Aristotle makes the distinction between the style of written and that of oral discourse in Book III Chapter 12. “To know the former means that you are not obliged to hold your tongue when you wish to communicate something… The written style is more finished: the spoken better admits of dramatic delivery.” Being introverted and someone who has a hard time expressing arguments in public on the spot, I find myself dominantly communicating arguments through writing. Thus, I agree with Aristotle’s statement about written discourse because not everyone has the natural ability to speak well in oral environments (e.g., a classroom). Producing good, rhetorical arguments orally with persuasive effect and confidence are not something that introverts like me can do on the spur of the moment or learn easily from a great rhetorician because according to Aristotle “dramatic delivery is a natural gift, and can hardly be systematically taught.” Thus, as an introverted writer, I tend to shy away from difficult arguments and questions in oral spaces. “Does Plato consider writing good or bad?” I would freeze up and “hold my tongue” at such a question because I would look “amateurish” and “sound thin in actual contests” because I do not have the natural ability of speaking well. However, if I was asked to write an argument to this question, I would be able to provide a more “finished” thought because my place in society is as a writer, and thus, I have a responsibility to write well. Hence, I think of rhetoric not as an art because it is a participatory, democratic medium. In a democracy, every individual (every sophist, philosopher, writer, etc.) has an important place in society. Aristotle defined himself not so much a writer but as a speaker. I define myself not so much a speaker but as a writer. Rhetoric embraces both participants despite their different styles. So, rhetoric is not an exclusive art.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Rhetoric and Science
In Chapter 9, Herrick asks an important question regarding rhetoric’s future and the role of rhetoric in science: “Should rhetoric’s role be limited to the practical considerations of conducting government and business, or should it be accepted as an approach to understanding all of the many and varied symbolic worlds in which we live, including science, music, medicine, and penology” (204)? Although Aristotle limited the scope of rhetoric to mainly courtroom debates and to funerals, today, I think the classical uses of rhetoric have expanded to almost every single discipline, every field, and to every space around the world. Rhetoric is present everywhere, which is not necessarily bad for society as seen with the rise of rhetoric in science.
This ubiquity of rhetoric does not trivialize rhetoric, but rather, it shows that the classical toolbox of rhetoric continues to thrive in and be adapted to many communities. I would argue that rhetoric’s tools are more significant within scientific communities than in any other intellectual community because rhetoric makes science more accessible to the world and scientists more accessible to the general public. It is true that scientists need to be objective in their work, but rhetoric is important for these experts because they need to effectively and persuasively communicate their ideas to the scientific and nonscientific communities. Science is all about communication. Science is not just about Aristotle’s logos and finding objective facts. It highly involves the crucial ethos of the scientist. There must be a certain level of trust involved for the public to accept scientific ideas as reliable and true. Training in the rhetoric of science can not only help bridge the gap between technical experts and non-experts just like how Aristotle bridged the gap between sophists and philosophers, but also can lead to better arguments in scientific debates, and hence, lead to better scientific policies for the future.
Defining, Understanding, and Communicating the Complexity of Climate Change in the 21st Century: Responsibilities of Scientists and Nonscientists within the Public Sphere
In
his book, Risk Society, Ulrich Beck
noted that “in earlier periods, the word ‘risk’ had a note of bravery and
adventure, not the threat of self-destruction of all life on Earth” (Beck 21).
Later, he defined the risk society “as a systematic way of dealing with hazards
and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization” (Beck 21). As a
result of these hazards and risks that have permeated society and that humans
have produced on the one hand but do not know about their final effects on the
other, a risk society has emerged because of public goods like DDT, chemicals
from atomic fallout, pollutants, and human-made, natural catastrophes. The risks
of chemicals were unknown to the public during World War II and the Cold War. People
could not see these risks in visible form. Consequently, risks can only become
visible to the public through effective communication from scientific experts,
and the ways in which scientists explain these risks to the public affect
public perception of future risks.
Similarly, climate change is an
invisible risk to the public eye. Because the risks are only visible to
scientists through scientific and technological instruments and advancements, climate
change has become a scientific issue complicated by the strained relationship
between scientific experts and average citizens in the public sphere. By
reducing the issue of climate change to complex scientific matters, scientists
dominate the conversations about risk, and as a result, they eliminate the
public from democratic discussion. On the one hand, as seen with atomic fallout
and DDT, science and technology cannot foresee the consequences of climate change
risks, but on the other hand, citizens
have started to come together as a risk society to try to mitigate future risks,
especially with new risks being introduced by technological options like
geo-engineering. According to James Hansen et al. in his article, “Perception
of climate change,” the chance of people coming together to alleviate risk is
becoming less likely because humans have loaded the “climate dice.” In other
words, extreme climate-related events are not just natural events anymore but
also human-induced ones. (Hansen 2418). However, in a risk society, people work
together because they share a common fate. Thus, with potential scientific and
technological advancements like geo-engineering on the rise, the complex nature
of climate change has influenced scientists’ responsibility (to their fellow
citizens) to overcome barriers in the public sphere, to better communicate the
perceived risks to the public, and to engage in discussion with citizens about
what should be done next; but at the same time, because humans have loaded the
climate dice and have made some people more vulnerable to risks than others,
the risk society has influenced citizens’ responsibilities to each other to
mitigate vulnerabilities, even though the public trust in scientists, in
government, and in the risk society to rise to the challenge to overcome risks
for the common good has diminished (thesis statement).
