Google has taken on the jobs of oracle, soothsayer, sleuth, psychotherapist and priest. But although it might seem omnipotent, its ability to meet our deepest needs is clearly limited. Our desire for it to do so reveals much about us.
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It is culture, not biology, that makes the average French person value all lives more equally and the Japanese make that value depend on how we behave. And these values can in turn be shaped by the philosophical and theological ideas that hold sway.
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“It is a damning indictment of the shallowness of globalisation to date that we are much more versed in the world’s cuisines than we are with its philosophies. People are more familiar with an Indian korma than they are with the true meaning of karma.”
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We seem to be caught in a dilemma. We can’t just dismiss the unacceptable prejudices of the past as unimportant. But if we think that holding morally objectionable views disqualifies anyone from being considered a great thinker or a political leader, then there’s hardly anyone from history left.
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While the narratives we like tell tend to be more like Hollywood movies, reality looks more like the work of a Beckett or a Pinter. The more we tidy the tales we tell, the more they resemble works of fiction rather than truthful histories.
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