Statues, including Romulus and Remus

The first is that authenticity turns out to be just another form of hyper-competitive status seeking, exacerbating many of the very problems it was designed to solve. Second, and even more worrisome, is that the legitimate fear of the negative effects of technological evolution has given way to a paranoid rejection of science and even reason itself.

Andrew Potter, in, “Authenticity, anti-vaxxers, and the rise of neoprimitivism,” makes some interesting observations related to a few topics I’ve been thinking about lately. Hopefully I’ll be able to distill them into something coherent I can talk about on Being Digital.

On the one hand, technology has raised the standard of living for the entire world, yet we still have people thinking like in the Medieval Dark Ages, from the anti-vaccination crowd to the religious extremists. Our beliefs and ability to reason, unlike technology, does not follow Moore’s Law. And lots of other people are generally confused and anxious about the accelerating pace of technological change, which leads to pathological behaviors and getting derailed by things that, relatively, don’t really matter.

Like the pregnant woman who pauses between puffs on her cigarette to rant on Facebook about the possible harmful effects of mobile phone antenna radiation on her unborn child.

We live in neoprimitivist times. Authenticity seeking wedded to technophobic irrationalism has led us to a bizarre situation where we are increasingly ignorant and suspicious of the scientific and technological underpinnings of our world. It’s like fish deciding that water is their enemy.

People searching for authenticity does not bother me. The more troubling thing is the increasing rejection of science.

via macdrifter