Scientific and technological
barriers to open discussion between the scientific community and the public have
negatively affected the public trust in scientists who on the one hand, have
responded to the global issue of climate change with scientific advancements,
but on the other hand, they have failed to communicate the risks of climate
change and technology to the public. Scientists have failed to take into
consideration the unknown consequences of science and technology, and they have
shown little effort to engage in democratic conversation with citizens about
what to do next. As a result, “new antagonisms open up between those who
produce risk definitions [scientists] and those who consume them [the public]”
(Beck 46). To avoid these antagonisms, scientists should have a major
responsibility to the citizens; risk definitions should be co-produced, which
means that scientists are responsible foremost to investigating the risks of
climate change that their citizens consider most important. James Hansen, in Storms of My Children, reiterates this critical
responsibility of scientific experts and political elites when he said that
“the experts, including those at many nonprofit organizations, have been in
Washington too long…” They are “asking only for what is ‘politically realistic’
rather than what is in the best interests of the public” (Hansen 241). This is
an important point because scientists have excluded citizens from the public
sphere about a complex issue that is far from certain and solved. Because of scientists’
and politicians’ own self-interests, they are trying to predict the
consequences of future risks with distorted facts, illegitimate policies, and
exaggerated evidence. To put this in perspective, the book, Storms of My Grandchildren, itself is
actually an example of how someone (James Hansen) with a scientific background
is taking the issue of climate change, distorting the facts, and exaggerating
the evidence with a 10-page science-fiction-like, unrealistic scenario in the
year 2525 that ultimately insults the intelligence of any nonscientific citizen
(Hansen 260). Because of the uncertainty of an issue that is far too complex
for the scientific elite to deal with by themselves, it is the responsibility
of the scientists to welcome the realistic skepticism and the truthful uncertainty
of the public into the public sphere.
The complex issue with climate
change is that a variety of different types of scientists, such as
climatologists, oceanographers, and volcanologists, are concerned with reducing
greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Taking action to reduce greenhouse
gases is a legitimate concern in the scientific community, but as James Hansen
argues in his article, “Perception of climate change,” “actions to stem
emissions of the gases that cause global warming are unlikely to approach what
is needed until the public recognizes that human-made climate change is
underway and perceives that it will have unacceptable consequences if effective
actions are not taken” (Hansen E2415). As a result, scientists have an
increased responsibility to their citizens because open discussions about
climate change can greatly influence the public’s perception in positive ways.
However, this scientific concern of reducing emissions does not align with the
public concern for more important issues. For example, Bjorn Lomborg, an environmental
writer (non-scientist), states in his article, “Cool It,” that in the eyes of
the average citizen, “many other issues are much more important than global
warming. We [the public] need to get our perspective back. There are many more
pressing problems in the world, such as hunger, poverty, and disease” (Lomborg
8). This is an important point made by a nonscientist because the current
approach of scientists communicating to the public is not effective. Lomborg
argues that scientists’ responsibility of getting the public involved in the
climate change discussion through exaggerated fears and unrealistic solutions
is not the answer; it only leads to the decision-making of the elite for policies
and new technologies that may (or may not) help turn around the problem of
climate change. Future generations will not change their behaviors and
attitudes towards this issue by simply welcoming new technological
advancements, like geo-engineering, into their lives that they have no say in. Americans
cannot take the mindset of scientists and politicians by saying, “we can pretty
much afford the luxury of doing whatever we want” because these closed-off
technological decisions never address the problems of humanity in first and
third world countries (Levitt & Dubner 199).
Many politicians are more concerned
about the health of the economy than the health of their people. The media
produce exaggerated risk definitions that make the public worry about the wrong
issues. Plus, there are “experts” like Steven Levitt (economist) in SuperFreakonomics, who produce potential
technological solutions, but Levitt and others do not consider all the facts. The
nonscientists of the world have developed mistrust for science because
“experts” have pointed the way towards technological solutions (like a “chimney
to the sky”), but these ideas are not necessarily solutions realistic for the
human risk society (Levitt & Dubner 201). This brings up a crucial point because
scientists may fantasize about a quick technological fix to deal with climate,
but right now, the public needs scientists to truthfully communicate to them
that, in reality, there is no quick fix. For example, Elizabeth Kolbert, an
American journalist (nonscientist), argued in her article, “Hosed,” that “given
their emphasis on cold, hard numbers, it’s noteworthy that Levitt and Dubner
ignore, by now, whole libraries’ worth of data on global warming…” (Kolbert 3).
As a matter of fact, Lomborg, a fellow nonscientist, states that because of the
biased sources of information from a variety of sources, “we [the public] hear
vastly exaggerated and emotional claims that are simply not supported by data”
(Lomborg 6). Yes, complex facts are important, but scientists’ main concern
right now should not be towards their own self-interests to find technological
solutions that may or may not be supported by complex facts, facts in which the
public can misinterpret. For example, Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, grabs the
public’s attention with exaggerated claims and facts that are designed to make
citizens “focus on the wrong solutions,” solutions of the scientific elite
(Lomborg 7). Average citizens have the responsibility to themselves and to
others to speak up and tell people like Al Gore that climate change is not the
most important, worrisome conversation in the global public sphere. Thus,
scientists’ responsibility to their fellow citizens lies in gaining the
public’s trust, which means engaging citizens in the discussions that are
happening because it is the citizens (nonscientists), not the scientists, who
are keeping the complexity of climate change in perspective.
Not only has the complexity of
climate change influenced the responsibility scientists have to their citizens,
the risk society has influenced citizens’ responsibilities to each other
because, as seen with Hurricane Katrina, individuals do not have the capacities
to alleviate future risks that are both natural and human-made. Going
from a society of materialism to a society of anxiety, risk is no longer
individualized and personal. A risk society means that everyone, despite people
being more vulnerable to risks than others, is in the risk society for the long
haul. “A risk society is a catastrophic society” (Beck 24). Human and natural
catastrophes are becoming the new normal where climate change is an issue too
big for any one person to solve. Because humans have loaded the climate dice,
natural disasters have become more uncertain, more common, and have led to more
human-made disasters. Thus, because citizens have made some groups of people
more vulnerable to risks than others, it is the responsibility citizens to come
together in solidarity to try to mitigate these vulnerabilities. However, the
extent to which American citizens are up to the challenge of the risk society
has been negatively affected by the mistrust in scientists who have excluded the
public from the public sphere for far too long.
