4. how did Modernity arise ?
Modernity did arise with the emergence of the paradigm of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
With the fall of the Western Roman empire Western Christianity largely absorbed the secular authority of the empire.
"In 476, the Germanic barbarian king Odoacer deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in Italy, Romulus Augustulus, and the Senate sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Flavius Zeno.
In addition, Emperor Zeno was sent the crown and marks of office of Romulus Augustulus by Odoacer in 476 AD and essentially assumed that he was now the sole Roman emperor – although he did little to assert authority in the west, and the tribes there offered him no vassalage.
The Eastern emperor Zeno did little to assert his authority in the west. But the imperial insignia, the crown, and marks of office of the Roman emperor, conferred him nevertheless this power. Succeeding Zeno on the throne Anastasius also avoided to interfere in the exercise of power in the West and he left the East-West ecclesiastical “doctrinal disunity” simmering that his predecessor had initiated.The main authority that had remained in the west was the Church, although it had no army or state, and officially derived its power, and the legitimacy of the Pope, from the Eastern Emperor.“ (1)
It is in this context that Pope Gelasius I sent his famous letter (2) to the Eastern Emperor Anastasius in the year 494 that exposed the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal power.
The Pope had not only lost its dominion over the North African church but his own domain was still de-facto under the dominion of the emperor of the Eastern Roman empire. This reality forced him to impress its influence over the nascent Frankish domain that expanded over the North and West of present-day France, the Benelux, and the Western border area of Germany.
The expansion of the papacy in the land of the Franks got widely recognized with the crowning by Pope Leo III of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in the year 800 which was seen as the moment when the temporal power in Western Europe submitted to the pope. Over the following centuries the papacy endeavored to keep alive this precedent and the primacy of the papacy over Western European temporal power arguably survived as late as the Coronation of Napoleon as the Emperor of France in 1802.
The Franks also supplied what was by far the largest contingent of fighters during the first crusade. And the fact is that the paradigm of Modernity emerged in the wake of the first crusade after Frank merchants were called to supply the Frank aristocracy with the kind of luxuries they had discovered during the crusades on the markets of the Eastern Mediterranean. But the nature of long distance commerce was very different from the commercial practice on local and regional markets that was the normality of frank merchants. It should thus not come as a surprise that, on the long distance roads towards Palestine, the first Frank long distance merchants encountered unbearable risks which illuminated their minds to “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
The old Italian and French word capital contained the notion of something :
The fact is that South-Western Europe’s long distance commerce, with the Arab markets, was plagued with the unbearable risk of having to transport gold or silver. The Letter of Credit, that circumvented that risk, got only implemented sometime in the 13th century. So for more than half a century, in the early phase of Long distance commerce before European merchants assembled at the Champagne fairs, the Frank long distance merchants had to confront the risk of losing their gold and silver to robbers or to opportunist local sovereigns.
This is how the minds of Frank long distance merchants were forced into awareness about :
That new vision was the rational and, during the entire six centuries of Early-Modernity, the merchant class avoided conflicts with the church by tapping the consumerist taste of the high clergy for its merchandises while ignoring ideological differences. The pragmatic common sense of the long distance merchants ensured the thriving of “the reason” but this came at the price of subduing its development as a societal worldview which suddenly changed with the rise of philosophic rationalism and liberalism.
The transformation of money into capital generates a very particular understanding, about the working of reality, in the minds of those who own capital. Their vision of the world morphs indeed automatically into the rational which, in reality, means an adherence to the implications of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
The expansion of the papacy in the land of the Franks got widely recognized with the crowning by Pope Leo III of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in the year 800 which was seen as the moment when the temporal power in Western Europe submitted to the pope. Over the following centuries the papacy endeavored to keep alive this precedent and the primacy of the papacy over Western European temporal power arguably survived as late as the Coronation of Napoleon as the Emperor of France in 1802.
