Give me options or give me death! Monsieur Patrick Henry did not make that claim. He said “Give me liberty or give me death”. He was claiming an entitlement that people should be free to choose to live their lives as they please, with the usual proviso that they do not wrong others. Implicit in his majestic rhetorical claim is the premise that people are best suited to judge for themselves what is good for them; and behind that premise was a very rich view about objective right and wrong.
Here is my view in a nutshell: If we define human progress in terms of creating new choices, then human progress is proceeding exponentially. If, on the other hand, we define human progress in terms of exercising wisdom, it is arguable that human progress is regressing, in that with more knowledge than ever before our behavior is increasingly indefensible.
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Needless to say, modernity differs sharply from the Mr. Henry’s era. For one the thing, the very idea of right and wrong has fallen upon hard times. Indeed, notwithstanding all the talk about equality regarding matters of sex and race and sexual orientation and whatever, people still seem to think that right and wrong does not amount to much more than mere opinion. So while a great many of us like the idea of equality between the sex and the races, many of these very same people are loathed to say that requiring women to wear a burka is really wrong or that we can really say Nazi ideology is wrong. For it is all about feelings; and the unvarnished truth is that those folks feel differently about such matters than we do. And of course: Who is to say that their feelings are any less legitimate than ours?
And if the above difference were not enough, there is the insight advanced by Ray Kurzweil, in his extraordinary book The Singularity is Near, in which he puts forth the thesis that technology will soon afford us options that have the effect of redefining humanity.
I think that Kurzweil is absolutely right. And that for me is the problem.
It is absolutely wonderful to have choices. But there is a proviso that lurks in the background to which no one is paying sufficient attention, namely that more often than not most of choose wisely. Over time, a vast plethora of choices in the absence of wisdom on the part of most people making those choices will result in something akin to Armageddon on earth.
Now, when one extracts from recent human behavior over the last 20 years, there is a very frightening assessment that suggests itself, which is that in general human beings are not prone to making wise choices.
If we were prone to making wise choices, then the possibilities of which Kurzweil speaks would truly be a blessing, precisely because we would have good reason to believe, given our past performance in making choices, that with the options envisioned by Kurzweil we would at least veer towards choosing wisely.
But human beings have shown themselves to be susceptible to the most ridiculous fads and to a lack self-control even in the face of obvious harm to their very physical well-being. Massive credit card debt shows a lack of wisdom. The stampedes and fights over toys during the Christmas season reveal an immaturity on the part of adults that is utterly painful. The silliness of camping out for days in order to be one of the first to own a new gadget is quite mind-boggling. Calling something an addiction has almost become a fad. And I shall say nothing at all about that over which we have the most control, namely that which we put into our bodies. Then there is the fact that ethnic identity has been pushed so far that in some case it has become an impediment to justice itself.
Does anyone think for a moment that the black Whoopi Goldberg would have defended a white Michael Vick engaged in dog fighting? Does anyone think for a moment that the blacks of Raleigh would have been so venemous towards a black Duke University lacrosse player accused of rape by a black woman of obviously questionable character? And imagine whites calling for the swift conviction of a black lacrosse player in college accused of rape by a white woman with a quite tarnished reputation.
As I said at the outset: If we define human progress in terms of creating new choices, then human progress is proceeding exponentially. If, on the other hand, we define human progress in terms of exercising wisdom, it is arguable that human progress is regressing, in that with more knowledge than ever before our behavior is increasingly indefensible.
The problem, obviously, is that an exponential increase in choices coupled with an increasing lack of wisdom is an absolute disaster.
Interestingly, what I am referring to as wisdom is what my parents would have referred as none other than commonsense. An abundance of choices on the part of those who fail to exercise commonsense even when it comes to the most to most basic choices is a recipe for an enormous crisis in the human condition.
I have drawn attention to two very distinct vectors: options, on the one hand; wisdom, on the other. It is typically supposed, and rightly so, that options in the hands of those who are evil will result in a catastrophy. And I will concede for the sake of argument that in some sense there is less evil in the world.
The problem, alas, is that options in the hands of those rather lacking in wisdom will also result in a catastrophy. And the very considerations that allow me to entertain the hypothesis that there is less evil in the world also force me to say that wisdom, even on the part of the well-meaning, is very much in short supply.
Humans can, of course, change the options that humanity might encounter. The issue, though, is whether they have the will to do so. And the evidence thus far is woefully discouraging. There are, to be sure, beacons of wisdom here and there. Unfortunately, that is not enough to sustain the light of wisdom that humanity needs.
I very much hope that I am wrong. For if, in the end, all that we are doing is choosing between which catastrophy will engulf humanity, then we are, in effect, left with no real choice at all.
