The (sub)Human Condition
(Euro)Modernism is a Bell Jar, inside an Iron Cage, within a Gated Gulag.
Yet, in tragic paradox, it comes meretriciously wrapped , within the exalted drapery of ‘freedom’.
Freedom!
What a mind-benumbing, hallucinogenic , inchoate, daydream!
What an ideally devised sop for the millions!
It has been the ‘discourse’ (another term to beware of) of Europe for at least four centuries.
The very (shallow, conniving) largesse of language of Modernism should inspire an instant, and very grave, caution.
O those Universal Declaration of Rights!
My – anyone would think they (i.e., the good folk that own and control everything) were just giving it away, for sheer goodness’ sake!
Has one (almost) reaching for musical instrument and marching boots.
If I had a penny for every soul who has believed in such tripe - only to stumble grievously upon the cold, hard rock of societal reality - I would be more opulent than kings.
The Myths - fables, fictions , and folklore - of Modernism are quite innumerable: and there are few of us, even within the charmed circle of the ‘intelligentsia’ who are not – even in these apocalyptic latter days - susceptible to their lures.
Let me put it , perhaps, more effectively: if Modernism were Dorian Gray, its hidden Portrait would be one sorry mess of an addled , distending, putrefaction.
The conceit of Europe (amongst many) continues to be that it has ‘discovered’ (or is it ‘invented’) – if not quite delivered!- ‘’freedom’ as the desirable, if not even ideal, anthropic condition.
Even a noted philosopher found it edifying to sub-title his work ‘ the pulse of freedom’- regrettably , echoing all those Anglo-Am demagogues who deploy it to cover up unseemly intentions and deeds.
Freedom: for what? From what? For whom? Against whom?
These latter queries abide , as they have for aeons, in a dead zone of deafening silence.
Yet the paradoxes have always been there , plainly to be seen.
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’, wrote one set of their ilk, that ‘all men are created equal’ - whilst colonies of African slaves languished in their backyards.
And what about Women? Ah, well…
Their petty, patriarchical, property-owning dream of a pacific ‘equality’ with one another – there’s fraternity ‘twixt fellow-governors- as a band of brothers might, within a racist and sexist frame , at a time of crisis, squaring off against a larger force: that may be all that is ‘self-evident’ in that high snatch of prose.
Yet, the drivel still drones on.
The above is, admittedly , a true, but trite, example.
Less shallow is the fact that ‘freedom’ was the dissembling, populist slogan of the emergent Modernist Captains of Commerce and Industry, as they battled the sires and seigneurs of the ancien regime , seeking the support of the mass of the sans-cullottes who were stirred up to serve as the ill-fated cannon fodder of their rank ambitions.
And , heavens, did they ‘deliver’ oodles of ‘freedom’, in lordly fashion - first , and foremost ,to themselves!
Peasants , serfs, laboring orders, ‘freed’ from their customary rights, dispensations, farms, foraging lands, commons, and related means of subsistence.
All that these wretched of the earth lost filled the bloated bellies, coffers , and ambitions of these New Titans.
Yes, the serf was ‘freed’: and for two or more centuries, entered that abundantly ‘free’ state of destitute vagabondage before rampant industry corralled them all , via whip , workhouse, and gunshot, into those ‘dark, satanic mills’ (that vulgar apologists , of ‘left’ and ‘right’ saw – and perhaps still see - as the necessary stepping-stones to their versions of Utopia).
It should give one pause, for the simple error of mistaking ideology – in the sense of tendentious fabrications – with reality.
(ii)
Ignorance of societal structures and anthropic realities assisted the success of this propaganda whose most tragic consequence was perhaps the ease with which the very victims of its noxious effects embraced it , seeing in it , astonishingly, a salve for their impossible situation.
Hope is indeed given as a sop to the hopeless!
The fulsome tragedy of uncountable millions, over generations, viciously severed from their secure moorings in the womb of a tightly integrated societal compact was forgotten: and, adding further offense to injury , the rootless victims of that Great Severance were now to be celebrated henceforth as the heroic ‘individuals’ of our epoch, ‘free to choose’ , and free to embrace, and experience, every random and planned , evil of a sordid, materialist , unrequiting, hell.
Hell is ‘other people’, wrote Sartre: yes , Hell is us, the disaffected zombies that dwell in the living cemeteries of Modernist society.
And , yes, utter wretchedness and angst can produce such magnificient cri de couer compositions in art, music, writing, philosophy, etc,, can they not?
Even if, like Van Gogh, they killed themselves , in so doing: or , went mad, like Nietzsche.
Yes, the contented rarely exert themselves to the point of genius - or dementia.
Society was reduced to but two functions necessary for the accumulation of wealth: producers and consumers - with workers and owners the two major classes of the New Order.
Society , reduced to a giant mill grinding out the gaudy means to assuage the greed and gluttony of a few, and ( a portion of) the basic needs of the vast multitude.
What a grotesque devaluation of the real riches of anthropic life!
Individuation, now a mark of European superiority, instead of being seen as the misbegotten Niflheim of social perdition, was to be celebrated as the highest canon of the human condition, despite its all too obvious affinity to the Slough of Despond : of alienation, despair, and anomie.
So now we add ‘freedom’ (i.e., from social obligation, responsibility, caring) to a self-seeking ‘individuation’ , and we create the Ideal Modernist Wasteland : that vaunted ‘civil society’ of universal egoism where each exerts against the other , in a competitive struggle for survival, one-upmanship, advancement, achievement, enrichment , etc.
