Five hundred years after the Renaissance, at a time when nations and corporations rival the church in their claims to people’s loyalties, the world is experiencing an even more dramatic expansion of knowledge, capitalism, and interconnection. Air travel – the fulfillment of one of Da Vinci’s dreams and prophecies – telephones, radio, television, motion pictures, facsimile machines, personal computers, and now the Internet combine to weave an increasingly complex web of global information exchange. Revolutionary advances in agriculture, automation, and medicine are taken for granted. We’ve landed men on the moon and machines on Mars, unleashed the power of the atom, deciphered the genetic code, and unlocked many of the secrets of the human brain. These dramatic developments in communication and technology stimulate the energies of capitalism and free society and the erosion of totalitarianism.
You can’t help but notice that change is accelerating. How these changes will affect you personally and professionally, nobody knows. But, like the thinkers at the end of the cataclysmic change caused by the Black Death, we owe it to ourselves to ask if we can afford to let the authorities of our time – whether church, government, or corporation – think for us.
It is safe to say, however, that accelerating change and increasing complexity multiply the value of intellectual capital. The individual’s ability to learn, adapt, and think, independently and creatively, is at a premium. During the Renaissance, individuals with a medieval mind-set were left behind. Now, in the Information Age, medieval-and industrial-era thinkers are threatened with extinction.
The Renaissance was inspired by the ideals of classical antiquity – awareness of human power and potentiality, and a passion for discovery – but it also transformed them to meet the challenges of the time. Now we can draw inspiration from Renaissance ideals, transforming them to meet our own challenges.
Perhaps, like many of my friends, you feel that your greatest challenge is living a balanced, fulfilling life in the face of increasing stress from every direction. As we noted, our medieval ancestors had no concept of time; we, on the other hand, are in danger of being controlled by the clock. In the Middle Ages, information was unavailable to the average person, and the few books that existed were in Latin, which was taught only to the elite. Now we are awash in an unprecedented, unrelenting overflow of data. In five hundred years we’ve moved from a world where everything was certain and nothing changed to a world where nothing seems certain and everything changes.
Accelerating change has inspired a never-before-seen burgeoning of interest in personal growth, soul awakening, and spiritual experience. The sheer availability of information about the world’s esoteric traditions has launched a tsunami of seeking. (A hundred years ago you would have had to have climbed a mountain in India to learn how to meditate; today you can take a course at the Y, download information from the Internet, or choose from hundreds of volumes at your local bookstore.) At the same time, the information glut contributes to pervasive cynicism, fragmentation, and a sense of helplessness. We have more possibilities, more freedom, more options than any people who have ever lived. Yet there is more junk, more mediocrity, more garbage to sort through than ever too.
THE MODERN RENAISSANCE MAN OR WOMAN
The ideal of the Renaissance man or woman, or uomo universale, has always suggested a well-rounded, balanced person, comfortable with both art and science. The liberal arts curriculum of universities around the world originated as a reflection of this ideal. In an age of increasing specialization, attaining balance requires going against the grain. In addition to possessing a good knowledge of the classical liberal arts, the modern uomo universale is also:
For seekers who wish to cut through the dross, to find deeper levels of meaning, beauty, and quality of life, Leonardo da Vinci – the patron saint of independent thinkers – beckons you onward.
Masaccio’s “expulsion” is an ironic theme for what may be the first true Renaissance painting. Both Michelangelo and Leonardo spent many hours studying it. Leonardo commented, “Masaccio showed by the perfection of his work how those who are inspired by a model other than nature, a mistress above all masters, are laboring in vain.”
If you have ever filled out a job application or written your résumé, then you can particularly appreciate the letter that Leonardo wrote in 1482 to Ludovico Sforza, regent of Milan. Da Vinci composed what is perhaps the most outstanding employment application letter of all time:
“I wish to work miracles …”
– LEONARDO DA VINCI
Most illustrious Lord, having now sufficiently seen and considered the proofs of all those who count themselves master and inventors of instruments of war, and finding that their invention and use of the said instruments does not differ in any respect from those in common practice, I am emboldened without prejudice to anyone else to put myself in communication with your Excellency, in order to acquaint you with my secrets, thereafter offering myself at your pleasure effectually to demonstrate at any convenient time all those matters which are in part briefly recorded below.
1. I have plans for bridges, very light and strong and suitable for carrying very easily …
2. When a place is besieged I know how to cut off water from the trenches, and how to construct an infinite number of … scaling ladders and other instruments …
3. If because of the height of the embankment, and the strength of the place or its site, it should be impossible to reduce it by bombardment, I know methods of destroying any citadel or fortress, even if it is built on rock.
4. I have plans for making cannon, very convenient and easy of transport, with which to hurl small stones in the manner almost of hail …
5. And if it should happen that the engagement is at sea, I have plans for constructing many engines most suitable for attack or defense, and ships which can resist the fire of all the heaviest cannon, and powder and smoke.
6. Also I have ways of arriving at a certain fixed spot by caverns and secret winding passages made without any noise even though it may be necessary to pass underneath … a river.
7.