It's a good poem. I learned the original off by heart two months ago to recite it to my sleep-averse child as part of their bedtime routine. It definitely benefits from recitation, which really unearths the lovely wavelike rythms.
(edit: this translation does a good job of matching the syllable count, almost perfectly. It does mean it strains a bit in places. But compromises always have to be made!)
Oh god this poem. It's like generational trauma in German speaking countries. At some point during junior high every student is tasked with learning to recite it by heart. Of course it's not too hard, but there are a million things a thirteen year old kid would rather do.
My high school's version of this was the Middle English version of Canterbury Tale's prologue. We'd then have to recite the first stanza or two in front of the class, one at a time.
This is about the root of humanity’s problem: the inability to avoid misusing knowledge and technology.
All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end (Thoreau)
Dukas should get a mention alongside Disney. Paul Dukes wrote the symphonic poem L’Apprenti Sorcier (1897) based on Goethe’s poem, which was later animated by Disney for the film Fantasia.
It is actually surprising to me how common this theme is throughout human history.
The story of Icarus and Daedalus, for example, has a very similar theme. Technology gives humans power over the world, but at the same time they risk being destroyed by it, if they lack the wisdom to correctly control it. Even people from antiquity were aware of this conflict.
The rate of technological change is accelerating because technology begets technology. Meanwhile, the rate of growth in wisdom is linear at best (and occasionally stagnant or in retreat). Frankly, it doesn’t bode all that well.
Mankind seems to forget every lesson after two generations.
Holocaust survivors are still with us, but the kind of nationalism that put them through that ordeal is on the rise again and is gaining popularity with teenagers.
Technology could help, but right now it seems to be working the other way.
It may be because there are rarely such simplistic rule-based lessons. To your example, nationalism could be a great emancipatory force in one century and an instrument of great suffering in another. If there is some takeaway, then it must be more subtle than "nationalism=evil".
> Technology could help, but right now it seems to be working the other way.
If history does teach us anything, the moral ambiguity of technological progress is surely one of the lessons of the 20th century. I think it might be one of those lessons we're forgetting again after a couple generations!
Wisdom doesn’t need to grow, it is eternal. It needs to be learned and accessed.
Key to understanding is to work to understand rather than redefine these concepts in the light of the same modernity that gave us domineering technological prowess at all costs.
Yeah, feels like we've largely lost touch with the Wisdom of a reciprocal existence within this ecosystem, the "Garden of Eden" through a Christian lens, or the way the Haudenosaunee Confederacy lived pre-Columbus.
Top down & middle-out disruption of information flow impedes acceleration of wisdom.
Ponzis and lesser people* at work.
*those who can't score without harmful sabotage
Sparring, cumulative competition, is a thing that drives the evolution of all parties and has the potential to rebalance the scales over and over again, but consumer culture and portfolio capitalism failed to capitalize on that and monetized the opposite instead: envy and sabotage.
Some people were too afraid of natural human convection and ruined the game. It still works, of course, but
Readit News
(edit: this translation does a good job of matching the syllable count, almost perfectly. It does mean it strains a bit in places. But compromises always have to be made!)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43926/the-canterbury-...
I speak and read German, but most German texts feel "cold and abrasive" to me. It is a language with very hard edges, so to say.
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The story of Icarus and Daedalus, for example, has a very similar theme. Technology gives humans power over the world, but at the same time they risk being destroyed by it, if they lack the wisdom to correctly control it. Even people from antiquity were aware of this conflict.
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Holocaust survivors are still with us, but the kind of nationalism that put them through that ordeal is on the rise again and is gaining popularity with teenagers.
Technology could help, but right now it seems to be working the other way.
If history does teach us anything, the moral ambiguity of technological progress is surely one of the lessons of the 20th century. I think it might be one of those lessons we're forgetting again after a couple generations!
Key to understanding is to work to understand rather than redefine these concepts in the light of the same modernity that gave us domineering technological prowess at all costs.
This seems to imply that we've gained all the wisdom there is to gain. Do you believe that's true?
Ponzis and lesser people* at work.
*those who can't score without harmful sabotage
Sparring, cumulative competition, is a thing that drives the evolution of all parties and has the potential to rebalance the scales over and over again, but consumer culture and portfolio capitalism failed to capitalize on that and monetized the opposite instead: envy and sabotage.
Some people were too afraid of natural human convection and ruined the game. It still works, of course, but
> it doesn't bode all that well.