At the end of my last post I mentioned that I would create an appendix consisting of a set of notes I took during one of my several reads through the book Changing Visions. I didn’t date my notes but I imagine they are from the 2000s somewhere. Here are those notes in edited form for clarity. Present-day comments will be in italics.
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In looking over my notes it is clear that I had recently read the 1993 book by Neil Postman entitled Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Here’s what I wrote in my notes:
Postman points out that with the advent of certain technologies, such as the stethoscope, doctors moved away from paying attention to the subjective reality of patients, and toward focusing on the objective reality of patients as revealed by the increasing presence of measuring devices.
In my last post I talk about the rise of the science cultural cognitive map and how this ascension was centrally about getting to some form of objective reality as revealed by measuring devices. This is what Postman is getting at. Recall from my last post that Antonio Damasio puts forward the idea that cognitive maps are hybrids: part visceral (i.e., the body) and part conceptual (e.g., our images of the outside world). The rise of the science cultural cognitive map sent the message that the body side of Damasio’s hybrid equation could distort our images and impressions of the outside world. Science wished to give us some way of creating images and impressions of the outside world relatively free from the potential distortions brought about by emotions and “gut reactions.”
As The Authors of Changing Visions (hereafter The Authors) write, “Human cultures are represented in many physical objects [like the physical objects that the stethescope provides us]. These range from works of art, to books, clothing, cities, and instruments of technology [again, like the stethoscope]. A living culture, however, must also survive in the minds of the people who comprise it. In other words, the knowledge and cultural heritage that is encoded in physical objects such as art, books, and technology, does not compromise a living culture without the active participation of the subjective knowledge that is available only to the mind.”
As mentioned in my previous post, The Authors caution against privileging the objective reality delivered by science and its measuring instruments to the exclusion of the subjective reality delivered by bodily responses such as emotions and intuitions.
Postman suggests that there has been a four hundred year truce between the objective reality delivered by books, and the subjectivity of teachers that makes books a living culture. In essence, Postman is pointing out that there has been a strained but yet functioning collaboration between subjectivity and objectivity. What makes a college course “come alive” so-to-speak is the subjectivity that the teacher brings to the objective subject matter delivered by printed media such as books. However, sadly, over time, subjectivity’s ability to make objective reality “come alive” has been greatly eroded, especially with the advent of digital media and online learning environments.
I recently read an article that talked about how Bill Gates is on the interview circuit promoting his new memoir Source Code: My Beginnings. Mr. Gates is suggesting that most professions such as doctors and teachers will be replaced by AI or artificial intelligence. Mr. Gates argues that it is very expensive and time consuming to train a human to be a doctor or even a college professor. In contrast, an AI entity of some kind can be created in a matter of moments and placed online for instant access by students and patients. This is a clear example of privileging the objective to the exclusion of the subjective, organic, “lived world.”
As science, along with its kissing cousin, economics, continue to strip away subjectivity from objectivity, people are retreating into small, tribal communities in an attempt to find, preserve, and enjoy the benefits of objectivity brought to life within a living culture filled with subjectivity. As both Richard Florida and Peter Morris point out in their respective works[1], there’s an interesting symbiosis that is getting set up as these tribal communities attempt to position themselves within the larger “dominator society” (to use a term taken from Riane Eisler’s work[2]). [I would argue that Eisler’s dominator society would largely agree with Lakoff’s frame of the Strict Father.] It is not uncommon to see a small, nurturant community cheek by jowl with a large dominator community. For instance, we see Santa Fe cheek by jowl with Los Alamos; San Francisco next to Silicon Valley; or the blue cities of Austin and Houston within a predominantly red Texas. So it would seem that these tribal communities are in fact “bedroom communities” for larger dominator centers. As Florida points out in The Rise of the Creative Class, high-functioning autistic workers creatively working in the worlds of high tech prefer to live in tribal communities that provide nurturance while maintaining access to high tech dominator structures. Florida goes a step further and suggests that as high tech workers continue to work in virtual, objective worlds provided by computer instruments, they will demand that their physical bodily needs be attended to, like providing them food and removing their waste, further tearing object from subject.
The Authors of Changing Visions state: “Men will do what their society wants [e.g., run into burning buildings, play on a team, kill in the name of patriotism, etc.] for as long as they believe that their society continues to exist.” Today, that sense of home and society is breaking down. As The Authors put it, “Men in battle will flee once their unit identity has been shattered after attrition rates approach a third.” This speaks to what happens when a cultural cognitive map begins to breakdown. The morale, the solidarity that the map provides begins to slip away leaving chaos and confusion and, yes, desertion. The worker brings his/her subjectivity to the objective manufacturing process creating a functional hybrid. But this is only done as long as there is a coherent cultural cognitive map in place. Unions then bring the subjective solidarity that manufacturing depends on. As automation continues on, this solidarity is broken. Once “a third” is reached, workers will scatter. We are rapidly reaching that point.