I once asked the time of a corporate executive, a stereotypical New England Yankee, striding up a Boston street in that ‘hurry’ that bespeaks the personage of importance: ‘buy yourself a watch’, came the laconic retort.
In short , the society of beggar-thy-neighbor and the devil-take the-hindmost.
Being was buried, forgotten: Doing, blindly, endlessly, was enshrined as the ‘Protestant Ethic’ with the celebration of ‘labor’ (preferably performed by Others: women, underclasses, Non-Europeans, et. al.,) not as a lamentable Post-Lapsarian doom , but indeed as a higher-order Virtue.
What Modernism destroys , in its depravity, is the very possibility of an anthropic civilization, considered not as some far-fetched utopia but as a very realized, and hence realizable, historical entity going back even prior to Antiquity.
In my metaphorical usage, Modernism destroys real, anthropic humans, tied to teach other by close-knit, affective ties, and turns them into Post-Human Reptiles: cold, canny, uncaring, and calculating.
In contrast, our traditional forbears were all simple, tribalist Mammals, warm-blooded , emotive, and familial.
As a First Strike, Modernism sunders the delicate tapestry of the reciprocal ‘social economy of affections’ which is the hallmark of anthropic Being , and substitutes the cold, concrete , implacable jungle of vested, asocial, amoral, self-interest.
As I have writ elsewhere, the European hegemon, thereby, is not yet ascended to civilization.
Indeed HE ( the male voice is inescapable: it is the ‘paradigm of masculinity’ that informs the Modernist straitjacket) went, catapulting, straight from barbarism to decadence.
(iii)
The traits of anthropic life are rudely , even absurdly, simple.
There are no ideals to be realized.
There are no propositions to be proved.
There are no goals to be attained.
And the only ethics are societally – i.e. , naturally- derived ones, not the products of extended navel-contemplation.
No surprise, really; for we are but hominids, self-conscious apes, driven by innate and powerful instincts .
Part of the art of social being is to tame or sublimate these drives (in point of fact, the ‘degree of civilisation’ attained, rests on how far the ‘paradigm of masculinity’ has been tamed/trumped by the modus of femininity: and It is in this regard that Matrilineal tribes with matrilocal residence are far more ‘evolved’ than Modernist societies) so society can perform nature’s prime requirement: propagation.
.Yes, it would appear that ‘god’ did not place us on earth , after all, to ‘realise’ some noble theological expectation worthy of those ‘created in His image’.
Our ‘values’, especially morality, stem from that ‘necessity’.
The human infant is perilously vulnerable, arguably for a longer stretch of time than others in the animal world.
So, the prime rationale for ‘Order’ Within is to secure the infant’s safety (the requirement of provisioning food is far less stringent, and needs far less effort, en generale).
Women, owing to nature’s quirk, as progenitors , and the first food-providers for infants, are the original, and prime custodians , of this vital function.
‘Security ‘ simply means taming the innate violence of men, or submitting the ‘paradigm of masculinity ‘ (violence, domination, aggression) to the gentler, but yet firm regime of the ‘paradigm of femininity’(nurturance).
This is achieved, historically, by ensnaring masculine dispositions within the matrix of the affective ties of kinship , which is the familial basis of the natural unit of our species: the Tribe.
This does not wholly subdue male proclivities, but distracts them, alters their sights , be it for short or long periods of time, from Within to Without.
In a very similar fashion, tribes ‘make peace’ with each other by entering into affinal, marital ,relations : with kinship again serving as the binding cement.
Morality is the base coding of kinship : at its root is simply the ‘rule’ of whom you can harm, with impunity, and whom you cannot, which helps define the ‘tribe’.
It is similar to the coding of incest, which prescribes whom you can marry, and whom you cannot, which helps define the ‘family’, or the extended family , or ‘group’.
Matrilineal tribal societies are likely our earliest, viably functioning, societal entities: and their achievement has arguably never been exceeded , once one deploys non-Modernist criteria, by any other societal form.
Real Anthropic values are perhaps best learnt from their example.
Kinship confers contentment – it is our natural state (i.e. the social and natural are one). ‘Happiness’, au contraire, is another wild , undefinable , hyperbolic , Modernist feint.
It is within the ‘family’ that the wayward, restive, instincts of men find some temporary repose, and that is satisfaction enough (for all).
Yet the achieved ‘armistice’ is not necessarily permanent: and men , can and do, ‘break’ with tribal codes - i.e., they break away from the ‘paradigm of femininity’ - to found feuding groups that go on to become empires.
(iv)
Back to Modernism.
The modern University is amongst its prime tools of containment.
In fact the Governors of Modernist societies have two tasks that often run against each other: to promote the accumulation of wealth , and also to serve (in appearance , or reality) the demands of ‘justice’ from the downtrodden orders(i.e. to ‘legitimise’ the order)
The University reflect the self-same mission.
For the farm and the factory to hum along, subject to the (altering) wishes of the commanding Lords of the Realm, the University has to be a hybrid of the two.
It , too, performs two Vital functions (and several ancillary ones).
One, its scientific labs farm the Technologies that drive its great, Productive machine.
Two, its ideological cells complement, and help manufacture, the desired stasis of mind and disposition, that nurture, in turn, the passive consumer, the meek elector, and the atomized citizen.
The two functions approximate ,more or less , the split between the natural and social sciences.
Now, the fact that debates , within the second platform , often exceed the bounds of mainstream requirements should not obfuscate their real function.
