Modern knowledge is more opaque to individuals than pre-modern local knowledge was

Evidence

Sociologists often suppose that, in contrast to the pre-modern era, where many things were mysteries, today we live in a world from which mystery has retreated and where the way “the world works” can (in principle) be exhaustively known. But this is not true for either the lay person or the expert, if we consider their experience as individuals. To all of us living in the modern world things are specifically opaque, in a way that was not the case previously. In pre-modern environments the “local knowledge,” to adapt a phrase from Clifford Geertz, which individuals possessed was rich, varied, and adapted to the requirements of living in the local milieu. But how many of us today when we switch on the light know much about where the electricity supply comes from or even, in a technical sense, what electricity actually is? — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 348

Categorization

• XREF: Perfect gloss on Stevens: he understands the craft of serving but the broader world system (Darlington’s politics) is opaque to him — he cannot reappropriate the expertise that governs the very institution he serves. — connects to: Modern dangers are produced by socially organized knowledge, not nature — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 262; Colonial knowledge production was driven by uncertainty, not clarity; Knowing more sometimes shrinks the sense of the unknown rather than expanding it. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1203 (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion — that modernity makes the world more opaque per-capita even as knowledge expands — is the structural basis of faceless commitment and worth sitting with: total systemic transparency produces total individual opacity.

Related

• Under modernity no knowledge is certain, in any science. (similarity 0.81)
• Knowledge of the social world makes that world inherently unstable (similarity 0.80)
• Modern dangers are produced by socially organized knowledge, not nature (similarity 0.79)
• Knowledge of social life does not produce greater control over fate (similarity 0.79)
• Modernity institutionalises doubt, making all knowledge claims inherently circular (similarity 0.78)
• New social knowledge alters the social world rather than merely describing it (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Pre-modern trust is anchored in local place rather than abstract systems. #corroborates (0.65) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 245
• Colonial knowledge production was driven by uncertainty, not clarity #complicates (0.35)
• Knowing more sometimes shrinks the sense of the unknown rather than expanding it. #complicates (0.30) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1203