Letters to the Editor
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@William Timberman
You wrote:The war over what things mean now differs as much from the ideological arguments of the past as nuclear weapons differ from siege engines and ships-of-the-line.
Does such a quantitative development equal a qualitative one? A real question for me I wonder about. Since nuclear weapons could mean the end of life on earth I suppose any distinctions are rendered moot with that example. But the industrialization of ideology: is it that it can progress so far that free choice itself is ruled out (if you believe in such?). Is there a qualitative dimension to the human being or not: that I suppose is the million dollar question. The best stuff I have ever read along these lines and that informs my questioning is the work of Jacques Ellul, particularly in the Technological Society, among others. It is a crucial question: is our age qualitatively different? Has all the quantitative development (in the industrialization of modifying human behavior) reached some kind of critical mass to make a qualitative difference? Or does quality, the non-quantitative, not exist at all, and so my question simply represents a category mistake? I still gamble on the reality of the qualitative, as I have not seen it decisively disproven.
I am finally a funny kind of Platonist. I do not think even our age has cast its nets fine enough to catch what it means to exist as a flower, let alone a human being looking at one.
But sometimes I have my doubts.