After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?
T.S. Eliot
We do not know precisely what knowledge Eliot had in mind, for being a poet he does not have to spell it out. But with a certain degree of poetic license, we might surmise that it is somewhat close to the knowledge we have tried to convey in this book. Hence, now at its conclusion, we must pose the same anguished question: after such knowledge what forgiveness?
What forgiveness can there be for trying to foist on ordinary, innocent people the guilty knowledge that they are living in the twilight of a cultural dark age? Should such knowledge not be forbidden or at least hidden? For does it not poison the wellspring of life by making the future seem bleak and hopeless? Are not the lives of people, especially the young, fraught with enough difficulty already without this extra burden of unwelcome historical knowledge? And can we even be sure that this is indeed knowledge and not some delusion that history has conjured up through the devilish cunning of reason? For where history is concerned, reason can deceive:
Certainly, if history is to be our guide, as perforce it must, for we have no other way to look back or look ahead, then we must beware of its delusions, its vagaries and false analogies. So let us keep two points in mind. Firstly, in talking of a cultural dark age we do not mean the historical Dark Ages as these occurred in Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire. Secondly, we have only entered the twilight and not the deep night of cultural darkness. The sun of science and technology is still ascendent and at its zenith, so if there is darkness, it is that paradoxical darkness at noon when there is glaring light but no enlightenment.
In general, save for the very poor and the politically oppressed, life offers affluence and freedom such as few could even aspire to before. Many people can move around from city to city all over the globe, and those with means can even settle where they choose. And culturally, too, it seems that people are better off than ever before. Literacy is almost universal, schooling for many people is free, and for some there is also free university education. Books are available free of charge or at a small cost. All kinds of cultural goods are also freely available. Many people are now liberated from the tyrannies of the past, including those of class, race and gender. It almost seems as if the first three horsemen of the apocalypse have been driven off. Only the last, death, remains still to be dealt with, and the rate of progress in the medical sciences arouses hope that it might not be too long before death, too, will lose its dominion, as St Paul promised long ago.
All the economists who have looked into the evidence agree that the average real income per person in the world is rising faster than ever before. The results will be a gigantic increase in the number of scientists, designers, writers, musicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, and ordinary business people devising betterments that will spill over the now rich countries allegedly lacking in dynamism.2
This will not be a mere matter of affluence and material prosperity, but of spiritual enrichment as well: âWe shall expect during the next hundred years a world spiritual change, enabled by much higher incomes.â3 In fact, âthe resulting spiritual change will be as impressive as the material changes.â4 And the best of this cultural cornucopia of plenty will come from Africa, for âgenetic
McCloskey seems to be applying a simple economistic formula: money plus genes equals genius. It is strange, therefore, that we do not see a crop of geniuses emerging from China, given its phenomenal economic development and the huge rise in the prosperity of its people. Surely, Chinese genes cannot be all that inferior to African ones? What we have seen instead of geniuses have been competent scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, designers and musical performers, but as yet not even Nobel Prize winners. This cannot be due to the inferiority of Chinese genes, since Chinese scientists living in America have won Nobel Prizes. In China itself scientists have produced almost as many papers as in America, but very few of these are of high quality. Its engineers have secured more patents than in America, but so far have not created new industries, only made small incremental adjustments to the old ones. No doubt, in time mainland Chinese will win Nobel Prizes, but these will not be awarded to geniuses making fundamental discoveries, for these (as we have seen), are more or less precluded in future science. Most probably they will be earned, as is mostly the case now, for small but significant improvements.
As far as the arts are concerned, the problems for creative Chinese are even more difficult than in science. Thus far, China has produced a few really competent modern writers but no composers of any distinction. The arts are even less subject to the law that money plus genes produces genius than the sciences. Genius or extraordinary creativity in the arts is not a function of numbers or even of prizes and awards of any kind, including the Nobel Prize. It is well possible, and indeed likely, that in the future, as has already happened in the past, writers in China and Africa will win more Nobel Prizes for literature and that composers will also emerge to win awards. But will that mean that a new literature and a new music will emerge from China or Africa? That seems most unlikely, since for that to happen there would have to be a new culture or, in effect, a new civilization coming from these sources. But there is no reason to believe that this will happen there, or anywhere else for that matter. As we have maintained, we are now living at a time of rapidly diminishing civilization and this is affecting all nations and all continents.
