Random Questions with No Pretensions

Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age is set in the near future when nanotechnology, like information technology before it, has changed what it means to be human. At one point in the book, two of the characters are forced to live on the street. Soon they head to a public matter-compiler, which assembles, atom by atom, a set of sushi for the homeless.

With all the talk about welfare, and handouts, and how much of a responsibility the government should have to make sure peoples’ basic needs are met, this scene brings up a question. Imagine a world where some technology has made it more than affordable, trivial in fact, for the government to provide people with what they need to stay alive. Could this, would this, be a better world? How would this affect the structure of society, the meaning of poverty, the meaning of life?

The other day I heard someone say, the forces of capitalism are essentially at odds with study of the humanities. This was a humanities professor, giving a lecture, and so I didn’t have a chance to ask him to elaborate.

At the same time that he said this, he kind of insinuated that the “the forces of capitalism” favor the study of science, of economics, of psychology. In effect, areas of study that can produce capital directly. What use, after all, is an anthropologist to someone trying to turn a profit? What use is literature? In a pure profit-seeking society, everything gets parred down to what sells to most people, from nail-clippers, to culture, to food. Things that have value beyond money have essentially no value in a world that doesn’t have a way to counter “the forces of capitalism.”

First of all, how solid is this assumption that the forces of capitalism are ultimately at odds with culture?

If you think “pretty damn solid”, then my next question is:

How does a society counter, or perhaps even channel, the forces of capitalism in order to sustain the integrity of knowledge for knowledges’ sake, truth for truths’ sake, and beauty for beautys’ sake?

Those who carry around beliefs

Like so many membership cards,

Others who wrap themselves in opinion

Swathed in ideas like regalia

Seem to miss the point of truth;

If we could

Dodge opine conscription

Doff ideological pride;

What, then, would be left?