My esteemed colleague in the craft of creating worlds, Charles Stross, has a popular blog, wherein he published a list of daunting drivers that - he maintains - push and militate against any hope for continuation of the glimmering Western Democratic-Scientific Enlightenment. His posting “Axioms of Politics” include some that are truly major and difficult to overcome…
…and yet, one comes away appalled that such a bright mind can so relentlessly avoid asking the simplest contrarian questions of himself, in order to notice the tendentious trend line of his own thoughts… and then step back, subjecting that trend line to criticism.
Am I a sunny polyanna? A year ago, I offered up a provocative metaphor… that the last four centuries appear to have begun — in their major theme — on the 14th or 15th year. No fizzing optimism there! Not when this 15th year might turn and bite us, at any point.
On the other hand, well, go ahead and read the Stross missive here: A Different Cluetrain. It’s filled with interesting ideas! Read its entirety. Then come back and see below for my response.
== Brin responds to Stross’s “A different cluetrain” ==
Dear Charlie… as usual you have a lot of cogent and insightful observations to offer us, in this missive. “Iron Laws” and such, that seem to make enlightened civilization hopeless, over the long run.
Alas though… sorry, man… but did you notice that the only factors in your lengthy list are dolorous ones and excuses for cynicism?
Yes, I know this is the core pattern maintained by the stylish, Doctorowian set, as if y’all invented the cynical snarl! (Not.) Still, when a pattern is so perfect — and so perfectly conducive to the emotional aim — then a true contrarian just has to ask questions. Like:
1) If these “iron laws” automatically turn all democracy and law and hope to shit… um… where did we get our current renaissance?
Oh, sure, declare that it’s coming to an end! That malevolent forces are undermining the Enlightenment! (I happen to agree with the latter.) But still, the contrarian asks… how did we get the narrow window of freedom and tolerance and diversity and social mobility that (though flawed) most of those reading this have enjoyed all our lives? One that kept — and still continues — expanding circles of inclusion?
What kind of blinkered tunnel vision would empower cynics to deny that something exceptional happened in the (quasi) democratic west? Something quite different from 6000 years of tediously-same feudal-priestly oligarchies. Those differences stack way too high to shrug off. Even if you declare it to be all over, you still have to explain how this window of delusional-short-lived freedom happened in the first place. And that means parsing when there are *exceptions* to your iron laws of despair and doom.
2) It is easy to conflate pluto-oligarchy-“capitalism” (POC) with flat-open-fair-market capitalism (FOFMC). Indeed, Adam Smith went on at great length, describing the difference. So did Karl Marx! But hell, who reads Smith or Marx, anymore? So yes, conflating these two opposites is easy to do. That is, it is easy for lazy fellows who cannot tell the difference between the East India Company and Silicon Valley.
In fact, Smith called POC the inherent and deadly enemy of FOFMC. The latter is based upon fair *competition* involving the maximum number of skilled, savvy, confident and knowing rivals, in a vastly middle-class, diamond-shaped society where every industry is under constant threat by brash startup entrepreneurs.
Are there forces that oppose this, preferring to squelch potential competition, in the old, feudal pyramids of inherited privilege? Sure! The same forces that do not want competitive democracy.
You are confusing crony Pluto-Oligarchy-“Capitalism” with the other kind. And yes, POC can pour concrete and build office towers and grab resources and exploit cheap labor. Just as Soviet command socialism did all those things.
Now show us their startups. Their inventions. You cannot. Your “iron laws” are not about governance. They are about seeking pyramidal privileges. 6000 years show that stopping them is hard! It takes a Revolution. What you seem to miss is the fact that the Revolution exists. It has been ongoing. We’re the next generation of rebels. And despair does… not… help.
You think the tyrannical and IP-stealing nations have huge advantages? The inventing nations have only to decide to stop buying the products of labor-cheapness factories — and to stop ignoring IP theft. If that happened, the POC/mercantilist nations would tank… and the democratic FOFMC nations would adapt.