The Franks also supplied what was by far the largest contingent of fighters during the first crusade. And the fact is that the paradigm of Modernity emerged in the wake of the first crusade after Frank merchants were called to supply the Frank aristocracy with the kind of luxuries they had discovered during the crusades on the markets of the Eastern Mediterranean. But the nature of long distance commerce was very different from the commercial practice on local and regional markets that was the normality of frank merchants. It should thus not come as a surprise that, on the long distance roads towards Palestine, the first Frank long distance merchants encountered unbearable risks which illuminated their minds to “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
The old Italian and French word capital contained the notion of something :
That notion of something "of the head" was illustrating how the money, that had been invested in their long distance ventures sometime in the 12th century, transformed, more particularly in the minds of the merchants, into something that had suddenly acquired a capital importance."of or pertaining to the head," from Old French capital, from Latin capitalis "of the head," hence "capital, chief, first," from caput (genitive capitis) "head" (from PIE root *kaput- "head")”. (3)
The fact is that South-Western Europe’s long distance commerce, with the Arab markets, was plagued with the unbearable risk of having to transport gold or silver. The Letter of Credit, that circumvented that risk, got only implemented sometime in the 13th century. So for more than half a century, in the early phase of Long distance commerce before European merchants assembled at the Champagne fairs, the Frank long distance merchants had to confront the risk of losing their gold and silver to robbers or to opportunist local sovereigns.
This is how the minds of Frank long distance merchants were forced into awareness about :
- the existence of ”the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”
- the new vision of the world that “the reason” instills in the minds
- the potential conflict that would arise between “the reason”, and the traditional Christian belief if it were left to contradict it.
That new vision was the rational and, during the entire six centuries of Early-Modernity, the merchant class avoided conflicts with the church by tapping the consumerist taste of the high clergy for its merchandises while ignoring ideological differences. The pragmatic common sense of the long distance merchants ensured the thriving of “the reason” but this came at the price of subduing its development as a societal worldview which suddenly changed with the rise of philosophic rationalism and liberalism.
The transformation of money into capital generates a very particular understanding, about the working of reality, in the minds of those who own capital. Their vision of the world morphs indeed automatically into the rational which, in reality, means an adherence to the implications of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
4.1. The implications of “the reason” are far reaching
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Money is a one trick pony.
The function of money is to pay for daily expanses and the payment eliminates the money which, in the 13th century context of the fairs of Champagne, led to the saying that money is sterile. Capital accumulation is the rationality that emanates from “the reason”.
In the context of mature power-societies, that are heavily influenced by Western Modernity, the notion that the transformation of money into capital generates an accumulation of returns on investment, that grows one’s capital base, necessarily conveys the idea of a maximization of individual interests.
And in societies, that are deeply rooted in individualism, such a maximization of individual interests necessarily leads to a firm conviction in rationality. In contrast tribal societies, that focus on a view of life centered on the community, condemn those individuals who maximize their individual interests.
Rationality appears as a societal good in the stage of development of Modernity, under power-societies, while it appears as a societal taboo in the tribal model of society. And in further chapters I’ll argue that rationality will fall in desuetude in the historical era that comes after Modernity for the good reason that the paradigm rooted in “the reason” will necessarily be abandoned to save the habitat of life on earth.Capital is the essence of rationality.
In light of 1 and 2 “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” imposed itself as the paradigm of Western Modernity. And philosophic rationalism and science are merely extensions of that “reason”. But more on that in part 5 and part 6..The emergence of the paradigm of Modernity.
The awareness, of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”, emerged in the first decades of Early-Modernity after the return of the Frank aristocracy from the first crusade.
The goods they had looted, from the Arab markets, aroused the interest of those in their social class, for their in-habitual projection of luxury, which fostered a new demand for a regular offer of such goods.
In the High-Medieval Period commerce was the proper of local and regional markets where the exchanges were paid for in gold and silver coins or in barter (4).
The satisfaction of this new demand, for luxury goods from Arab markets, was thus answered by regional merchants who adventured to travel to the Eastern Mediterranean. The Italian City-States would only compete for the supply of such goods, to the north, after observing their regular unloading in the port of Genoa from where Frank merchants transported them by caravans of mules.
During the High-Medieval Period sovereignty over land and people was still not firmly established and the roads were highly insecure. It is in such a context that small groups of regional merchants, carrying gold and silver coins borrowed from other merchants, or from their local nobility and clergy, departed direction East.
But the risk of robbery were only too real and the consequences were inconceivably high. Losing the money borrowed from their local elites meant that the merchants would not be able to sell any goods once back in their regional markets and so the reimbursement of their loans would be impossible which would render life in their towns untenable.
