The CoronaVirus outbreak that occurred in China in the beginning of January soon locked me down in Beijing and this eliminated the brouhaha of society that helped me to focus on the technicalities of digital imaging.
But the extraordinary nature of the epidemic, and the even more extraordinary nature of the language that was accompanying it, kept me coming back to the web. What impressed me most is that while the epidemic transformed in a pandemic the language in use in the West morphed into virulent propaganda; a sign that the pandemic is somehow radically altering the geo-political balance of power.
My intellectual curiosity was aroused and to get a better grip on the reality I decided that after finishing this series of digital transformations I would restart to write about the societal and geo-political transformations that are taking place under our very eyes.
What follows is a new series of posts that will form, the first draft material of, a 3rd book about our contemporary circumstances.
Book 1 : "A growing disconnect between East and West". Published in October 2018
Book 2 : "What
is going on
? ". Published on the 06th of December 2019.
Book 3 : "A first devastating blow in Late-Modernity".
____________
A foreword
Power
societies excel at scaring people into a state of fear that is
designed to overwhelm their capacity to think and assess what is
really taking place around them. In other words power uses fear to gain the
submission of its subjects. This is its natural mode of operation.
The balancing act between mind and body is the natural antidote to fear. But the fact is that very
few individuals master that balancing act and so they lose the ability to pause and observe, think, and
assess the reality that is unfolding around them. Only a
handful among these few individuals are furthermore ever making the effort to
understand the larger context of how we interact with our habitat
and how, in turn, our habitat interacts with the whole in which we
are such tiny particles.
In
power societies knowing is shared by the few who compete for power
while knowledge is produced and shared by that handful of
sage individuals
who pause to assess the facts. Power
shenanigans distract the individual and interrupt his capacity to ensure mind-body balance. That's
why in
Modernity sages
retire
in contentment on the margins of power societies where
they silently accumulate knowledge by confronting their conscious certainties with their subconscious visions. (1)
Power
societies are driven exclusively by the competition for the control of power and
by the submission of their citizenry through fear. The citizens’ daily lives' are thus impacted in a fundamental way by the powers that be :
“ National governments really matter, and it really matters which one you happen to find yourself under. Though the pandemic is a global phenomenon, and is being experienced similarly in many different places, the impact of the disease is greatly shaped by decisions taken by individual governments. Different views about when to act and how far to go still mean that no two nations are having the same experience. At the end of it all we may get to see who was right and what was wrong. “ (2)
Modernity consecrated the 'private ownership of capital' as the prime attribute of power. In Late-Modernity China’s adherence to 'state ownership of capital' allowed it to industrialize in the blink of an eye. Western private capital holders suddenly were feeling threatened...
This competition
is the general context in which the CoronaVirus broke out.
______________
Notes.
1. See “From Modernity to After
Modernity 28.
Part 3. Divination. Introduction”.
2. “ Coronavirus
has not suspended politics it has revealed the nature of power “
by David
Runciman in The Guardian. 2020-03-27.
