For Your Information Age

I can see how data and information can be seen as something that can cause the collapse of civilization, lest we forget what happened in Eden, the fruit that was consumed. But also, we've always had to sieve through the information we've been given, and now we have to be much more adept at doing so than ever before. I would assert that the problem is not that society is becoming lazy in their thinking. We're always looking for loopholes to not have to physically work as hard (a problem in itself, as Gandhi pointed out), but in the looking we're exercising the mind. (And, as it happens, a mind at rest is working just as hard, if not harder, than a mind at work because it has to compensate for the inactivity.) So, the problem is not in too much information. The problem is that we have to sift faster than we can manage.

If there is to be Renaissance, then it may be in allowing data to be data, for what it's worth and in recognizing that, like tools, data can be helpful but there should always be a respect for the rudiments - the things that are foundational to everything else: loving, thinking, believing, creating, empathizing, growing gardens, etc.

Civilization cannot end until there is an overwhelming absence of the rudiments. And if only one person recognizes the value in the rudiments, another cannot help but reciprocate - it's human nature.

I still believe that the world is good - data or no, materialism and greed included - because we are horrified by the bad things, and most of us still work at caring for each other, even in the West.

Please, activist friends, remember that people are good.