New Orleans is an example of what
Beck would call a risk society that has influenced not only the citizens’ of
New Orleans responsibilities to each other but also the responsibility
Americans have to each other in times of crises. On the one hand, the natural
and human-made risks of New Orleans have made the city more vulnerable to
future catastrophes, but on the other hand, these vulnerabilities have made the
city more resilient. Because people have lost their faith in science, it is
important to look to historians and academic scholars (nonscientists) who give
citizens truth about the present and future by examining the past. Thus,
Historian Ari Kelman (a nonscientist), from the University of California,
Davis, in her article, “Boundary Issues: Clarifying New Orleans’s Murky Edges,”
makes the important distinction between
the situation of New Orleans and its site to illustrate how the city is
vulnerable to natural and human-made risks. On the one hand, New Orleans has a
good situation because it is significant economically as a gateway to the Gulf
of Mexico. However, it is a bad site because “the city was built on sediment,
the long ramp of the Mississippi’s levee…” (Kelman 696-697). This nonscientific
perspective of American history is important to take into consideration because
the natural risks are also human-made risks. Ever since the 1800s, people have
chosen to settle in the “flood-backed swamps” of the Lower Ninth Ward despite
being vulnerable to not only natural risks but also human risks such as
governmental neglect (Landphair 838-839). Governmental neglect is significant
to take note of because despite having to face obstacles alone and with minimal
help, people continue to inhabit New Orleans, more specifically the forgotten
Lower Ninth Ward, because they have a responsibility to each other as citizens
of the world to take care of one another. The people of the Lower Ninth Ward and
of surrounding areas chose not to evacuate before and after Hurricane Katrina
because they had a responsibility to keep up the community. They continued to
live in this section of the city despite disease, poverty, and neglect.
Juliette Landphair (another nonscientist) in her article, “The Forgotten People
of New Orleans,” informs Americans about the human-made risks in New Orleans,
to illustrate an important lesson in American history: the extent to which
Americans are up to the challenge of risk society does not depend on the
individual, but rather, it depends on the capabilities of “anxiety-producing
communities of danger” (Beck 49). The vulnerabilities
of New Orleans have shown that Americans are up to the challenge of climate
change because “from the Ninth Ward’s very start, vulnerable terrain combined
with municipal neglect to secure its reputation as distant and uncivilized,”
but at the same time, “the Ninth Ward’s isolation encouraged the growth of a
self-sufficient communal culture” (Landphair 839). New Orleans will face future
vulnerabilities. But, the vulnerabilities of communities like the Lowe Ninth
Ward have influenced American citizens, who are responsible for protecting the
people who cannot protect themselves, to form close-knit communities. These
communities, created by climate change, will keep New Orleans and other places
resilient going forward.
The failure of scientists to communicate
with the public and the government’s inability to unite America in a time of
crisis has taught Americans a valuable lesson about its past so that history
will not repeat in the future. Average citizens cannot heavily rely on the elite
to make decisions. It is not only the responsibility of scientists to include
the public in the conversations of climate change, but also, it is the
responsibility of the citizens to become actively involved in the public
sphere. Individual actions are not good enough in an issue so complex. Science
and technology cannot save humans from their own risks that they have created.
Citizens have the tools like the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter to become an informed citizenry
and an engaged public. The extent to which Americans are up to the challenge of
the risk society depends on the public trust of the scientific community; this
crucial trust that breaks down the barriers in the public sphere is the one
truth that must stand strong in the midst of uncertainty.
Works
Cited
Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Thousand
Oaks, California: Sage
Publications,
1992. Print.
Hansen, James,
Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy. “Perception of climate change.” Proceedings of
the National
Academy of Scieces. National
Academy of Sciences, 6 August 2012. Web. 30 November 2012.
Hansen, James. Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About
the Coming Climate Catastrophe
and Our Last Chance to Save
Humanity. New
York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009. Print.
Kelman, Ari.
“Boundary Issues: Clarifying New Orleans’s Murky Edges.” Journal of American
History December 2007: 695-703. Print.
Kolber, Elizabeth.
“Hosed: Is there a quick fix for the climate?” The New Yorker. Conde Nast, 16
November
2009. Web. 3 December 2012.
Landphair,
Juliette. “The Forgotten People of New Orleans: Community, Vulnerability, and
the
Lower
Ninth Ward.” Journal of American History December
2007: 837-845. Print.
Levitt, Steven D.
and Stephen J. Dubner. SuperFreakonomics:
Global Cooling, Patriotic
Prostitutes, and
Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
Print.
Lomborg, Bjorn. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s
Guide to Global Warming. New
York:
Random House, 2007. Print.
Herman Melville and the Paradox of Technology
When Herman Melville’s book, Typee, was published in 1846, American
society was on the brink of great technological progress and change with
regards to American culture. On the one hand, technology in the 1800s brought
American society into a new world of advancement and improvement, and
technological change created new benefits for Americans such as more ways of
communicating with each other with the telegraph, different methods of
transportation such as the railroad, and more efficient ways of doing work.
Thus, technology brought a better way of life for the future. But, on the other
hand, modern technology, even if it was originally intended to be used towards
the ends of justice, equality, and the improvement of the human condition, has
overcommitted Americans to the technological utopian vision of the future
without regards to the savagery, poverty, and poor conditions of Americans in
the 1840s or today in 2013.
