The Modernity Conspiracy

Modernity arrived on the skirts of technology, and forever the two concepts are intertwined. Imagining modernity without technology is nearly impossible since our very idea of modernity is dependent on the idea of technology. But technology in rudimentary form has always been part of society. From cavemen's stones to computer keyboards we have struggled to control the chaos and helplessness of life. But post-modernism’s fuss about technology, how to get it and how to create it is historically unique. Why has the whole world converted to technologism? Why are governments all over the world trying to create Silicon Valleys with technology parks and creative ‘technology’ culture? Why do Third World countries view modernity with such desire? And why are technology and science seen as the messiahs of redemption from the fate of human suffering of disease, poverty and injustice? Is a technological world a modern utopia?; is it a just world where nobody grows old or dies?

Perhaps we need to understand that the holy trinity of Technology, Capitalism and Media are the guardians of the post-modern world. It is no accident that Technology is God, Capitalism the Son of God, and Media the Holy Spirit.

Modernity Isn’t Fool Proof

While the progressive Third World elevates technology to messianic levels, convinced that there is no other alternative, it is equally reluctant to give up its own gods and pre-modern moral code. Why should it need to give up god—but quite clearly there is a need to change the main features to a more ‘modern’ God Modernize Islam, Modernize Hinduism or else etc. We hear that all the time from the ‘secular’ ‘the educated'.

Even though the chances of a suffragette movement ever emerging in Asia, gay pride or black resistance are remote, a quasi resistance to modernity is in the very fabric of identity in the sub-continent. Looking slowly westward from Bombay, the post WW2 Muslim countries have already experimented with modernity. On the cusp of the East and the West, Turkey was the first to relinquish its pre-modern code for modernity. It has seen the dubious results of drastic reinvention in the modernization of Turkey. Turkey lost its script, its language and its clothes. Did it become a world leader of anything as a result? Ummm. Not really. One of the conundrums of the modernity brigade is that Turkey, after expunging dogmatic religion did not become an egalitarian, open society of exemplary tolerance. (Pankaj Mishra pointed out Turkey’s intolerance recently(1). That glaring fact is worth analyzing. Perhaps the arbitrary suppression of culture in any form, never leads to excellence. Quite ironically Turkey gave more to the world in the times of the Ottoman empire than in its modern incarnation 50 years ago. Its forced ‘modernization’, cut away the heart of its identity and it has never really found a replacement in post-modern materialism.

Right now all bets are on technology and capitalism will change Asia to a super user of technology. This shift in Asian attitudes towards machines is tantalizing and bewildering. Are machines really the new threat to humanity as portrayed in recent Western science fiction and fantasy? Or will technology and resultant wealth change Asia automatically to an egalitarian and open society?

Is technology really a new Avatar, who moves among us and redeems us from strife, struggle and suffering?

Only Some Can Modernize

For one, a global modern utopia isn't possible because for the rest of the world to modernize in similar lines as the West, we’d need another Saudi Arabia. For the world to invest in alternative non oil dependent technology—we’d need a few more geniuses who reinvent current science and are able to sell their inventions (i.e., if a few corporations can be restrained from buying those companies out and then putting their inventions in cold storage).

The irony of global resource mobilization is that modern industrialization depends on ancient oil found in the least modern places. Like the plot for a compelling science fiction novel, the post-modern world is dependent on the pre-modern worlds of Africa and Arabia. The post-modern world pays for its energy needs, and finances the pre-modern way of life. From this, a nasty hodge podge of right and wrong emerges. The West pays for African and Arabian oppression from imperialism, discrimination and injustice since the power brokers trade oil and resources to finance their power. Modernity for these pre-modern worlds is oppression rather than the liberty it promises the West. Even as the modern world rides on the success of its technological superiority and egalitarian open society, it finances despotic rulers who perpetuate dogmatic rightism in closed societies. For example, Nigeria and Shell, Ibn Saud in Saudi Arabia, the Sheikhs who rule UAE are the Magis. The suppression from these Magis is the reason why post-modern culture as practiced in the West, impresses the aspiring middle classes of the world with its fraternity, equality and diversity. It attracts the educated in the guise of freedom, democracy and human rights who consequently (perhaps wrongly) are convinced that the answer to Third World oppression is modernity, regardless of who rules the Third World.

The irony is that the material independence that persuades us is freedom, is possible because of the soil of the Third World. Without oil, without the resources from the Third World, the First World cannot run for one day.

In recent decades, the dependency for oil has been supplemented with other needs.

Increasingly this dependency is not just for resources but also for man power and mind power. What are the ramifications for the increased dependency of the First World on labor from the poorer/non-modern countries?. Perhaps a whimsical question: Could this mean that post-modern culture is unsustainable?

Does Modernity Work?

Consider the population growth crisis throughout Europe and North America—women apparently cannot be persuaded to produce enough children to keep the present political structure alive (public sector/private sector dichotomy). Because of the lack of taxable income/people, a major crisis in medical, healthcare, benefits and family support is brewing. Raising children in the West is darn difficult. Not only is a child a financial calculation but also an impossible problem since there is no in-built community support for rearing children.

If helpful immigrants from all over the world who left behind dysfunctional societies for a ‘better life’—had not come to the West over the last 50-70 years--fueling the continued growth of capitalist/post-modern worlds, the post-modern system would have had to reckon with its dysfunctional sides a long time ago.

When immigration could not solve the labor issue the capitalists just upped and moved to cheaper producing countries making the first world even more dependent on the third. One would imagine that these increasing dependencies would transform the international bureaucracy controlling the movement of human capital. It could be likely that that new trading blocs—zones would be created to accelerate and manage these dependencies. But that softening of nationalisms and borders isn’t happening. In contrast, the USA—has decided to become an iron curtain country where everything from information to people is controlled, filtered and managed. Once you are in US, it is impossible to leave. And if you are outside, it is difficult to enter. The Green card has become the Red card.

It is likely that for the First World to remain First World, the Third World must remain Third World.

For the Third World to become First World using current technology, we need another Third World--perhaps one is birthing in the very womb of the Third World--the 60% percent under skilled people living below the poverty line in Asia.

Do We Really Like Post-modern Culture?

Perhaps if Shakespeare was born now he would not ask questions but state that, ‘To be or not to be, there is no question since regardless we must become machines.’ Must we become mechanical to be free? Must we inherit post-modern apathy?

Perhaps even more worrisome than the lack of population growth in post-modern societies is the bigger crisis of ignorance. It is no accident that the level of mathematics and science taught in schools in North America is so easy. It is no accident that the first generation migrants from the Third World come here and the second generation sinks into the oblivion of the so-called liberal arts rather than the rigor of science. Perhaps the most useful knowledge provided by the North American education system these days is selling and organizing skills. For any more technicalities, please refer to google. ( Perhaps the next great outsourcing opportunity for India or Pakistan will be in education since teachers hate to mark exams).

Quite the quirk of fate that the civilization most attracted to enhancing productivity and efficiency—a civilization founded on the Christian work ethic has changed the very idea of work. The hardworking West has changed—perhaps irreversibly into a super distracted, low attention span morass of button pushers. And that victory too lies at the hands of the holy trinity of technology, capital and media. In this collusion of forces, the University has lost its centrifugal position of being the source of innovation.

What really drives the common herd towards this mechanical, apathetic post-modern culture? Does Nietzsche’s idea of a super man really lie at the heart of it? Does the vision of a super race drive people towards technology? Or is it the desire to know that drives us all? Do we all want to be explorers who ride in a metaphoric Enterprise searching for new worlds in deep space?. Can we really assume a future where we will have something else more interesting to do other than cook, clean, eat, sleep and watch TV? And if so, how do we deal with the stress in trying to be super human?

Life has become so compartmentalized that culture is something that happens on TV to other people. In the absence of community, a continuously mechanical existence, even the word human seems almost like a criticism. When was the last time someone said—“I am human” and meant it to sound like praise rather than a self deprecating note meaning; “I am human: not as efficient and useful as a machine.” (or even as an Asian).