As a closing observation, advocating for grade inflation[3] and decreased scholastic demands, the DEI movement is playing right into the agenda of disembodied information and the rise of the virtual world. They are encouraging the very world that, ironically, will only bring about imprisonment. No one enjoys a satisfying meal at a virtual diner. Joseph Campbell often told his audiences to not take the menu for the meal that it represents. The DEI movement is asking students to eat their course catalog for the learning it represents. As Damasio writes in Feeling & Knowing:
When people think of “uploading or downloading their minds” and becoming immortal, they should realize that their adventure—in the absence of live brains in live organisms—would consist in transferring recipes, and only recipes, to a computer device. Following the argument to its conclusion, they would not gain access to the actual tastes and smells of the real cooking and of the real food.
As I have argued many times before—whether knowingly or unknowingly—today high tech and the DEI movement make strange bedfellows probably because both holdout the promise of emancipation from the constraints of the body.[4] The digital age genie is clearly out of the bottle, however, it’s not too late for the DEI movement to reverse course and advocate for an embrace of body. This about face need not be that difficult or complex. It could be as simple as encouraging students to read books cover to cover, or learn how to drive[5], or spend more time in nature without smartphones, or demand leaning from well-paid teachers who have the talent to surround objectivity with the subjectivity of a living, face-to-face culture. And, above all, demand academic and scholastic excellence at all levels. Pulling from the title to a book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, the “coddling” has to end.[6]
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Closing Thoughts
In his book Superbloom, Nicholas Carr points to a student, Amelia Lester, who wrote an article for the Harvard newspaper Harvard Crimson. Lester’s article appeared a week after Facebook was released in 2004. Carr calls Lester’s article “exceptionally perceptive.” Lester noticed how quickly Facebook “tapped into several ‘primal instincts’—‘an element of wanting to belong [i.e., wishing for attachment], a dash of vanity and more than a little voyeurism…’ ” quoting Carr who quotes Lester. Carr writes, “[Lester] remarked on how quickly students had taken to packaging themselves as content on the new medium.” Facebook asked students for descriptors, labels, and categories—where did you grow up, what are your favorite movies, what are you studying, etc.—abstractions that “had the effects of turning complex beings into legible objects,” Carr observes. Facebook as stethoscope had succeeded in turning complex beings into legible objects that then could be easily read and manipulated by digital systems. Students had been turned into menus no longer able to “gain access to the actual tastes and smells of the real cooking and of the real food” quoting Damasio from above. Asking students to take on the emotion of guilt for acts committed centuries ago also reduces them to objects that then can be easily read and manipulated by digital systems. The digital age and third wave emancipatory systems have now joined hands in abstracting students and adults away from their “messy, all too organic real selves” quoting Lester.
As I put the finishing touches on this post I spied a video in my YouTube feed entitled “20 Lessons on Tyranny: by Timothy Snyder” read by John Lithgow.[7] What caught my attention was how many items on this list agree with suggestions I have made with respect to improving things at the current moment. I’ll just mention a few. I recommend you watch the video as it is very poignant considering current circumstances.
Number 5 – Remember Professional Ethics
Number 9 – Be Kind to Our Language
• Make an effort to separate yourself from the Internet
• Read books
Number 10 – Believe in Truth
• To abandon facts is to abandon freedom
Number 12 – Make Eye Contact and Small Talk
Number 13 – Practice Corporeal Politics
• Power wants your body softening in your chair, and your emotions dissipating on the screen
• Get outside
• Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people
Number 14 – Establish a Private Life
• Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around
• Remember that email is skywriting
Notes:
[1] – See Richard Florida’s 2019 book The Rise of the Creative Class, and Peter Marris’ 1996 book The Politics of Uncertainty—Attachment In Private and Public Life. I’d also recommend Marris’ 2002 article What Can Be Wrong With Growth.
[2] – See Riane Eisler’s 1998 book The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future.
[3] – Wikipedia defines grade inflation thus: “Grade inflation (also known as grading leniency) is the general awarding of higher grades for the same quality of work over time, which devalues grades.
[4] – See my book A Question of Attachment—Toward a Lossless Society.
[5] – See this article: Teens Are Delaying Getting Their Driver’s Licenses. Parents Want to Know Why.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/05/health/teens-delay-driving-wellness/index.html
[6] – The full title is The Coddling of the American Mind—How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.
[7] – Here’s the link to this video:
