Suspicion

I had a few interesting thoughts over the week.

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A few days ago, I was at a meeting with some colleagues and we began discussing technological advances. I began to notice that my colleagues were much more suspicious about "progress" than I was. I myself recognize that not all scientific and technological progress is used in a helpful manner; I recognize that it can be and has been distorted and has harmed humans in many ways. However, I do not think this distortion is innate to technology; I do feel that on the whole scientific and technological progress opens up potential for the good, and that, if harnessed properly, can be helpful rather than harmful to humanity.

This led to my question: Why do I appear to have a more optimistic view of progress and history than many of my colleagues do?

My tentative answer, after some reflection, is this (and don't laugh): I truly think it's because I'm a woman. Woman's history is a history of progress: Women have fought for emancipation and they are finally, little by little winning. Very few women can honestly say that it was better to be a woman a hundred years ago, or three hundred years ago, or five hundred years ago, than it is today. I think that men view history differently, however.

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Over the weekend, I read up a little on the Waldorf educational system, prompted by a discussion with a colleague who was Waldorf-educated all through elementary and high school. There are aspects of the Waldorf educational system that I find very attractive--the respect for each child, the emphasis on art and on holistic development, etc.

However, one aspect of the Waldorf educational system that I am less comfortable with (and this is where my discussion with my colleague headed) was (again) the very high levels of suspicion regarding technology. I tried to understand more the rules in Waldorf schools about not allowing children below the age of seven to look at "moving pictures" (such as television or videos) and the hesitation even that they look at pictures at all (such that stories are recited orally to students). My colleague explained that this had to do with Steiner's concern that moving pictures would hinder the child's development of his imagination.

On the one hand, I do understand Steiner's point, but I also wondered whether there was a uncalled for bias against pictures. Might it not be possible, I suggested, that pictures also help to stimulate a different kind of imagination? Perhaps an emphathetic or emotional imagination?, I suggested.

The other thing is not being allowed to read until you're seven. I can't imagine that.

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I worked in broadcast journalism for a short time, and I can clearly pinpoint in my mind the two moments in my life when I first felt the compulsion to do so.

The first when I was around six or seven years old. I was living in Singapore at the time, and I watched a documentary on television about child abuse in Singapore. I remember being extremely affected by what I had watched, and to this day, the images I saw on television and the interviews with child abuse survivors that I listened to stand out among my many memories of being a child in Singapore. I feel now as I did then that that watching that documentary: (1) exposed me to an issue I had no other way to learn about as a six-/seven-year-old child, (2) was a moment that helped me to develop an empathetic imagination for people in a situation different form mine, and (3) made me believe in the power of mass media to expose, to educate, to inform, and most of all, to open people's minds.

The second moment was when I was around eight years old, in the midst of the Ethiopian famine. Again, the images of the Ethiopian famine that I saw on television altered the way that I looked at the world. To this day, they remain the archetypal images in my mind of how dire poverty can be, of how forgotten certain sectors of the human race can be, and also of how much power mass media has to bring to light problems and issues that demand our attention.