Why do we suddenly get an explosion of creativity and progress in certain places and moments, Johan Norberg asks, and why do these golden ages end?
I have learned that ages become golden because they imitate and innovate. They first emerge because of cheating. They didn’t come up with all the innovations that made them prosper; instead they took them from others.
Athenian, Italian and Dutch merchants picked up new ideas on their business trips. Like the Borg of Star Trek, the Romans constantly absorbed peoples, ideas and methods by conquest, and Abbasid Baghdad actively sponsored a translation project to lay their hands on the world’s knowledge and science.
But there is a limit to how far imitation can get you. To make this progress self-propelling, these cultures had to combine these inputs with their own thoughts to create innovations, from higher agricultural yields to artistic rebellions. This takes inclusivity back home. People have to be allowed to try new things. Free speech, free markets and a rule of law that constrains the arbitrary actions of rulers leave room for this.
But get Giotto and the flying shuttle, it takes something more: a broader culture of optimism. Innovation is difficult and controversial, and the results are never guaranteed. Therefore, you need a sense that there is hope and possibility, and you need role models around you who have shown the way, to make it seem like it is worth trying. Others to be inspired by, learn from, and to compete with.
This progress sometimes became self-sustaining because, at a certain point, it started transforming the self-identity of these cultures. That is why we often see clusters of creativity, like philosophy in Athens, art during the Renaissance, classical music in Vienna and technology in Silicon Valley.
Pessimism, the sense that it is hopeless, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a clue to the decline and fall of golden ages.
[…]
All these golden ages experienced a death-to-Socrates moment in times of crisis, when they soured on their previous commitment to open intellectual exchange. They started to support strongmen, control the economy and abandon international exchange. This made the fear of disaster self-fulfilling, since those barriers limited access to other possibilities and restricted the adaptation and innovation that could have helped them deal with the threat.
What is this grammatical construction? Is this valid English?
This seems subtly wrong, somehow. Could it be because AdtechVC-era Silicon Valley is an instantiation of Hell on Earth and must be permanently destroyed and utterly obliterated forever, or is it, rather, the truly farcical notion that AdtechVC-era Silicon Valley has produced anything of value at all, let alone anything of eternal value like Athens, Florence, or Vienna?
…And here it is. The author is implicitly protesting presidents with the arrogance to exercise the powers of their office in unapproved fashion, mundanely Hamiltonian economic policies, and fewer than infinity Indians.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the author is a Swede.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGkLjfPWqeI
Not entirely wrong… but is optimism better?
Let’s imitate a golden age, then. But wait, are we learning from past or is that Voodoo thinking again?
Would not hurt to drop a specific example or two here as well.
On the other hand, are there examples of the opposite? Let’s remember Russian minister Sergei Witte, once competently working for the monarch who won a tariff war. But his wild economical spirit wanted much more. Thus, once he was left to his own judgment, the bold renovator opened those barriers and optimistically expressed hope that now wealth will just flow in on its own. For some reason, this course ended quite disastrously. Hmm.
Or we may at least remember that “golden age” is called “age” for a reason, and that if someone 70 years old (or 10, for that matter) rejects the fear of disaster and boldly tries to act as if he was a fit 20 years old man… well, this sort of optimism does not sound healthy.
Optimism is severely over-rated. Every sports team when they run on the field think they’re going to win and half the time they’re wrong.