Beyond Postmodernism

Beyond Postmodernism

think what is needed is for each person to be a peer member of a face-to-face community which is in its turn a peer of all other communities. For an individual or community to be more entails denying some measure of these goods to others; for an individual or community to be less entails their being denied some measure of these goods. Alternatives to such peer social life (if we exclude the possibilities of totally removing oneself from social interaction by becoming a hermit or committing suicide...) seem to entail some persons exploiting and being more of a burden to others, and other persons being exploited by and bearing more burden for others than the human condition requires....

What exactly do I mean by "being a peer"? An individual is a peer when he or she has both a policy-making and a productive role in their community, and he or she is neither subordinate to others in making policy (like a wage-worker) nor superordinate to them (like a boss) in implementing it. To state this positively: each individual should have both an unsurpassable role in deciding what will be done, and an inescapable role in doing it. (Example: if people want to play golf, let the golfers maintain their golf course.) The particular face-to-face community of which the individual is a citizen is a peer when it is neither subordinate nor superordinate to other communities -- neither a colony nor a colonial power, etc. Obviously such a model of the social world opposes things "mega", from the "space program" to celebrities. Instead of stars and the star-struck, we would have a world in which each person -- like a lighthouse and its keeper -- is a point of light to aid the nagivation of all through the often dark straits of life....

Cornelius Castoriadis pointed out: Representation is incompatible with democracy, because democracy is where persons govern themselves instead of being governed by others. In a "representative democracy" the only real democracy is among the representatives -- which is pretty much the same kind of social life as exists among a group of corporate CxOs (vis-à-vis employees et al.), trade union bosses (vis-à-vis the union's "members"), a university's tenured faculty (vis-à-vis students et al.), etc. (The main problem with such "cliques" is not the goods they provide for their members, but the goods they exclude non-members from enjoying too. Social construction does not consist primarily in taking away goods persons have, but in remediating persons' lack of goods. On the other hand, there is no good reason to expect a person who is deprived of a good life to help others to have it. A goal is for every individual to "count", as much as possible, but not at the expense of anyone else: the sphere of social interaction need not be a "zero sum game"!).

Modernism -- the Enlightenment, etc. -- certainly aimed at such a situation, but fell short -- at least so far -- of universally realizing it. A lot of post-modernism doesn't even seem to try. Wouldn't going beyond post-modernism mean going beyond both these conditions to the ever more complete and more expansive accomplishment of this unfinished project of a genuinely egalitarian society (to provide each person with an aliquot proportion of an ever bigger "pie")? As Albrecht Wellmer has argued: in a certain sense, modernity is unsurpassable, because it understands itself as the project of always and in all ways improving itself. Modernism is the proposal that progress can occur by the existing individual or group improving itself, instead of progress only being able to occur through the "evolutionary" replacement of existing individuals with new ones (via the individually tragic, and collectively wasteful mechanism of death and re-production)....

I have another web page about going beyond postmodernism, which has some relevant background information and pictures of examples (click here to go there). Almost everything on this website has something to say about this issue. Is this kind of radical, material and not merely formal democracy possible? We don't know, because it hasn't been given a serious try. Perhaps because of the sheer quantity of people now alive, coupled with our heritage of global environmental pollution, options have been foreclosed. Perhaps Heidegger's assertion that "only a god can save us" is, wretchedly, right.

I suggest each person can start by examining the quality of their work days (for students, their study days, etc.), and asking -- both (esp. for "subordinates") for themselves, and (in the case of "higher-placed" individuals) for others -- how well that occupation measures up to the [dynamically self-improving] criteria of dialogical cooperation here described. Especially I urge this for "high tech" workers, and students in "higher education", many of whom (including, you guessed it: myself) seem to me, oxymoronically, to work (study, etc.) in backward conditions. Marketing should, it seems to me, accomplish, among other benefits to persons: (1) As Emmanual Levinas wrote: The aspiration of making is not just to satisfy need, but to produce things to share with others in celebratory hospitality. (2) As the Episcopal liturgy says: Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works... ("marketing" as universal role-modelling...).

Fredric Jameson has pointed out that for people to be objects of bureaucratic "socialism" or of an equally dictatorial "capitalism" (the tyranny of "the market"), really are just two versions of the same thing: alienation. The challenge is to find some way for every person ("Everyman") to be a "principal" of the universal social world.

hese are not "binary" issues, but rather gradations of more better and less worse. Even if 6+ billion people compounded with massive environmental pollution mandate some kind of representative world government (and perhaps even a large measure of hopefully benevolent dictatorship... -- see, e.g., Garrett Hardin's classic essay: The Tragedy of the Commons...), it may nonetheless be possible greatly to enhance the level of material democracy within groups, and to cultivate greater sensitivity to and compensation for persons' privations insofar as democracy cannot -- at least for the moment -- fully be realized. Only Nicholas of Cusa's noble vision would begin to satisfy, beyond merely biological needs, persons' genuinely human potentialities:

In an infinite universe, everywhere is a center and the periphery is nowhere.

But you probably already knew all this.... Your thoughts?