Norman Cantor has argued that three developments in particular have given birth to the growing sense of nihilism in art, architecture, literature, dance, theater, and rock music.
First, biotechnology, which built on the discovery in 1953 of the structure of DNA, has succeeded in driving home the idea that human life is defined by impersonal genetic codes rather than personal choices. This perception has greatly diminished the sense of human significance.
Second, astounding advances in computer science and technology have reproduced or surpassed many of the tasks that were once thought to be defining marks of human uniqueness.
Third, new communications technology has not only brought news, sports, and entertainment from around the world into American living rooms each day but has also given vast new power to multinational corporations and forced the last pockets of Marxism into desperate disarray. Like computer technology, the new communications technology has expanded human capability and increased human efficiency, but it has diminished human stature. We have been dwarfed by our own inventions and in many ways have become irrelevant to their workings. For these and many other reasons, we have come to feel small, empty, unspecial, meaningless.
First, biotechnology, which built on the discovery in 1953 of the structure of DNA, has succeeded in driving home the idea that human life is defined by impersonal genetic codes rather than personal choices. This perception has greatly diminished the sense of human significance.
Second, astounding advances in computer science and technology have reproduced or surpassed many of the tasks that were once thought to be defining marks of human uniqueness.
Third, new communications technology has not only brought news, sports, and entertainment from around the world into American living rooms each day but has also given vast new power to multinational corporations and forced the last pockets of Marxism into desperate disarray. Like computer technology, the new communications technology has expanded human capability and increased human efficiency, but it has diminished human stature. We have been dwarfed by our own inventions and in many ways have become irrelevant to their workings. For these and many other reasons, we have come to feel small, empty, unspecial, meaningless.
- David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland:
The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, 1994.
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