In Walden,
Henry David Thoreau notes that “so with a hundred ‘modern improvement,’
there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance”
(Thoreau 41). In other words, people reading authors like Thoreau or Melville
in the 1800s up to today must understand that modern technology creates a mirage
in American society where it is so easy to become caught up in achieving
technological progress that people forget that technologies do have miserable
consequences for the human condition in the present. Americans can become so
focused on investing in technologies that embody and promote the values of the
American Dream (such as hard work, laboring all day, and material abundance)
that they have enslaved themselves within the capitalist system, a system ironically
and originally intended to make men free as noted by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations and in the Declaration
of Independence in 1776. When analyzing Typee,
it is interesting to point out how modern technology (or the lack of it)
has embodied and influenced the definition of an important American cultural
value, which is freedom. Similar to Thoreau’s views of technology (even though
Melville does not mention the word “technology” in the novel), Melville arrived
at a similar conclusion when he compared how a Typee man is able to do the same
work as a European man, but it is the Typee man, without modern technology, who
lives the better life because he is stress-free from his labors and still
provide for his people by picking the finer fruits “from the branches of every
tree” (Melville 112). In writing Typee, Herman Melville did not
necessarily view technological change and progress as a negative change for
American culture in the 1800s and in the future. However, the misery and
enslaving aspects of modern technology in 19th century America were
what worried Melville in writing Typee
because technological progress,
capitalistic values, and Christianity values enslaved the natives on the
Sandwich Islands, and these American values were quickly spreading to the
islands of Nuku Hiva; but more important, Melville, in writing this book, pointed
towards a crumbling, lost future of American society (a vision that readers of
this book in the 19th century and in the 21st century alike
find troubling): unless Americans can hold onto the romantic, cultural values
of freedom, equality, and justice and ease the burden of industrialization and
technology, Americans in the 1840s were (and Americans today are) wasting their
times with the pursuit of technological progress because technology is the
ultimate destruction of simplicity and humanity (thesis statement).
How can technology promote the value of freedom
and positive advancement yet at the same time enslave the users of that
technology? This perplexing question is one that most people cannot answer
today, and thus, many of Melville’s readers in the 1840s probably found
Melville’s harsh outlook on technology, more specifically on civilization,
troubling, especially when Melville noted in Typee that “in a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of
life, though few and simple, are spread over a great extent; but Civilization,
for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve…” (Melville
124). This statement from Melville in Typee
is significant because it presented a challenge to the American way of living
at the time the book was written and showed how people in highly-civilized
cultures could both be free to do what they want but enslaved by the work they
did because of the aid of the machine.
To help readers in the 19th
century and in the 21st century understand this contradiction
between technology and civilization and the contradiction between slavery and
freedom that Melville wrote about in the 1800s, it is significant to look back
at the patterns that arose in the Americas before Melville’s time. In the
mid-1600s, on the one hand, the rise of the sugar industry in the Caribbean
spurred economic growth for colonial European powers, but on the other hand,
the sugar plantations enslaved the natives of the area. Ironically, a pattern
developed where the slave labor of natives actually helped pave the way for
freedom in the Caribbean and in the surrounding area in the 1700s and 1800s.
For example, Toussant L’Overture led the unfree, enslaved Haitians of Saint
Domingue in the Haitian Revolution to break free in 1804 from the bondage of
Napoleon, the French, and from the grappling chains of industrial technology by
holding onto the romantic ideals and cultural values of the French Revolution.
Similarly, in 1776, slave labor on cotton plantations in the American colonies
resulted in the freedom from Britain. However, when the Americans became free from
British authority, the people of the United States ironically became so enslaved
to the capitalist system that “most men, even in this comparatively free country,
through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares
and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked
by them” (Thoreau 3). Just like Melville in writing Typee, Thoreau, through first-hand experience of freeing himself
from the burdens of modern life, was a harsh critic on technology and
industrialization’s promises for a better, more eloquent life. Were the natives
of the Marquesas islands lazy and uncivilized because they slept in and sat
around all day, or were they better off because at the end of the day, they
were the ones who were able to pick the fruit from the breadfruit trees without
the constant toils of industrial technology? Whether his readers in the 1840s
agreed or disagreed with Melville, the simple, independent man, according to
Melville, is the one truly free.
Thus, when the sugar plantations reached
the Sandwich Islands around the time of Captain James Cook’s voyages in 1761,
the paradoxes of slavery and freedom and of technology and civilization become
even clearer. Captain Cook and his ship crew did not have any intent on
enslaving the natives or converting them to Christianity, but “no matter how
well-meaning, the eighteenth-century mariners inevitably introduced dangerous
new diseases, animals, weapons, and missionaries that cascaded into rapid
environmental and cultural changes that troubled the Polynesians” (Taylor 469).
Alan Taylor’s writings about the Sandwich Islands is crucial to consider
because Cook was warmly welcomed onto the Sandwich Islands by the friendly,
“civilized” natives, but at the same
time, Cook’s death in 1779 at the hands of the natives themselves illustrates
sufficient evidence of how industrialized cultures can turn the free into the
enslaved through capitalistic enterprises like sugar plantations, difficult
labor, and Christianity, and these cultures can turn the civilized into savages
through modern technology. Just like how Captain Cook witnessed the unintended
consequences of technological progress of exploring unchartered territory
(consequences which resulted in the destruction of native culture), Melville,
in writing Typee, expressed concerns
of how quickly slave labor, industrialization, capitalistic values, and
religious values could potentially be projected onto the Marquesas Islands.