Look at the plethora of flag-waving rebellious’ outlooks that have come and gone: Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, structuralism, post-colonialism, environmentalism, et.al , that have all had their 15 minutes in the spotlight - only to end up in harmless ghettos, far from the action.
When women, within the educated, protested, they were granted a fief: Women’s Studies.
When enough Blacks resisted, they got the satrapy of African or Ethnic Studies - to lull their best minds into more realizable dreams: of tenure.
Needless to add, neither form of protest had any lasting influence upon actual public policy, save in exceptional outlier instances that actually prove the rule (Chomsky , in one of his early works, called mainstream academic elites, more generally, the ‘New Mandarins’).
For all the manifold tribes of ‘dissenters’, Racism and sexism remain the alpha and omega of all European formations , everywhere, regardless of their (mild) protestations to the contrary.
One swallow does not a summer make: and yet the election of Obama , or the coming election of Hillary, is (and will be) used to convince us that those pernicious ideas and practices are a thing of the past.
If you can bring yourself to believe it, the good society has already been achieved.
But , to return to the University.
Under today’s globalization, the universalisation of this institution , especially in its North-Atlantic -Anglo-Am patent, on a sound (or ,rather , unsound) Modernist basis, presages the universal adoption of this ‘Standard Model’ of economic, social, and political existence demanded of peoples the world over.
One Piper, One Tune; and 7+ billion are , with or without consent, accepting the Rules of Engagement of Modernism.
Indeed, no hegemon in world history has expected, nay demanded , more.
So, clearly, it is De-schooling, rather than schooling, that is the order of the day.
Let me state it baldly: the species is doomed to the extent that Non-European worlds are imprinted indelibly, as they are by the day , with this Modernist daguerreotype.
(v)
I have said that Modernism was the First Strike against the conventional norms of anthropic society (one must honor Europe’s claim to priority in all things).
In one swoop , the time-honored ‘compact’ that yet subsisted even within the unequal, hierarchical , violent, morass of feudal society , was obliterated.
Henceforth , the Modern sector would leech off all other sectors , heedless of any countervailing obligations, both domestically and internationally.
However,the North Atlantic had even more destiny to achieve.
In the Eighties, came the Second Strike, this time of Late Modernism.
Whom the gods wish to destroy , it is said, they first make mad.
Late Modernism, in euphoria at its global success, turned cannibalistic, and began to feed upon itself.
Whilst continuing to fleece the world, willy nilly, it let the most parasitic of economic activities- finance- despoil its own productive capabilities , thereby effectively , and possibly irrevocably, commencing the process of self-subversion.
Never in the history of Modernism has unproductive activity so mortally threatened more productive spheres.
In al irony, therefore, the ‘Second’ strike might also be its , if somewhat dubious, Last Huzzah.
So , the question is posed: who is to save EuroModernism from its own Himalayan follies?
Well, it may well be, howsoever unexpectedly, its Non-European clones as they are , and as they are being engendered, in Asia , Africa , and South America .
China has the mantra pat, by now, and present-day India appears eager to chant it: Russia with an ever-fading memory of its near-extinct socialist inclinations , remains , as yet, half-and-half.
So the chance remains, for late Modernism to be revived – or is it resusciated ? – by these Emergent Powers.
However, their own dependence on the on-going viability of EU , Japan, S.Korea, and the North Atlantic – all of whom are technically bankrupt - may not be wholly conducive to their role as Rescuers of the Modernist World.
(vi)
I rail against the European variant of Modernism, which is not only the Original Template , but also the one that triumphed globally, via the antic means of fraud and force.
Do I claim it is devoid of all, or any, merit?
Look at it this way: I can burn my house down in order to cook my dinner – now the latter effect is undeniably meritorious.
But the cost?
There’s the rub.
The benefits of Modernism are numerous – my personal favorite is flushing toilets - but they come at too frightfully unaffordable a cost for the species, and perhaps even our planet.
It is the European ,Modernist , Governors that have brought the ecological world to the very brink of existence, the societal world to breakdown, and the economic world to collapse.
The world is suicidally nuclear today because of Their venomous invention(s) (no African, Asian, or Other, could even dream of such cataclysmic technologies of barbarism).
Worse, They have force-tutored the globe , on pain of punitive destruction, to follow in their ruinous footsteps, in all domains.
The Soviets were busy , for decades, quietly undermining their own achievements, but nonetheless the West forced them to abandon their frame of self-exploitation, to join in the Great Game.
Similarly , Maoist China was headed no place in particular, and yet had to be bribed and goaded to give up its own form of quiescence.
And so on.
As such, it is the European Modernist- in particular the Anglo-Am set of forces -that is squarely responsible for where we are today: in the Greatest Crisis in the History of Our Species.
(vii)
As a species , we don’t’ need much to be content.
This is not idle philosophy: but an amply attested fact.
Tribes yet exist that are contented, if ‘proof’ were needed.
It is a Modernist travesty that , prior to its advent, the world was steeped in ‘poverty’.
Firstly, poverty is a relative notion, and has no content.
If the intended meaning is deprivation, then that is always the willful creation of those who privatise and monopolise resources vital to the welfare of the many.
In effect it is a policy creation, and not a natural state at all.
It is also the goad to involuntary labour , within Capitalism, so governor would ever dream of abolishing it.
EuroModernism has, in fact, specialized in that manner of enforced deprivation, domestically and externally, for centuries - exacerbating inequalities, globally.
No tribe we know of ever starved to death unless it was under dire compulsion, of conquest or natural disaster.
We do not need a ‘gdp’ to grow every period, unto eternity.