The Panglosses of our times, such as McCloskey and very many others, believe that we are living in the best of all possible worlds for the present. But they also believe that things are bound to become even better in the future. They see all impediments to progress being overcome and new possibilities
But at least two considerations should give them pause. The first is the very real possibility that another Lisbon earthquake of far larger scope could happen at any time, and not just flatten one city but all the major cities in the world and make them uninhabitable for ever after. We have barely escaped such a cataclysm a number of times already in the past and we might not be so lucky again. Relying on Mutually Assured Destruction is not exactly a secure state to be in; and furthermore, we have paid with insecurity for the prosperity we have thus far enjoyed. We are dancing on the rim of the volcano.
The second consideration is of a longer and much slower trajectory, but with equally disastrous consequences in the longer run. If we continue to indulge in our profligate wastefulness and allow the gnp to climb higher and higher, we will inevitably bring about a natural catastrophe. At present it is global warming and pandemics that threaten us, later there will be other horrors as well. But climate warming is bad enough even on its own, as the ecological scientists predict; Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research recently declared: âIf damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization.â6 But not only to civilization; life as we now know it will be forfeited for something else that we cannot even begin to imagine.
However, in this book we have not been concerned with such man-made natural catastrophes, as real and permanently possible as they are; rather our sole interest and focus of attention has fallen on culture, that is, on what is called Geist in German. For what we are threatened with is not only material destruction but spiritual devastation, the dissolution of our cultural souls. And in this respect, we are faced with a paradox analogous to that of prosperity generating insecurity, for the more cultural goods are produced and the cheaper they become, the less they are worth in real value. Quantity and quality stand in inverse relation to each other. This applies as much to knowledge as to art.
Our markets are flooded with a profusion of aesthetic products of all kinds. We are constantly immersed in art and nearly drown in it. Everywhere we look and turn, it is there. Every time we turn on our television sets or other electronic media devices a huge cavalcade of shows beams in. As we stroll the streets or shopping malls we are confronted with a cornucopia of
However, we know in advance that many of the aesthetic goods that appear today will be gone by tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Few have any lasting value. Their use-by date is of short duration, from one fashion season to the next. The books that have not been sold this month or this year will be remaindered and those still left will be pulped. The artists who exhibit this year will be replaced by a new crop of names next year. The musical hits will no longer be heard when new hits arrive as regularly as buses at a bus stop. Everything flows, you cannot step twice into the same stream or street, as ever newer sounds, sights, goods, shops and buildings are moving past at various intervals of time. Creative-destruction is as much the practice of aesthetic capitalism as of any other.
It is not all that different for knowledge either. Every year over two million scientific articles are published and this number is steadily rising. This is referred to as an âexplosion of knowledgeâ. But actually, what is exploding is the rate of publication without all that much new knowledge being added to the established body of science. As the old joke has it, science knows more and more about less and less until it knows everything about nothing. What the joke points to is the continual narrowing of focus and interest produced by excessive specialization. But the problem goes much deeper than that, for only very few of the masses of papers published every year matter and make a real difference to knowledge. These are the ones that are essential for ongoing research. Most of the others are never read by anyone apart from their authors and perhaps referees; of those that are read, fewer still are referred to; of those that are referred to, only a fraction is actually utilized. As research has revealed, a large proportion of papers contain false information, and a very small but growing proportion are actually fraudulent.7 Science is no longer the noble pursuit of truth it once was; it has become an academic competitive rat-race where getting a research grant is far more important than having an idea, and recruiting collaborators and assistants counts for more than the research project itself, which is drafted so as to solicit the funds for its own undertaking.
