The following quote was copy-pasted from page 583 and following of "Knowledge Formation. 6.2.1. The quasi-Worldview of Modernity".
This 1,150 page book will be available on my website this 27th of August.
This 1,150 page book will be available on my website this 27th of August.
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Modernity is not a worldview in the real sense of the word. It is a quasi-worldview. A worldview relates to a holistic narrative about what reality is all about that all citizens share as their own understanding. In other words the ideas generated by Modernity, and the facts that these ideas sustain, are not weaving a holistic narrative about human existential reality.
As a matter of fact nor Modernity, nor science which is its active method of inquiry, are offering a holistic narrative about what reality is all about... The ideas and facts of Modernity are generated to satisfy the sole concerns of capital holders and the men of power. In this sense we come to understand why Modernity can’t answer the existential questions that pop up in peoples’ minds and why peoples’ minds are thus filing with anxiety which isolates them in the disturbing feeling of not really belonging to their societies.
The fact of the matter is that the sharing of the characteristics of Modernity can’t cure the existential anxiety that afflicts most people in advanced Modern societies. As we saw earlier these societies have reached the stage of Late-Modernity which is the stage of life preceding death. This in turn explains why, to find relief from the anxiety resulting from the feeling of not belonging to something bigger than themselves, people flock to older worldviews like religions or whatever sects are active in their local environment.
By the characteristics of Modernity I mean that this quasi-worldview is rooted in the conversion, by Western European long distance merchants, to “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money, convenient debt, or unused nature into a dynamic process of capital accumulation”. And after applying this paradigm, for some 6 centuries, Western-Modernity gave rise to the following parameters that became societally determinant in the sense that they have literally driven Western societies to their present condition of atomization while attracting societies worldwide to follow suit :
- The archetypal model of power societies forced religious paradigms in the individuals' minds and the forced conversion to Western Christianity instilled individualism in the minds of all.
- People gradually converted to the instrumental paradigm of Western-Modernity that is “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money in a dynamic process of capital accumulation".
- The rationality of the paradigm of Modernity evolved into philosophic rationalism, science, and a consumerist conformism.
- Scientific specialization separated all fields of life thus detaching them from their subservience to the reason of U or the Whole universe.
- The ideology of the enlightenment, liberalism, directly competed with the political parties representing the interests of the religious institutions for exercising the power of the state :
- Representative governance, and human rights, blinded the individuals to their real interests
- TINA, or "There Is No Alternative" or "society does not exist" and "the individual is all there is", blinded the individuals to the real alternatives to Western-Modernity and its imperialism.
But this ideology of the Enlightenment drove Western societies into hyper-individualism which later combined with the views of postmodernism about the obsolescence of societal worldviews. The outcome of this process was societal atomization or the slow death of Western societies.
In the absence of a shared holistic narrative Modernity can not be viewed as a pure worldview. Its 5 determinant traits substantiate the values that are shaping the contours of what I call the quasi-worldview of Modernity. But this is not sufficient to keep the individuals from walking away from their societies.
This quasi-worldview has been made the creed of the liberal ideology of capital holders and their servants in power and in corporate institutions. This ideology is drilled in peoples’ minds through the daily propaganda peddled by the media and the target, of those who pay for this propaganda, is to force people to adopt the 5 core traits of the quasi-worldview of Modernity as the substance of their own ideas and behaviors.
The power of propaganda is so strong that it convinces people that what it peddles is the only game in town. As Thatcher famously said “There Is No Alternative”. TINA was Thatcher's slogan and it has taken over the whole world in this Late-Modernity. By translating into an ensemble of societal behaviors and ideas TINA fixates these 5 core ideological traits in the minds of all citizens as being the ultimate truth about the working of reality in the context of Late-Modernity.
Let’s note here that the French thinkers who gave us Postmodernism were among the first to fall in this TINA trap. Jean-Francois Lyotard’s diagnostic that the traditional societal narratives had vanished was a correct diagnostic but his subsequent leap into believing, that such narratives should henceforth be avoided altogether, was merely putting some intellectual meat on the skeletal ideology of liberalism. Bruno Latour was thinking along the same lines when he asked “Has knowledge-slash-power been co-opted of late by the National Security Agency?” (1).
The 5 core traits, of the quasi-worldview of Modernity, form the substance of the paradigm of Modernity. But this paradigm has evaded the scrutiny of the thinkers and intellectuals who focused their attention on Modernity or capitalism.