After James Cook’s discovery of the
Sandwich Islands, missionaries like Peter and Fanny Gulick came over in the
1830s to try to “Christianize” the natives and to prevent them from becoming powerless
and from becoming influenced by the evils of capitalism and earthly salvation;
however, “by cultural as well as commercial imperative, the missions were
economic as well as religious institutions” (Taylor 464). What Taylor is saying
here is important to consider because missionaries unintentionally became
involved in the sugar industry and thus involved in the natives’ slave work of
the sugar plantations because hard work and intensive labor, by its very
nature, was and still is a deep American cultural value. So, missionaries
viewed industrialization of the Sandwich Islands as a way to save the natives from
their cannibalistic culture. But, in reality, Christianity brought about
disease (small pox) and industrial technology that killed off the native
population and that increased human misery not only for the natives but also
for civilized societies.
As a result of the human misery caused
by Christianity’s involvement in the sugar industry, Melville worried that
bringing industry, capitalism, Christianity, and other American cultural values
to the natives on the islands of Nuku Hiva would diminish the romanticism of
native values (especially religious values), values that were necessary for
these people to hold onto in order to live happily. This is why Melville was so
interested in discussing Typee religion in the book because the Typee people
did not have to take part in the drudgery of industrialization and the
enslaving control of Christianity: “Better will it be for them forever to
remain the happy and innocent heathens and barbarians that they now are, than,
like the wretched inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, to enjoy the mere name
of Christians without experiencing any of the vital operations of true
religion, whilst, at the same time, they are made the victims of the worst
vices and evils of civilized life” (Melville 181-182). Thus, it is intriguing
to mention what Alan Taylor wrote in American
Colonies when he argued that James
Cook seemed to think that “the Pacific Islanders seemed to possess a worthy
simplicity that Europeans had lost” (Taylor 468). Similarly, Melville was
deeply concerned with the potential negative influence of American cultural
beliefs and values on the simple lives of the Pacific natives on the one hand.
But on the other hand, it is true that “the fiend-like skill we [Americans]
display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the
vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation
that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white
civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth” (Melville 125).
This observation from Melville of white civilization in relation to the “noble
savage” is an interesting point to consider because it can be argued that Melville’s
Typee is an indirect greater warning
to Americans about what cultural values and beliefs they have lost and will
continue to lose because of the development of modern technology.
Therefore, Melville wanted to change American
society with the book, Typee, by
challenging his readers to think uncommonly in the 1800s to look at how a group
of natives without modern technology can live richly with less. Historian William Cronon wrote in Changes
in the Land that on arrival to the East Coast of the United States in the
1700s (before Melville’s lifetime), “many European visitors were struck by what
seemed to them the poverty of Indians [Native Americans] who lived in the midst
of a landscape endowed so astonishingly with abundance” (Cronon 33). How can
Cronon argue that poverty is equivalent to wealth? After reading Melville’s Typee,
it can be argued that the values of capitalism created earthly material
wealth for Americans in the 1840s, but at the same time, this capitalist system
that Americans were trapped in had eroded the romanticism of not only the natural
environment, but also, it had destroyed natives’ romantic values of living
comfortably with one another without modern technology.
An important example in American history
that illustrates this irony between capitalism and romanticism as related to Typee
is the American whaling industry (around 1812-1861) that dominated most of
Melville’s lifetime. The American whaling ship industry was significant because
its global dominance was the result of Captain Cook’s scientific and
technological voyages to the Pacific. Not only did the American whaling
industry make the United States significant on a global level, but also, it was
during this time period that this industry became a global economic powerhouse
as whaling was one of the first capitalistic systems that joint-stock companies
could invest money in overseas. As a capitalist system, whaling ships that
voyaged to the Pacific helped spread capitalist values to the Polynesian
landscape and way of life. Plus, the act of killing a whale and bringing it to
market in the 1800s was rather romantic (yet a mystery) as described by Herman
Melville in Moby Dick: “If then, Sir
Williams Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest
peasant’s face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered
Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put
that brow before you. Read it if you can” (Melville Moby Dick 407). Melville’s description of killing the whale in Moby Dick is romanticized and beautiful
on the one hand, but on the other hand, it represents mysteriousness, the
overreliance on the capitalist market system, the evils of material wealth, and
reliance on industrial technology. Just like Melville in writing Moby Dick and Thoreau in writing Walden in the 1800s, Melville wrote Typee to
help the average reader in the 1840s understand that one must look to nature
and beyond the natural environment to find oneself and to search for the
multiple truths of the world (just like Tommo did on the islands of Nuku Hiva)
because market, technological progress, and capitalism undermine the truths
about who people really are and will eventually worsen the natural world. Thus,
the historical context of the American whaling industry helps Melville’s
readers to understand Melville’s prediction that capitalist wealth would destroy
the naturalness of American culture. The whaling industry gives Melville’s
readers some perspective on the dangers of capitalism influencing American life
when he said that “there were no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes,
no bills payable, no debts of honor in Typee… or to sum all in one word – no
Money! That ‘root of all evil’ was not to be found in the valley” (Melville
126). Therefore, because the Typees were uninfluenced by capitalist values of
material wealth and slave labor, the Typees were freer than the civilized
whites in the 1840s. Instead of constantly working for the advancement of the
future, the Typees were able to live comfortably in the present with few troubles,
problems, and issues. In other words, Melville tried to show his readers
through his novel that capitalistic values are based on earthly salvation. To
truly be saved, one must find a meaningful life and rooted cultural values in
pure nature and beyond. Thus, capitalism and romanticism were and still are two
American ideas that are troubling to Melville’s readers.
Therefore, Melville had an interesting
message for his readers when he wrote in Typee, “how often is the term
‘savages’ incorrectly applied! None really deserving of it were ever yet
discovered by voyagers or by travelers… That in all the cases of outrages
committed by Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or other been the aggressors
and that the cruel and bloodthirsty disposition of some of the islanders is
mainly to be ascribed to the influence of such examples” (Melville 27). This
passage from Typee is the most
revealing passage that Melville offers to explain how modern technology
influences cultural values and beliefs. The Polynesians in the Pacific were not
really savages because Europeans did not see them the way they actually were.
