New Dark Age?

Thanks to the smartphonification’ of life, we now have more memories in our pockets and less in our heads. We have entered a phase of unreason. We may not have entered the age of anti-Enlightenment. But we see the core values of the Enlightenment fading. Critical thinking, empirical rigour and a spirit of debate and discussion are losing ground. Today, secular values are ridiculed.

- ASH NARAIN ROY

At the end of the 20th century, celebrated Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez made a seminal observation: “Expect nothing from the 21st century; it is the 21st century that expects everything from us.” Marquez was right. The new century promised glorious sunrise, major advances in human civilisation, innovations and societal progress from the physical to the abstract, and from the digital to the tangible.

We are in the third decadal journey of the 21st century. With degeneration all around, one doesn’t have even a faint hope in what Victor Hugo believed: “even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise.” Today, science is slogging, technology is straying into the realm of the unknown and society is in retreat. Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan believes that we are living in a profoundly antiscience moment.

The age of theory is drawing to its end. We have entered a phase of “post-theory science.” How can science flourish when denial, distraction, accusation and lies are part of the new game in town? Doubt is essential for science. We are in the belly of the beast. Technology is helping the believers of neo-science to perpetuate their myths. Thanks to the ‘smartphonification’ of life, we now have more memories in our pockets and less in our heads. We have entered a phase of unreason. We may not have entered the age of anti-Enlightenment. But we see the core values of the Enlightenment fading. Critical thinking, empirical rigour and a spirit of debate and discussion are losing ground. Today, secular values are ridiculed.