Could it be that post modern humanity’s fear of being ill, getting older, being fatter less ‘slick’ and ‘perfect’ at heart not a conspiracy of media but a conspiracy of modernity in which people have to view their endeavor as a productivity output curve. The culture of efficiency encourages people to mimic machines with 0 downtime. But human strengths lie in different areas. Creative people have cycles of 0 production where they just exist (watching the grass grow as it were). (Newton probably did lots of that). 0 downtime means that people reach information absorption thresholds very soon and cannot ‘deal’ with further complexity. Articulation—through conversation and writing is also a luxury—many see it as a useless activity since it does not lay food on the table or pay the bills. If the very essence of being human is useless than perhaps more quickly than we imagine, the post-modern world will replace itself with machines.

Ultimately mechanization, alienation from community, lack of time to absorb and think results in the political apathy of post-modernism where despite free information, people are ill informed. Ironically post-modern people are weak guardians of an open society---less free than they ever imagined. Can it be that modernity is a huge conspiracy that far from providing freedom has curtailed it—the difference being that today’s slave believes he is free?.

The Standardization of Knowledge

Let’s forget the esoteric philosophers, let’s look at a corporate thinker. Peter F. Drucker is better known and understood in popular culture than any technically educated philosopher. Going by the modernity tenet, populism is more important than excellence. Even though he coined the term ‘knowledge worker’ and stated quite often through his writing that this phase of industrialization is the knowledge era, a breakthrough concept at the time, the reality today is somewhat different. Today’s knowledge worker (the worker whose day is spent sitting in front of a computer) is facing a unique phenomena—the standardization of knowledge and its access. Standardization means that the knowledge workers task is to make things intuitive, easier, simpler (which ultimately means like the next guy’s). The challenge for today’s knowledge worker is to go one step further so that he/she can anticipate what would be easier for the other person. If knowledge is indeed meant to be so ‘easy’ so ‘obvious’ so, ‘like we really think,’ it would mean that we don’t really need the kind of education that Universities provide. All we need to do is anticipate the normal curve---and copypaste is one great way to do so. A best-selling book "Blink" suggests that analysis and 'thinking' is a great waste of time. It seems to base itself in the premise that all we really need to know we already know. These days it is hard not to run into someone who comes out of 'Blink' unconvinced that he or she must suspend systematic thinking and start being more intuitive. "Blink" almost convinved me that George W. Bush is a genius.

Yup they talk about how intelligence has changed over the years. Instead of memory you need patterns, instead of working it out you need to understand what you are doing, instead of holding information in your own head you hold it in your laptop. If there is nothing wrong with that, well nothing is right either.

Let’s face the bitter truth. Them computers and other computerized machines have made us more dependent than we ever were.

Since being human is not a post-modern requirement for freedom, the system (a vast capitalist machinery and its power brokers) invents valves to siphon the pressure of continuous mechanical work. Despite the science parks, children watch more TV in North America than anywhere else in the world. The average TV watching for teenagers is 3 hours per day in North America. This, in a country where usually every few miles a fully stocked library exists.

It is no accident that Silicon Valley is the yoga capital of the world. The mechanical existence of post-modern life with its low level continuous stress kills the creative spirit (and pads the midriff with oodles of fat) reducing productivity of super creative people. It is also no accident that 70-80% of engineers in the bay area are immigrants—who obtained their basic education outside orderly USA—most likely in a less time constrained, more child friendly place with an incredible amount of attention. Well, human thought is more about timeless contemplation rather than hourly outputs.

The in vogue diseases of the postmodern world are ADD, depression and obesity. People seem to develop extremely low attention span in urban USA with an inability to concentrate. More drugs are given for these conditions than ever before in history. The rational explanation is that these diseases weren’t discovered before, therefore we must treat them with expensive drugs. Yet, this rationalization doesn’t extend to banning harmful drugs, chemicals in food, high emission and resource consuming vehicles. The most actionable rationale seems to be always about selling something. This irrational behaviour in a supposedly fully functional and old democracy is odd. What can explain the odd sense of loss of control?. Noam Chomsky called it ‘manufactured consent’. He may be more right than he knows. A techno geek friend is convinced that media in USA is loaded with subliminal messaging that makes you go to malls, vote a certain way and ignore certain news. One can laugh at this paranoia but the truth is that the sense of numbing is real.

So, what is the modernity conspiracy?

A low subliminal buzz, a sort of ‘numbing’, a pressure to produce and consume, a tremendous feeling of uselessness and a continuous discontent.

Who or what is still tingling?

The Third World