"There is no obscurity about the origin of the term “capital.” It made its appearance first in medieval Latin as an adjective capitalis (from caput, head) modifying the word pars, to designate the principal sum of a money loan.
The principal part of a loan was contrasted with the “usury”—later called interest—the payment made to the lender in addition to the return of the sum lent.
This first phase long distance commerce between the land of the Franks and the Eastern Mediterranean lasted from sometime after 1100 until 1174 when Italian merchants joined the Champagne fairs. This entire first phase was fraught with much anxiety and it is this kind of anxiety that most probably awoke the first Frank long distance merchants to “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”. The risks and anxiety I’m referring to were attested by the Count of Champagne as early as 1148 :This usage, unknown to classical Latin, had become common by the thirteenth century and possibly had begun as early as 1100 A.D., in the first chartered towns in Europe. The use of money was long confined almost entirely to the towns, and the lending of money occurred mostly between merchants, and only rarely between merchants and others." (5)
These interventions, by the sovereigns of Champagne to protect the interests of the merchants, attracted more of them, from the whole of Europe, to participate in their fairs. And this in turn gained these Fairs their unique role as the initiators of European long distance commerce :“As early as 1148, when money changers from Vézelay were robbed on their way to the Provins fair by a French nobleman, Count Thibault II wrote to the regent of France demanding that the money changers be compensated and declaring, ‘I will not let take place with impunity such an injury, which tends to nothing less than the ruin of my fairs’.” (6)
In the 13th century the merchants had already made a very clear distinction between money and capital which implies that this distinction had indeed emerged earlier which means before the participation of the Italian merchants in the Champagne fairs."The first institutional service provided by the counts of Champagne consisted of mechanisms for ensuring security of the persons and property rights of traders. The counts undertook early, focused and comprehensive action to ensure the safety of merchants traveling to and from the fairs, and were unusual among medieval fair-authorities in devoting considerable political and military resources to extending this guarantee beyond their territorial boundaries. " (7)
If the risks and anxiety of the merchants, during the first phase of commerce with the Eastern Mediterranean are an accepted fact, their conversion to “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” has still not attracted the attention of the academy. But outside of this Frankish first phase long distance commerce of luxuries in Western Europe there is no good explanation available for the origination of the word capital in the 12th century as is attested by its etymology."… A second institutional service provided by the rulers of Champagne was contract-enforcement. The counts of Champagne operated a four-tiered system of public law-courts which judged lawsuits and officially witnessed contracts with a view to subsequent enforcement. " (7)
The best description of the origin of the word capital that I have encountered until now was given by Frank A. Fetter in his 1937 seminal text "Capital, Interest, and Rent” :
In “Civilization and Capitalism”, volume 1, “The Structure of Everyday Life”, (9) Fernand Braudel, confirmed the 3rd phase mentioned by Frank A. Fetter when he wrote that in the commercial city-states of Italy in the thirteenth century, the meaning of capital had evolved in the idea of the “money of a merchant” devoted to investment which was also called “Capitale”, or a dynamic form of money capable of expansion through investment in commerce, that was different from “simple money” which was considered to be sterile and only existing for facilitating daily commercial exchanges."It made its appearance first in medieval Latin as an adjective capitalis (from caput, head) modifying the word pars, to designate the principal sum of a money loan. The principal part of a loan was contrasted with the “usury”—later called interest—the payment made to the lender in addition to the return of the sum lent.
… very gradually, the meaning of “capital” was widened in the marketplace to include besides actual money loaned, the monetary value of wares sold on credit, and still more generally the worth of any other credit (receivable) expressed in terms of money.
The next inevitable expansion of the meaning of capital made it include the estimated value of merchant’s stock of goods and of agents (such as tools, shops, ships, lands, etc.) employed in his business by himself as well as when loaned to another for an agreed interest or rental. Included with these as “capital” was the monetary valuation of debts and bills receivable and of valuable rights of all kinds pertaining to the business. " (8)
This third phase must necessarily have taken place within the context of the Champagne fairs that were the beating heart of the emerging Europe-wide space of commercial capitalism. The first and second phase originated there and the 3rd phase would most probably have expanded from there to the towns and cities of all the participating merchants. The fact that Fernand Braudel mentions its appearance, in the commercial city-states of Italy in the thirteenth century is not proving, that this third phase originated there. It just proves that literary material, produced in these city-states, is confirming its practice there in the 13th century.
