When The Moon Sings - March 8, 2025

I am doing this American History project in the spring, and I have spent the last few weeks preparing for it.  This week, I focused on Alexis De Tocqueville’s thoughts, as expressed in his book Democracy In America.

To this point, the enterprise has been comfortable enough.  In previous weeks, I read, re-read mostly, works that attempt to plumb the mind of our country as it developed.  Many of them touched on concepts that I hold dear.  But I realized I had been putting off De Tocqueville, so this week, I started his work.

I had reason for delay.  He published his work in two volumes – my copy has both in one binding.  It runs 704 pages in tiny type, including his notes, with slightly less than another hundred from the translators.  Just picking up the book takes more than average determination.

De Tocqueville came to America on a diplomatic mission.  A lifelong enthusiast of democracy, he found America much to his taste.  He travelled widely, including several legs on the frontier, and spent the next five years writing about it, to the extent of 704 pages in tiny type.  Especially on the American frontier, he found the level of democracy he hoped France could emulate.

De Tocqueville’s hopes were probably forlorn.  The United States of the time had an overriding passion for developing the frontier.  Many of the places he visited, such as Green Bay Wisconsin were outside of the country then, and he took a swing through the South, visiting many places that still had the frontier character.  The premise was entirely different from France’s and probably couldn’t survive any attempt to export it.

The United States spent a few centuries with that same passion.  Over that time, we developed a set of skills for frontier settlement.  That settlement included mistakes, disasters, and injustices, but it resulted in the nation we have today.  Many of the historian, sociologists, and writers I read credit the frontier with shaping the American character.  A historian by the name of Frederick Jackson Turner, active just after the frontier had been conquered, made that idea his life’s work.

Even though the frontier had closed, Turner thought that the frontier spirit might translate to other great enterprises.  He said, “In place of old frontiers of wilderness, there may be new frontiers of unwon fields in science, fruitful for the needs of the race; there are frontiers of better social domains yet unexplored.  Let us hold to our attitudes of faith and courage, and of creative zeal.”

We have realized Turner’s hopes. Since he wrote those words in 1899, we have transformed our lives to a degree that would astound him. The United States has contributed mightily to advances in physics, medicine, and too many other scientific fields to list. The innovators of his day, like Thomas Edison, frequently worked as individuals, but the country has shown a talent for taking those inventions, institutionalizing and propagating them, and making them part of everyday life.

We may have exhausted the frontiers of the continent, but the frontier of space awaits. We have even started to conquer virtual frontiers; Turner could not have foreseen the impact of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Turner traced the development of civilization on the frontier. Settlement followed exploration; settlements grew and connected until the settlements became integrated into the national rhythms, and fed them. Contentious, combative even, and frequently lawless people made the initial settlements, those who followed had more serene and socially valuable skills. Life became less violent, more predictable, anchored by schools, churches, and votes rather than gunfire. 

If that same evolutionary path applies to our new frontiers, where are we?  For space exploration, we are just starting.  We’ve only visited and visited briefly, like the first explorers of the Mississippi.  Just settling space seems in a remote future – settling it still falls in the province of science fiction.

Digital civilization seems much more achievable in the foreseeable future.  The digital world encompasses much of the globe – the settlers have established their presence, or really, our presence.  The infrastructure exists – it’s heavily used, and we feel deprived when electricity or communications problems deny us access.  That settlement still has its problem and opportunities – technical developments could change the way we live and learn. AI provides the most obvious, but others will occur.

So we have at least some degree of settlement – does that mean we have digital civilization?  We have not lost our inclination for combativeness.  The settlers, even the most mild-mannered, had good reason for their anti-social behavior.  For them, it was the difference between flourishing and failing, perhaps even life or death.  They were familiar with that – the process of uprooting yourself and your family, whether down the road or across the ocean, frequently resulted in loss of life.  The dissention now seems less urgent.

As settlements grew, so did the need for socialization.  Individuals were held more accountable for their words and actions.  Perhaps that’s the difference between settlement and civilization – accountability, the idea that actions and words have some effect on the rest of the settlement.

Looking at the digital settlement, it’s hard to see much accountability, but lawless behavior has become a constant.  This week alone, I have received notices of debits against accounts, warnings that my posts have offended the social media producers, and other bogus messages.  I do not have those accounts, have not transgressed against the laughably lame posting standards, or done anything else I received notices for.  They are individuals masquerading as account and media managers, hoping for data they can exploit.  Anonymity and accountability work against each other.  Transition from con games to attempts to influence, and the problem becomes even worse.

Accountability, if we are to achieve it, requires oversight, something nobody in the digital world wants to provide.  Oversight is expensive and complex, and it requires deft management to do right, especially in a democratic society.  But the alternative is the anarchy we see now, masking itself as free speech.  We do have digital settlement, but digital civilization seems as far off as space colonization – maybe further.