Instead, the science, the technology, and the cultural values of Western
Civilization brought over to the Pacific Islands were forced and projected onto
the natives, creating the discourse of savagery and barbarianism among the
natives. Here, it is crucial to briefly mention the influence Captain David
Porter’s Journal of a Cruise made to the
Pacific Ocean had on Melville’s research for Typee because unlike the common, misinterpreted views of Western
Civilization on native life, both men on their trips to the Marquesas Islands
did not see cannibalism or savagery of the native tribes, but rather, they
witnessed friendliness, simplicity, and beauty in the respective tribes they
visited. For example, Porter wrote in his journal that “this delicacy in
concealing the wounded body of an enemy, and their caution in avoiding the
touch of the blood or the dead carcasses, greatly staggered my belief of their
being cannibals” (Porter 47). This quote from David Porter’s Journal
illustrates the misunderstandings of what savagery and civilization really are,
and it illuminates the savage, barbarian side of Western civilization that
often was overlooked in the 1800s. Thus, when writing this book, Melville was
not as much worried about the survival of the Typees, who did not have the
material luxury of modern technology; however, he expressed greater concerns of
the destruction of American cultural values because of the invisible, overlooked
aspects of American savagery, an idea that troubled Melville’s readers because
of America’s incredible potential for technological progress at the time.
Through Typee, Melville wanted to
really make sense of the ambiguous relationship between capitalism and
romanticism and the relationship between poverty and abundance that troubled
his readers in the 1800s. For example, Melville writes that “I was fain to
confess that the Polynesian savage, surrounded by all the luxurious provisions
of nature, enjoyed an infinitely happier, though certainly a less intellectual
existence, than the self-complacent European” (Melville 124). This passage is
interesting to take note of because most who read this novel in the 1800s
probably thought technology, industrialization, and material goods brought happiness
(a selfish way of thinking brought about by capitalism), but Melville realized
that happiness is the result of living with less and by easing one’s burdens and
troubles in life. Thus, Melville outlined two views of wealth in opposition to
each other. Before people started reading Typee in the 1840s, the way
Europeans viewed Native Americans in Northeastern America in the 1700s
illustrates these two views of wealth that Cronon wrote about in Changes in
the Land. Melville, in writing the
book, thought that unless Americans could become consciously aware of the
natives and the way they actually were without transferring cultural values and
beliefs onto the natives’ landscape and way of life, then Americans would never
be able to learn how to live richly in poverty. But rather, they would live for
technological progress despite problems of poverty unresolved in the present.
Therefore, Melville’s ultimate message
about technology and America culture that he wanted his American readers in the
1840s and even his readers in 2013 to know was that Americans live in two
conflicting worlds. On the one hand, they live in a world of modern technology
and industrialization that makes everyday life more efficient, easier, and
richer in terms of material wealth. But, the consequence of living in this
technological world is that they have created a world where they are constantly
straddling the line between savagery and civilization, leading themselves to
their own self-destruction.
Atomic Bombs, “Kipple,” and the Promise of Early Computers
“A merry little surge of electricity
piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick
Deckard. Surprised – it always surprised him to find himself awake without
prior notice” (Dick 3). This is the opening scene in Philip K. Dick’s book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Deckard and his wife, Iran, consider themselves lucky to own the Penfield Mood
Organ. The mood organ is a significant technological device in the novel that
controls Deckard’s emotions. With the mood organ, Deckard and Iran can dial
into any mood they feel like. However, once they dial in an emotion, they lose
control of that emotion to the machine. They lose the freedom to make choices on
their own. Thus, from the beginning of the novel, Philip K. Dick has already
blurred the line between humans and machines. For Americans reading this novel
in 1968 in post-World War II United States, they would have been deeply
troubled by Dick’s portrayal of androids because androids are machines that
humans depend on to learn what it means to be human. But, giving autonomy to
machines severely limits human autonomy in a world where humans have little
choice and control of their common fate, a fate poisoned by atomic radiation.
Thus, in writing Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick troubled his readers in 1968 with the paradox that as
humans depended on modern technologies in post-World War II United States and
relied less on each other to define their own human values and ethics, the
atomic bomb permeated into everyday life and reoriented American values of
peace, security, and control; DDT and Strontium-90 caused uncontrollable and
unpredictable problems in the environment, which reframed the values, ethics,
and responsibilities of scientists and individual consumers; and early
mainframe computers extended but severely limited the values of democracy and
freedom in the public sphere (thesis statement).
When Dick published his novel in
1968, many Americans were worried that modern technology, specifically the
atomic bomb, would lead society to collapse into totalitarianism because the
distinction between humans and machines was becoming blurred, humans’ lives
were becoming fractured, and their values were developing in response to the
atomic bomb. The atomic bomb did not only embody American values, but it
reoriented the values of almost all societies. Thus, as the atomic bomb was
dictating the values of Americans in the atomic era, Americans had optimism
mixed with uncertainty as they continuously struggled to reassert humanity’s
ability to control its own technology, dictate its own values, and define its
own ethics. Paul Boyer in his book, by
the Bomb’s Early Light, states that “above all else, the atomic bomb raised
‘the question of power. The atomic scientists had to learn new ways to control
it; so now does political man” (Boyer 9). This tension about who is in control
of technology or the lack of control of technology by humans is portrayed in
the novel as Deckard fights back against the android machines and the Rosen
association to reassert his and humans’ control over the technology, the
environment, and their dominance over machines. However, as Deckard fights
against the androids, he finds himself becoming less empathetic and more like
the androids who have no moral or ethical purpose and who have no control over
their fate. Similarly, around the time people were reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Americans, scientists, and government
were becoming fearful and were losing their ability to control the unintended
consequences of the atomic weapons they created. But, “Americans must not
surrender to fear or allow themselves to be paralyzed by anxiety; they must
rally their political and cultural energies and rise to the challenge of the
atomic bomb” (Boyer 26). This is an important quote to keep in mind because
whoever controls the means of reproduction controls the fate of humanity, and
if no one controls the technology, no one is in control of what it means to be
human and of the values of American culture.