4.2. The paradigm of Modernity” converts the Europe-wide space of commercial capitalism to its rationality
The actors, in this Europe-wide space of commercial capitalism, the merchants and the sovereigns gradually came to see everything along the lines of a more individualistic, materialistic, and rational order of things that forced the individuals to adjust their ideas by relativizing some of their beliefs from before their conversion to this new vision of things.
The force that reconstructed the merchants’ understanding of the world was “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” which originated the field of the rational, in the wake of the crusades, sometime during the 12th century in the territory of the Franks in the South-West part of Western Europe.
Motivated by envy and desire for the kind of material possessions, that successful long distance merchants exposed to their gaze, an ever growing segment of Western European citizens, along the following centuries, converted to that reason and its field expanded to everything there is under the sun. This expansion of the application of “the reason”, in turn, opened the path to :
As of today the field of the rational, that had emerged during the early practice of long distance commerce, remains enveloped in a deep fog. I sometimes wonder if this fog is not deliberately maintained to hide the deep origin, — of philosophic rationalism — of the scientific method — of Neo-liberalism and Postmodernism, that resides in the transformation of money into capital. This hypothesis is certainly less fashionable, than the mystique entertained by academic intellectuals about “an exceptional age of reason that emerged from the development of human cognitive faculties”, but its coherence is nevertheless rooted in easily verifiable facts which give it a higher robustness.
The fact is that the biological foundations, of the modern cognitive faculties of Homo-Sapiens, had already formed some 300,000 years earlier. What changed over the span of these last 300,000 years were primarily the contextual settings, that fostered the substance of the culture of the day, which caused the slow evolution of the field of societal culture. And the fact is that all the necessary ingredients had been assembled in the context of South-Western Europe in the 12th century that would set in motion a chain of causes and effects which would free the genie of “the reason” which would ultimately drastically change the course of world history.
The Needham puzzle (10), about the great divergence between china and the west, was due to a build-up of the necessary ingredients in the particular context of South-Western Europe in the 9th-11th century. The interaction of these ingredients converged in the right time and in the right place where they found the appropriate energy to power an emergent process :
The force that reconstructed the merchants’ understanding of the world was “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” which originated the field of the rational, in the wake of the crusades, sometime during the 12th century in the territory of the Franks in the South-West part of Western Europe.
Motivated by envy and desire for the kind of material possessions, that successful long distance merchants exposed to their gaze, an ever growing segment of Western European citizens, along the following centuries, converted to that reason and its field expanded to everything there is under the sun. This expansion of the application of “the reason”, in turn, opened the path to :
- The enlightenment by philosophic rationalism, the scientific method, and liberalism sometime along the second part of the seventeenth century
- Neo-liberalism and postmodernism which resulted in Western societal atomization sometime around the end of the 20th century that gave rise to the age of the “Woke” and the stupendous irrationality and adventurism of Western governance.
As of today the field of the rational, that had emerged during the early practice of long distance commerce, remains enveloped in a deep fog. I sometimes wonder if this fog is not deliberately maintained to hide the deep origin, — of philosophic rationalism — of the scientific method — of Neo-liberalism and Postmodernism, that resides in the transformation of money into capital. This hypothesis is certainly less fashionable, than the mystique entertained by academic intellectuals about “an exceptional age of reason that emerged from the development of human cognitive faculties”, but its coherence is nevertheless rooted in easily verifiable facts which give it a higher robustness.
The fact is that the biological foundations, of the modern cognitive faculties of Homo-Sapiens, had already formed some 300,000 years earlier. What changed over the span of these last 300,000 years were primarily the contextual settings, that fostered the substance of the culture of the day, which caused the slow evolution of the field of societal culture. And the fact is that all the necessary ingredients had been assembled in the context of South-Western Europe in the 12th century that would set in motion a chain of causes and effects which would free the genie of “the reason” which would ultimately drastically change the course of world history.
