Age of anxiety: Today, society could not have been richer, yet the disparities could not have been greater. Photo: iStock
Modern society has evolved and put in place structures that increase trade and commerce, reason and literacy and ensure a better standard of living to many. But this has only highlighted the contradictions of gut-wrenching inequality and poverty. Advancement of knowledge has not led to increase in wisdom. There is war and destruction, migration is being questioned and we tragically appear to have become more religious and less humane.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” wrote British novelist Charles Dickens in his 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities. The words are remarkably prescient.
While Dickens went on to highlight the many contradictions of the times he wrote in, the present time too similarly seems to be “an age of wisdom” and the “age of foolishness”, the very “epoch of belief” as well as the “epoch of incredulity”. We look around and yes, it is the “season of light” and “spring of hope” and yet also, the “season of darkness” and the “winter of despair”.
Living with contradictions
Harvard professor Steven Pinker, in his celebrated 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature, contends that we cannot be living in better times than now; that modern society has evolved and put in place structures which foster the rule of law, increase trade and commerce, reason and literacy and assure a better standard of living to larger swathes of humanity than ever before in the past.
Undoubtedly infrastructure and the essentials of a good life have improved. But this has only highlighted the contradictions — and as Thomas Piketty in The Economics of Inequality (2015) and Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011) have eloquently brought out, there is gut-wrenching inequality and poverty.
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Science has made incredible advances, yet there is pseudoscience, poverty, water shortage, famine, inadequacy of medical support and deaths. The advancement of knowledge has not led to a corresponding increase in wisdom.
And there is war and destruction. Women and children who have nothing to do with the stubbornness and ego of grown-up men are being killed. Schools and hospitals are being destroyed. The social fabric across societies globally is being stretched. There is tension, fear and apprehension as to what the future holds.
Migration is being questioned; despite the fact that all countries without exception have at various points in their history been built on a foundation of migrants. Migration, as has been said, is a powerful driver of progress-lifting economies, connecting cultures, benefiting countries of origin and destination alike.
‘The Age of Anxiety’
What better time to remember WH Auden’s dark, Pulitzer-winning 1947 poem, The Age of Anxiety, written in the aftermath of World War II, which captures the angst that engulfs us presently. In the poem, fate brings four characters together in a bar — a rational, thinking person, a dreamer, an idealist and a cynic. Restless and beyond cure.
“We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment. And let our illusions die,” writes Auden, the lines suggesting that human beings prefer status quo rather than to face reality. An illusion seems better rather than seeking a change; we’d much rather not “climb the cross”, any cross.
Auden talks of a paradox which again is so typical of the times we live in.
The four characters are sitting in a bar, lulling themselves with liquor, conversing and yet are all essentially alone. “Alone together, they are companions, who share no common speech,” writes the poet. The modern man cannot be more digitally connected and yet emotionally, desperately lonely.
The poem talks of the need to search for meaning. “To ask the hard question is simple,” writes Auden. And yet we drown in our cowardice, accept the situation as it were, know the truth and yet shy away from confronting the truth, mere spectators.
The sentence “we are lived by powers we pretend to understand” captures the reality the modern man faces — AI taking increasing control of our lives, where Mythos (an AI model) and OpenAI become so powerful as to make all infrastructure vulnerable and cause dread and alarm both in the minds of the designers of the models and the government. Are we with our eyes open creating a monster?
This too shall pass
Societies today appear to be torn with distrust. There are more external manifestations of religions than at any time in history. But tragically, religion, it appears, has hardened our soul. We have become more religious and less humane. We do not deserve our religions, for we have let them down by our conduct.
We have larger populations who are literate than ever before in history; yet less educated. Political leadership has shown less statesmanship and let down their citizens. We are numbed by years of ennui. Society could not have been richer than before; yet the disparities cannot be more.
What then does the future hold for us? A gradual slide into further degeneration? Yes, we live in an ‘age of anxiety’, but we should not let anxiety kill our natural human instincts. Instincts which have shaped us over centuries, of doing our bit for society, of empathy, of doing good, of speaking up when we see evil. And to never lose hope. For as is said, everything is ephemeral; this too shall pass, provided we never lose courage, that most important of virtues, as late American writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou put it, to face the vicissitudes of life.
In the meantime, let Auden have the last word: “Looking up at the stars, I know quite well; That for they care, I can go to hell/But on earth indifference is the least; We have to dread from man or beast”.
