On Titan & Plato: How to Cope in 2005

So far, 2005 has thrown us as many if not more extremes as 2004, on personal, political, and global levels. I thought perhaps it was just me, but conversations with friends suggest it is a shared perception. Maybe it’s just age setting in: As we get older our perception of life and its meaning (or lack thereof) changes. But maybe world events do move in dramatic cycles. It does seem that every generation feels it is living at a decisive point in history. Certainly every generation has no lack of optimists, pessimists, millenialists, evangelists, activists, not to mention drama queens, mother hens, soapbox orators, and opportunistic visionaries. But if everything is so damn decisive, if so many of us share a feeling of large-scale imminent change, why does it also seem that humanity just keeps repeating its bathetic mistakes, wasting precious time and resources running in circles like a chicken with its head cut off?

Is it cynicism to give up on humanity’s ability to solve its problems? I have a growing number of friends who believe in the earth, but not in the future of humanity. If we manage to kill ourselves off, the earth will continue, most likely life will continue in some form (toxic nuclear & chemical waste notwithstanding). The fact that our advancing technological knowledge gives us the ability to wreak global havoc does make it statistically possible that we could obliterate our species altogether. On the other hand, we could just make our lives wretchedly hardscrabble (“bombed back to the stone age” is a term that has been bandied about since the first atomic devices were detonated), and the human cycle would start anew. Plenty of sci-fi books have explored that theme. I particularly liked “A Canticle For Leibowitz” the first time I read it, in that it deftly mixed science and religion. Both visions – humanity marching off a spiritual cliff into oblivion, or humanity cyclically sabotaging its own efforts to progress, like crabs in a basket – are pretty cynical, but maybe realistic.

Other friends and acquaintances have shared other visions:
Maybe the current chaos, largely the result of the role of the U.S. as Big Brother to the world, is a sign of a declining empire, Pax Americana on the wane. Sinophiles and sinophobes alike envision a near future where China is the dominant world power, in which the American agenda will at the least be subject to changes in the East.

Maybe philosophy and social planning is just what we do between wars. Since the Cold War was officially handed over to historians to debate, we have been tweaking the War On Drugs, the War On Terrorism, and of course The Culture War (which seems to be code for science vs. religion). The last two appear to be converging into a good ol’ Christian vs. Muslim slugfest which, if militants on all sides have their way, may just coalesce into the long-awaited World War III.

Maybe science in the service of capitalism will make an end-run around our genetic propensity for religious wars and self-destruction. The global pharmaceutical industry is working at breakneck speed to turn us into society of functional drug addicts. Every third ad on TV seems to be for a medication that corrects a physical or mental imbalance, and of course the more we poison our environment, the more imbalanced we become. It’s a cat-rat farm. But the longterm social plan might be to end war and social upheaval through global medication. I had an idea, but I’m much too lazy to actualize it, so I’ll just share it here: Take George Lucas’ film “THX-1138” and splice in real present-day ads for pharmaceuticals. I saw one today for a medication to treat “Adult ADD” that had a voice-over almost identical to the one in the Lucas filmâÂ?¦ You know, the recorded voice that starts when the futuristic zombified workers open their medicine cabinets and says: “Failure to take your medication constitutes a drug violationâÂ?¦”

Maybe the espoused ideal of global democracy is just a ruse. The founding fathers practically came to fisticuffs over the way the new nation should organize its wealth and resources. It may be an oversimplification to pit Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian democracy against each other, but the bottom line issue is whether individuals should decide how the wealth they create should be used, or whether a select group of educated visionary leaders should make those decisions. In other words, “Leave it to the experts.” This sort of makes sense, since idiots with money are a danger to themselves and others, but with very few exceptions it doesn’t seem like the “experts” are doing such a great job either.

Which leads to the title of this essay: The unspoken justification for experts (that is, leaders in various fields) having power is that they are leading us somewhere, they have a vision, they are making the lives of everyone better. But in reality this usually turns into a kind of Snake Oil Plato: Give us your money and we will realize an ideal society, except that only the crÃ?¨me de la crÃ?¨me will get to enjoy that ideal, the rest of you suckers will maybe get some of the trickle down, if you’re lucky. The crÃ?¨me de la crÃ?¨me drive the latest cars, have all the cool toys, drink designer water, etc. They live the ideal lifestyle, which we try to emulate, usually on credit. If this ideal could be had by everyone, we’d all drive Hummers and have personal trainers. But by then our global resources would have long ago been used up; hence, Snake Oil Plato.

But there are some exceptions. As I get older I believe in science more and more. Not in a religious sense (I think the Culture War paradigm is a red herring). Rather, I believe that in a world of snake oil salesmen, science is one of the few pursuits that consistently delivers. It doesn’t necessarily deliver solutions to social problems, or a better standard of living for everyone. Those things are elusive and fraught with “monkey’s paw” type contingencies (a wish come true often makes your life worse). But science delivers increased information. If we have to give most of the wealth we create over to the experts, I’d rather see it result in a probe landing on Titan than in a new titanium-bladed nose-hair trimmer. Both are scientific breakthroughs but, though the nose-hair trimmer seems more applicable to my daily needs, I would rather see pictures of the surface of Titan. They are pictures that may not solve any social problems, may not end any wars, may not even continue to exist if we manage to blow ourselves up. But they contain new information, and help me to step outside the fray for a moment.

Maybe we are at a decisive point in human history; maybe not. Maybe the sky is falling; maybe we just have our heads up our asses once again. Maybe it is pointless to hope for things to get better; maybe it is only hope which keeps us going. So many maybes that it gets harder and harder to believe in anything. But, as another friend said as we sat in a Mexican restaurant in South Austin eating way too many chips and salsa, “The more information you have, the less you need to believe. You just are.” Makes sense to me.