The Needham puzzle (10), about the great divergence between china and the west, was due to a build-up of the necessary ingredients in the particular context of South-Western Europe in the 9th-11th century. The interaction of these ingredients converged in the right time and in the right place where they found the appropriate energy to power an emergent process :
"And that process unfolded, as an uncontrollable chain reaction of causes and effects that gradually pushed a paradigmatic shift in the human perception of the world. You can read about this whole process in “Power-societies were without any doubt instrumental in managing the larger societies that originated in the abrupt climate warming at the tail-end of the Younger-Dryas". The fact is that power-societies engaged the process that today terminates with humanity’s predicament of the great convergence of Late-Modernity” (11)
4.3. Rationality is relative while logic is absolute
Rationality is the mode of thinking derived from the reason that is proper to any given context. Each context contains indeed the substance of its own rationality and the thinking and behavior of the individuals, or of groups of individuals, adapt in order to fit in the particular context they find themselves in. There are thus as many forms of rationality than the number of existing contexts which de-facto means that the forms of rationality are nearly infinite.
But when we speak about rationality in this Late-Modernity we all most probably speak about the rationality that is derived from the paradigm of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” or a later iteration of the paradigm in the form of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital”.
As an example of rationality in a specific context I would like to cite the thinking context of economists. Classical economists rose amidst the triumph, of philosophic rationalism and of the Enlightenment, and they conceived a theory, of the economic aspects of daily culture, that is rooted in the “rational choice” of the individuals. What these classical economists meant was that all the individuals are consciously maximizing their self-interest which forces them to make rational choices.
But what was left unsaid in this definition is that only capital holders had converted to the paradigm of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”. And so going counter to “the reason” of this paradigm of Modernity, for a long distance merchant, would have been considered abnormal indeed !
But these merchants, at any time, would have merely represented a very small minority of the population. And notwithstanding the admiration by the large majority, of the richness, accumulated by the merchants, it was not affected by “the reason” in the same manner. The rationality, emanating from “the reason”, forced capital holders to focus on the accumulation of capital by investing surpluses.
But bystanders, or admirers of the merchants’ richness, were not affected by capital accumulation for they had none. Instead they were obsessed with what it takes to accumulate money. Observing that money was flowing from the implementation of the investments of capital holders this obsession to accumulate money, over the centuries, developed into a discipline, a rigor, to satisfy the demands of capital holders and their corporations.
Early-Modernity was the era of commercial capitalism that lasted the 6 centuries between 1150 and 1750 when capital holders were focusing on the accumulation of capital and admirers of their richness were focusing on the accumulation of money. Both obsessions combined in a new societal normality that viewed from far in space must appear more like a mental derangement. But most Homo-Sapiens came to view this normality as the rationality of Modernity whose atomist materialism expanded thus, under the appellation of philosophic rationalism, to all there is in the universe.
All this occurred while the First Principles of Life were being trampled upon. As I mentioned earlier this would have been impossible in the context of traditional tribal societies, for example, which gives us to understand that the notion, of the individual rational choice, was invented by economists as an ideological submission to the new normality in the context of Western High and Late-Modernity.
As one of the first economists who proposed the rational choice theory Adam Smith was indeed conforming to the Zeitgeist of his time which was overwhelmed by the rise of philosophic rationalism and the militancy of political liberalism among capital holders and intellectuals. Smith viewed self-interest as the normality of individualism. And so the individual rational choice and the invisible interactions, of the rational choice of all the individuals, would engender the economy of nations or so Smith thought. Rationalism appeared thus as the ultimate fulfillment, of the interests of Western societies, and it was thought that it would be best served by freedom of production and freedom of consumption.
The Enlightenment focused European minds on the evidence of “what was effectively at work” in the emergence of the industrial revolution : “the reason”, the extension of “the reason” to everything under the sun in the form of philosophic rationalism and the instrumentality of science to “the reason”.
Unfortunately Western intellectual endeavors since the Enlightenment have most of the time been engaging in rationalization and not in comprehension of “what was effectively at work”.
And this appears so much more true that the mere fact of thinking about it makes us feel awkward and a dreadful feeling overtakes us when writing about it. Fortunately this feeling gets tempered by our Late-Modern predicament which is the ultimate proof that “what was effectively at work” has definitely been transgressing “the First Principles of Life”.