We do not need satellites, microwave ovens, nor even hi-powered computing machines as personal household items.
Nor do we need to transport ourselves, at the spur of the moment , from sea to shining sea , across the globe.
Nor do we need to dream (and this will one day be a tidal wave) of a Transhuman world of robotized humans literally internalizing new technologies.
Nor do we need, even more tellingly, to labor all our lives, and against our inclinations, for people we don’t care for , making products we may not approve of, and under conditions we are not enamored of.
From the mines of Potosi, to the slave plantations of the American South, and the latter-day, corporate-funded sweatshops of Bangladesh: such has been the real sway of the implacable EuroModernist Impulse of Exaction.
So the query is moot: what manner of ‘freedom’ is the Modernist really celebrating?
One would hope it is not the earthshaking ‘choice’ between Coke and Pepsi.
At any rate, the freedoms that matter are not ‘freedoms’ at all, but ordinary anthropic needs: to be sheltered from want, indignity, and insecurity.
Such manner of benefice has only been possible in small face-to-face communities of a gemeinschaft nature.
The Tribe is exactly that.
It’s one big, Extended family. Its ties are Affective. They are not rent by competitive disaffections.
Nation and State belong to a very different order.
They are organised from above , and are not based on affective empathy: they are formal and impersonal. They run on bribery and/or intimidation.
In fact, the Modern Nation-State is a European innovation dating from the Treaty of Westphalia.
Few peoples in our Pre-Modernist past ‘chose’ to be self-organised in that manner.
If it happened, it is because it was imposed by on them - by force.
The dilemma of Modernism is clarified - we as humans crave satisfaction of anthropic needs that a nation state cannot deliver: quite literally, it doesn’t ‘care’.
Yet a tribe delivers such werewithal w/out asking.
A social economy of affections differs vastly from a political economy of interests.
It is the difference between a moral economy and a material economy.
Better still, it is the difference between (anthropic) civilization and (Modernist) barbarism.
Now we should comprehend the spectacular failure of ‘communism’ (those that reap delight from that failure need to recall that the latter tried to build a better society for all, and failed – aided , generously, in their failure by the global machinations of the West . Yet the latter has failed, too, but without trying anything even remotely meritorious).
They tried to create the former (fraternity,sorority), but based on the latter (bureaucracy, dictatorship).
That circle simply cannot be squared.
Gemeinschaft is gemeinschaft and gesellschaft is gesellchaft – and never the twain shall meet.
As I have remarked elsewhere, a little anthropology goes a long way in avoiding terrible blunders in policy.
I do not ‘idealise’ tribal society any more than I disparage Modernism - uncritically.
Yet it is clear to any thinking person that the antic tribe embodies values that are worth emulating.
No tribal society has ever poisoned the air, made waters toxic, and threatened the planet with mass-species extinction(including our own).
Those values are, arguably, important to reclaim, especially in these times of large scale distress and disaffection with the present climate of drift.
The (Euro)Modernist needs to consider: look at the 20th Century, the century of High Modernism.
Look at its capacity for slaughter and war: is there any precedent for the sheer scale of the mass-murder in any other form of society?
Has drudgery, homelessness, unemployment, insecurity, stress, and tension , vanished?
Have those resounding ‘Declarations’ been fulfilled?
Look at the current consequences of the long-drawn High-GDP EuroModernist Way: in ecology, in social cohesion, in economical viability, in morality, both public and private.
Are we, perchance, happier for it?
The Happy Planet Index is not found correlated , en generale, with GDP, except perhaps negatively.
Look at the stupefying stockpilings of nuclear warheads, biological weapons, et. al.
Look to the disasters that, actually and potentially, accompany accidents - even in peaceful nuclear facilities.
Look at the current setting of the Doomsday Clock.
Add them all up.
Is the EuroModernist Way one big, grand, success story?
Regardless of how one answers that question, the reality of our tribal natures yet asserts itself, quite naturally, in the ‘last instance’.
As the crisis deepens, communities rediscover lost commonalities, the commons itself being reclaimed en route.
Today’s impecunious young are now discovering the boons of the succoring ‘green, green, grass of home’.
Family, as the First Benevolent Society , is again being recognized.
And Crypto-currencies , co-ops , and mini-barter- economies are emerging, spontaneously, worldwide.
And so , it appears, the process of revitalization begins afresh.
It is , perhaps, an opportunity - to rethink all things.
‘Progress’, that term so dear to Modernism, sometimes, may mean no more than a (welcome) return to our anthropic roots.
The ‘Garden of Eden ‘ may not be an idle myth: Marx built his own utopia on the basis of what he understood (at a time when Europe studied the “Other’, after first subduing it) as ‘primitive communism’ - which is none other than the tribal society form(s) I have been referring to in these posts.
REFERENCES
R.KANTH, AGAINST EUROCENTRISM, 1997
---------, BREAKING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT, 1997
---------, Two Lectures on Eurocentrism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwQrpfom9M<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DZDwQrpfom9M&k=AjZjj3dyY74kKL92lieHqQ%3D%3D%0A&r=Ul8alR2l08keT7LU6kfGk%2FLPjA2GeWA1tJYXAdjLdto%3D%0A&m=l80kmrQP5oD9Yn9GW3wVClP85XRBN%2FmCVzJs2Jxsw8M%3D%0A&s=86a419fc904ebbfcaf93be689bd47970ffd28239a7951a7b16c96396fd034db4
_________, THE POST-HUMAN SOCIETY, 2013
© R.Kanth 2014, Harvard University
(Euro)Modernism is a Bell Jar, inside an Iron Cage, within a Gated Gulag.