But we won’t do that. Because ever-increasing numbers of the poor in China and Bangladesh are sending their kids to school with full bellies and internet access, for the very reason that we buy the crap from those factories. And those kids will want to invent. They will watch Hollywood films and read sci fi and want democracy.
Moreover you know this. So why are you spreading such simplistic dooooooom? Why do you not even once mention the Meme War that we are winning like a steamroller? The lessons of Suspicion of Authority, tolerance, diversity, eccentricity and liberation-of-women that fill almost every Hollywood film etc? And hence the underlying reason for so much macho-belt panic and terrorism? A transformation whose principal feature is a couple of billion women and girls who are more empowered and confident than their mothers were?
Sure, I freely and openly avow that nearly all of your listed “iron laws” exist and are threats to the renaissance…
...as our ancestors faced very similar threats in the 1890s and 1930s.
...as our ancestors faced very similar threats in the 1890s and 1930s.
So? It’s a test, then! A test we can pass, as they did. But only if we look beyond excuses for despair. If we start tallying not only the “iron laws” that undermine the renaissance, but also our advantages — the counterpart tools and assets that we revolutionaries have in our hands, empowering us to resist the pull of the feudal attractor state.
== …aaaand argue! ==
Alas while your list of obstacles is well worth studying, you simply doubled down on the dolor. You try to shrug off the two hundred year western-democratic enlightenment experiment, with its spectacular (if still flawed) diamond-shaped social structure, low levels of class determinism, expanding horizons of inclusion, plummeting world poverty rates, high (compared to any earlier culture) levels of freedom and competitive entrepreneurship...
...and you attribute all of that to two tragedies, the Great Depression and Hitler? Um.... can you even step back and see how that sounds?
Could any of the good stuff — just maybe — have come from solid and innovative social design? "Perhaps by some folks who understood such stuff better than I do?" Perish the thought!
You don't even do gloom all that well! I can out-cynical that, and I'm not even a cynic!
For example, the proper disdainful dismissal of the WEE (Western Enlightenment Experiment) is to attribute it to:
(1) theft of the American Frontier,
(2) rape of colonized continents,
(3) sudden access to prodigious fossil fuels.
For example, the proper disdainful dismissal of the WEE (Western Enlightenment Experiment) is to attribute it to:
(1) theft of the American Frontier,
(2) rape of colonized continents,
(3) sudden access to prodigious fossil fuels.
Those three should provide a bulwark for any dolor-addict, especially as #3 proves to be both limited and toxic. Yippee. Hurrah for cynicism! Except...
Did you know, dear (and respected!) colleague, that in the 1890s Frederick Jackson Turner wrote about the closing of the American frontier, predicting it would have exactly the shut-down effects that you fellows now see looming before us? That was 125 years ago. Huh. Kinda got delayed there.
Next read (if you can stomach) Spengler's Decline of the West (1918)... oops... and the screeds by Hitler and Stalin about decadent western bourgeois democracies in their final hours. Ooops again. And the millennialist doomcasters that rise up every year, among our neighbors.
Jesus, do you guys ever lift your heads from this satisfying-spiral of smug "I-knew-it-couldn't-last" schadenfeude?
Yes, the Revolution is in trouble. It is ALWAYS in trouble! We could use your help on the barricades.
In fact, Charlie, there are mighty, synergistic processes that empower us to stave off the old, feudal attractor states, processes that are as powerful as your admittedly-daunting Iron Laws. You might help refine and refresh them. Better yet, make others aware of them. Even better still, laugh at the dolor-junkies who want you to wallow with them.
Hey man, don't give in to the blandishments of comfy, middle class ingrates, dissing a renaissance that gave them everything. I've read a lot of your stuff, and you are bigger than them. A true, bona fide idea maven! So guide them to the next, meta level — above cynicism — which is amazed wonder that we got all this, despite those Iron Laws.
And a grateful willingness to fight for it.
And a grateful willingness to fight for it.
Now I am outta here. Ben Franklin is calling. Good luck man. You are one of the most interesting living humans.