The colleges, polytechnics and universities where most of this research is done are at the same time producing ever larger numbers of graduate
Undeniably, this system of research is essential for our economies, and also for our medical institutions and military forces. It brings improvements in all three respects. It leads to the invention of new machines, to newer products and ways of producing them. It helps us to live longer and be more productive. But at the same time, it impacts our lives in ways that are far from salutary, especially so where it concerns our children.
The invention of the computer and the setting up of the internet was a prodigious technical feat. It led to the establishment of commercial platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon and many others which were designed to create connectivity between people all over the globe and lead to knowledge being communicated throughout the world without the threat or fear of censorship or repression. But at the same time, it commercialized social media and transformed the way people traditionally related to each other. These media became potent means of spreading disinformation, false news, unsubstantiated rumours, superstitions and fanatical ideologies. People became enclosed in their own echo-chamber bubbles where all they heard were their own views amplified and reinforced by others like themselves. What was intended to bring universal enlightenment only brought confusion and darkness instead. If a cunning evil genius scientist of comic-book genre had wanted to confound mankind, he could not have invented a more potent means of doing so.8
The assault on the mind, and especially the mind of the young, carried out by means of the internet, is complemented by the assault on the brain carried out by means of brain implants. Much of this work is still in the experimental stage, but the direction in which it is heading is already clearly discernible. It is designed to produce a human-machine coupling, in which the human brain will be integrated into a larger cybernetic system in which it is only one component linked to artificial intelligence and cybernetic systems. There is already talk of such entities as the future evolution of humanity in the form of trans humans or cyborgs. All this is done under the guise of helping real humans repair brain damage or cure diseases such as Alzheimerâs, schizophrenia,
Partly as a result of all such developments, a new kind of cultural barbarism is now sweeping through mankind. It is having a pernicious effect on children and the young in general and leading to their stupefaction and ever-growing illiteracy. Of course, it is only the last in a long line of technologies that have been conducive of such effects. This is evident in the fact that as ever greater numbers attend schools, colleges and universities for ever-longer periods their capacity to read is continually decreasing. Students now graduate from high schools who cannot read at all. Many of those who graduate from colleges and universities have never read a book from cover to cover. Those who have read a book have done so with less attention or comprehension than their parents at a similar age and far less than their grandparents if they attended college or university. In some schools of music or conservatoriums students of composition can now graduate without being able to read musical notation. Even university professors now tend to read less. They mostly read articles and not books. A professor of philosophy at a leading university in America boasts that he has never read a book on philosophy; reading articles in the current journals is all he needs in order to do his kind of philosophizing.
It is now undeniable that cultural barbarism of this type is quite compatible with advanced science and technology. That was the point of Aldous Huxleyâs dystopian novel Brave New World, published nearly ninety years ago. Much of what Huxley predicted and projected into a distant future has already come to pass. This has not only happened in the material domain of genetic engineering and high-speed transportation, but also in the cultural sphere. To take but a single sentence from the novel that recounts historically how the condition of the brave new world was reached:
Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had been destroyed during the Nine Yearsâ War); by the suppression of books published before AF150.10
One can now read a sentence like this not as a futuristic prediction of what might happen, but as an actual account of what is happening or has already happened; not just during Chairman Maoâs Cultural Revolution, but in our
How close we have in fact come to Huxleyâs world is depicted in a much more recent book by Jean Chesneaux entitled appropriately Brave Modern World. This is the new world of what he calls âhomo mundiales modernusâ which he characterizes as a âmutant speciesâ of mankind.11 The more science and technology develops, the more such mutations will occur. Through genetic engineering we are now capable of producing new species such as Huxley could not have imagined in his time. We now have crude instruments for controlling something of what goes on in a personâs brain; and, as we have seen, there is on-going research to make such controls ever more comprehensive and refined in the near future. But this is by no means the limit of where such research is heading, for somewhere on the distant horizon there is the possibility of completely superseding humans with intelligent machines. There are some brave new world scientists who welcome this prospect. Thus, the issue as it is even now shaping itself is not just a matter of the end of civilization but the end of humanity itself.
