Vol. 162: Hope for the future

Smartphones, and Quakers, to the rescue

Back at the turn of the millennium— 26 years ago! — I offered these hopeful and indisputably rational predictions about the future.

“The world of a thousand years ago accepted tyranny, slavery, and cruelty as necessary evils (the best anyone could hope for was enlightened despotism). Today’s world is characterized by the growing global embrace of democracy and freedom (resisted, to be sure, with increasing desperation by tyrants and terrorists).”

“The next millennium may well witness the end of violence and coercion altogether, and possibly even government as we know it, due to the alignment of four otherwise unrelated factors: Gandhian tactics, which will further demonstrate the utility of passive resistance as the best practical means to achieve one’s ends; the Internet, through which information will replace force as the primary means of organizing people; psychology, which will further unlock the secrets of the human mind; and biotechnology, which will extend human life spans to centuries, thus producing a far more mature world population.”

How’s that working out so far? Let’s see.

Who reads books?

In 2024, 77 million Americans elected as president — for the second time! — an adolescent narcissist who will do anything to attract attention. The Supreme Court has excused him from the customary rules of human behavior. Russia has spent four years bombarding Ukraine without ever really explaining why. NATO is on life support. Jews in Israel— AKA “a light unto the nations”— are elbowing Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza.

ICE is rounding up thousands of innocent immigrants, and labeling anyone who objects a terrorist. The U.S. Department of Defense has been renamed the Department of War, and its secretary has promised to give “America’s warriors” the freedom to “kill people and break things.” Scientists and experts are in retreat. Questions about covid, flu, pneumonia, and measles epidemics have been turned over to Bobby Kennedy Jr., who lacks a medical degree.

Artificial intelligence is replacing human intelligence. Thanks to the Internet, any idiot can now pose as a journalist online. (One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons portrays a dog pounding happily at a computer keyboard while chortling, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”) Also thanks to the Internet, virtually every prominent male in the Western world, with the possible exception of Pope Leo XIV, has been implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal.

Kids, not to mention adults, have stopped reading books. Instead, they spend their days with smartphones, thanks to which, according to some studies, teenagers no longer relate to each other or their elders, and young males are clueless about getting married.

OK, OK— in the short run, our millennium isn’t doing so well. But in the long run…

The Quaker contribution

The rise of NGOs-— non-governmental organizations— has occurred precisely because the Internet has made it so much easier for people to address many social, environmental, and humanitarian problems without going through the red tape of a government agency.

Or take those smartphones that everyone uses and everyone despises. Those little handheld devices empower private citizens to record events and, in the process, keep public servants honest and responsive. In Minneapolis last month, both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were filming ICE border patrols on the street when they were shot and killed by ICE agents. Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem contended that they were terrorists threatening the life of the agents. In the past, they might have gotten away with that baloney. But the abundant video footage demonstrated otherwise.

Smartphone videos are actually an updated version of the old Quaker practice of “bearing witness”— that is, challenging injustice simply by witnessing what’s going on. One important Quaker contribution to civilization was their perception that baddies modify their behavior when they think they’re being watched. The smartphone has advanced that centuries-old concept exponentially.

500 years before Jefferson

And sometimes that kind of progress really does take centuries. I’m thinking here of my medieval ancestor, the 13^th Century German rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, whose grasp of subjects like community organization and taxation was said to endow him with quasi-legal authority among Jews and Christians alike (even the Holy Roman Emperor consulted Meir on at least one occasion). This remarkable thinker contended that, under the principles of Jewish public law, the individual is absolutely free, the legitimacy of government is derived solely from the free and uncoerced consent of the governed, and the legislative power of the majority is limited only to certain areas and cannot encroach upon the individual’s private and inalienable rights. Five hundred years passed before those ideas gained traction with John Locke and Thomas Jefferson and were embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution.

To me, the lesson of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg is that— Thomas Carlyle notwithstanding — great ideas do not begin as a minority of one. They often occur to many people in isolation. But the ideas perish unless some community connects such people, reinforcing their beliefs and emboldening them to convert their thoughts into actions. But some communities perform this function better than others.

Jews in Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, my home for the past half-century, was not merely the birthplace of modern democracy; it was also the only major city in the world founded and profoundly influenced by that most tolerant and egalitarian religious sect, the Quakers. As such, it became a haven for Europeans fleeing oppression as far back as the French Huguenots in the 17^th Century. It was the only North American center of the Enlightenment, that great 18^th- Century awakening that ushered in modern political culture.

Yet there was once a time when Jews like me were denied the right to vote or hold pubic office in Pennsylvania. Today, of course, Pennsylvania gentiles freely (and even routinely) choose Jews as their governors, U.S. senators, mayors, and district attorneys, not to mention heads of major local universities. These things take time, not to mention human and technological chemistry.

One other piece of the puzzle: As Hannah Arendt wrote, a free and healthy society requires active thinkers, not passive consumers. But thinking is hard work. It’s often frightening. Many people would rather just be told what to do. A free country is one where people can speak up without fear of retaliation. Dissent is as essential to democracy as consent is.

Swagger vs. maturity

The model for the future, I argued 25 years ago, is the secular, tolerant, democratic ideal proposed by (among various assorted thinkers) Meir of Rothenburg and the Quakers who founded Philadelphia— “the same model nurtured by the diverse peoples who run Philadelphia in remarkable harmony today.”

“We won’t live to see it, of course,” I wrote. “But if and when it happens, swaggering, rambunctious cities will be out, and mature, civilized cities like Philadelphia will be in vogue once again. The city that nurtured the greatest achievement of the Second Millennium C.E.— modern democracy— could engender the greatest achievement of the Third Millennium as well.”

One other thing I would add: Don’t count out the Quakers. Thanks to smartphones, the Internet, and the other technological advances that connect people, those dudes could just be getting started.

Human progress isn’t a continuum. The lessons of the bad times can be useful in the long run.

I know what you’re thinking: In the long run, we’re all dead. I prefer another equally valid cliché: Getting there is half the fun.

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com