Darkness and scattered light: Four talks on the future

by William Irwin Thompson

Genres: Essays

189 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1977

About the author

William Irwin Thompson is an American social philosopher, cultural critic, and poet. He received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He describes his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz on ancient texts". He is the founder of the Lindisfarne Association.

Reviews

[Abner Rosenweig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled onto this at a library booksale, having never heard of William Irwin Thompson. It was a synchronistic, serendipitous discovery in that it built so well on many of the conclusions I've been coming to independently.

The book completely blew me away. Thompson is a visionary prophet / poet / philosopher. With an extraordinary range of scholarship, he burrows so deeply into our culture that he transcends the intellect and emerges with a torrent of timely and timeless wisdom.

Darkness and Scattered Light is one of the best books of cultural criticism I've ever read. I'll certainly re-read it and eagerly seek out Thompson's other work. That Thompson's work is not more widely known only indicates that mainstream culture is not yet ready for its insight. I have a feeling Thompson will attract a wider audience in generations to come.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

As well as a social philosopher and cultural historian, William Irwin Thompson is a poet, and the latter shines through these four long speculative essays on the future. Perhaps best known for The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light (1980), Thompson is a master of the sound bite.

Romanticism and industrialization are the double helix of nineteenth-century society (p. 18).

As romanticism was to industrial society, so mysticism is to cybernetic society (p. 22).

Culture has become nothing more than an expanding economy (p. 32).

There is no such thing as self-sufficiency (p. 50).

Ultimately, the world of consumerism ends up by consuming itself (p. 68).

What the media have done is to create a new electronic peasantry. The experiment with democratization through mass education has failed, and the message of civilization, in achieving its widest audience, has moved toward entropy (p. 72).

Once the demons are loosed, they cannot be put back; they have to be transformed into deities (p.82).

In the opening paragraph of his first essay, ‘Beyond Civilization or Savagery’, Thompson says: ‘The way for a technological society to take a step into the future is to shift the weight of its emphasis from machines to myth (p. 13).’ Good luck with that. He elaborates on the means of achieving this needed revisioning:

In times of overcivilization, or decadence, when the failure of traditional institutions is overwhelmingly apparent, the individual has to leave, to go out into the desert, up into a cave in the mountains, or simply into some remote and distant part of himself (p. 14).

Pandemic-related restrictions make my choice of an option simpler. But the gender bias sits oddly with Thompson’s emphasis on the Goddess, which pervades The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. ‘Or’, he continues, ‘the prophetic space can be found in a prison cell.’

Speaking with prophetic charisma, Thompson calls for ‘a re-visioning or a remythologizing of nature, self, and society (p. 43).’ Four+ decades ago, before the greed-is-good ’80s, this rallying cry felt valid. Now, though adherents to such ideals still exist, it sounds hopelessly dated, and goes on to predict:

Business and economics will lose their charisma in planetary culture, and in a happier future, the purpose of business will not be seen as the maximization of profit, irrespective of the suffering of the earth and humanity, but simply as an act of service. The businessman will take his place alongside the nurse, the dentist, the postman, the elementary-school teacher (p. 43).

What Thompson, despite having left his civilisation behind, failed to foresee was the displacement of such down-to-earth jobs by AI. The postman has been losing business to email, the schoolteacher to handheld devices, and robots are already being programmed for nursing and dental surgery. AI is even encroaching on Thompson’s turf: composing (depending on how you define it) poetry.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 Mythopoetic Lectures on developing patterns in history, technology and culture. Amalgamation of history, psychology, philosophy and theology brought together by an author apt at reading multiverses in many fields. For anyone interested in globalization and the future of our planet as well as enthusiasts of Yeats, Blake and Yoga. Written in the late 70s, these pieces paint a good vision then of things that are taking form now in the world. Therefore, giving hope to a new world order/view/age.

[Andrew Neuendorf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this writer so much that if you discover him I'll stop reading him (for awhile, in disgust at you) and then I'll invite you and him back into my life and we'll start a club and make his figurine out of non-animal-invasive gelatin mold because that seems like the right thing to do.

[Maurice · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in getting some insight into where we are in the course of history on this planet, read this.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming Into Being (by the same author) is more developed.