Is it possible that the rationalization of the Enlightenment got our Western minds so badly screwed up that we are now no longer capable of descending to the ground of the universal reality ? For how else could we call the spectacle of the complete loss of touch with reality, by Western governance systems, than the predicament of Modernity ?
But this line of thought would imply that it is no longer “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”, and its physical and biological outcome, that is our ultimate predicament but well the madness that has swallowed Western thought processes amidst their contemplation of the prospect of this great convergence !
Facing the incommensurate discomfort of watching this spectacle I feel as if, by necessity to protect my own sanity, I’m being dragged ever deeper in the evolutionary swamp of the societal cultural field of Western societies. And oh paradox the further I go there the more coherent the story becomes but also … the longer becomes the distance between myself and my fellow-citizens !
I’m, well aware that I have been avoiding to confront my vision of rationality in “Modernity”. It was always in my mind but I delayed writing about it as if I had been scared to engage in this most controversial of all subjects. I normally don’t shy away from controversies but I feel that debunking rationality is on an other level all together. Our domestication has anchored it so deeply in our conscious minds that the sole remedy to lift the anchor is to plunge even deeper in our subconscious…
From whatever angle you look at it danger lurks. From the conscious perspective the danger is that society or “the others” could view your approach to rationality as a sign of irrationality, whose price would be rejection, while from the subconscious perspective the danger is inside you. Yes inside yourself a moment of distraction, or of weakness, could set you drifting in the nothingness of vanity from where the path back to coherence is uncertain.
I started writing “The Great Turning” quasi automatically. My plan had been to start the 3rd Volume of the series “From Modernity to After-Modernity” titled “The formation of societal knowledge”. I have visibly been impelled to delay my adventuring in this 3rd Volume. And I’m now just discovering, while writing this, that the need I’m feeling, to open myself about what I think is the true nature of rationality, is the real reason why I started this “Great Turning”.
Chapter 5 and 6 will be entirely devoted to the subject. It is possible that my subconscious feels that I have first to clear the air about the concept “rationality” before to start writing about the “The formation of societal knowledge” ! Accessing the reality of the formation of societal knowledge can only be undertaken from the perspective of “logic”.
Logic is on another plane than rationality. As I wrote here above “each context contains the substance of its own rationality and the thinking and behavior of the individuals .. adapt in order to fit in the particular context they find themselves in”. Logic is not proper to the context it is proper to the systemic coherence of the whole.
The substance of "logic" is coherence in thinking about contextual settings from the perspective of the systemic coherence of the whole.
Coherence imposes thus to start one’s thinking by situating the object of the thinking in the context of “the whole”, for, if you jump immediately in the nuts and bolts of something the chances are high indeed that you will lose yourself in a world of speculations that will become ever more detached from reality.
Coming out of 1000 pages of discussions about Modernity, with my subconscious, I have had many opportunities to observe the atomist approach of most historical research works. It is simply a matter of fact that over the last 50 years the technique, of quantitative measurement, has taken priority over deep thought.
I understand that such an overturning of the priorities of thinking was called for by the rationality at work within “the reason”. Returns on investments are indeed prime in the rationality of “the reason” ! But the fact is that this overturning of priorities has separated thinking from “the First Principles of Life” with all the consequences that we now observe !
But when we speak about rationality in this Late-Modernity we all most probably speak about the rationality that is derived from the paradigm of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” or a later iteration of the paradigm in the form of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital”.
As an example of rationality in a specific context I would like to cite the thinking context of economists. Classical economists rose amidst the triumph, of philosophic rationalism and of the Enlightenment, and they conceived a theory, of the economic aspects of daily culture, that is rooted in the “rational choice” of the individuals. What these classical economists meant was that all the individuals are consciously maximizing their self-interest which forces them to make rational choices.
But what was left unsaid in this definition is that only capital holders had converted to the paradigm of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”. And so going counter to “the reason” of this paradigm of Modernity, for a long distance merchant, would have been considered abnormal indeed !
But these merchants, at any time, would have merely represented a very small minority of the population. And notwithstanding the admiration by the large majority, of the richness, accumulated by the merchants, it was not affected by “the reason” in the same manner. The rationality, emanating from “the reason”, forced capital holders to focus on the accumulation of capital by investing surpluses.
