The cosmos started with a very big bang. But the human species with a very small whimper. We have evolved over trackless trails of time so very slowly. Today's thinkers estimate the accumulated knowledge of humanity did not technically double until about 1800. Which means millions of years and billions of people taking that long.
But then...!
Humanity's social and scientific knowledge began to explode. It doubled again by 1900. Then by 1950. Again by 1980. Do the math -- we're on a roaring tiger-tail ride with another 100,000 books and documents being released worldwide every hour of every day.
Far too much to read, to learn, to use. The best we might do perhaps is consider how this whirring force of human knowledge exists in three parts: The knowledge + the recipients + the method:
* Whereas much knowledge was once philosophically driven, today it is scientifically driven. Of all the scientists who ever lived, 90% of them live today. Work today. Strive today. It is an age of inexorable scientific advance from neuro-biologists to psychologists to cosmologists. If the ancients honored many gods and medievalists one god, modernists honor how their elite scientists can decipher us in terms of our libidos, brain lobes and genetic codes
* The recipients of all this knowledge can in part be distinguished by how they accept it. Fundamentalists -- from Bible Belt Christians to Jihadist Muslims -- reject what they see as the reductionism of modern science [reducing a God-created species from its spiritual whole into a network of its physiological parts]. Existentialists -- from post-WWII skeptics to post-modern new agers -- find no God in the cosmos, only each of us working our valiant but dangerous way through it. Which means half the world can't dialog with the other half
* The method by which all this knowledge boils and bubbles into humanity's consciousness is today's multi-sensory, 24/7 barrage of recipient experiences. From our libraries, networks, big screens, and everywhere-I-go hand held screens. No time for meditating monks on mountaintops, this new age has plopped humanity right smack in the middle of a Fourth of July flurry of flashing theories and studies and data which we may not quite understand, but gosh it's stunning isn't it
Too late to figure out how and why we got here. For better or worse, we're here. Of course, if all this knowledge were actually that great, then why can't we figure out the common cold? And why do we still refuse to save a few bucks for these incredible post-Christmas-sales?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment