Charliepaulcmp's Blog

Session5 Wed 27 Oct: Crises of modernity: from progress and liberation to totalitarian prison house.

• The “crisis of modernity” is the sense that modernity is a problem , that traditional ways of life have been replaced with uncontrollable change and unmanageable alternatives. The crisis itself is merely the sense that the present is a transitional point not focussed on a clear goal in the future but simply changing through forces outside our control (this idea that the present is characterized by directionless change we call the “postmodern”).
• Modernity has created a world view in us that is primarily abstract, that is, we experience the world as composed of discrete, fragmented, and separable units.
• We experience modernity as a proliferation of alternatives either in regard to lifestyle or historical possibilities; future directed behavior (as opposed to tradition) tends to accelerate the proliferation of alternatives. Traditional cultures see themselves as repeating a finite number of alternatives in the present; in modern cultures, the future opens up a vast field of historical and lifestyle choices.
• Finally, we see ourselves as having lost tradition, that is, that our behavior patterns, our rituals, etc., are all new and innovative, that we are not repeating the past. But in fact, the experience of modernity is, in fact, to live in traditional ways and to repeat tradition in unrecognizable forms. Modern cultures still perform traditional rituals, such as sports (which are originally religious rituals) or shaming rituals, yet the origin and original meaning of these rituals have passed out of the culture.
• So, in sum, modernity—the sense that the present is discontinuous with the past, is an illusion—and this illusion creates modernity itself. What has changed is social memory ; we have disconnected most of our practices and ideas from our collective memory of their origins and meaning