Yet, in tragic paradox, it comes meretriciously wrapped , within the exalted drapery of ‘freedom’.
Freedom!
What a mind-benumbing, hallucinogenic , inchoate, daydream!
What an ideally devised sop for the millions!
It has been the ‘discourse’ (another term to beware of) of Europe for at least four centuries.
The very (shallow, conniving) largesse of language of Modernism should inspire an instant, and very grave, caution.
O those Universal Declaration of Rights!
My – anyone would think they (i.e., the good folk that own and control everything) were just giving it away, for sheer goodness’ sake!
Has one (almost) reaching for musical instrument and marching boots.
If I had a penny for every soul who has believed in such tripe - only to stumble grievously upon the cold, hard rock of societal reality - I would be more opulent than kings.
The Myths - fables, fictions , and folklore - of Modernism are quite innumerable: and there are few of us, even within the charmed circle of the ‘intelligentsia’ who are not – even in these apocalyptic latter days - susceptible to their lures.
Let me put it , perhaps, more effectively: if Modernism were Dorian Gray, its hidden Portrait would be one sorry mess of an addled , distending, putrefaction.
The conceit of Europe (amongst many) continues to be that it has ‘discovered’ (or is it ‘invented’) – if not quite delivered!- ‘’freedom’ as the desirable, if not even ideal, anthropic condition.
Even a noted philosopher found it edifying to sub-title his work ‘ the pulse of freedom’- regrettably , echoing all those Anglo-Am demagogues who deploy it to cover up unseemly intentions and deeds.
Freedom: for what? From what? For whom? Against whom?
These latter queries abide , as they have for aeons, in a dead zone of deafening silence.
Yet the paradoxes have always been there , plainly to be seen.
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident’, wrote one set of their ilk, that ‘all men are created equal’ - whilst colonies of African slaves languished in their backyards.
And what about Women? Ah, well…
Their petty, patriarchical, property-owning dream of a pacific ‘equality’ with one another – there’s fraternity ‘twixt fellow-governors- as a band of brothers might, within a racist and sexist frame , at a time of crisis, squaring off against a larger force: that may be all that is ‘self-evident’ in that high snatch of prose.
Yet, the drivel still drones on.
The above is, admittedly , a true, but trite, example.
Less shallow is the fact that ‘freedom’ was the dissembling, populist slogan of the emergent Modernist Captains of Commerce and Industry, as they battled the sires and seigneurs of the ancien regime , seeking the support of the mass of the sans-cullottes who were stirred up to serve as the ill-fated cannon fodder of their rank ambitions.
And , heavens, did they ‘deliver’ oodles of ‘freedom’, in lordly fashion - first , and foremost ,to themselves!
Peasants , serfs, laboring orders, ‘freed’ from their customary rights, dispensations, farms, foraging lands, commons, and related means of subsistence.
All that these wretched of the earth lost filled the bloated bellies, coffers , and ambitions of these New Titans.
Yes, the serf was ‘freed’: and for two or more centuries, entered that abundantly ‘free’ state of destitute vagabondage before rampant industry corralled them all , via whip , workhouse, and gunshot, into those ‘dark, satanic mills’ (that vulgar apologists , of ‘left’ and ‘right’ saw – and perhaps still see - as the necessary stepping-stones to their versions of Utopia).
It should give one pause, for the simple error of mistaking ideology – in the sense of tendentious fabrications – with reality.
(ii)
Ignorance of societal structures and anthropic realities assisted the success of this propaganda whose most tragic consequence was perhaps the ease with which the very victims of its noxious effects embraced it , seeing in it , astonishingly, a salve for their impossible situation.
Hope is indeed given as a sop to the hopeless!
The fulsome tragedy of uncountable millions, over generations, viciously severed from their secure moorings in the womb of a tightly integrated societal compact was forgotten: and, adding further offense to injury , the rootless victims of that Great Severance were now to be celebrated henceforth as the heroic ‘individuals’ of our epoch, ‘free to choose’ , and free to embrace, and experience, every random and planned , evil of a sordid, materialist , unrequiting, hell.
Hell is ‘other people’, wrote Sartre: yes , Hell is us, the disaffected zombies that dwell in the living cemeteries of Modernist society.
And , yes, utter wretchedness and angst can produce such magnificient cri de couer compositions in art, music, writing, philosophy, etc,, can they not?
Even if, like Van Gogh, they killed themselves , in so doing: or , went mad, like Nietzsche.
Yes, the contented rarely exert themselves to the point of genius - or dementia.
Society was reduced to but two functions necessary for the accumulation of wealth: producers and consumers - with workers and owners the two major classes of the New Order.
Society , reduced to a giant mill grinding out the gaudy means to assuage the greed and gluttony of a few, and ( a portion of) the basic needs of the vast multitude.
What a grotesque devaluation of the real riches of anthropic life!
Individuation, now a mark of European superiority, instead of being seen as the misbegotten Niflheim of social perdition, was to be celebrated as the highest canon of the human condition, despite its all too obvious affinity to the Slough of Despond : of alienation, despair, and anomie.
So now we add ‘freedom’ (i.e., from social obligation, responsibility, caring) to a self-seeking ‘individuation’ , and we create the Ideal Modernist Wasteland : that vaunted ‘civil society’ of universal egoism where each exerts against the other , in a competitive struggle for survival, one-upmanship, advancement, achievement, enrichment , etc.