Not all welcome the new knowledge with the same Panglossian optimism. Some, such as the molecular biologist Gunther Stent and the science journalist John Horgan no longer see it as making any fundamental contribution to the science we already possess. Horganâs subtitle to his book on science is âThe twilight of the scientific ageâ. The main title is The End of Science.12 By that term Horgan does not mean the end of scientific research; on the contrary, he notes that scientific work goes on prolifically, but he believes we can no longer expect any of it to result in fundamental discoveries. According to Horgan, science has come to an end in the sense that no further Kuhnian style paradigm revolutions can be expected.
Horgan bases his views on the ideas put forward by Gunther Stent more than forty years ago. Stent believes that all the basic laws are already known and all the fundamental discoveries in the key sciences of physics, chemistry and biology that can be made have already been made.13 All that remains to be done is for these to be applied to new phenomena. He likens science to geography where previous generations of explorers discovered and explored all the key
Horgan adds to the work of Stent and others by examining what is taking place on the so-called frontiers of science, that is, in regions where one would expect startling new discoveries to be made. This is especially so at the two outer limits of the exceedingly small and the exceedingly large: namely, in sub-atomic elementary physics probing the basic constituents of matter and in astrophysics and cosmology studying the origin of the universe. These two fields of physics have unified in that they have shown that what ensued in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang is not unlike what takes place in high-energy atom smashes. But, as Horgan notes, the physicists admit that there are limits to the energies that can be harnessed in such experimental work, and therefore limits to the extent to which theories in both these fields can be tested. The most recherché of these theories are no longer experimentally falsifiable, they can only be judged according to mathematical criteria of consistency and simplicity. Horgan maintains that this means that such theories, such as superstring theory, are no longer science in the old sense; it is what he calls âironic scienceâ, using a term of literary criticism. One need not agree with Horganâs ideas or take them at face value to see that there is a point to his and Stentâs views of the problems of science. We have in fact considered them critically in two previous books The Ends of Science (1987) and Quintessence of Dust (2020). What we established in these works is that science as it is now practised is no longer the same kind of activity that it was during the previous era, approximately from Newton to Einstein and a little beyond. However, in this book we are not concerned with the current state of science itself â this is the subject of a separate book entitled Art and Science: A Parallel History â but rather with the effects it is having on culture. During the previous age of European civilization, science had an enlightening effect on culture: it brought about a fundamental change in our world view, away from traditional religion and a closed universe to an open universe governed by natural laws, which lent itself to disenchantment and secularization. The whole trend of the epochal movement called the Enlightenment was driven by the progress of science. All those who believed in it saw science as the manifest proof of Progress in
We have learned to our cost over the past century where such beliefs can lead and what damage can be wrought by social and political movements inspired and enthused by such rationalistic ideals. We can no longer view science as inherently beneficial for culture. It can bring about social changes, especially when coupled with technology, but these need not be conducive to enlightenment. It could have the opposite effect, as we have just witnessed in relation to computers, the internet and social media. Of course, we have no idea how this will turn out in the long run, but we cannot afford to be sanguine about it. Science and technology can be opposed to civilization, and any talk of a technological civilization is little short of an oxymoron.
Nevertheless, we must now recognize that humanity in its present state cannot do without science and technology. Without it, the earth could not support eight billion inhabitants or even half that number. There are just too many people to be fed, clothed, housed and all else that human beings now require. We cannot return to a primitive life-style or become peasants once again. We must rely on science and technology; it has become our destiny. But it always carried its hidden dangers; it is always knowledge mixed with guilt. When Bacon declared in all innocence at the very start of this quest that it aimed at âeffecting all things possibleâ he could not have foreseen what it would lead to in its end. For once we discover that something is possible, that it can be done, then the urge to do it becomes all but irresistible. This is what the physicists felt when they built the A-bomb; the problem, as Oppenheimer declared, was just âtoo sweetâ to be resisted. Once the A-bomb was proved to work, it was impossible for them not to go on to the H-bomb; and so, they brought us closer and closer to Armageddon. After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
Such knowledge cannot be forgiven because it cannot be forgotten or unlearned, it is here to stay for all time. It has become an unalterable fate for humanity, to be endured as best we can. Science and technology give rise to many such problems that do not admit of any final solution, but require constant maintenance and management to be kept in check. The unforeseen consequences of our present science and technology will continue to plague future generations long after our time. They will need to exercise external vigilance and remedial action. To prevent such problems proliferating and spreading they will need to invoke moral laws that are stronger than the laws of technical progress.