Marx focused, on the monopolization of capital accumulation in the hands of a small coterie of capital holders, which forced inequality on their societies. But his forceful rejection of capitalist inequality distracted his attention from the rationality, that is work in the transformation of sterile money into a process of capital accumulation, and he missed thus the nature and the origin of this rationality. This explains the inattention of Marxism to the rationality of Western-Modernity that has infused the minds with a paralyzing consumerist conformism.
Western thinkers have been blinded by the rationality of Modernity. The near totality of them have fallen in its trap and their minds got lost in its forms, — economic — social — cultural — and so on, without ever attaining its substance and they are thus living in the ignorance of its essence.
1. The rationality of Modernity
The 5 core traits of Modernity, — the archetypal model of power societies — the reason — the rationality of Modernity — the separation of all fields of life — and the ideology of liberalism, have fostered an exceptionalist “Modern rationalization” of human activities.
Modernity = the product of the system of values of Western European capital holders
Modernity emerged as a product of the reasoning and of the system of values of European capital holders and long distance merchants who very soon learned about the primacy of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money, convenient debt, or unused nature into a dynamic process of capital accumulation”.The different forms of the consequences of Modernity
The concerns of capital holders and long distance merchants gradually imposed a set of consequences to their societies that took the following forms :- The capture of the human mind by an abstract reason
- Expansion of the reason through the transformation of sterile money into a process of capital accumulation
- The finality of the reason has always been external to life
- Incompatibility of the reason, and the rationality of Modernity, with the “First Principles of Life”.
- The function of science is instrumental to the reason and it has no concern for life.
- The human ignorance of the precautionary principle comes at the price of the predicament of humanity in this Late-Modernity.
1.1. The capture of the human mind
Starting with Early-Modernity, or the phase of merchant capitalism, “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money into a dynamic process of capital accumulation” captured the minds of long distance merchants and capital holders. And their success, over the centuries, slowly gained the adherence of ever larger segments of European societies to “the reason”.But “the reason” is a finality that is external to human life and as such it has no consideration for any matter pertaining to human life or to the principle of life in general. This means that, in the internal logic of “the reason”, “whatever generates profits” is now being considered as the summit of rationality. This includes :
- Any activities that poison the air, the land, or the water in the habitat
- Any activities that poison humanity and/or other species which cause them suffering.
The capture of human minds by that finality takes place indirectly by positing that the signs of richness it procures are the ultimate truth in life. The luxury such richness permits to acquire is exposed as proof, of its existential and societal truth, to the eye of all citizens. And that truth appears irresistible to the minds that had been opened up earlier to individualism by Christianity.
Let’s remember that the narrative of Christianity rendered each and every individual responsible for their own sins in the eyes of God. The conversation between the individual and the Christian god suddenly initiated the self that “the reason” boosted into the ego which necessarily resulted in the expansion of ego-ism to all.
1.2. Expansion of the reason that transforms sterile money
The capture during Early-Modernity of the long distance merchants’ minds, by the internal logic of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money, into a dynamic process of capital accumulation”, forced their minds to convert to its rationality. Their conversion won them vast richness that they invested partly in mansions and palaces which for centuries stoked flames of envy in the minds of all Europeans. Over the centuries that envy eventually contaminated even the minds of the monks and intellectuals who thus conceived of a systematization of “the reason” to all aspects of life which eventually took the form of philosophic rationalism.In human affairs nothing ever falls from the sky. There is always a chain of causality that leads to the emergence of new phenomena and new ideas. This is what happened with European intellectuals between the 12th and 18th centuries. The substantiation, of the successes of long distance merchants and capital holders into mansions and other luxuries, was indeed impossible to ignore in societies that had freed the genie of greed from its bottle. The desire of all to gain access to the kind of richness exposed by the long distance merchants was certainly a determinant element but there was definitely more at play. The financial success of the long distance merchants and capital holders gained them gradually an increasing clout over the political decision-making process.
The phase of merchant or commercial capitalism, between the 12th and 18th centuries, ensured the redistribution of the cards of political power from the aristocracy and the clergy to the bourgeoisie which laid the groundwork for the application of the principles of democracy in the 19th century. It goes without saying that the infighting taking place during this redistribution of the political power irreversibly consecrated the rationality contained in the reason at work within capital as the societal truth. And the intellectuals had no doubt as to which estate to side with.
Viewed in this light the rise of rationalism from the context of “the reason” is an indisputable fact. But the societal truth that this fact succeeded to impose should not be understood as being an existential truth as capital holders were cheaply peddling their ideology of Neo-liberalism. It was indeed the concern of long distance merchants and capital holders to adapt their societies to their needs that imposed “the reason” as a societal truth that later expanded into philosophic rationalism.
