Friday, May 05, 2006
Radical Egalitarianism – Is this a good thing???
I am user of Wikipedia and the internet. But, I am beginning to wonder if all this access to data is a good thing or not…
I am currently listening (again, kudos to http://www.audible.com, the greatest thing since the wheel) to the book, The World is Flat. It’s a fascinating thesis, but his flatteners make me wonder. Specifically, Friedman’s writing on Google and Wikipedia. Now, let me put my biases up front – I am a near PhD in the theology and have become used to the idea of using experts instead of any Jane, Dick, or Hamid. Friedman quotes the founders of both companies, and how excited they are about going direct to users for information, and how now information has been leveled so everyone has access to the same information and can make their own decisions.
In general this is a good thing. More information allows for people to make good decisions. But, having read Wikipedia, at times I have been a bit concerned about the statements found there. Further, should one Google say, Jesus, and the first link that came up (after the adds) was, http://www.jesusdressup.com/ Yep, you read that right. Number six was http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/
My point being that not everyone is an expert. In fact most people aren’t. Now, we still believe in experts (when someone gets cancer, they don’t go and Google a home remedy), but on so many things we think that we can just go and find the answer, and what we find really will be the answer.
Much of the controversy surrounding The Da Vinci Code, is related to this proposition. Dan Brown is not a historian, not a theologian, and not an archeologist. Yet, by the simple act of putting on the first page, “This book is true,” changes the whole approach to the book. It’s a work of fiction written by a writer (granted a very prosperous one). Even basic historical work shows that the only things true in the book is that there is a city called Paris and there is a museum called the Louvre. After that…well, lets be clear. Its fiction. But Brown is treated as a reliable source.
Even before Brown and his easy to read page-turner, I was worried about the concept of radical egalitarianism. Lets be clear, I am a biblical egalitarian (believing in the essential equality of males and females), but I do respect people who know more than me. Sure, in a classroom or other setting, the teacher does learn from the students, but if I am paying money or taking the time to come hear someone, I expect them to know more than I do.
The first time this issue really coalesced for me was when I read Morris Berman’s book, The Twilight of American Culture, in 2000. It’s a great book, and in it he takes on the notion that we are all equally learners from each other. He sees this as destroying American culture, as we lose any notion of greatest and mastery. While we still like to buy high quality products, we seem to treat ideas as if they don’t really matter. But its ideas that drive the world, and ideas, even more than things (like, say bombs) kill people. Communism…nice idea but it didn’t work and it killed and enslaved millions. The Atkins Diet…worked for some people but was probably more dangerous than helpful. You get the idea. The ideas that we assimilate from others change us, helping us to become who we are. Some might say Christianity is the most dangerous idea in the past two millennia. Okay, that is fair, but lets debate it, discuss its positive and negative, and work to reform the idea.
But in radical egalitarianism we don’t debate and we don’t reform. People are free to pick often suspect sources and embrace and idea, good or bad. Right now the popular idea is that oil companies are gouging us, and that they should be forced to reduce their prices. Okay, we do that (and trust me, I have no love for “Big Oil”) and we will cheap gas that it sold out. But people have readily embraced that idea. In fact, as a great article was published 05.03.06 at the L.A. Times, pointing out that the people really profiting from this oil price surge are the world’s dictators - http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot3may03,1,1222567.column?coll=la-util-op-ed&ctrack=1&cset=true
Look, I don’t want to go back to a world where only the Church or some other source tells us what is real and false. But we have to train people on how to sift data, what is good and trustworthy (using sound historiography and the like), and what is complete bilge. Some want to lay the blame for this at the feet of postmodernism, and its basic denial of truth (a cheap shot). But postmodernism doesn’t tell people to believe in anything, but rather to look and see the biases in any information, and keep those in mind as you try and develop a bigger and rounder understanding of things.
No, I think the real issue is that we have just gotten lazy. It is a lot easier to just believe Dan Brown that Jesus was married et al than do some basic research and discover that a) he has major issues with the church and Christianity and b) that the fact about Jesus that he says are lies are some of the best documented truths in world history – and not just from Christian sources.
More data is not good. More good data is good. More time thinking and processing facts is good. If in the end you decide to become a Communist Buddhist modern artists, great. At least you have spent the time, processed the data and came to what you think is the best choice. Wolfhart Pannenberg, the great (bias again) theologian said that we must make decisions based on the data, but always be open to new data that overturns our previous thinking. I think that is good advice…but it’s a lot harder than just turning to Google or Wikipedia for all of the answers to life’s quandaries.
