{"id":16300,"date":"2018-02-02T23:49:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T07:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16300"},"modified":"2018-02-02T23:51:56","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T07:51:56","slug":"16300-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/16300-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Brave New World. Lost Old World."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great Transformation by Karl Polyani is a landmark book describing the world\u2019s transition that coincided with and was sparked because of the industrial revolution. Polyani proposed a few major ways that this revolution shifted the dynamic of the entire world experience. Primarily the industrial revolution changed the way the world (both government and people) interacted and processed it\u2019s land, is labor, and coins. The industrial revolution was what brought all of these already shifting tectonic plates and made it one massive transformation everything in.[1]<\/a> And with the new reorganization and handling of land, labor and coin came a new form of regulation. Polyani dismisses the myth of Adam Smith (among others) and the Invisible Hand of the self-regulating market. There is no purely self-regulating market, as many westerners might believe.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

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While many in our cohort this week have continued to write about this, I wanted to share another change the industrial revolution (probably) brought about, that many are not aware of. Polyani certainly would not have been aware of it in 1940. This peculiar recent discovery is quite possible a secret of history that was unintentionally forgotten. And it is was so easily forgotten because it was such an assumption and regular part of life for all mankind, that no one ever even thought to clearly document it. This is the idea that everyone, pre-industrial revolution, would sleep twice per day. It\u2019s the idea of the disappearance of the second sleep.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re like me you probably began to think, is he actually saying what I think he is saying. We\u2019ve all probably figured that at some point our species had changed since electricity but I thought that just meant we slept less! Roger Ekrich says that the industrial\u00a0revolution and artificial light being prevalent amongst most of society completed altered not just how much we sleep, but how we sleep.[3]<\/a> Although unbelievable at first, it makes sense that pre-industrial people would not sleep straight through their sometimes fourteen hours of darkness each night! Ekrich proposed that what people did in between their two segments of sleep while they were awake might have been meditation, sex, or reflecting on their own dreams. Ekrich claims his idea of segmented sleep was discovered through studying texts and writings from before the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n

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There is even a precedent that this idea is found in Biblical writing as well! [4]<\/a> William Holladay\u00a0goes back and reads these biblical stories looking to see if this underlying piece of culture was actually there.\u00a0I think some of Holladay’s presentations may have been a stretch to say that that is evidence for segmented sleep. But, it is possible since \u201csecond sleep\u201d would have been an assumption and so ingrained into the biblical\u00a0authors that they would have never thought of writing about it. It’s the old example of a fish not being able to talk about water. It’s too normal for them to even mention.<\/p>\n

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This would be another tectonic plate shifting, all because of the industrial revolution. I share this only to say, that if Ekrick is right and if Polyani is right, we will probably never fully grasp the amount of change \u201cthe human experience\u201d has had in the last 300 years.<\/p>\n

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But what this book really made me think of, is so where our next great transformation is going to be. As we\u2019ve switched from industry to information, how is the next leap going to act out? It’s more than just social information. Bill Gates in a similar tone of Polyani\u2019s book shares his ideas of where the future is going[5]<\/a>, as does Elon Musk[6]<\/a>, and many leaders venture in this semiotic realm. But as Polyani pointed out to those who proceeded him, they were in the middle of it all and couldn\u2019t see it clearly. We are in the middle of it all now, and our future is unclear.<\/p>\n

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In the end I’m left with this conviction; that HOWEVER the world was before the industrial revolution, AND however the process happened as it changed, AND whatever it\u2019s like now, AND whoever could guess where it\u2019s going, MAY this quote from the prophet of the brave new world give us our definition of our current reality.<\/p>\n

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\u201cArmaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence \u2013 those are the three pillars of western prosperity.”<\/p>\n

~ Aldous Huxley<\/p>\n

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_________<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Karl Polyani,\u00a0The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time<\/em>\u00a0(Boston: Beacon Press, 2007).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ha-Joon Chang,\u00a023 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism<\/em>\u00a0(Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation, 2013).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ekrick, Roger, \u201cAt Day\u2019s Close: Night in Times Past\u201d interview by Connie Doebele.\u00a0C-SPAN 2: Book TV<\/em>, March 24, 2006<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Holladay, William Lee. \u201cIndications of segmented sleep in the Bible.\u201d CBQ 69, no. 2 (2007): 215-221 and McAlpine, Thomas H. Sleep, Divine & Human, in the Old Testament. JSOTSup 38. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987, pp. 215.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> TheVerge, “Bill Gates Interview: How the World Will Change by 2030,” YouTube, January 22, 2015, accessed February 03, 2018, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8RETFyDKcw0.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Elon Musk, “The Future We’re Building — and Boring,” YouTube, May 03, 2017, accessed February 03, 2018, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zIwLWfaAg-8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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