I once asked the time of a corporate executive, a stereotypical New England Yankee, striding up a Boston street in that ‘hurry’ that bespeaks the personage of importance: ‘buy yourself a watch’, came the laconic retort.
In short , the society of beggar-thy-neighbor and the devil-take the-hindmost.
Being was buried, forgotten: Doing, blindly, endlessly, was enshrined as the ‘Protestant Ethic’ with the celebration of ‘labor’ (preferably performed by Others: women, underclasses, Non-Europeans, et. al.,) not as a lamentable Post-Lapsarian doom , but indeed as a higher-order Virtue.
What Modernism destroys , in its depravity, is the very possibility of an anthropic civilization, considered not as some far-fetched utopia but as a very realized, and hence realizable, historical entity going back even prior to Antiquity.
In my metaphorical usage, Modernism destroys real, anthropic humans, tied to teach other by close-knit, affective ties, and turns them into Post-Human Reptiles: cold, canny, uncaring, and calculating.
In contrast, our traditional forbears were all simple, tribalist Mammals, warm-blooded , emotive, and familial.
As a First Strike, Modernism sunders the delicate tapestry of the reciprocal ‘social economy of affections’ which is the hallmark of anthropic Being , and substitutes the cold, concrete , implacable jungle of vested, asocial, amoral, self-interest.
As I have writ elsewhere, the European hegemon, thereby, is not yet ascended to civilization.
Indeed HE ( the male voice is inescapable: it is the ‘paradigm of masculinity’ that informs the Modernist straitjacket) went, catapulting, straight from barbarism to decadence.
(iii)
The traits of anthropic life are rudely , even absurdly, simple.
There are no ideals to be realized.
There are no propositions to be proved.
There are no goals to be attained.
And the only ethics are societally – i.e. , naturally- derived ones, not the products of extended navel-contemplation.
No surprise, really; for we are but hominids, self-conscious apes, driven by innate and powerful instincts .
Part of the art of social being is to tame or sublimate these drives (in point of fact, the ‘degree of civilisation’ attained, rests on how far the ‘paradigm of masculinity’ has been tamed/trumped by the modus of femininity: and It is in this regard that Matrilineal tribes with matrilocal residence are far more ‘evolved’ than Modernist societies) so society can perform nature’s prime requirement: propagation.
.Yes, it would appear that ‘god’ did not place us on earth , after all, to ‘realise’ some noble theological expectation worthy of those ‘created in His image’.
Our ‘values’, especially morality, stem from that ‘necessity’.
The human infant is perilously vulnerable, arguably for a longer stretch of time than others in the animal world.
So, the prime rationale for ‘Order’ Within is to secure the infant’s safety (the requirement of provisioning food is far less stringent, and needs far less effort, en generale).
Women, owing to nature’s quirk, as progenitors , and the first food-providers for infants, are the original, and prime custodians , of this vital function.
‘Security ‘ simply means taming the innate violence of men, or submitting the ‘paradigm of masculinity ‘ (violence, domination, aggression) to the gentler, but yet firm regime of the ‘paradigm of femininity’(nurturance).
This is achieved, historically, by ensnaring masculine dispositions within the matrix of the affective ties of kinship , which is the familial basis of the natural unit of our species: the Tribe.
This does not wholly subdue male proclivities, but distracts them, alters their sights , be it for short or long periods of time, from Within to Without.
In a very similar fashion, tribes ‘make peace’ with each other by entering into affinal, marital ,relations : with kinship again serving as the binding cement.
Morality is the base coding of kinship : at its root is simply the ‘rule’ of whom you can harm, with impunity, and whom you cannot, which helps define the ‘tribe’.
It is similar to the coding of incest, which prescribes whom you can marry, and whom you cannot, which helps define the ‘family’, or the extended family , or ‘group’.
Matrilineal tribal societies are likely our earliest, viably functioning, societal entities: and their achievement has arguably never been exceeded , once one deploys non-Modernist criteria, by any other societal form.
Real Anthropic values are perhaps best learnt from their example.
Kinship confers contentment – it is our natural state (i.e. the social and natural are one). ‘Happiness’, au contraire, is another wild , undefinable , hyperbolic , Modernist feint.
It is within the ‘family’ that the wayward, restive, instincts of men find some temporary repose, and that is satisfaction enough (for all).
Yet the achieved ‘armistice’ is not necessarily permanent: and men , can and do, ‘break’ with tribal codes - i.e., they break away from the ‘paradigm of femininity’ - to found feuding groups that go on to become empires.
(iv)
Back to Modernism.
The modern University is amongst its prime tools of containment.
In fact the Governors of Modernist societies have two tasks that often run against each other: to promote the accumulation of wealth , and also to serve (in appearance , or reality) the demands of ‘justice’ from the downtrodden orders(i.e. to ‘legitimise’ the order)
The University reflect the self-same mission.
For the farm and the factory to hum along, subject to the (altering) wishes of the commanding Lords of the Realm, the University has to be a hybrid of the two.
It , too, performs two Vital functions (and several ancillary ones).
One, its scientific labs farm the Technologies that drive its great, Productive machine.
Two, its ideological cells complement, and help manufacture, the desired stasis of mind and disposition, that nurture, in turn, the passive consumer, the meek elector, and the atomized citizen.
The two functions approximate ,more or less , the split between the natural and social sciences.
Now, the fact that debates , within the second platform , often exceed the bounds of mainstream requirements should not obfuscate their real function.
