Digital Barbarism

in fact a decision on one level or another and not just neglect—not to feed them. Taking care of horses costs money, requires diligence, and courts trouble. In the end, he no longer paid out, so he had his money and he had his thoroughbreds, but their skin was stretched tight over their bones, they were covered with sores and wounds from fighting each other for the stubble in their paddocks, their legs were like fragile reeds, and they moved slowly and painfully as if close to death. Perhaps when the owner first withheld their feed and he had the delight of both money and beautiful horses he imagined that he could do anything, that they would remain beautiful, that his wilfulness would exact no price. But, of course, it did.

Hardly am I saying that there isn’t good in the new forms or bad in the old, but that a mindless embrace of either leads to the acceptance of anything whatsoever in one and the rejection without merit of the other. This tendency, in part the product of embittered and joyful partisanship, undermines the belief that judgments and standards are necessary. In the case of the rush to faith in the machine, and by putting trust merely in what is new or next, it nurtures the view that truth cannot exist independently of fashion or consensus, and that truth is therefore malleable and defined purely or primarily by power.

In this regard, the quick and dirty mobilization made possible by the internet, if applied to the workings of political decision, would result in a choice as wrong as the Romans made when they abandoned the Republic. Were Ross Perot’s now seemingly ancient proposal for instant electronic referenda to be realized, as it now so easily could be, it would threaten the republican form of government and its essential moderating mechanisms, which rely upon time, consideration, and the principles and conscience of each elected representative, to filter out frenzies, crazes, and panics. We are rapidly building a nation in which, intoxicated, we will have no chance to regret in the morning what, intoxicated, we did the night before.

The subjects of my criticism will protest that they do judge soberly and that they are not pushed to their opinions by the quick-rising squalls of mass enthusiasm or drawn to them by the sudden and giddy powers they now exercise. But the evidence does not support them. Their newly acquired powers have made them careless and coarse, and, in their enjoyment and anticipation of what they have and what they wish for, they now appear like all those whom power corrupts.

Though they are only masters of the surface, if that, they expect to master the universe, and masters of the universe need never compromise. What a pity, because to some extent the very powers that desensitize them can be applied to heal the wounds they have made. It is necessary to go into the new world, as we shall, but to keep faith with the humanity and achievements of the old. Above all, this demands a reversal of the process in which people have begun to model themselves according to the virtues and behaviors of machines. But perhaps this is too much to expect. Revolutions are characteristically violent. They arise from hope, and, with few exceptions, go on to destruction. And never have revolutionaries drunk on revolution been the best judges and guides of mankind, even though they never fail to think they are, and readily present themselves as such.

The revolutionaries of copyright are simply a subset of the machine revolution, and though in mien they are the diluted shadows of their predecessors, they are spiritually much the same. For the rights of authorship that have developed over time and as the world has changed are part of and an achievement of civilization. An assault upon them is an attack on one narrow front against civilization itself, and is accomplished by civilization’s malcontents—who would destroy it without consideration as they accumulate intoxicating powers; who would destroy it out of self-indulgent grievance; who would politely destroy it by radical amendment; who would destroy it capriciously; or who are simply caught in the tide of others.

Perhaps the whole of modern times can be said to be a flirtation with force, regimentation, stress, and power, subjecting frail human bodies and emotions to the limits and strains appropriate to steel, ceramic, engines, and blast furnaces. It need not be so. It should not be so, if only because, to cite Montaigne, “Nature always gives us happier laws than those we give ourselves.”¹²⁵

The new, digital barbarism is, in its language, comportment, thoughtlessness, and obeisance to force and power, very much like the old. And like the old, and every form of tyranny, hard or soft, it is most vulnerable to a bright light shone upon it. To call it for what it is, to examine it while paying no heed to its rich bribes and powerful coercions, to contrast it to what it presumes to replace, is to begin the long fight against it.

Very clearly, the choice is between the preeminence of the individual or of the collective, of improvisation or of routine, of the soul or of the machine. It is a choice that perhaps you have already made, without knowing it. Or perhaps it has been made for you. But it is always possible to opt in or out, because your affirmations are your own, the court of judgment your mind and heart. These are free, and you are the sovereign, always. Choose.

NOTES

1. C. P. Cavafy, “Expecting the Barbarians,” in The Complete Poems of Cavafy, ed. & trans. Rae Dalven (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1961), p. 18.

2. Charles de Gaulle, The Army of the Future (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1934), p. 109.

3. Mark Helprin, “© Inequity,” in Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2007. Previously published as “A Great Idea Lasts Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright?” (title supplied by the editors), New York Times, Op-Ed,