Children of Chaos, by Douglas Rushkoff
Surviving the end of the world as we know it.
By Douglas Rushkoff
This is a truly fascinating book about post-'Gen-Xers'. Rushkoff says that the mass media are the framework of our lives. He has understood how powerful the media are - he uses the word 'mediascape' to describe the world we live in.
What he says about the media is the best part of the book. He helps people who are over the hill to understand 'screenagers' - kids born in a world ruled by TV and computer. But his ideas about where our culture is going raise some questions.
Rushkoff uses two pictures of Social Change:
Evolution:
We are evolving into a new "colonial life-form". We are developing as our technology develops. The only alternative is apocalyptic destruction.
Chaos Theory:
Chaos is: the deeper order within disorder. Chaos theory is a recent idea in maths. Rushkoff takes some of the buzz-words of chaos theory and uses them to help understand how society is changing - for example fractals - patterns or self-similarities which are repeated on different scales.
Past
Rushkoff says that in the past society was characterized by institutions (religions, corporates, politics, family), by one-directional media (TV), power structures, and by unchanging morals. The future is pessimistic - pollution, moral collapse, bureaucracy, inflation, AIDS.
Present
'We are all immigrants to a new territory,' says Rushkoff: Traditional culture is collapsing! We are in a time of change and turbulence. We have to cope with a flood of new information and ideas. We cannot make sense of a world which is
- disjointed
- tribalized
- non-rational
We have to learn from our kids because they have adapted much better and quicker than the rest of us.
Future
We are evolving with our technology towards a future in which humanity will become a colonial organism, across the whole world. This
Key to this is our networking technology.
So there is hope! Our current problems are only birthing pains!
A trick with words?
says Rushkoff. This is a trick to watch out for: Like a lot of other writers, Rushkoff loads evolution with a plan and a purpose that the facts cannot bear. (Richard Dawkins is another, with his 'selfish gene' theory.) For example:
Well whose objective? He talks about it 'groping towards complexity' - Well what gropes? And why? And how? If you do not believe in a God who created and controls the Universe, giving evolution this kind of purposefulness is cheating. In fact, atheists should not use purpose-type arguments at all. But they often seem to find it difficult to be consistent about this for some reason. (Why could this be?)
Human wickedness and evil
Rushkoff's view of the future is very rosy. But does he take human evil & wickedness seriously enough? You do not have to be a religious fundamentalist to see that there is a problem here - there is enough evidence in recent history. As the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell said
Or, as psychologist Carl Jung put it:
But Rushkoff does not deal with our need to be rescued from ourselves.
Metaphorically speaking
When Rushkoff talks about evolution and Chaos theory, he is using metaphors, or pictures (although he might deny this...) For example, Chaos Theory is really a mathematical discipline. But Rushkoff takes some of the jargon, and some of the concepts, and applies them in a free-wheeling way to social change. There is nothing wrong with doing this - but "it ain't proof" of anything.
The same with evolution. Evolution is an idea in biology. Rushkoff applies it to social development. Human beings have evolved significantly within a single creature's lifespan, he says. Well... society may have changed a lot in a single lifetime, but this is not the same as evolution.
Fudging the facts
To make his point, Rushkoff just takes a free hand with historical facts. For example:
- Scientists like Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Lord Kelvin, and others, would have been really surprised to learn that "Religion managed to survive only by separating itself from science..."
- "We kill people like... Copernicus" - Well, we did not (kill Copernicus).
- He links the Renaissance with sailing round the world with the death of the idea of a God who is "up there" in the sky. But the Renaissance was a result of the re-discovery of Greek and Latin classics. It began in the 14th Century - Magellan did not sail round the world until the beginning of the 16th Century. And the ancients knew long ago that the Earth was a globe - Eratosthenes measured its diameter in 240 BC.
- Rushkoff uses the theory that the unborn baby in the womb goes through the stages of evolution of the human species - but this theory is now discredited.
- Rushkoff identifies technology with magic. He says that "Many of our technological advances - like radio crystals, fractals, and fuzzy logic - are based on ancient precognition of molecular structure, self-similarity, and the organic basis for intuition." But this just is not true to the facts of history.
I enjoyed reading this book, and wanted to agree with Rushkoff - but in the end, he lost credibility by playing fast and loose with the facts.
Vision quest?
One positive thing about "Children of Chaos" is that Rushkoff recognizes a spiritual side to our nature that we cannot ignore or repress. However inhuman the world is, however impossible to understand, we still look for meaning and purpose and relationship.
The Bible's explanation is that we are "made in the image of God" - personal, rational, spiritual and moral. Not only this, but we are made for a relationship with God.
Of course, many people have turned away from traditional religion as this has failed to meet this need. Instead, they have turned to eastern religions, New Age, and DIY "spiritualities" in a quest for reality.
Negative view of religion
Rushkoff has a negative view of religion - and a sympathetic view of the occult. He does not seem to think there is any reality behind the follower of Christ's belief in God. He says that we developed the idea of God to give us laws and boundaries to make us feel safe. For example, he says
But this misses the point completely. The real question is whether in fact there is a God who is there. Rushkoff is enthusiastic for spirituality, but it's a spirituality which is not connected to any facts.
His view of traditional religions is very negative. He talks about "self-righteous religions", and centuries of "spiritual repression". This hostility towards the Church is combined with a positive attitude to occult practices such as tarot and I-ching.
Message misunderstood
Rushkoff has not understood the Bible's message. For example, he talks about the Christian view that the human being is a perfect form which can only be sullied by sex or corrupted by technology. This is not a Christian view. The Christian view is that sex is designed by God, and a good thing, and fun! It only becomes a bad thing when it is used in an inappropriate way - outside marriage.
In the same way, technology is not in itself corrupting. Rather, it is part of our God-given rationality and creativity. Yes, technology can lead to bad results, such as pollution - but this is a misuse of technology. It does not mean that technology itself is bad.
Rushkoff's whole view of Christianity seems to be that it is about earning our way into God's favor. But the reality is that we have gone badly astray, and God offers us mercy and forgiveness which we do not deserve, and which we cannot do anything to earn.
Evidence ignored
But the biggest problem with Rushkoff's view of Christianity is that he has ignored or distorted the facts. He has not engaged at all with the evidence from the natural creation, or from history, for the reality of the God of the Bible. He has just dismissed it by ridicule.
Rushkoff's media analysis is fascinating and his view of modern technology is gripping, but in the end his central idea fails because it does not match up to reality.