Silicon Insider: The End of the Modern Age
May 7 -- Three experiences on a single day recently left me wondering if this is the end of civilization … or its renewal.
The first was a daily Web site surf that brought me to an essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education by the eminent historian John Lukacs, titled "It's the End of the Modern Age."
The gist is that "Western" civilization, that way of organizing society around individualism, market capitalism, democracy and the Scientific Method, which began in southern Europe, then spread to England, then the United States and then the world, is now in irremediable decline.
The liberal humanism Zeitgeist, born in the Renaissance, codified by the Declaration of Independence, and that doubled human lifespans and put a man on the moon, is now at the end of its cycle.
I read the essay with more than a little skepticism. For one thing, every generation is convinced that it has been chosen, among all the others, for a unique fate. People have been talking about the end of civilization for a long time, and usually it's aging historians rationalizing their own approaching demises.
Besides, after getting a close-up look at the Muslim "street" on TV the last few months — and especially after the triumph of American technology in Afghanistan and the burst of patriotism here at home — it is hard to imagine a viable replacement for Bacon, Locke and Edison.
A Second-Rate Society After All?
Yet I found myself unable to deny Lukacs' core message. As a matter of fact, I have felt like I was born into a culture in decline — a world of self-referential, mannerist and second-rate literature, architecture, music and art, a collapse of civic duty, moral relativism, degeneracy, rampant nihilism and a celebration of the ugly and debased.
I remember my late father, the most forward-looking man I've ever known, saying to me not long before he died, "Don't let 'em kid you, Mike. It really was better 50 years ago."
Pretty depressing stuff indeed. And nicely tuned to the general malaise we've all been feeling out here in Silicon Valley ever since the stock market crash.
When people you know — folks who were the most optimistic technologists and entrepreneurs just two years ago — are now talking about leaving tech forever and going into selling real estate, it's not hard to believe the whole world is going to hell.
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