Arda Sever
@Saccha
15 okur puanı
Ekim 2019 tarihinde katıldı
History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking mass.
Reklam
New technologies kill old gods and give birth to new gods. That's why agricultural deities were different from hunter-gatherer spirits, why factory hands fantasized about different paradises than peasants and why the revolutionary technologies of the twenty-first century are far more likely to spawn unprecedented religious movements than to revive medieval creeds. Islamic fundamentalists may repeat the mantra that 'Islam is the answer', but religions that lose touch with the technological realities of the day forfeit their ability even to understand the questions being asked. What will happen to the job market once artificial intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks? What will be the political impact of a massive new class of a useless people? What will happen to relationships, families and pension funds when nanotechnology and regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty? What will happen to human society when biotechnology enables us to have designer babies, and to open unprecedented gaps between rich and poor?
You will not find the answers to any of these questions in the Qur'an or sharia law, nor in the Bible or in the Confucian Analects, because nobody in the medieval Middle East or in ancient Chine knew much about computers, genetics or nanotechnology. Radical Islam may promise an anchor of certainty in a world of technological and economic storms - but in order to navigate a storm you need a map and a rudder than just an anchor. Hence radical Islam may appeal to people born and raised in its fold, but it has precious little to offer unemployed Spanish youths or anxious Chinese billionaires.
More than a century after Nietzsche pronounce Him dead, God seems to be making a comeback. But this is a mirage. God is dead - it's just taking a while to get rid of the body. Radical Islam poses no serious threat to the liberal package, because for all their fervour the zealots don't really understand the world of the twenty first century, and have nothing relevant to say about the novel dangers and opportunities that new technologies are generating all over us.
In Italy for thirty years under the Borigas they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
If the experience of other voters is alien to me, and if I believe they don't understand my feelings and don't care about my vital interests, then even if I am outvoted by a hundred to one I have absolutely no reason to accept the verdict. Democratic elections usually work only within populations that have some prior common bond, such as shared religious beliefs or national myths. They are a method to settle disagreements among people who already agree on the basics.
Reklam