Look at the plethora of flag-waving rebellious’ outlooks that have come and gone: Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, structuralism, post-colonialism, environmentalism, et.al , that have all had their 15 minutes in the spotlight - only to end up in harmless ghettos, far from the action.
When women, within the educated, protested, they were granted a fief: Women’s Studies.
When enough Blacks resisted, they got the satrapy of African or Ethnic Studies - to lull their best minds into more realizable dreams: of tenure.
Needless to add, neither form of protest had any lasting influence upon actual public policy, save in exceptional outlier instances that actually prove the rule (Chomsky , in one of his early works, called mainstream academic elites, more generally, the ‘New Mandarins’).
For all the manifold tribes of ‘dissenters’, Racism and sexism remain the alpha and omega of all European formations , everywhere, regardless of their (mild) protestations to the contrary.
One swallow does not a summer make: and yet the election of Obama , or the coming election of Hillary, is (and will be) used to convince us that those pernicious ideas and practices are a thing of the past.
If you can bring yourself to believe it, the good society has already been achieved.
But , to return to the University.
Under today’s globalization, the universalisation of this institution , especially in its North-Atlantic -Anglo-Am patent, on a sound (or ,rather , unsound) Modernist basis, presages the universal adoption of this ‘Standard Model’ of economic, social, and political existence demanded of peoples the world over.
One Piper, One Tune; and 7+ billion are , with or without consent, accepting the Rules of Engagement of Modernism.
Indeed, no hegemon in world history has expected, nay demanded , more.
So, clearly, it is De-schooling, rather than schooling, that is the order of the day.
Let me state it baldly: the species is doomed to the extent that Non-European worlds are imprinted indelibly, as they are by the day , with this Modernist daguerreotype.
(v)
I have said that Modernism was the First Strike against the conventional norms of anthropic society (one must honor Europe’s claim to priority in all things).
In one swoop , the time-honored ‘compact’ that yet subsisted even within the unequal, hierarchical , violent, morass of feudal society , was obliterated.
Henceforth , the Modern sector would leech off all other sectors , heedless of any countervailing obligations, both domestically and internationally.
However,the North Atlantic had even more destiny to achieve.
In the Eighties, came the Second Strike, this time of Late Modernism.
Whom the gods wish to destroy , it is said, they first make mad.
Late Modernism, in euphoria at its global success, turned cannibalistic, and began to feed upon itself.
Whilst continuing to fleece the world, willy nilly, it let the most parasitic of economic activities- finance- despoil its own productive capabilities , thereby effectively , and possibly irrevocably, commencing the process of self-subversion.
Never in the history of Modernism has unproductive activity so mortally threatened more productive spheres.
In al irony, therefore, the ‘Second’ strike might also be its , if somewhat dubious, Last Huzzah.
So , the question is posed: who is to save EuroModernism from its own Himalayan follies?
Well, it may well be, howsoever unexpectedly, its Non-European clones as they are , and as they are being engendered, in Asia , Africa , and South America .
China has the mantra pat, by now, and present-day India appears eager to chant it: Russia with an ever-fading memory of its near-extinct socialist inclinations , remains , as yet, half-and-half.
So the chance remains, for late Modernism to be revived – or is it resusciated ? – by these Emergent Powers.
However, their own dependence on the on-going viability of EU , Japan, S.Korea, and the North Atlantic – all of whom are technically bankrupt - may not be wholly conducive to their role as Rescuers of the Modernist World.
(vi)
I rail against the European variant of Modernism, which is not only the Original Template , but also the one that triumphed globally, via the antic means of fraud and force.
Do I claim it is devoid of all, or any, merit?
Look at it this way: I can burn my house down in order to cook my dinner – now the latter effect is undeniably meritorious.
But the cost?
There’s the rub.
The benefits of Modernism are numerous – my personal favorite is flushing toilets - but they come at too frightfully unaffordable a cost for the species, and perhaps even our planet.
It is the European ,Modernist , Governors that have brought the ecological world to the very brink of existence, the societal world to breakdown, and the economic world to collapse.
The world is suicidally nuclear today because of Their venomous invention(s) (no African, Asian, or Other, could even dream of such cataclysmic technologies of barbarism).
Worse, They have force-tutored the globe , on pain of punitive destruction, to follow in their ruinous footsteps, in all domains.
The Soviets were busy , for decades, quietly undermining their own achievements, but nonetheless the West forced them to abandon their frame of self-exploitation, to join in the Great Game.
Similarly , Maoist China was headed no place in particular, and yet had to be bribed and goaded to give up its own form of quiescence.
And so on.
As such, it is the European Modernist- in particular the Anglo-Am set of forces -that is squarely responsible for where we are today: in the Greatest Crisis in the History of Our Species.
(vii)
As a species , we don’t’ need much to be content.
This is not idle philosophy: but an amply attested fact.
Tribes yet exist that are contented, if ‘proof’ were needed.
It is a Modernist travesty that , prior to its advent, the world was steeped in ‘poverty’.
Firstly, poverty is a relative notion, and has no content.
If the intended meaning is deprivation, then that is always the willful creation of those who privatise and monopolise resources vital to the welfare of the many.
In effect it is a policy creation, and not a natural state at all.
It is also the goad to involuntary labour , within Capitalism, so governor would ever dream of abolishing it.
EuroModernism has, in fact, specialized in that manner of enforced deprivation, domestically and externally, for centuries - exacerbating inequalities, globally.
No tribe we know of ever starved to death unless it was under dire compulsion, of conquest or natural disaster.
We do not need a ‘gdp’ to grow every period, unto eternity.