The question that arises here is the following. Is an observed fact synonymous with truth ?
Rationalism posited that observable facts went counter to the veracity of religious texts. Society visibly agreed with the proposition and the debate was closed in favor of rationalism. But in Late-Modernity we are drawn back to that same question and the answer is not clear-cut any longer.
Is the first dimension, of observable facts, all the truth there is ?
Let’s come back to the matter that started our questioning. Is “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money, convenient debt, or unused nature, into a dynamic process of capital accumulation” a life compatible fact ?
It is incontestable that the application of “the reason” resulted in the world’s most extraordinary economic boom ever and peoples’ living standards effectively increased to an all time high. But does this prove that “the reason” is a societal and existential truth ?
Well not exactly. All it does prove is that when “the reason” is put in charge of commercial exchanges the total economic activity increases. So from the perspective of a national economy, and from the perspective of the individuals who gain consumers’ might, it is certainly a net positive that seems to prove that the reason is a societal and existential truth. But what about this other truth that there are numerous side-effects to the application of “the reason” ?
It is true that “the reason” has been most successful at growing economies and satisfying customers. But it is also true that this came at the price of :
- An uncontrollable population explosion that soon will be followed by an uncontrollable implosion.
- An uncontrolled rise in the use of finite natural resources that leads to their peaking and then to their economic exclusion for being too costly
- An uncontrolled rejection of externalities in the habitat and in the biology of life that are causing a multitude of side-effects
- These side-effects destabilized the existing balance in the habitat of life and their sudden conversion in Late-Western-Modernity are threatening to shift the Geo-bio-chemical state of the world in a new state
- The rise of hyper-individualism and the atomization of societies and so on and on.
The initial question was “Is the reason a human truth ?”.
From the perspective of short term economic considerations the answer is an incontrovertible yes but it is a definitive no from the perspective of the principle of life on earth and more particularly from the perspective of the perpetuation of the human species.
So what we discover is that facts do not represent the whole truth. There is indeed another dimension than “observable facts” and it is that “many facts are not directly observable”… which brings us back to the traditional notion of knowledge that had a systemic take on reality by viewing facts in their global context.
Systemic reality imperatively demands our recognition that the perpetuation of the species is of a superior order of importance than the considerations of capital holders and than the considerations of individual consumers.
The reality of life has to be viewed as a universal principle that emerges and further thrives in complete interrelatedness with the Whole and with its planetary contextual settings.
In other words the human species has a limited band of life sustainability that is very narrow indeed. Temperature-wise the band tolerates variations of average temperatures that are limited to a maximum of plus or minus 5 degree C at the most. Passed that limit human life vanishes. But temperature is only one parameter. There are many other parameters like the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the presence of water, etc… What this shows is that the context of life is something very fragile indeed that we have at all time to protect from inconsiderate actions.
In light of this the truth appears something that is a lot more complicated than what capital holders might want to recognize. For the sake of opening our minds let’s imagine for a moment that, to avoid the pathogenic effect of “the reason”, societies decided to eliminate the considerations of merchants and capital holders and replaced these with the considerations of their populations at large.
Would the picture not be vastly different ?
Now let’s go a little further and let’s try to imagine what would be the case if traditional men of knowledge were still in charge of the formation of societal knowledge. Do you believe that they would be foolish enough to let a tiny minority of individuals desecrate the balance of life on earth ? No way. They would re-impose the respect of the existential truth or a truth that maximizes the perpetuation of the species. This means that traditional (wo)men of knowledge would concentrate on pragmatism and would avoid ideology. They would indeed submit to the systemic reality of the universe and more particularly they would focus on surfing on the waves of reality.
1.3. A finality that is external to life
The finality of the rationality at work within “the reason”, and the finality of philosophic rationalism, are necessarily antagonistic with the systemic reality of the universe that sustains the principle of life. In other words the systemic reality of the universe sets limits to what is possible and what is not possible for the principle life, at the individual and societal levels, while the finality at work within “the reason” imposes total freedom for itself in the minds of its executioners.This I think is, in essence, the existential contradiction of Modernity that sets it on a path of life destruction concluding with the reassertion of the systemic reality of the universe that is going to cleanse the mess humanity created so industriously.
The capture of the human mind by greed, desire and envy, erases the systemic reality of the universe from human consciousness. As a result a finality that is external to life easily hides its direct responsibility for damaging the principle of life which inflicts so much suffering to the self, to living species to mother earth, and to the universe.
