The things we take as truth

[avevale_intelligencer]

Comments to my post about the Wall Street Journal article have been unanimous on one point; the world today is no darker or grimmer than it ever has been. That it seems that way is simply because we know more about it.

I disagree, because it seems to me that the fact that we know more about it is in itself an enabling factor. I don't see how it can fail to be so. The map is not the territory, but knowledge of the map conditions how we interact with the territory.

More on this, possibly, later; computer time is limited.

Comments

[melodyclark.livejournal.com]

This is where being an agnostic comes in handy. The only thing I take as truth is that there is no truth, which is a self-negating "truth" but the only one that fits me.

[michael cule (from livejournal.com)]

I'm an agnostic, not because I believe there is no truth, but because I have a very pessimistic view of my (or any mortal being's) ability to discern it.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I disagree, because it seems to me that the fact that we know more about it is in itself an enabling factor. I don't see how it can fail to be so.

Well, it could fail to be so, for example, if half the children you knew (the ones in your village, I suppose, since you might never venture farther than a couple of miles from there, what with having to work the Lord's fields and everything) died before they were five.

Or it could fail to be so if you were never warm in winter, and you wore the same clothes all day every day and there was no such thing as bathing, and if the harvest was bad everyone went hungry and some people died.

And let's hope you never needed what passed for surgery then, because there's nothing at all they could do for the pain. On the bright side, you'd probably be a peasant, because practically everyone was a peasant, and surgery might just not be available to you no matter what. So there's that.

Give me THESE days. Every. Single. Time.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Not so long ago, there was more than half a century of Really Big Wars and Genocides. Things have gotten better.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

This is only true if the expansion of your knowledge includes areas where, on average, things are darker and grimmer than they are for you personally (or at least, in your previous areas of knowledge).

Since Britain is a relatively prosperous area on the global scale, knowing more about other places probably does drop the average "doom and gloom" to a darker level.

Knowing more about areas that actually affect us - here I'm not sure, and suspect the change is in how we react to the knowledge rather than any underlying factual change.

When I was a kid, there was no TV in the house, and no hysterical spreading of non-news to worry us.
If I went into town on my own, I might meet a stalker, or some strange person in a rain-coat might approach me in an underpass. So? I was over ten years old, I knew how to handle the situation, and I did. I didn't even bother mentioning it to my parents every time.
Now, if a ten-year-old gets accosted by some strange man in a raincoat, it's Mass Panic, Lock Up Your Daughters!!! I don't believe it's actually happening any more often than it did, it just gets more "news" coverage. Parents become more aware of it - as I say, I didn't always bother mentioning it to mine, any more than I'd come home and discuss the problems I'd had crossing the road.