The Smartest Book About Our Digital Age Was Published in 1929. By Ted Gioia.
The Smartest Book About Our Digital Age Was Published in 1929. By Ted Gioia. The Daily Beast, January 5, 2014.
Gioia:
How
José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the
Masses helps us understand everything from YouTube to Duck Dynasty.
I first
read José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt ofthe Masses more than thirty years ago. I still remember how disappointed I
was by this cantankerous book. I’d read other works by Ortega (1883-1955), and
been impressed by the Spanish philosopher’s intelligence and insight. But this
1929 study of the modern world, his most famous book, struck me as hopelessly
nostalgic and elitist.
Yet I
recently read The Revolt of the Masses
again, and with a completely different response. The same ideas I dismissed as
old-fashioned and out-of-date back in the 20th century now reveal an uncanny
ability to explain the most peculiar happenings of the digital age.
Are
you, like me, puzzled to learn that Popular
Science magazine recently shut down comments on its website, declaring that
they were bad for science? Are you
amazed, like me, that Duck Dynasty is
the most-watched nonfiction cable show in TV history? Are you dismayed, like
me, that crappy Hollywood films about comic book heroes and defunct TV shows
have taken over every movie theater? Are you depressed, like me, that symphony
orchestras are declaring bankruptcy, but Justin Bieber earned $58 million last
year?
If so,
you need to read The Revolt of the Masses.
You’ve got questions. Ortega’s got answers.
First,
let me tell you what you won’t find in this book. Despite a title that promises
political analysis, The Revolt of the Masses
has almost nothing to say about conventional party ideologies and alignments.
Ortega shows little interest in fascism or capitalism or Marxism, and this
troubled me when I first read the book. (Although, in retrospect, the
philosopher’s passing comments on these matters proved remarkably prescient—for
example his smug dismissal of Russian communism as destined to failure in the
West, and his prediction of the rise of a European union.) Above all, he hardly
acknowledges the existence of “left” and “right” in political debates.
Ortega’s
brilliant insight came in understanding that the battle between “up” and “down”
could be as important in spurring social and cultural change as the conflict
between “left” and “right.” This is not
an economic distinction in Ortega’s mind. The new conflict, he insists, is not
between “hierarchically superior and inferior classes. . . . upper classes or
lower classes.” A millionaire could be a member of the masses, according to
Ortega’s surprising schema. And a pauper might represent the elite.
The key
driver of change, as Ortega sees it, comes from a shocking attitude
characteristic of the modern age—or, at least, Ortega was shocked. Put simply,
the masses hate experts. If forced to
choose between the advice of the learned and the vague impressions of other
people just like themselves, the
masses invariably turn to the latter. The upper elite still try to pronounce
judgments and lead, but fewer and fewer of those down below pay attention.
Above
all, the favorite source of wisdom for the masses, in Ortega’s schema, is their
own strident opinions. “Why should he listen, when he has all the answers,
everything he needs to know?” Ortega writes. “It is no longer the season to
listen, but on the contrary, a time to pass judgment, to pronounce sentence, to
issue proclamations.”
Ortega
couldn’t have foreseen digital age culture, but he is describing it with
precision. He would recognize the angry, assertive tone of comments on web
articles as the exact same tendency he identified in 1929. He would understand
why Yelp reviews have more influence than the considered judgments of
restaurant reviewers. He would know why Amazon customer comments have more
clout than critics in The New Yorker.
He would attend an angry town hall meeting or listen to talk radio, and
recognize the same tendencies he described in his book.
Recently
I had dinner with a friend who is affluent, educated, and a noted wine
connoisseur. We were talking about wine critic Robert Parker and other experts,
and my friend asserted that he now relies more on wine advice from websites
where anyone can post their evaluations of different vintages. And if the mass
mentality has taken over wine-tasting, what can we expect from film reviews or
rock criticism?
Of
course, this rise of mass opinion comes at a cost. For example, music criticism
is turning into lifestyle reporting. Even specialist magazines avoid dealing
with any technical descriptions of what a performer is doing, and I have a
hunch that the less critics know about the structure of music, the more likely
they are to succeed today. This same tendency, outlined with precision by
Ortega back in 1929, can be seen in numerous other fields where experts once
reigned, but have now been replaced by the opinions of the masses.
Strange
to say, not all kinds of expertise are ignored nowadays. The same people who
denounce expert opinion about movies or music will praise a skilled plumber or
car mechanic. The value of blue-collar
expertise is accepted without question. The same people who get angry when I
make judgments about the skill level of a pianist, would never question my
decision to pay more to hire a superior piano tuner. This is a peculiar state
of affairs, but very much aligned with the “revolt of the masses.”
Ortega
also predicted the close connection between advancing technologies and these
new rude attitudes. He devotes an entire chapter to the co-existence of
“primitivism and technology.” He understands that the rise of new technological
tools gives a global scope to the unformed opinions of people who, in a
previous era, would have only focused on what was nearby and familiar. Above
all, he marvels at the fact that the “disdain for science as such is displayed
with greatest impunity by the technicians themselves.” Or put differently,
skill in manipulating a technology (say, Instagram or the iPhone, in our day)
has nothing in common with a zeal for facts and empirical evidence. That
shocked Ortega, but we encounter it daily on in the web.
I wish
Ortega were around nowadays to comment on digital age culture. At one point in The Revolt of the Masses, he complains
about a woman who told him “I can’t stand a dance to which less than 800 people
have been invited.” So how would the Spanish philosopher respond to the crowd
mentality that seeks out viral videos with a hundred million views? How would
he evaluate TV reality shows in which the best singers or dancers are
determined by the verdict of the masses? What would he think of political
judgments shared by the millions in the form of 140-or-fewer-characters tweets?
I can’t
do justice to all of this book’s riches in a short article. On almost every
page, Ortega addresses some issue that still resonates today—for example, the
rise of consumerism; or the possibility for barbarism to flourish in tandem
with technology; or the unbalanced specialization which favors science over the
humanities; or (in his words) “the loss of prestige of legislative assemblies.”
You recognize all of those hot topics, don’t you?
Okay,
we encounter these dysfunctional tendencies every day, but Ortega forces us to
see them with a different perspective—from the standpoint of “up” versus “down.”
Indeed, his book is more valuable for the speculations it will spur in a
current-day reader than in the specific situations Ortega addresses. But isn’t
that always the measure of a timeless thinker?