Late this summer, I read a column in the The New York Times Sunday Review by Neal Gabler that drove me mad. Gabler believes that Americans do not think anymore and, as a result, we no longer formulate BIG ideas that have the power to transfix and transform society. In his editorial, Mr. Gabler points to an earlier time – pre-social networking and pre-Googling – when BIG thinkers were cultural icons – Albert Einstein, Betty Friedan, Marshal McLuhan. He makes the rather strange point that “a generation ago, these men [I assume he means “people” since he includes a few women in his examples of BIG thinkers] would have made their way into popular magazines and onto television screens.” He seems to mean that we no longer want to hear what scientists have to say if we can’t consume their ideas in a Tweet-stream.
But, I wonder about that when I watch the Daily Show or the Colbert Report with my 20-year-old son and we are listening to the US Ambassador to the UN discuss why the UN matters to the US or a Senator discuss the debt ceiling debate. Okay, okay – it’s a six minute interview with snarky humor laced throughout, but that’s about three minutes longer than the so-called major networks’ coverage of important topics and about as long as NPR gives a story (and that’s called an “in-depth” treatment). These are BIG problems calling for BIG ideas and they are not solely problems of the marketplace, the one domain in which Gabler acknowledges that BIG ideas are clearly being born.
But, if Gabler gives, he also takes away.
“Entrepreneurs have plenty of ideas, and some….have come up with some brilliant ideas in the ‘inventional’ sense of the word. Still, while these ideas may change the way we live, they rarely transform the way we think. They are material, not ideational.”
I have to say, that I am still trying to make sense of this assertion. It seems to me that many commercial inventions do, in fact, change the way we think. They create new frameworks which change how we see things and this is precisely how understanding is transformed. The fact that these ideas are embodied in a product or a service (are experienced in the corporeal world) does not – to my mind, at least – negate their “ideational” impact. And, the notion that ideas in the marketplace and ideas in the… “non-marketplace(?)” are fundamentally different also makes me wince. Are there any corners of human activity that are free from the curse of “monetization?” The marketplace subsidizes some pockets of activity, insulating them from its daily concerns – non-profits and government – but they are not immune or outside of its reach (ask any university that relied on its endowment funds for operations in 2009 or NGO that relied on donors).
Finally Gabler goes full bore and lets loose about what he calls our “post-idea” world. This is the world in which we are more concerned with amassing information to stay informed than to make sense of the world. We live in a gap between apprehending and comprehending the world in Gabler’s terms. Reducing our expression to 140 characters or video clips and restricting it to our circle of online friends (even if they number in the millions as they do for Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher) traps us in an endless loop of opinions which are the antithesis of BIG thinking.
I admit that I find it impossible to keep up with the flow of information that comes my way. But this was the case 20 years ago – before the Internet, before Kindles, before iPhones and iPads and netbooks and Blackberries and instant messaging and Twitter. It was nice not to be so accessible, so 24/7, but it didn’t make it any easier to be thoughtful.
In some of the work that I do, BIG ideas are afoot and they are engaging many people in provocative and energetic discussions that seek to enlarge our understanding of what it means to live in an increasingly inter-connected world in which seemingly small choices ripple outward with surprisingly large impact over long periods of time. Strands of thinking that come many different fields – complexity theory, evolutionary biology, particle physics, finance, philanthropy – are being woven together to form new ways of seeing, of understanding our world.
My children’s education at the elementary, middle and high school levels is far more concerned with understanding than it is with simply acquiring information – a marked contrast to my own experience. And, my kids are every bit as connected 24/7 via text messages and video chats as any of their peers. Yet somehow, BIG ideas still entrance them as they struggle to make sense of their world in all its close immensity. I am not a betting person, but I would still bet that there are BIG ideas out there that are heading our way and that as a species our drive to make meaning will prevail.
And, that’s as a good a reason as any on this Thanksgiving Holiday to be thankful.
Source: “The Elusive Big Idea,” Neal Gabler, Sunday Review, The New York Times, August 14, 2011.
