Annihilation from Within Fred Iklé (cool books to read .txt) 📖

political and social matrix? How can nation-states—indeed, how can the human race—survive scientific-technological advances that keep accelerating, untamed by religion and time-tested traditions and moving way beyond the control of governments? This question will have no easy answer. Nations now depend on perpetual economic growth, which thrives best if nourished with untrammeled technological progress. Perpetual growth of the national economy has many influential advocates, such as the business community, investors, and agencies that seek to reduce poverty. The options of elected officials to tame the dark side of technology are therefore severely limited, since almost any restriction imposed on technological “progress” will be attacked as being antigrowth.

Today’s apotheosis of economic growth is a relatively recent phenomenon.3 It began when Franklin D. Roosevelt energized U.S. and British officials to prepare postwar policies for promoting economic growth at home and abroad, a new philosophy heralded by FDR’s famous call for “freedom from want—everywhere in the world.” Prior to the 1930s’ Great Depression, many industrializing nations had enjoyed fairly steady growth for a long time without any specific pro-growth policies and without pro-growth lobbies. Yet today, being considered “progrowth” is essential for politicians seeking reelection and for economists seeking an academic career. Few scholars are willing to explore the merits and problems of what John Stuart Mill called the “stationary state”—an economic-demographic order in which human lives could continue being enriched and people would make cultural advances, although the world’s population and “physical capital” would have stabilized. Someone who has written creatively on the larger picture of growth and stability is Herman E. Daly; but economists who see merit in some such stability are not welcome in the economics departments of most universities.4 That leaves us intellectually ill-prepared to throttle the dark side of technology without stumbling into a prolonged economic depression.

To find our way through these times of trouble we will have to reject the siren songs of new ideologies that promise security for everyone, but at the price of accepting a totalitarian dictatorship. How can democratic nations rein in science and technology to work again as their servants, not as their destroyers? How can a people find the strength and conviction to turn around the flow of history?

In meeting this formidable challenge, an important source of strength can be the people’s common emotional bond with the past. In the United States, this bond is the extraordinary continuity of the American Constitution. No other global power has been built on such an enduring foundation, providing both a long-lasting political philosophy and extraordinarily stable legal basis for the nation. Certainly the Roman Empire changed its legal structure and political philosophy several times, as did the British Empire, and China had its dynastic changes as well as the more recent revolutionary transformations of its ideology. But the American Constitution is truly exceptional. While it has been amended many times and disputes about its interpretation enliven America’s political scene endlessly, let us note that no American party, no organization with any influence, none of America’s ethnic and racial groups oppose the Constitution. To preserve this most precious patrimony of our country, each generation must be reminded of the gift from the Founding Fathers. We all must maintain the emotional link to the time of the country’s creation, even as we also must look to the future—both its promising prospects and ominous threats.

Fortunately, the human mind can rise above the inexorable flow of time. As if lifted up by celestial wings, our emotions enable our thoughts to overcome the transitory nature of the current moment. We can revisit moods of erstwhile happiness or sorrow, and leap ahead in joyous expectation or with grim foreboding. These winged emotions revive the vanished past to provide an anchor for our present sentiments, and illuminate a future that is still out of reach. What binds people together in times of trouble are emotional links to stories of their past endeavors, their sacrifices and victories, their wellsprings of ethics and faith. What inspires people to accept sacrifice today to build a better tomorrow are the colors of hope and fear that illuminate the road ahead. Without these emotive anticipations and memories, societies would live compressed in the here and now. Perched on such a narrow foothold in the time dimension, people would lack the inspiration—indeed, would lack the will—to exert themselves in behalf of the future.

NOTES

1. Mankind’s Cultural Split

The epigraph lines at the beginning of this chapter from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust (Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! In meiner Brust, die eine will sich von der andern trennen; …) are followed by a passage suggesting that the “two souls” represent the struggle between the desire for earthly pleasures and a striving for higher values. Although this is not exactly my theme in the present chapter, the central theme of the Faust legend—as developed by Goethe, Christopher Marlowe, and other authors—is highly relevant to this book. Significantly, this legend gained popularity at the dawn of the scientific-industrial revolution. The legend speaks to man’s pursuit of ever more scientific knowledge that will bring ever more power over nature and with it more material pleasures, even at the risk of causing fatal damage to one’s traditional moral values—a gamble known as the Faustian bargain with the devil.

1.   Jon Turney’s Frankenstein’s Footsteps: Science, Genetics, and Popular Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) offers an engrossing account of the literary premonitions that preceded Mary Shelley’s book, and the sequel of science and science fiction since then. Turney notes that Mary Shelley “belonged to a society seeing the first real effects of industrialization, when whole landscapes marked by ‘dark satanic mills’ were becoming visible. And she was witness to the growing power of science” (19).

2.   A recent book on China’s short-lived naval triumph is Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). My quote above of Wen-yuan Qian is from his The Great Inertia: Scientific Stagnation in Traditional China (London: Croom