I’m not kidding; we are moving into a different civilization.
There’s a lot of friction in human habits. We call it “custom and culture” but it amounts to that broad, almost unconscious comfort zone that is neither exactly what we want, nor bad enough to provoke wholesale change. But the underlying structure of what we’ve had is going away, unsustainable as the desirable things it made possible take wing and leave the nest. Despite our fantasies, there is nothing perfect in the sense that it can last forever. The structure of our awareness is also a living thing, and it has aged to the boundaries of its own mortality.
The ad-supported model is collapsing. It may not go away completely, but it will suffer a significant shrinkage, going from near ubiquity to just a few strongholds where they can still survive. None of it is likely to thrive for a long time to come without radical transformation. In my humble opinion, we haven’t seen much change yet. In each field of human endeavor, the hardening of old ways varies with the character it takes on as it grows. Everything dies according to how it lived. Advertising is rooted in materialism, but that is also the most fragile aspect of human nature. It’s the worst thing to build on if you can’t keep the wild innovations rolling.
Some things require only minor adjustments. The popularity of sports as entertainment isn’t going to die; that’s hard-wired into human nature. You can find traces of it all the way back in the most ancient literature and cave drawings. It’s the kind of thing even the most poverty-stricken starving louts will waste resources to see. Advertising will survive there. In most other venues it will wither, perhaps die altogether.
That will change what you and I see on the Net. It will be a shake out. If it requires a high liquidity to function, you should expect it to wither. If the driving force behind it is something deeper in human nature, then it will continue without advertiser support. We are about to find out what projects and services are built on the human soul, and to what degree, as the flow of money dries up. Never mind where it started; where is it today? We’ve already seen some old Internet bastions go begging for a buyer, and that sort of blood-letting is only going to increase. When the paycheck goes away, only what people truly love will continue.
So not every business or project will shut down. For awhile, there simply won’t be any money, so we’ll get rid of a lot of fluff. Out of sheer boredom a lot of folks will start testing new ideas and eventually we’ll build a new culture and human productivity will reawaken. While it remains to be seen what that looks like, we do have hints of what will at least make it through the transition when global finances are at low ebb.
We who see our human existence through lens of God’s moral character will always find our places in this mess. If God drives us to do it, He’ll provide the means. While I teach that we can learn how to build a better moral economic theory, I’m willing to bet it would be hellishly hard to share with most people. That’s because it’s a theory that includes a reliance on miracles outright. God’s revelation doesn’t always make sense to our human reasoning processes, but I maintain that we do have a capacity for learn the divine logic that makes it work.
That’s what I’m doing here on the Net. Honestly, I have doubts that his free service offered under the name “WordPress” will survive the economic shake up, at least not in its current form. Some of the most popular stuff has already closed up shop and disappeared from the Net because what made it popular was unsustainable in tight economics. On the one hand, I’m convinced God hears and keeps things alive if we ask according to His divine revelation. On the other hand, a fundamental element in prayer is asking for our minds to change to meet the higher priorities of moral truth. Our personal sadness at the loss of something has little bearing on the question. I’m doing my best to tell the story of what I’ve seen in hopes that at least a few of you will be provoked to seek that moral fabric, that divine logic.
Given that “reality” can be a label for whatever fantasy and mythology we cling to at any given time, I say that we can and should build a new reality.