But bystanders, or admirers of the merchants’ richness, were not affected by capital accumulation for they had none. Instead they were obsessed with what it takes to accumulate money. Observing that money was flowing from the implementation of the investments of capital holders this obsession to accumulate money, over the centuries, developed into a discipline, a rigor, to satisfy the demands of capital holders and their corporations.
Early-Modernity was the era of commercial capitalism that lasted the 6 centuries between 1150 and 1750 when capital holders were focusing on the accumulation of capital and admirers of their richness were focusing on the accumulation of money. Both obsessions combined in a new societal normality that viewed from far in space must appear more like a mental derangement. But most Homo-Sapiens came to view this normality as the rationality of Modernity whose atomist materialism expanded thus, under the appellation of philosophic rationalism, to all there is in the universe.
All this occurred while the First Principles of Life were being trampled upon. As I mentioned earlier this would have been impossible in the context of traditional tribal societies, for example, which gives us to understand that the notion, of the individual rational choice, was invented by economists as an ideological submission to the new normality in the context of Western High and Late-Modernity.
As one of the first economists who proposed the rational choice theory Adam Smith was indeed conforming to the Zeitgeist of his time which was overwhelmed by the rise of philosophic rationalism and the militancy of political liberalism among capital holders and intellectuals. Smith viewed self-interest as the normality of individualism. And so the individual rational choice and the invisible interactions, of the rational choice of all the individuals, would engender the economy of nations or so Smith thought. Rationalism appeared thus as the ultimate fulfillment, of the interests of Western societies, and it was thought that it would be best served by freedom of production and freedom of consumption.
The Enlightenment focused European minds on the evidence of “what was effectively at work” in the emergence of the industrial revolution : “the reason”, the extension of “the reason” to everything under the sun in the form of philosophic rationalism and the instrumentality of science to “the reason”.
Unfortunately Western intellectual endeavors since the Enlightenment have most of the time been engaging in rationalization and not in comprehension of “what was effectively at work”.
And this appears so much more true that the mere fact of thinking about it makes us feel awkward and a dreadful feeling overtakes us when writing about it. Fortunately this feeling gets tempered by our Late-Modern predicament which is the ultimate proof that “what was effectively at work” has definitely been transgressing “the First Principles of Life”.
Is it possible that the rationalization of the Enlightenment got our Western minds so badly screwed up that we are now no longer capable of descending to the ground of the universal reality ? For how else could we call the spectacle of the complete loss of touch with reality, by Western governance systems, than the predicament of Modernity ?
But this line of thought would imply that it is no longer “the great convergence of Late-Modernity”, and its physical and biological outcome, that is our ultimate predicament but well the madness that has swallowed Western thought processes amidst their contemplation of the prospect of this great convergence !
Whatever is the reality of the perception by the West of the predicament of humanity the fact of the matter is that the whole world is now witnessing the daily refuge of Western political decision-makers in their delusional characterization of the exceptionalism of their own countries’ and their refusal to entertain the legitimate demands, of the rest of the world, for a soft landing of the whole of humanity amidst the troubled realities of a world that is on the verge of an existential catastrophe."Yes, the western sphere has become so prone to a ‘head-spinning’ disorientation (as was intended), through the constant rain of disinformation labels, stuck haphazardly across anything critical of the ‘uniform messaging’, and by outrageous, obvious lying, that a majority in the western world has begun to question their own and surrounding levels of sanity. In their bemusement, they have come to see the ‘messaging’ of sacrificial politics and the financialisation of absolutely everything as ‘perfectly rational’. They have been rendered helpless, held immobile in a spider’s web. Bewitched." (12)
Facing the incommensurate discomfort of watching this spectacle I feel as if, by necessity to protect my own sanity, I’m being dragged ever deeper in the evolutionary swamp of the societal cultural field of Western societies. And oh paradox the further I go there the more coherent the story becomes but also … the longer becomes the distance between myself and my fellow-citizens !
