Revolutionaries act as if they are destroying the old and starting something new. More often than not, however, these revolutions look more like Ferris wheels: the only thing that’s truly revolving is the cast of characters at the top. The structure remains the same. So the digital revolution — however purely conceived — ultimately brought us a new crew of mostly male, white, libertarian technologists, who believed they were uniquely suited to create a set of universal rules for humans. But those rules — the rules of internet startups and venture capitalism — were really just the same old rules as before. And they supported the same sorts of inequalities, institutions, and cultural values.
A renaissance, on the other hand, is a retrieval of the old. Unlike a revolution, it makes no claim on the new. A renaissance is, as the word suggests, a rebirth of old ideas in a new context. That may sound less radical than revolutionary upheaval, but it offers a better way to advance our deepest human values.
Read more from “Renaissance Now!” from Medium’s weekly Team Human serialization:
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How we can trade a mere digital revolution for a truly dimensional shift
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