NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/revoluti/counter/54

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 15.3 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!digex.com!rcheek
From: [e-mail] (Richard Cheek)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: post-modern paradigm
Date: 22 Dec 1992 18:37:58 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
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        THE COMING NEW POST-MODERN PARADIGM

    With all due respect to the experts in various fields on whose
toes I may be about to step with this rather long article, I put this
forward in a spirit of congenial curiosity, and not malice or egotistic
presumption. I hope that some may find this an interesting thread for dis-
cussion.
    There is coming a new world view that is going to fill the gaps
and open seams exposed in the curent modern view of things. These world views
Thomas Khuns (sp?) labeled paradigms, and though I can't remember the
exact spelling of his name, I found the ideas very interesting. The assump-
tions of our current paradigm of modernism are well worn and due for
replacement. That this process will be accelerated by the speed and avai-
lability of modern information systems is apparent, and we will see more
organised pushes for change in the modern paradigm untill the pushers simply
chuck the whole thing and start with a fresh analysis of the facts to date.
    To explain what I'm speaking of, I must review the previous paradigm
of the Mideaval world and how the modern paradigm contrasts with it. There
were, of course, many varied cultures of the Mideaval world, as there are
today; I wish to describe the Western ideas of Europe as they generally were
prevelant and my understanding of them, since the present paradigm began there.
    To understand a way of thinking one should look at that cultures view
of the ideal, and to the Mideaval mind the ideal of a subject seemed to be a
reflection of the contrast between heaven and Earth. The Mideaval person saw
things die on Earth and decay into the soil, but the heavens were the same year
after year. The Earth was not immovable, it sometimes shook, but the heavens
were never affected by random events. The rolling hills and sharp mountains
were not the Euclidean geometric perfection that was eximplified by the spheres
of not only heaven itself but the orbits of the stars and sun as well. The ideal
of a thing was thus reflective of the qualities of heaven, immutable, constant,
and regular in their rythyms and geometric shape. Man, being of the Earth, was
also corupt, mortal and flawed, but his creator had imbued him with the potent-
ial of the heavenly and man was therefore expected to strive mightily to
partake of heavens perfection.
    This is reflected in many aspects of the mideavals life. The government
was not a mere contrivance of humanity, but apointed by God and led by Him in
a mysterious way. To question authority and suggest change, was to kick at the
foundations of society itself, for man was expected to be humble and try to
understand his world, not change it, and to follow authority not question it.
Religion, as well, was seen as immutable, eternal and distant. Man was to meekly
seek God's aproval through the church and do penance for his sin. Sex was not
comendable for anything but reproduction as it was too animalistic. Scholarly
authority was first grounded in the revelation of the magisterium, and then
perhaps illumined further by the wisdom of the ancients, but was required to be]
of the necessary pedigree, tracing backward in time, and upward in the hierarchy
of knowledge represented by the institutions of learning and the church. By
these men the Universe was understood to be, like its Creator, orderly,
immutable, and intuitively understandable as natural law.
       By the nineteenth century various different schools of thought had arisen
that questioned many of these tenants and finally came to forms that were mutu-
ally supportive in a new system of viewing the universe. Kant had derived a new
analysis of the universe that saw God and heaven as entirely 'otherly' and not
of the same perceptable world we live in. Thus, since God is unknowable in an
objective way, He is, therefore, only understandable in a subjective sense,
and each person becomes his own arbiter of the True. Voltaire suggested that
the Ancients were out of date, and the world of his day could only be held
back by an undue regard for them. Reason was enthroned as the only true measure
of knowledge, and science was the new repository of the wisdom of greatest value
and religion faded into a prop for those unable to face the new modern world.
    Through the investigations of Darwin and other biologists, it was
realised that the Earth had many seemingly unnecessary or extinct forms of
life. This brought into question the unchanging nature of the universe and
implied that either God was also changing or He was even more distant from the
universe than had previously been imagined. The concept of an impersonal proc-
ess of change or evolution replaced the idea of a anthropomorphic Creator
and the ability to reproduce ones own kind became the measure of living organ-
isms. Freud expressed the application of this view to humanity when he said
"biology is destiny" and summed the struggle of human existence on the personal
level as a process of coming to terms with our sexuality. Many psychological
problems were traced to sexual frustration and more sexual liberty seemed to
promise great release from mental problems of every kind. The concept of guilt
became outmoded as man was no longer expected to rise above his nature, fallen
or not, and human behavior became the product of genetic drives and social cond-
itioning. The long suffering victim, like Ghandi, replaced the virtuous hero
as the ideal of human potential, patiently awaiting their tardy fellow men to
develop, as they endured the pains of merely irresponsible, not evil, behavior.
    Scholarly authority was seen as the product of narrow specialization
and expertise, and the world of knowledge became subject to a process of
division that splintered science into evermore diverse specialties. Marxism
became the basis for viewing the processes of states and nations, reducing the
flows of history into the simple bed of economics and class struggle. Monarchs
were no longer the anointed of God, but merely the foremost of an oppressive
class alliance born long before to thwart the nobles that undermined royal
power. All these schools of thought came to buttress one another in the nine-
teenth century and the many intellectuals, aware of the new world dawning began
to address instead the question of how to bring their vision to reality.To sweep
away the dead hand of the past was all that seemed necessary to realise a utopian
age as science, wed with reason, became the guiding light of civilizations
advance.
    The success of the disemination of this paradigm was mostly due to the
circumstances of the day, but the proponents of the new world view also establ-
ished networks of fraternity in the universities and academic organizations that
slowly carried their message through the educated classes. When World War One
revealed the willingness of the ruling classes to slaughter commoners by the
millions, the modernists had their final proof of the inhumanity and barbarism
of the dominant monarchical system. Through the twenties and beyond the new
generations of students were abhored by the gross dimensions of the war. How
can this be considered the behavior of civilized people? The discovery of canals
on Mars, Piltdown man, the rapid advance of technology, and the disappearance
of any major monarchical factions in Europe, all seemed to make the old mideaval
view seem quaint and bizarr. The old order was dismissed as an anachronism and
then largely forgotten or ignored.
    But here we stand, at the threshold of a new century and there are still
many who voice doubts, fears and opposition to this modern paradigm, and their
numbers are growing. Across the world, many nations have rejected Western cul-
ture and reaffirmed their own, even to reestablishing their ancient monarchies
or new theocracies. Freud, Marx, and Darwin are now toppling from their perches
in the halls of academia, but their inertia continues to carry onward like
a dead corpse, smothering newer theories and newer questions. Human behavior
is seen now as too complex to be completely explained with such simplicities as
sex drive or economics, and the sexual revolution has brought sexual problems
into the realm of fatal. The religious void of society has created a spiritual
desert whose full consequences are yet unknown, but we delve still further from
the wellsprings of our heritage each year as more and more of our faith and it's
expression are bleached from the public life. Darwinism is under increasing
attack as more scientist find the rigors of gradual and uniform evolution too
binding. Many realise Darwins theories are simply not reflected in the fossil
record, and what we have come to learn of microbiology suggests that there
must be other explanations. Except in China and and American faculties, the
theories of Marx are regarded as having been a failure in practice everywhere
they have been tried and even Sweden is striving toward more free market
policies. The sexual revolution has been a failure with a catastrophic spread
of sexually transmitted disease and ever more rapes and sexual disorders.
    What will be the new paradigm of the next century? Will it be the
greens philosophy, bringing man to an equal level with creation, along with
vegetarianism and technophobia? What will be the next major ideology to
to step into the gap left by Marxist-Leninism? What will happen? One thing is
apparent, the priests of the modern paradigm have no intention of passing
quietly into the night, and fully use their institutional and fraternal power
to squelch any new questions or theories that might undermine the current
paradigm.
    Here are guesses coming from conversations I have had with some friends.
This paradigm will be a fusion of the romantic and rational, of the scientific
and religous and mystical. It will emphasise the special value of humanity
and being human in a natural but responsible way. Standards will be aimed at
recognising the need to be fully human yet presenting goals above mortal
efforts in order to inspire people to fully realise their potential as human.
