A New Dark Ages

These thoughts were inspired by a conversation over at John Hanson's blog, De Gustibus, we all need something, and I'd like to acknowledge my double debt to Brother John, not only for initiating and hosting that conversation, but also for a gentle and generous comment here that agitated me to write again.

Robert Maynard Hutchins coined the notion of “The Great Conversation,” which is defined as, “a characterization of references and allusions made by authors in the Western canon to the works of their predecessors.” This notion became, in due course, the seminal idea upon which Hutchins and others ultimate built “The Great Books.” The question as it came up on De Gustibus considered the status of religion in the Great Conversation, and the sense that religion is being relegated to a marginal and mostly honorary role in that Conversation. I think this is an important question, but it is not today's question. Today's question regards the health of the Great Conversation itself.

I'll begin by illustrating and expanding a bit on Hutchins' idea. Melville's novel, “Moby Dick,” is built upon references to the Old Testament, from the first sentence, “Call me Ishmael,” to the last, “It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.” Here we see a pattern of references he could assume would be meaningful to his readers. References which would enable him to say less, but mean more. His novel does not stand alone, but it builds on that which came before, and indeed, I suspect that more people today associate the name “Ahab” with the Great White Whale than with Jezebel or Elijah. Melville entered the conversation.

At this point, I'd like leverage this example into three related digressions:

1. If “Moby Dick” is a part of the Great Conversation by dint of its references to the Bible, doesn't this mean that the Bible is also a part of the Great Conversation? Yes. Isn't this obvious? It certainly was to the authors of “the Great Books,” who in their introduction made the point that they didn't include the Bible in their collection simply because they expected any of its readers to already have multiple copies. Indeed, if we remember that the Bible is not a book, but a collection of books, we can already see the Great Conversation at work within the Bible, as one book quotes another.
2. Hey, isn't the Great Conversation supposed to be about the Western canon? The Bible is a lot of things, but it is mostly written from the very different perspective of oriental culture. The first thing you have to understand about Western culture is its acquisitive nature. We claim the Bible. You don't like it? We don't care.
3. What about other cultures? Don't they have conversations too? Isn't it both arrogant and limiting to focus on the Western canon? Alright then. The second thing you have to understand about Western culture is that it is arrogant. But yes, it is limiting, which is both good and bad. What gets sometimes gets lost in the “Dead White Male Lit” vs. “World Lit” debate is a willingness to acknowledge what both sides have right. There is a distinctive Western conversation (nods to the right), but it is itself in conversation with other culture's conversations (nods to the left). The Bible, one of the foundational documents of the Western canon, is very much a case-in-point, but hardly a unique one. I'll cite Hesse's “Siddartha”, Achebe's “Things Fall Apart,” and the cinematic conversation between Kurosawa and Leone.

But now we get to the question. What is the health of the Great Conversation today? How might we assess it?

This is a critical time for the Great Conversation. Even in the early 50's, Hutchins wrote about how then-recent events had challenged (but in his estimation, unsuccessfully) foundational values of Western culture. And perhaps it was revulsion to Hitler's racial interpretation of Nietzsche's elitist notion of Übermensch that lead Mortimer Adler to push the egalitarian notion that the best education for the best is the best education for all. And the Great Books grew out of this, as an explicit attempt to make the Great Conversation accessible to all. These challenges, while they have not yet overwhelmed us, remain unabated. And all the while, technology has been producing profound changes in the nature of publishing, driving down costs and increasing bandwidth, to the point where anyone with access to a public library, a Google account, and an axe to grind, can set up shop and hope to reach billions. The absence of a public library notwithstanding, this blog itself is a case-in-point.

My thesis is that the Great Conversation has all but collapsed. As more and more people have entered in, and as time-to-publication has fallen from years to milli-seconds, the Great Conversation has pivoted. We no longer consider so much the great minds of the past, nor do we hope to engage the great minds of the future. We write for today's comments, which after a week's time will live forever unread on Google: cache without value.

My thesis is that these are the New Dark Ages: that we've walled ourselves off from the past and future of the Great Conversation, in favor of more vigorous but ultimately ephemeral chatter. We know more facts, but possess less understanding, less wisdom. We are trapped in the ignorance of now.

But I see hope. Whether through nature, or through God, our excesses are inevitably corrected. Difficult times, which is simply another way of saying times that involve changes we don't understand, are times when we're compelled to look beyond us. And we face difficult times, perhaps difficult enough to tear us away from our inward gaze. If not now, soon.

Peace