I was brought up on modernism. I would still go for it any time. And I am quite unashamed about it in these post modern times. Modernism had a healthy distaste for every propped up institution in the world. It viewed the establishment as evil. It delighted in pulling down the arrogant architectures of a utilitarian culture. And it was right, for every grand institution turns on its adherents after a period of time and catches them by the throat, trying to squeeze the very life out of them. Also the utilitarian culture always had the capability to construct terrible deformities like Auschwitz and Dachau. We did not view it as the creation of the Nazis alone, for we knew that Nazi’s were just the torch bearers at that particular point of time. Fascism is a disease of the psyche, it was prevalent all through the long history of human evolution. But it has not reared its ugly head in a similar fashion to that of the first half of last century. All knew something was wrong, and every one who set out to investigate the problem became a modernist.
These knew that the movement was destined to be superseded by another such movement, but what came in its wake was a horror of the first order. We can’t deny that this new malady was helped by several factors. External techniques of war and interrogation had been replaced by internal techniques. Brute force was traded for subtle invasive brutality. Reality was overthrown by virtual reality. It was the beginning of technocracy. By the time it had really begun to sweep aside everything in its wake, it was a bit too late to fashion an effective technique of defense against it. The technology had caught people with their pants down. It had an alluring physical presence and they fell for the snare of this new vampire. It does not drink your blood. But it sucks your spirit dry.
But the world had not changed one bit, it was as brutal as it was before, and in reality it had become more inhuman and more insensitive than it was. There is something very wrong with the human psyche. It has not improved at all through the passage of time. The same violent passions, the same bestial urges, the same stupid antagonisms rule the roost. There is something deep down in us which do not allow us to prosper inwardly as a human society, a strange restraining force for going against evil. It always sides with the ill and with the pretension of doing well. The soldier says “it’s my guys out there, they need me”. Really he is not speaking for himself, he is speaking for the “clan“. This elusive clan could be an archetype within the psyche. He is already sort of disembodied, he does not care for himself, but he care for something. The problem with that something is that it is entirely wrong. That something is about the “guys”. For the same guys who again do not care for themselves.
Look how the system makes you say things. It puts you through the rigors of a terribly Spartan existence, It denies you the normal necessities of life, it court- martial’s you if you dare to just look defiantly up. But it make you bond with others for sacrificing yourself for causes of which you can’t make the head and tail of. What are you fighting for? Is the fight going to save the world? Is it going to create anything other than despair, for both the victors and the defeated? It happened in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in India’s case in Srilanka. It does not end here.
This is what the establishment does to you. It crushes your reason and provides you with a vague sense of belonging to something very basic, in this case a confused link to fellow soldiers. Personally these guys may not care to know each other even in civilian life, before they ever met in the military setting I mean. The system creates a fake bonding with a fake pretense. This is why it is anti-human. The stronger its external structure is the viler it is. This drama of the unconscious desire in the system for destroying human beings as well as other structures (seen antagonistic to it) has been holding center stage for a long time it seems. May be this drama is never going to end. I believe that we have some sort of a destructive gene inside us, which makes us deny others the freedom that we would have for ourselves. There is also a convergence of various power structures towards every other such structure which is terrifying.
The more frightening aspect of the techno- civilization is that it has now taken its fights into the sphere of the mind. Its Auschwitz and Dachau’s are invisible. It has created a Panopticon of the whole world. Every single human being inside this Panopticon is always being monitored by the masters. This modern Panopticon does not have any walls. Its boundaries extend to all the spheres of human intervention, both global and spatial. The eyes of the guard’s looks at you through satellites, their ears are tuned into your conversations through Echelon, their instructions reach you through the gadgets you carry around with you or wonder of wonders, through the thin air.
I believe that the modernist values still hold good in this post –post- modernist times. All seems to have accepted the intervention of the market into their lives. It is the primary playing ground of post modernism. It boasts of nullifying greater narratives. But the aim behind it is all too evident. It wants to sell goods. It is fashioning peoples taste to newer products by ousting older ones from the mind. The talk of negating greater narratives serves the purpose very well. Unfortunately those that call themselves progressives have also fallen for the sweet talk of the degenerate philosophy. They naively believe that the new reality could be interpreted in this manner more convincingly. Nothing could be farther from the truth than that. If some one vainly hopes for making the existing destructive world -view scarce by this new approach, they can think again. Negating greater narratives for post modernism is not the same as demolishing institutions of the modernism. Post modernism is not a transitional stage of modernism as some believe. It is dead against the spirit of modernism.
This might not go down well with some of you. But Post modernism was invented by the apologists of the establishment with the help of the market gurus. It is entirely a market oriented philosophy, if you can call it a philosophy at all. No wonder it spread like a disease all over the world within no time of its inception. It had to be preached all over the world to instill the supposedly fresh and thoroughly body oriented thought structure to the already highly infected public. With the help of electronic media it has achieved its primary aim, that of spreading the consumerist culture every where in the world.
Some say that it took the modernism to reach the third world 30 years from its beginning but that the post-modernism took immediate root every where. No wonder. Its god is the omnipresent market. It does not propagate ideas on humanity; instead it sells goods and services and makes good profit out of it. It is impersonal and faceless. It has given the control of the world to a few merchants who would like to rule the world.
This is the age of Merchantism rather than that of post modernism, but not merely in the sense seen by Raymond E. Feist in “Rise of a Merchant Prince” but in a much more invasive and aggressive manner than any thing the world has ever seen. Philosophy of gain pervades everything; it is the shadow culture of greed cleverly foisted on the human body in exclusion to everything else with a double purpose- to control and to amass wealth. No other considerations find a place in this scheme of greed.
Sad times these.
Note : My idea’s on both modernism and post modernism is thoroughly subjective and may not agree with what is being said and taught about them in the academic circle or even among the enthusiasts. Those who want to form their own views on these subjects may refer to the following links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
These links may be of use to you as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
http://photo.net/bp/dachau
http://www.rationalmind.net/essays/our-techno-utopian-future-fallacies-and-predictions/
http://books.google.com/books?id=pRGTw-uAAc4C&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=techno-+civilization&source=web&ots=G5NUjdDDA2&sig=xc2IhKNY33mupi3mS-tqO4q6F_M&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result
http://runescape-money-guide.blogspot.com/2008/01/ways-to-make-runescape-money.html
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