Harvard Biologist E.O. Wilson famously said that, “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.” But, like the top of a bookcase that hasn’t been dusted in years, time and modernity have replaced a formerly fresh insight with a thick layer of superficial cliche. Sadly reserved to a role of banality, I think it is now more than ever that we need to pull out our dustpans and seriously re-visit what it means to be starving for wisdom.
There has arguably never been a time in human history filled with greater access to information. The best books ever written are available for free as PDF’s online, college courses at Harvard and MIT are readily available for those outside their pristine campus walls, and we have access to a search engine capable of solving any mystery in mere seconds. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a single moment that we spend disconnected from some sort of stream of communication, in spite of our best efforts to do so.
Our phones, equipped with social media applications, search engines, e-mail, and text messages is just the beginning. Podcast apps, kindle, and audible make it so that even pedestrian things like commuting to work, or washing the dishes can be made to transport us from the banality of our car, or kitchen, into the profundity of a college classroom. All of this before I have even mentioned the large, blue-light emitting screens that most humans have firmly placed in every conceivable room in their homes: televisions, laptops, desktops, the like.
I am not necessarily discounting the ability of any and all of these technological advances to provide us with information. Being able to consume relevant information while we are engaged in doing other, more pedestrian, things is a remarkable time saver. But, what I am criticizing is the assumption that information is a necessary prerequisite to understanding.
It is probably true that we know more about the world today than we ever have. And, there is an argument to be made that this is a good thing. But, it doesn’t necessarily hold true that we have to know everything there is to know about something in order to understand it. In fact, too many facts and too much information is often better served as an obstacle to our understanding than a passage. It seems that our present condition in the modern world is one where we are inundated with information to the detriment of our understanding. And, I think this is what E.O. Wilson was getting at.
The reason we find ourselves in this situation is that the growth of mediums with which we can transfer information, the very media previously mentioned, has led to a growth in the race to package intellectual positions.
Technological developments and the growth of information distribution has made it possible for not only more people to consume information, but also produce it. This has created a situation where both the intensity and volume at which content creators need to produce information has increased exponentially. In order to have your information read, listened to, or watched, it needs to be frequent and it needs to be fast. In order to meet this demand, content creators have reduced the complexity of their thesis and arguments to form convenient packages that are easily consumed by the masses.
I am not necessarily saying that the quality of the information has dropped, although I would argue that it has. It took Yuval Noah Harari 20 years to write Sapiens and it was accordingly one of the best books in the last 20 years. It also took him 18 months to write Homo Deus, which was rather forgetful. I don’t even want to talk about 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
Beyond the actual quality of the information being created, I would argue that the consequences have appeared more on the side of the consumer. You see, to truly understand something means to grapple with it, to ask questions of it, to compare it to other authors, books, and podcasts on a similar subject. In other words, understanding necessitates thinking. But, it is my contention that the packaging of intellectual positions, like a can of Coca-Cola or the new iPhone, has led to a world designed to make thinking unnecessary.
We are granted the illusion and the appearance that we are thinking, or being analytical, when in reality we are passively consuming more information at greater speed, at greater frequency, but with less understanding, with less assimilation.
Podcast listeners, Blog readers, and Book buyers are being presented with an over-simplified thesis, on a complex topic, strategically whittled down to a digestible package of intelligent rhetoric, convenient data and statistics — all designed to be read and consumed with as little effort and difficulty as possible.
Erudite Philosopher Nassim Taleb, in his book Anti-fragile, points out the benefits of difficulty, in aiding comprehension and attention. The perfect example is the modern vehicle. When you step in to a 2019 Audi Q5, for example, your posterior chain is met by the most comfortable, luxurious leather seat known to man kind. Your eyes are confronted with a dashboard akin to a fighter jet cock-pit. This isn’t your father’s Ford Torino. As you hit the road you are comforted by the technological advancements that have learned to accelerate, decelerate, and turn your vehicle without you having to do much beyond barely staying conscious. We aren’t far from a future where this process is completely automated.
We are all familiar with the comfort offered by the modern vehicle. We no longer have to maneuver manual transmissions, search for the speed limit, or even pay attention to exits and destination signs thanks to the comfort of built-in GPS units. Surprisingly, for all of the modern advancements in car technology and comfort, we haven’t made things much safer for ourselves. Car accident rates have increased and car accident deaths have been stable for around 15 years, mostly thanks to advancements in the structure of the cars themselves.
The explanation that Nassim Taleb offers is a perceptive one. The increase in comfort that car manufacturers and technologists have created for us has also decreased our attention. Therefore, more drivers pay less attention to what they are actually doing (driving) and place more and more trust in the vehicles alone, rather than their own skills, in taking them to where they need to go.
It is my contention that this is exactly what modern media has done to information. It used to be the case that when you read something, or listened to something, that you had to think about what it meant. You had to analyze and synopticize it. What is this person saying? What are their main arguments? Are those true? If they are true, then what is the significance of that for me, what I believe, and humanity as a whole? We don’t ask ourselves those questions anymore because we consume our information in a way where we don’t have to. Besides, we don’t have time — we have another podcast to listen to and another article to read.
It used to be the case that we had to make up our mind about something. But, the advent of modern mediums has been so successful at packaging intellectual positions into digestible vitamins that they have essentially “made up our minds” for us.
We don’t make up our minds at all. Instead, we are presented a pre-packaged intellectual position that the medium we consume it over conveniently places into our minds for us; a process not too dissimilar from placing a CD into a CD player. Then, also not too dissimilar from a CD player, when in the appropriate situations, we are conditioned to push a button and “play back” the opinion that was burned on the CD.
To complete the feedback loop, whenever we ‘play the songs’ on our CD players, we are rewarded by those that have the same CD. We regurgitate the opinions and information we consume to the group of people that have also consumed it and receive our reward for having successfully consumed and spit back what we have ‘learned’. This process is at the bottom of our ideologically possessed and polarized political landscape. We are educating, organizing, and rewarding ourselves for simply putting a CD in a CD player and pressing play.
We have been told that we must educate ourselves. We must listen to podcasts, read blogs and books, and follow the right people assuming the whole time that simply showing up to the game means you know how to play. The image of the modern man is one sitting in his Audi Q5, listening to his favorite podcast while commuting to work, preparing himself to “play back” what he hears to his co-workers, pleasantly anticipating his social reward for having performed acceptably by those that agree with him — all without ever having had to think.
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