Empathy is very significant to the
novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? because by using empathy as the main distinguisher between humans
and machines, Dick is challenging his readers to think about empathy,
technology like the atomic bomb, and technology-dictating cultural values in
ways that his readers never thought about before. Specifically, Dick is using
empathy to show the possibility of a dystopian future of technological despair
where humans are losing their natural abilities to empathize with living
beings. As a result, Dick suggests that perhaps humans are becoming more like
androids and vice versa because both do not have any control over their current
situation. For example, the escaped androids in the novel can cut off the legs
of a spider because they do not show empathy, but on the other hand, androids
like Rachel Rosen are becoming more like humans as she expresses a desire to
help Deckard retire androids throughout the novel. When Jacques Ellul wrote The Technological Society in 1967, Ellul
envisioned a similar dystopian relationship between technology and culture,
where there will “be a dictatorship of test tubes rather than of hobnailed
boots” (Ellul 434). In other words, the scientific and technical elite claim
they control the technology, can solve the problems of technologies like atomic
fallout, and can exert perfect control and scientific management over every
aspect of people’s lives, which is similar to how the how the Rosen association
in the novel exerted control over the reproduction of androids.
\
However, because the atomic bomb left
Americans with a lack of control and certainty, they did not feel like they had
any choice in the inevitable destruction of the Earth. Thus, the destruction of
the environment resulted from the scientists’ and the elite’s lack of
management, planning, and control over the land, the machine, and of each
other. Similarly, in the novel, humans
were the one that created the problems of radioactive dust, the extinction of
almost every species of bird, and the “kipple-ized” environment (Dick 65). In addition, “the dust which had contaminated
most of the planet’s surface had originated in no country, and no one, even the
wartime enemy, had planned on it” (Dick 15). The fact that humans in the novel
were unable to anticipate and plan for the radioactive dust is important to
note because characters like Rick Deckard do not have the appropriate amount of
empathy to have control over their own problems and to even have control over
their fate. That is why it was so important for Deckard to own a real animal
instead of a fake because the lack of owning a real animal showed that Deckard
was losing his status as a human being, losing his empathy towards others, was
losing his ability to control his own circumstances, and was becoming less
human like the “chickenhead” Isidore. So, although Dick uses empathy to
distinguish humans from androids, it seems like Philip Dick also uses empathy
to show his readers a complex paradox in modern society after World War II
where what makes a human a real human became less clear at the time because the
atomic bomb made anything seem possible for humanity, yet there were limits of
understanding the technology, fear of the unknown effects, and lack of control
over these effects that caused people to question humanity and lose faith in
the scientists who created the atomic bomb. Thus, “it is apparently our fate to
be facing a ‘golden age’ in the power of sorcerers who are totally blind to the
meaning of the human adventure” (Ellul 435). This is a crucial point by Ellul
because the atomic bomb created new values in American culture in the
post-World War II era, including new values of freedom to consume in a new
consumer society created by New Deal programs. But at the same time, the
scientists who created atomic weapons controlled the technologies, controlled
the values of those technologies, and conformed individual consumers into
modern life. So, while there was great promise for modern technologies
following World War II, there was also great fear that technology was promoting
values of centralization and totalitarian control, instead of democracy.
As atomic technology was developed
for the fight against communism, a great consumer society emerged after World
War II that created a market for nuclear energy, but the negative effects of
nuclear fallout started to show up as every day, invisible chemicals, like DDT
and Strontium-90, in unexpected places. Modern technologies used during World
War II created new values of liberation and autonomy for the consumer as war technologies
created a market for consumer goods like DDT. But at the same time, these
modern technologies created values of conformity and centralization because
only a few owned the means of production and reproduction, making it extremely
difficult for the average person to have the true capacity and autonomy to
clean up the problems created by science. Similarly, in the novel, the Rosen association
owned the means of production of androids, leaving Deckard, Isidore, and other
humans powerless in a machine-dominated environment.
One of the major questions that pondered
many readers of Dick’s novel was: could Rick Deckard and the humans in the
novel win over their own self-destruction? Would the “kipple” bury Rick Deckard
and his freedom in the novel just like how it was burying Americans in the
post-war consumer society? In the 1960s, Dick used “kipple” to signify the
unintended consequences of the consumer society at the time. Average citizens
wanted to know who was responsible for the problems of Strontium-90 and DDT
caused by science. These questions were on the minds of Americans during the
time Dick published his book. In Technics
and Civilization, Lewis Mumford wrote that the machine “is both an
instrument of liberation and one of repression” (Mumford 283). . In this case, nuclear fallout from nuclear
bomb testing was an instrument of both liberation and one of repression. On the
one hand, tracing the effects of Strontium-90 and DDT gave individuals an “everyday
ecological sense” as the average consumer had to weigh life choices with and
without nuclear technology. On the other hand, the effects of Strontium-90 and
DDT were out of the individual’s control; individuals could not solve the
problems of science. Thus, nuclear weapons created new responsibilities for
scientists in the atomic era and helped define new values and ethics for
protecting the environment and avoiding a tragedy of the commons. The
unintended consequences of nuclear technology helped nonscientists define new
values and ethics for the scientists. Scientists ignored the effects of their
creations because they were detached from what they were doing and from the
values of the average citizens. In the novel, Deckard was attached and
connected to the Mercer Box at the expense of detaching from societal values.
By the end of the novel, he let the fake Mercer Box take control of his fate.