The fact of the matter is that, during the last centuries, Western unbridled activities have unleashed the devastation of the habitat of all living species and have set the earth on a path of extremely fast mass extinction.
Human overpopulation is not only depleting the earth’s limited resources it is also poisoning the oceans and the land and decapitating the forests that act as the earth’s lungs. In danger of suffocation mother earth seem to have ordered its systems to eliminate the human pathological virus. We are presently 1 minute from midnight in the adventure of life on earth. Will humanity recover its sanity before midnight ? I’m definitely not so sure about this any longer.
Under tribal societies the human species was conscious about the necessity to keep human activities within the bounds of systemic reality. Things changed following the agglomeration of people in villages, the agricultural revolution and the emergence of power societies, but it is the freeing by Modernity of the genie of greed, that surfaced after the pushing of its ideology of individualism, which forced “the reason” and philosophic rationalism as the societal normality of Modernity. And the finality, of the normality of Modernity, was nothing else than the reproduction of the invested capital base, owned by the capital holders, and its accumulation by investing its recurring profits.
The only question that seems to make sense, at this juncture of my argument, is if humanity is going to let such a materialistic finality, that is external to life, destroy the principle of life on earth ?
1.4. Incompatibility of the reason and rationalism with the principle of life
Having been captured, by the finality of “the reason” and of rationalism, human minds have largely forgotten about all the elements that are foundational to life and by extension to the working of the universe. If humanity wants to survive as a species it has to come to terms with the fact that “the reason”, and the rationality of Western-Modernity, are fundamentally incompatible with the principle of life. And so humanity needs urgently to gain a sense of its responsibility towards the survival of its own species and towards the perpetuation of life on earth.Unfortunately this is not the field of scientists; this is the field of the (wo)men of knowledge who lost their societal role a few centuries ago… Will it now be necessary for the systems set up by Modernity to collapse in order to assist at a come-back of the (wo)men of knowledge in their role at knowledge formation ?
1.5. Science abdicates its responsibilities toward life
Human concerns, in Late-Modernity, have grown so far out of the bounds of the finality of life and of the working of the universe that scientists now come to accept the idea of a technological singularity. This implies that they willingly accept to lose the possibility of understanding and controlling what finality will soon be pursued by their productions in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and in Artificial Life (AL or robotics). Something like this is epochal and it seriously baffles me that scientists are let free to pursue on such a mad path without any serious resistance from their society.The fact is that, over the tens of thousands of years preceding civilization, humanity was conscious about its obligation and responsibility to leave a livable world for the generations to come. But over the last centuries Modernity willingly ignored this responsibility. And now some scientists are giving up, in total impunity, on this sacred human responsibility towards life and the working of the universe. Worse still these scientists are left free to create the demise of their own species and eventually a lot more than their own species.
What is going on here ?
The capture of the human mind, by the 5 core traits of Western-Modernity, imposes an ordering “by the rationality of Modernity” which concludes that human weaknesses better give way to “the űber rationality of intelligent machines” (2). The thing here from humanity’s perspective is that this űber-rationality could very well conclude that human life itself is a non-rational impediment to its own order… and so an űber-rationality could very well complete what human knowledge inferred was a task that the principle of life itself should have undertaken.
In other words technological madness is perhaps the instrument of nature to cleanse an impetuous young and hubristic species from the realm of life. But perhaps such a thinking only indicates the relativity of human knowledge versus the absolute knowledge of the universe and its principle of life.
1.6. human ignorance of the precautionary principle
The ignorance of what is foundational to the universe, and its principle of life, is the reason for humanity’s very casual attitude towards :- The implications of the Whole for its sub-ensembles and their parts
- The general interrelatedness of the parts in an ensemble
- The positioning of life in the structure of the Whole
- The destructiveness of human thoughts, behaviors, and actions
- The technological singularity and the demise of Homo-Sapiens
The fact of the matter is that until very recently humanity lived in respect of this precautionary principle. And the fact is also that, according to our best observation, all other living species live in respect of it. Western-Modernity, and its rationalist hubris, have detached us from the reality of the universe and have rendered us ignorant about our responsibility in the destruction of life on earth.
Notes
1. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern” by Bruno Latour.
2. Űber: depending on the context this German word means “over”, “above”, “across” or “super”, “hyper”. When using the composite “űber-rationality” I mean something as “hyper-rationality” or a rationality that eliminates everything else even if it might be participating in the explanation of what is being observed...
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