Such problems will remain part of the human condition for the foreseeable future. This is the reason why we cannot speak of any cultural recovery
Civilization can only emerge out of cultural renewal, but science and technology will not bring that about. Whether such a thing will ever come again in the future, we have no way of knowing. All speculation about it is mere guess work. What we do know, for we see it all about us, is that civilization is now severely damaged and might no longer recover. The worst destruction occurred during the twentieth century that âtime of troublesâ in Europe, China and many other parts of the world. Those parts which escaped the suicidal wars and revolutions of last century, such as America, have succumbed to rampant capitalism by opening up everything to market greed, preserving little interest in safeguarding culture or tradition or even the raising and educating of children. In these respects, the affluent life-style can be just as damaging as poverty; to have too much can corrupt just as having too little can embitter. Neither profligate wastefulness nor ressentiment and envy is a prescription for a good society; where both are present together, we can be sure of more âtimes of troubleâ ahead.
Still, in our desire to counter the Panglosses we must be careful not to take the diametrically opposite point of view and exaggerate the dark side of our time. Some authors are already inclined to do so, as, for example, James Bridle who speaks of a ânew dark ageâ and writes of it as follows: âThis is a deeply dark time, in which the structures we have built to expand the sphere of our communications and discourses are being used against us â all of us â in a systematic way.â15 Bridle does not seem to have taken account of the fact that if this were true he could not be writing those words; it would be far too difficult for anyone to express such thoughts. In fact, we are not in a dark age, only in the twilight moving towards it, with no idea of whether or how it might be averted.
Twilight is our ruling metaphor; despite the fact that it has come down to us with a long and far from reputable past. It figures in Wagnerâs Götterdämmerung, Twilight of the Gods, and in Nietzscheâs counter-blast against Wagner, Götterdämmerung, Twilight of the Idols. The former conveys in
Twilight can be a wonderful and enchanted time for children, when shadows lengthen as the light dims and everything familiar takes on the aura of mystery and magic in a still and hushed atmosphere. There are many such grown up children at present who love to play with their scientific or academic toys, discovering a neat trick they can play on nature or inventing a new game they can play with each other, and they think themselves ever so clever and good. Nietzsche called such people âthe last menâ. ââWe have discovered happinessâ, say the last men and they blink.â17 While they carry on with their games and diversions twilight darkens and night is about to fall, and in the night, as Hegel said, all cats are black, there is nothing to be discerned any more.
But as yet, it is only twilight not yet night. The âpolar night of icy hardness and darknessâ that Weber predicted a century ago did come about, but only at certain times and in certain places; it did not become general and it has now passed.18 Had it persisted for much longer these words could never have been written. The fact that they are being written and read means that we are neither in the best of times nor in the worst of times, for who would write such things in good times; or alternatively, as Edgar puts it in King Lear: âThe worst is not, as long as we can say âthis is the worstâ.â We cannot say âthis is the worstâ for worse is still to come, unless we can muster our strength and moral will to resist it.
But before we can even resolve to do anything we must first understand the nature of the difficulties. We are beset by problems, few of which have easy
It was in this spirit of an on-going collective endeavour for the whole of mankind that in an earlier work we proposed the idea of a movement for cultural conservation to parallel that for natural conservation.19 By this we meant something more than the already existing organization for preserving historic heritage, such as the sites, homes and heirlooms of past generations. This is obviously essential, but it is not enough. It does not serve all that much to conserve old buildings when what went on within them has vanished; the structures might remain but their spirit has gone.
