. Clark suggests 'the sleep of reason' might alternatively be the dream of reason. In that case it would be the over-extension of reason that brings forth nightmares.
Well, many have suggested that before Clark. :) To a Spanish-speaker, “sueño” is ambiguous: it can mean both “dream” and “sleep”. So Spanish speakers have wrestled with the ambiguity of this painting since the time of Goya. To my knowledge, Goya didn’t indicate which he preferred; I’m guessing he chose it because of its ambiguity. Either way, it makes a powerful statement about the role of reason.
Absolutely! And I remember being deeply moved at the time when I saw those paintings at the Prado ( not so sure I would now). A sign of KC’s prejudice, perhaps: no Spanish painters and no icons.
This is interesting to read alongside Marshall McLuhan, who wrote frequently about a return to tribalism as a result of electric technologies and the way they dissolve time and space.
MM didn't seem to see so-called 'rational / literate' man and his society as something to be mourned, though. If you want to live in a global village, you're going to have to put up with a demon or two. They're part of the territory.
I get the impression that with any technology, one thing is being traded for another. Aspects of human experience which one type of technology (and its consequent worldview) push to the sidelines may come back with a vengeance when the tide changes. Such is life.
Thanks. I'm reminded of Plato's "likely story[mythos]" as the prime reference to reality. Theory in Greek is 'vision', and one's so-called disenchanted vision of the world is no less a myth then one's enchanted world. Since there is no criteria to differentiate between the two (for they reference different realities), and since,as you so succently pointed out, materialism leads to dematerialized world, we are left to fathom the split world of dualities. And in such a predicament, pity unto those who hold on to one side only.
That's an interesting insight. I haven't connected technology and pomo to that viewpoint but it does seem to point towards something underneath that pomo unearths in a sense.
Just told a colleague last night I've noticed an uptick in people's hostile responses to the communication of those they perceive as Other. Let me be clear: the hostility isn't aimed at a person or their views now, it's aimed at the texts constructed by an Other. The timbre of this hostility strikes me as almost superstitious. To quote Tolkien's Aragorn while he and friends were hunting the White Wizard in Fangorn: "Don't let him speak. He'll cast a spell on us." This is the nature of the fear and hostility I'm noticing.
Isn't this slightly old hat, though? The desire to be in touch with spirits or a non-rational realm in an overly bureaucratic world, a cold and mechanical universe, seems to be a recurrent theme in modern history.
Also, isn't the desire to believe in something beyond just the material realm what it is, fundamentally, to be human? (I'm not suggesting that it's *only* a desire).
On the "seduction of images"..that made me think of Jewish/Islamic aniconism and Illich's 'Guarding the eye'.
Not so sure about the turning to violence bit. Colonial and 20th c. violence can't, I think, be brushed off as stemming from a return to the mythical. More like "the sleep of Reason" and modern, state racism.
Fair point, Nicholas. I suppose my comment was something of an overreaction to a point I don't understand: a valorization of the "actually" real over the "mystical". If we are fundamentally metaphysical beings then there's always something beyond material existence (perhaps the loss of transcendence means that 'beyond' becomes 'below'- whence the emphasis on the subconscious and the demonic?).
I think Nietzsche's point still resonates: if one abolishes the Real do appearances vanish as well?
This is a deeply important and resonant line of thought. Appreciate your lucid exploration of it
Are you familiar with John David Ebert's THE NEW MEDIA INVASION? Ebert frames his incisive study of the undermining of old media by new media in terms of dematerialization.
I'm not familiar with it. I'll check it out. Thanks.
I’m surprised you didn’t call on that deep student of apparitions, William James. In “The Variety of Religious Experience,” James sawtwo types of minds, tender and tough. The tough-minded are the empirical, the scientific. But a baffling, image-sated world is too tough for most minds, hence the “tender-minded,” who desperately need visions, mysticism, and alas, demons to explain what they have no chance of understanding.
I certainly should have.
What a fantastic post; so much food for thought!
Let's start here:
"I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the re-enchantment of sensory perception is happening just as people are habituating themselves to living in a technologically mediated world, a world constructed of images rather than things."
Clearly, these two things are happening at the same time, and yet I hadn't connected the dots that this is so. What a prescient realization.
"We viewed the information age as an age of reason, governed by the scientist and the mathematician. We’re now coming to realize it’s altogether different — an enchanted age, governed by the myth-maker and the mystic."
This reminds me of Goya's "El Sueno de la Razon Produce Monstruous" (Reason's Slumber Creates Monsters, my own translation). Goya was a Spaniard who lived at the time of the European Enlightenment, or La Ilustracion in Castilian, and while I'm no formal expert on his paintings, I feel the same way about paintings as I do about words: once their creator puts them out into the universe, I have the prerogative of creating out of them what I will. In this case, I am guessing that Goya felt similarly to our author: if we put "reason" to bed, we'll get monsters. Or demons, as you will.
