Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Is There A Hubris of Manifest Defeatism As Well As That of Manifest Destiny?

There is always more going on than we are aware of, and there is always more that is possible than seems available in what we happen parochially to attend to as important. While we are pretty good by now about ridiculing the hubris of those whose arrogance disregards the contingency of human affairs, it seems to me that there is a corresponding hubris in those whose defeatism disregards this same contingency no less. To deride the public affairs of one's time as facile and corrupt is almost certainly to speak the obvious truth, but to declare them failed beyond redemption or reform is never as wise as it may seem at the time, but represents every single time a failure of perception, a failure of imagination, and a failure of nerve most of all.

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