This is particularly true of our old universities where the buildings remain intact but the sense of being in a university in the old way has disappeared and given way to a frenetic rush for research funds so that ever more papers can be published. What used to be beacons of enlightenment have become more like degree factories. Those who graduate from them can no longer refer to their alma mater, for there is little soul left in what is taught there. This, too, is a problem that has no solution for it leads to an unending battle to preserve as much as can still be saved of the old university culture and fend off the forces tending to destroy it. It is a struggle that must be waged with different means and following various strategies in the various academic systems of the world. It is not something for which one can offer prescriptions that will hold for all cases and conditions. Analogously, all efforts to conserve culture will have to be adjusted to local conditions. There are no general principles valid for all situations.
This still leaves the question unanswered of what is the point of conserving old cultures and maintaining what is still left of civilization, when all the main currents of contemporary society run against this? There were many in the past, such as the Futurist artists, who held that we should make a clean sweep
At present we have no grounds to entertain such hopes. Nor can we allow ourselves the prophetic daring of the Nietzsche who dreamt of the Superman and confidently expected something much better to sprout on the ruins of the West. Many of his followers, such as Heidegger and others, looked to Hitler as the leader of genius who would initiate the dawn of a new kind of Being. They went from twilight to dawn and forgot about the intervening night. And it is night at its deepest and blackest that in fact ensued, and what followed instead of dawn was just the same twilight grown even darker. Europe rebuilt its ruined cities and recovered economically to new unparalleled heights of prosperity, but its culture was fatally wounded, if not killed outright.
After the initial calamity of the First World War, Weber refused to engage in any prophetic prognostications about the future. Politics he declared was the slow boring through of hard boards; it must be undertaken with resilience and resolve, and not by looking for charismatic leaders to provide salvation. We would do well to follow his advice now. We must persevere as best we can and maintain what of undeniable value we still possess, rather than indulge in destruction in the hope of a better future. Radicals, who still have a hankering for revolution despite the tragic disasters of the past, will no doubt castigate this stance as another form of conservatism. And there is some truth in that as far as culture is concerned, for conservation and conservatism come together in this respect. But this does not mean that one needs to follow conservative policies in politics or economics.
Eliot was a conservative in a much stronger sense for he declared himself an Anglican in religion, a royalist in politics and a classicist in art. One need not follow him in these respects. Nevertheless, what he has to say about culture and its conservation in prose works such as his Notes Towards a Definition of Culture should still be read for it has a great deal to teach us.20 And of course, there is his great poetry from which we can draw inspiration. It is in the spirit
T.S. Eliot, âGerontionâ, in Collected Poems 1909â1962 (London: Faber and Faber), 1963, 39â41.
Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality, op. cit, 64.
Ibid, 72.
Ibid, 70.
Ibid, 71.
Quoted by Peter Hannam in The Age (Melbourne) 2 November 2019 from an article in Nature.
See Samuel Arbesman, op. cit, 162.
See Roger McNamee, Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe (London: Harper Collins, 2019).
See Annie Jacobsen, The Pentagonâs Brain: The Uncensored History of DARPA, Americaâs Top Secret Military Research Agency (New York: Little Brown, 2015).
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Harmondsworth UK: Penguin 1955), 50.
Jean Chesneaux, Brave Modern World: Prospects for Survival (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 33.
John Horgan, The End of Science: The Twilight of the Scientific Age (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
Gunther S. Stent, Paradoxes of Progress (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1978).
Harry Redner, Beyond Civilization, op. cit.
James Bridle, A New Dark Age, op. cit, 231.
See Harry Redner, The Tragedy of European Civilization, op. cit, Part 2, âUntergangsters of History and Philosophyâ.
Fredrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Anon. (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1950), 9.
Max Weber, âPolitics as a Vocationâ, op, cit, 128.
Harry Redner, Conserving Cultures: Technology, Globalization and the Future of Local Cultures (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
T.S. Eliot, âNotes Towards a Definition of Cultureâ in John Hayward (ed.), T.S. Eliot: Selected Prose. (Harmondsworth UK: Penguin/Peregrine, 1963), 231â235.