I’m, well aware that I have been avoiding to confront my vision of rationality in “Modernity”. It was always in my mind but I delayed writing about it as if I had been scared to engage in this most controversial of all subjects. I normally don’t shy away from controversies but I feel that debunking rationality is on an other level all together. Our domestication has anchored it so deeply in our conscious minds that the sole remedy to lift the anchor is to plunge even deeper in our subconscious…
From whatever angle you look at it danger lurks. From the conscious perspective the danger is that society or “the others” could view your approach to rationality as a sign of irrationality, whose price would be rejection, while from the subconscious perspective the danger is inside you. Yes inside yourself a moment of distraction, or of weakness, could set you drifting in the nothingness of vanity from where the path back to coherence is uncertain.
I started writing “The Great Turning” quasi automatically. My plan had been to start the 3rd Volume of the series “From Modernity to After-Modernity” titled “The formation of societal knowledge”. I have visibly been impelled to delay my adventuring in this 3rd Volume. And I’m now just discovering, while writing this, that the need I’m feeling, to open myself about what I think is the true nature of rationality, is the real reason why I started this “Great Turning”.
Chapter 5 and 6 will be entirely devoted to the subject. It is possible that my subconscious feels that I have first to clear the air about the concept “rationality” before to start writing about the “The formation of societal knowledge” ! Accessing the reality of the formation of societal knowledge can only be undertaken from the perspective of “logic”.
Logic is on another plane than rationality. As I wrote here above “each context contains the substance of its own rationality and the thinking and behavior of the individuals .. adapt in order to fit in the particular context they find themselves in”. Logic is not proper to the context it is proper to the systemic coherence of the whole.
The substance of "logic" is coherence in thinking about contextual settings from the perspective of the systemic coherence of the whole.
Coherence imposes thus to start one’s thinking by situating the object of the thinking in the context of “the whole”, for, if you jump immediately in the nuts and bolts of something the chances are high indeed that you will lose yourself in a world of speculations that will become ever more detached from reality.
Coming out of 1000 pages of discussions about Modernity, with my subconscious, I have had many opportunities to observe the atomist approach of most historical research works. It is simply a matter of fact that over the last 50 years the technique, of quantitative measurement, has taken priority over deep thought.
I understand that such an overturning of the priorities of thinking was called for by the rationality at work within “the reason”. Returns on investments are indeed prime in the rationality of “the reason” ! But the fact is that this overturning of priorities has separated thinking from “the First Principles of Life” with all the consequences that we now observe !
Notes
1. "The
Fall of Rome : 476, The Final End of An Empire",
Rebellion Research machine learning think tank, by Jack Tappin.
2022-02-14.
2. “Gelasius
I on Spiritual and Temporal Power, 494”,
the Internet Medieval Source Book,
translated in J. H. Robinson.
3. Online Etymology
Dictionary capital (adj.)
4.“First
Societal Blow in Late-Modernity. 7.4.3.2. the transition from Late-Modernity to After-Modernity. C. Societal governance. Page 515”.
5. "Capital,
Interest, and Rent: Essays in the Theory of Distribution. Part
1, Essay 11 Reformulation of the Concepts of Capital and Income in
Economics and Accounting. Chapter
3”,
in Econlib. Reprinted from “Accounting
Review” 12 (March 1937), by Frank A. Fetter.
6. “What
Lessons for Economic Development Can We Draw from the Champagne
Fairs?”, ECONSTORE. CESifo Working Paper No.
3438. Category 12: empirical and theoretical methods. April 2011, by
Jeremy Edwards and Sheilagh Ogilvie.
7. “What
Lessons for Economic Development Can We Draw from the Champagne
Fairs?”, ECONSTORE. CESifo Working Paper No.
3438. Category 12: empirical and theoretical methods. April 2011, by
Jeremy Edwards and Sheilagh Ogilvie.
8. "Capital,
Interest, and Rent: Essays in the Theory of Distribution. Part
1, Essay 11 Reformulation of the Concepts of Capital and Income in
Economics and Accounting. Chapter
3”,
in Econlib. Reprinted from “Accounting
Review” 12 (March 1937), by Frank A. Fetter.
9. "Civilization
and Capitalism”, volume
1, The Structure of Everyday Life”,
William Collins Sons & Co Ltd. 1992, by Fernand Braudel.
12. "The
Masque of Pandora", Strategic Culture
Foundation, by Alastair Crooke. 2022-08-08.
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