Modernity and Its Discontents Three Dangerous Propensities of Modernity
The extraordinary developments of our Scientific-Technologies have created unprecedented possibilities in both positive and negative scenarios. In all areas of human enterprise from genetic manipulation to social control, to the unknown unknows, the dangers and the opportunities are in constant flux. In this context it is deceptive and false to believe that science is morally neutral. In the early part of the twentieth first century a number of human propensities have passed the limits of their functionality. And in fact, these propensities have created almost unprecedented tendencies towards disaster.
Propensity One: Towards Violence:
The social, cultural, moral and legal normalisation and justifications of organised violence in the ‘war system’ have created technologies of destruction that have become genocidal on a global environmental scale. The ‘war system’ has become an existential threat to human survival. It is deceptive and delusionary to believe that the ‘war system’ will not end in unprecedented global level disaster.
Propensity Two: Towards Exploitation:
The political-economic systems based on the principles of the ‘free market’, ‘finance capital’ and ‘endless consumption’ and their associated ideologies have evolved unprecedented exploitive and destructive predispositions. These systems are built on unique levels of exploitation of ‘dispensable individuals’ and a very destructive relationship to the ‘natural world’. It is deceptive and dishonest to believe that these tendencies are in any way sustainable.
Propensity Three Towards Me-Me-ism:
The ideologies of individualism have fashioned a totalitarian culture of self-righteous narcissism, dominated by a deadening ‘secular-consumer narrative’ that justifies its own trivia. In historical experience the proclivity of ‘bread and circus’ is normally the precursor to the collapse of that civilization. It is deceptive and fraudulent to believe that these cultural ‘norms’ of ‘secular-consumerism’ are a pathway to individual flourishing.
