The New Dark Age

America's great contribution to civilization is "freedom". Nothing is valued more highly; nothing is spoken of more reverently. Yet, it is obvious today that freedom has been reduced to nothing more than the freedom to consume. Yes there is freedom of religion; yes there is freedom of voting. But these are mere sideshows. The real action is consumption. We are, after all, a "consumer" society. Freedom is simply the freedom to consume.

This culture, this "freedom" is darker and more debased by far than the so-called dark or middle ages. At least in that unjustly maligned time humanity had humility and reverence for something higher. But scientific thought and rationalism has forever condemmed that era with this misguided pejorative. 

These are indeed the dark ages today. They are dark because only that which can be counted and consumed is valued. And consumption is the using up, the incineration of all things. To consume is to kill-- an overstatement? 

The brilliant, prescient, Max Weber, summed it up in his "iron cage" metaphor. The rational, western world has created an iron cage of secular values which regards all that is not quantifiable and empirical as dead and exploitable. All Weber missed was the evolution of the industrial world to the information age; today it is a digital cage in which we have imprisoned ourselves.

I wonder if there are others who see from this perspective? Perhaps Wendell Berry? Maybe J.M.G. Le Clezio, whose excellent "Le Reve Mexicain" clearly tends towards the same view after meditating on the destruction of pre-columbian civilization.