Overall, individual nonscientists need science and technology to learn about
themselves and the world they are living in so that they can have the freedom
to make better choices for the future. But at the same time, individuals must
be careful not to give too much autonomy and control to science and technology
because as seen with DDT and Strontium-90, science and technology can lose
control by putting the fate of the world in the hands of the power elite. Thus, in 1968, technology
needed to develop new cultural values based less on the few individuals who
controlled the technology and more on the community.
In the midst of post-World War II
prosperity, there was freedom for the individual to consume and use up
resources and live better. However, in Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip Dick questioned why Americans valued
an overabundance of resources when eventually in the long term, those resources
would be depleted. Dick introduces the concept of kipple in his novel to
address this concern when he says that “kipple is useless objects, like junk
mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers … When
nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself… It always gets more and more…No one
can win against kipple, except temporarily” (Dick 65). This quote is
significant because it summarizes the major historical context in which Dick is
writing. Just as how individuals questioned the projects of the TVA and the
consumer society it created in post-war America, Dick’s readers questioned
whether Rick Deckard and John Isidore could stop the abundance of “kipple” from
destroying the Earth and from diminishing the meaning of what it means to be
human. Dick challenged his readers at the time to look at the world in a new way
where a society was not made up of individuals, but rather, individuals were the
society. Like Strontium-90 and DDT, more items or “kipple” seemed to be showing
up in places where they do not belong. Thus, one of the challenges Dick
presents to Americans is for them to rely on each other and not on technology
to find a way to bring order out of chaos unless they wanted the freedom of the
technological commons to lead to ruin, a tragedy which early mainframe
computers helped predict.
When Philip K. Dick wrote this novel, many individuals had felt a loss of control over modern technology
in the post-World War II era and had felt a loss of control of their
environment as they could not contain the spread of atomic fallout; however,
the rise of the early mainframe computers brought great promise for
individuals, scientists, the military, and government who wanted to assert
control over their lives, over their technological creations, and over their
common fate. People like J.C.R. Licklider, Vannevar Bush, and Alan Turing
envisioned the democratizing capabilities of these early computers. For them,
these computers like the ENIAC, SAGE, and the ELIZA program created and
extended values of democracy, rationalization, and centralization. In other
words, computers gave individuals control over their environment, created a
zone of democracy, administered people’s freedoms, and extended the public
sphere. For example, in the ENIAC Press Release in 1946, “it was pointed out
that the electronic calculator does not replace original human thinking, but
rather frees scientific thought from the drudgery of lengthy calculating work”
(ENIAC Press Release). However, “it is perhaps paradoxical that just, when in
the deepest sense man has ceased to believe in – let alone to trust – his own
autonomy, he has begun to rely on autonomous machines” (Weizenbaum 9). Weizenbaum
is trying to point to the idea that humans have autonomy only because they see
that autonomy through computers. Thus, in a way, a person’s choices and values
are undermined by the computer’s limitations. In other words, computers can
open up the doors to new communities, new ideas, and can expand the public
sphere, but they are also limiting. Weizenbaum discussed in Computer Power
and Human Reason how computers enabled and limited a public sphere when he
wrote that “like highways and automobiles, they enable the society to
articulate entirely new forms of social action, but at the same time they
irreversibly disable formerly available modes of social behavior” (Weizenbaum
37-38).
Whereas many saw the great promises of
computers and the democratic values they enabled, Philip K. Dick troubled his
readers because he thought machines did not enable democracy, control, and
rationalization, but rather, machines weakened these human values. In the
novel, the purpose of an android is to mimic reality and because they can
simulate reality so well, Rick Deckard and other humans can understand more
about themselves the more they understand about androids. However, because the
humans in the novel rely on androids to learn about humanity, humans are losing
autonomy and control to the androids. For example, the Penfield mood organ
gives Deckard freedom to dial any emotion, but once he is dialed in, there is
no human control of emotions. The machine itself and the company that owns the
machine (Penfield) are in control of Deckard. In the novel, humans are relying
on androids to channel their emotions when they should be channeling human
emotions themselves. For example, Iran said that “my first reaction consisted
of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I
realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this
building but everywhere, and not reacting” (Dick 5). This is significant to
note because machines and computers may be able to simulate reality, control
emotions, and democratize knowledge, but that simulated reality drains meaning
from reality itself. This is why readers of Dick’s novel were troubled by what
is real and what is not real. In the novel, Mercer, revealed in the novel as a
fake, becomes real for Rick Deckard because of his need for interactions and
his need for connecting with others through the empathy box. Thus, Deckard’s
interactions with Mercer further blurred the distinction between humans and
androids because Deckard and the escaped androids that he is trying to retire
are solitary creatures, but they use technology of the Mercer Box and of the
fake Buster Friendly to feel connected with one another, but they actually are
not connected in reality at all, which is a similar idea to the present-day Facebook.
Like social media, Deckar is alone but connected through the Mercer Box, a fake
which enables and destabilizes democratic values in the public sphere. Similarly,
as Americans used early computers in the post-World War II era to gain control
of their lives and democratize knowledge, they became more reliant on the
technology and less on each other.
Thus, in writing this book, Philip K.
Dick wanted his readers to know that technology will show great promise for
humans, but that promise is usually met with limitations and uncertainty for
what it means to be human the more humans try to connect with their tools. So,
as the atomic bomb, DDT, and computers in post-World War II America gave
Americans prosperity and progress, they also exhausted Americans to the point
where they put more hope in their technology than in their hope for humanity to
solve human problems like Strontium-90, which caused Americans and American
values to fracture and disperse. Today, as people become connected and
emotionally attached to their devices, as they become “glued” to their cell
phones, and as they form simulated communities online through Facebook, people
become more like the technology they create, undercut their own values, and
more important, undermine the value in others.
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