We do not need satellites, microwave ovens, nor even hi-powered computing machines as personal household items.
Nor do we need to transport ourselves, at the spur of the moment , from sea to shining sea , across the globe.
Nor do we need to dream (and this will one day be a tidal wave) of a Transhuman world of robotized humans literally internalizing new technologies.
Nor do we need, even more tellingly, to labor all our lives, and against our inclinations, for people we don’t care for , making products we may not approve of, and under conditions we are not enamored of.
From the mines of Potosi, to the slave plantations of the American South, and the latter-day, corporate-funded sweatshops of Bangladesh: such has been the real sway of the implacable EuroModernist Impulse of Exaction.
So the query is moot: what manner of ‘freedom’ is the Modernist really celebrating?
One would hope it is not the earthshaking ‘choice’ between Coke and Pepsi.
At any rate, the freedoms that matter are not ‘freedoms’ at all, but ordinary anthropic needs: to be sheltered from want, indignity, and insecurity.
Such manner of benefice has only been possible in small face-to-face communities of a gemeinschaft nature.
The Tribe is exactly that.
It’s one big, Extended family. Its ties are Affective. They are not rent by competitive disaffections.
Nation and State belong to a very different order.
They are organised from above , and are not based on affective empathy: they are formal and impersonal. They run on bribery and/or intimidation.
In fact, the Modern Nation-State is a European innovation dating from the Treaty of Westphalia.
Few peoples in our Pre-Modernist past ‘chose’ to be self-organised in that manner.
If it happened, it is because it was imposed by on them - by force.
The dilemma of Modernism is clarified - we as humans crave satisfaction of anthropic needs that a nation state cannot deliver: quite literally, it doesn’t ‘care’.
Yet a tribe delivers such werewithal w/out asking.
A social economy of affections differs vastly from a political economy of interests.
It is the difference between a moral economy and a material economy.
Better still, it is the difference between (anthropic) civilization and (Modernist) barbarism.
Now we should comprehend the spectacular failure of ‘communism’ (those that reap delight from that failure need to recall that the latter tried to build a better society for all, and failed – aided , generously, in their failure by the global machinations of the West . Yet the latter has failed, too, but without trying anything even remotely meritorious).
They tried to create the former (fraternity,sorority), but based on the latter (bureaucracy, dictatorship).
That circle simply cannot be squared.
Gemeinschaft is gemeinschaft and gesellschaft is gesellchaft – and never the twain shall meet.
As I have remarked elsewhere, a little anthropology goes a long way in avoiding terrible blunders in policy.
I do not ‘idealise’ tribal society any more than I disparage Modernism - uncritically.
Yet it is clear to any thinking person that the antic tribe embodies values that are worth emulating.
No tribal society has ever poisoned the air, made waters toxic, and threatened the planet with mass-species extinction(including our own).
Those values are, arguably, important to reclaim, especially in these times of large scale distress and disaffection with the present climate of drift.
The (Euro)Modernist needs to consider: look at the 20th Century, the century of High Modernism.
Look at its capacity for slaughter and war: is there any precedent for the sheer scale of the mass-murder in any other form of society?
Has drudgery, homelessness, unemployment, insecurity, stress, and tension , vanished?
Have those resounding ‘Declarations’ been fulfilled?
Look at the current consequences of the long-drawn High-GDP EuroModernist Way: in ecology, in social cohesion, in economical viability, in morality, both public and private.
Are we, perchance, happier for it?
The Happy Planet Index is not found correlated , en generale, with GDP, except perhaps negatively.
Look at the stupefying stockpilings of nuclear warheads, biological weapons, et. al.
Look to the disasters that, actually and potentially, accompany accidents - even in peaceful nuclear facilities.
Look at the current setting of the Doomsday Clock.
Add them all up.
Is the EuroModernist Way one big, grand, success story?
Regardless of how one answers that question, the reality of our tribal natures yet asserts itself, quite naturally, in the ‘last instance’.
As the crisis deepens, communities rediscover lost commonalities, the commons itself being reclaimed en route.
Today’s impecunious young are now discovering the boons of the succoring ‘green, green, grass of home’.
Family, as the First Benevolent Society , is again being recognized.
And Crypto-currencies , co-ops , and mini-barter- economies are emerging, spontaneously, worldwide.
And so , it appears, the process of revitalization begins afresh.
It is , perhaps, an opportunity - to rethink all things.
‘Progress’, that term so dear to Modernism, sometimes, may mean no more than a (welcome) return to our anthropic roots.
The ‘Garden of Eden ‘ may not be an idle myth: Marx built his own utopia on the basis of what he understood (at a time when Europe studied the “Other’, after first subduing it) as ‘primitive communism’ - which is none other than the tribal society form(s) I have been referring to in these posts.
REFERENCES
R.KANTH, AGAINST EUROCENTRISM, 1997
---------, BREAKING WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT, 1997
---------, Two Lectures on Eurocentrism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwQrpfom9M<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DZDwQrpfom9M&k=AjZjj3dyY74kKL92lieHqQ%3D%3D%0A&r=Ul8alR2l08keT7LU6kfGk%2FLPjA2GeWA1tJYXAdjLdto%3D%0A&m=l80kmrQP5oD9Yn9GW3wVClP85XRBN%2FmCVzJs2Jxsw8M%3D%0A&s=86a419fc904ebbfcaf93be689bd47970ffd28239a7951a7b16c96396fd034db4
_________, THE POST-HUMAN SOCIETY, 2013
© R.Kanth 2014, Harvard University