It seems the most basic change will be in the sense of the 'ideal' in design.
The change here is already occuring, in the direction of human-friendly
designs. The concept of trying to force humanity into rigid containers will
ebb, and the specialization of markets to each type of person will add to
this hightened goal of designing things around the person, not merely some
abstract. Life will cease to be a daily struggle and in fact the absence of
such a driving force will leave a void people will attempt to replace with
service to causes outside or tangential to their everyday issues of putting
food on the table, salaries, etc. The ease of everyday living will be itself
a type of crisis, and the stress of making constant choices will be the biggest
threat to contentment, because people need to feel accomplishment with their
life. Ergonomic comfort will disquieten the soul.
    To compensate for the ease of everyday living, rigid frames of refer-
ence will be seen as more desirable to restore parameters to a chaotic life-
style, filled with choices in every moment of the day. Traditional faiths will
resurge around the world, especially christianity, not the accomodationist
variety, but the sort that calls for sacrifice, and to be different from a
secular society that regards nothing as permanent or forever binding. A healthy
sense of skepticism about academic theory will come about as people begin to see
that there is a tension between seemingly opposite truths that must have a
balanced view to maintian the most responsible principles, for instance the
tension between freedom and order, and the belief that everything that one might
find naturally occuring among men has a place. Ways of thought that exclusively
emphasise one end of twin truths will be seen as extremist and a product of
the rare air of purely academic speculation. Ordered liberty will be popular as
the concept of responsible, peaceful freedom displaces anarchical libertarian-
ism and society recovers from the excesses of the Aquarian Age. For instance,
instead of laisez-faire capitalism, there will be a resurgence of the simple
concept of responsible management and consumption, inviting government regul-
ation to maintain equal compliance with guidelines that are seen as better for
all society. Quick results of a managers record will not count as much as the
long term systemic effects of his tenure, even for a period of time after he
left the old position.
    In the sciences and academia a welcome sense of humility will return
and the phenomena of scientism will recede. The basic assumptions of an orderly
universe,  and the constancy of physical laws will become more a subject for
discussion. Kants division of the noumenal and phenomenal will begin to blur as
the discovery of different types of physical reality and multiple dimensions make
any static divison between the percievable and imperceptable a question of which
current reality one is reffering to. I suspect the theory of punctuated equilibrium
will displace Darwinism as the various flaws of Darwinism continue to become
apparent in its inablility to anticipate or explain various phenomena. Adapt-
ation will be seen as a response to the environment on a genetic level and not
the fortuitous bounty of random mutation. The replacement of natural selection
with its mandatory uniform gradual adaptation will be replaced by a concept of
adaptation to a rapid series of changing environments due to planetary catas-
trophy. Instead of a constant search for the best adaptation to a particular
environment, having the best set of adaptions for the greatest range of environ-
ments will be given equal weight. Gestation may be seen as one of the greatest
developments of survival if it is true that the adaptation of the mother can
assist the adaptation of the fetus through sharing her physiological responses
to her environment in hormones, adrenalin, and other body chemicals. The inter-
action of the various elements of the environment will be seen as an almost
mystical whole.
    Limited monarchy will come to be seen as a natural, unifying element
in nations splintered by ethnic rivalry, and class competition. The rebirth
of the ideal of the Renaisance man and the courageous hero will fill a void in
popular pantheons because of the chaos that will erupt in our communities as
the consequences of libertinism peak in tumult. Sexual monogamy will again be
viewed as the only responsible practice and virginity will return to being a
desirable quality in choosing a mate for both sexes. Narrow specialization will
be passe as information on virtually any topic becomes readily available to the
public on home information systems far surpassing any encyclopedia or library.
Emphasis will be placed on gathering the benifits of the cross-polinization of
interdisciplinary work. Neo-traditions will be born of ecclectic attempts to
bring about hybrids that are tolerant of different cultures yet affirm a special
place for their own. It may take a century or three decades, but I think
the new post-modern paradigm amd its effects will resemble something like this.
    If you think I've had too much time on my hands, sorry. Just food for
thought.