Onto the next.
When I think of demons, I think of mythological thinking. And when I think of mythological thinking, I think back to 2004 when Ron Suskind did an interview with a White House aide (speculated, but not confirmed, to be Karl Rove). The unnamed aide said this:
"...that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do".
So again, we have the reality-based community (those of us who believe reality can and should be observed, analyzed, and that then we draw conclusions about how to proceed), and those who belong to the community that makes up fabrications. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality". Is this phenomena connected to the fact that we're a late-stage empire, as it were?
"When everything’s mediated, when images take precedence over “a reality whose nature we are less and less able to grasp,” the hyperreality of the mythical and the mystical seems deeper, truer, than the tepid reality of the actual."
This reminds me of Bishop Honore of Autun, who wrote in the 12th century that "pictures are the literature of the laity". Since most medieval French peasants were illiterate, it made sense that the Church should present important narratives in picture format (stained glass images, icons, breviaries, etc.).
But while that worked for medieval peasants, it won't work for us: most of us are literate and many of us can think critically. So although the comparison isn't exactly the same, I sense a similarity in the "enchanting" religious images favored by Honore and the "fantastical" stories of Tucker Carlson and Rod Dreher.
They should know better. And we need to hold these fools to account.
I'd love to hear anyone's comments and/or critiques of my ideas.
I am new to Nicholas Carr's work, and I'm impressed by it. I just picked up his new book, too, and am looking forward to reading it.
K. Clark suggests 'the sleep of reason' might alternatively be the dream of reason. In that case it would be the over-extension of reason that brings forth nightmares.
Well, many have suggested that before Clark. :) To a Spanish-speaker, “sueño” is ambiguous: it can mean both “dream” and “sleep”. So Spanish speakers have wrestled with the ambiguity of this painting since the time of Goya. To my knowledge, Goya didn’t indicate which he preferred; I’m guessing he chose it because of its ambiguity. Either way, it makes a powerful statement about the role of reason.
Absolutely! And I remember being deeply moved at the time when I saw those paintings at the Prado ( not so sure I would now). A sign of KC’s prejudice, perhaps: no Spanish painters and no icons.
This is interesting to read alongside Marshall McLuhan, who wrote frequently about a return to tribalism as a result of electric technologies and the way they dissolve time and space.
MM didn't seem to see so-called 'rational / literate' man and his society as something to be mourned, though. If you want to live in a global village, you're going to have to put up with a demon or two. They're part of the territory.
I get the impression that with any technology, one thing is being traded for another. Aspects of human experience which one type of technology (and its consequent worldview) push to the sidelines may come back with a vengeance when the tide changes. Such is life.
Thanks. I'm reminded of Plato's "likely story[mythos]" as the prime reference to reality. Theory in Greek is 'vision', and one's so-called disenchanted vision of the world is no less a myth then one's enchanted world. Since there is no criteria to differentiate between the two (for they reference different realities), and since,as you so succently pointed out, materialism leads to dematerialized world, we are left to fathom the split world of dualities. And in such a predicament, pity unto those who hold on to one side only.
That's an interesting insight. I haven't connected technology and pomo to that viewpoint but it does seem to point towards something underneath that pomo unearths in a sense.
Just told a colleague last night I've noticed an uptick in people's hostile responses to the communication of those they perceive as Other. Let me be clear: the hostility isn't aimed at a person or their views now, it's aimed at the texts constructed by an Other. The timbre of this hostility strikes me as almost superstitious. To quote Tolkien's Aragorn while he and friends were hunting the White Wizard in Fangorn: "Don't let him speak. He'll cast a spell on us." This is the nature of the fear and hostility I'm noticing.
Anyone else?
Great post!
Isn't this slightly old hat, though? The desire to be in touch with spirits or a non-rational realm in an overly bureaucratic world, a cold and mechanical universe, seems to be a recurrent theme in modern history.
Also, isn't the desire to believe in something beyond just the material realm what it is, fundamentally, to be human? (I'm not suggesting that it's *only* a desire).
On the "seduction of images"..that made me think of Jewish/Islamic aniconism and Illich's 'Guarding the eye'.
Not so sure about the turning to violence bit. Colonial and 20th c. violence can't, I think, be brushed off as stemming from a return to the mythical. More like "the sleep of Reason" and modern, state racism.
Thanks. I did not mean to suggest that violence in society springs from only one source or cause. That’s certainly, and sadly, not the case.
Fair point, Nicholas. I suppose my comment was something of an overreaction to a point I don't understand: a valorization of the "actually" real over the "mystical". If we are fundamentally metaphysical beings then there's always something beyond material existence (perhaps the loss of transcendence means that 'beyond' becomes 'below'- whence the emphasis on the subconscious and the demonic?).
I think Nietzsche's point still resonates: if one abolishes the Real do appearances vanish as well?