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they tend to shun the new.90 When the Turkish empire was crumpling in the
16th century, Ottoman authorities were sure that they could recapture
former glories by returning to the traditions of the past. Europeans came up
with improved methods for preventing plague, but the Turks refused to use
them. Why? The foreign techniques departed from the customs that had
once made Turkey great. Like the birds in a state of hunger, the Ottomans
sought their comfort in clinging to tradition. When plague did break out in
the land, the Turks blamed it on the few foreign innovations they had failed
to eradicate. To stop the ravaging illness in 1580, officials destroyed--of all
things--an astronomical observatory. The newfangled installation, they were
sure, had offended Allah and brought the curse of disease. 91
Sounds like something that could never happen here. But Allan
Bloom's The Closing Of The American Mind seems to blame our problems on a
departure from traditional values. He implies that our abandonment of the
sexual and racial inequalities of the 40's and 50's has a great deal to do with
our current plight. His prescription seems to be a return to the standards of
our past. In fact, he wants to go very far back indeed... all the way to the
values of ancient Greece.
Others, like self-appointed science critic Jeremy Rifkin, want to head
backwards technologically. Rifkin has garnered great gobs of publicity by
trying to single-handedly halt the progress of genetic engineering. This
modern Luddite is just one of a new army of American public figures
determined to move us resolutely in reverse. Religionists like Moral Majority
leader Jerry Falwell and presidential candidate/religious broadcaster Pat
Robertson want to turn back the clock and restore the lifestyle they knew
when they were children. Even radical ecologists want to throw the gearbox
into reverse--their slogan: "back to the Pleistocene."
Though religious leaders and ultra-conservatives claim that we have
strayed from old-fashioned values, the opposite is the case. Since the signs of
America's decline first showed up in the late '70s and early '80s, our tendency
has been to move toward the old, stable ways. You can see this
Human superorganisms show the same pattern. In times of trouble
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