The Three-Metropolis Drawback of Fashionable Life

However right now there’s a third metropolis affecting the opposite two. Silicon Valley, this third metropolis, isn’t ruled primarily by cause (it’s virtually the mark of an amazing entrepreneur to not be “cheap”), nor by the issues of the soul (the dominant perception appears to be a type of materialism). It’s a place, slightly, ruled by the creation of worth. And a big element of worth is utility—whether or not one thing is beneficial, or is no less than perceived nearly as good or helpful.

I understand that some individuals in Silicon Valley consider themselves as constructing rationalist enterprises. A few of them is perhaps. Town’s guiding spirit, nevertheless, is summed up by investor and podcast host Shane Parris, fashionable among the many Silicon Valley set, when he says: “The actual take a look at of an thought isn’t whether or not it’s true, however whether or not it’s helpful.” In different phrases, utility trumps fact or cause.

Our new century—the world from 2000 to the current day—is dominated by Silicon Valley’s technological affect. This metropolis has produced world-changing services and products (instantaneous search outcomes, next-day supply of tens of millions of merchandise, fixed connectivity to hundreds of “associates”) that create and form new needs. This new metropolis and the brand new forces it has unleashed are affecting humanity greater than something Tertullian may have imagined.

And this new metropolis is rising in energy. By no means earlier than have the questions of Athens and the questions of Jerusalem been mediated to us by such an amazing number of issues that vie for our consideration and our needs. Silicon Valley, this third metropolis, has altered the character of the issue that Tertullian was wrestling with. The questions of what’s true and what’s good for the soul at the moment are largely subordinated to technological progress—or, on the very least, the questions of Athens and Jerusalem at the moment are so certain up with this progress that it’s creating confusion.

It’s laborious to flee the utilitarian logic of Silicon Valley, and we mislead ourselves after we rationalize our motivations. Probably the most fascinating factor in regards to the cryptocurrency craze was the ubiquity of “white papers”—the framing of each new product in purely rational phrases, or the necessity to current it as a product of Athens. After which there was Dogecoin.

We’re not dwelling in a world of pure cause or religious enchantment, however one thing fully new.

Motive, faith, and the technology-driven quest to create worth at any value at the moment are interacting in methods we scarcely perceive, however which have huge affect over our on a regular basis lives. Our two-decades-long experiment with social media has already proven the extent to which cause, or Athens, is being flooded with a lot content material that many have referred to it as a post-truth atmosphere. Some social psychologists, like Jonathan Haidt, imagine it’s making us crazy and undermining our democracy. Humanity is at a crossroads. We try to reconcile numerous wants—for rationality, for worship, for productiveness—and the strain of this pursuit reveals up within the issues we create. As a result of the three cities are interacting, we at the moment are dwelling with technology-mediated faith (on-line church providers) and technology-mediated cause (280-character Twitter debates); religiously adopted know-how (bitcoin) and religiously noticed cause (Covid-19 cathedrals of security); rational faith (efficient altruism) and “rational” know-how (3D-printed assisted-suicide pods).

If Tertullian have been alive right now, I imagine he would ask: “What does Athens must do with Jerusalem—and what do both must do with Silicon Valley?” In different phrases, how do the domains of cause and faith relate to the area of technological innovation and its financiers in Silicon Valley? If the Enlightenment champion Steven Pinker (a resident of Athens) walked right into a bar with a Trappist monk (Jerusalem) and Elon Musk (Silicon Valley) with the purpose of fixing an issue, would they ever have the ability to arrive at a consensus?