The Denials of Modernity

[Pattern-chaser]

Kenneth Boulding, English-born American economist, educator, peace activist, and interdisciplinary philosopher, expressed this idea in his 1966 essay "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth" where he wrote: "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

I have never understood why this statement of the totally-and-completely obvious is so rarely said or written. Any 14 year-old who takes maths can tell you that this is unavoidably so. So how can we sensibly pursue free-market, laissez-faire, unlimited growth, capitalism/economics? We can't.

[Stoppelmann]

Why would denial on this scale require a different approach?

I'm not sure (answering your final question). I think the problem here, with the chain of reasoning that you have presented — and let's assume for now that it is a correct and useful chain of reasoning — is a real-world one. How will you persuade people to adopt your perspectives, and 'cures' for denial? As a species, I suspect we have availed ourselves of denial deeply, often, and for a very long time. How will you persuade us to change? I think this is a common problem with proposals for improvement or advancement, isn't it?

I understand the problem, which also arises when patients are confronted with the news that they are terminally ill, and that their passing will happen soon. Modernity, as a movement, will never accept the truth that its life is finite, only individual human beings, caught up in the throes of imminent death of that movement, may be able to see what is happening and take the lead from people like Vanessa Machado de Oliveira to formulate a perspective for a future post-modern world.

The post-modernism we experience today is still caught up in the past and has to be born out of its dying mother, which is why it is so violently kicking against her. The future must no longer remain connected as with an umbilical cord, but cut itself off from the past, and like a child carries much of what the mother gave it, and still must become an individual life. So must the post-modern world also live its life – for good or for bad – out of the ashes of the past. The question is, what have we learnt from the past? This is what her book is attempting to define, as are her videos, workshops, and numerous other methods. But it is intended to be a labour of love.

She has doubts that we will be able to forego creating ashes, which is a worrying perspective. What she is attempting to create is, in her mind, literally for the survivors. So, it isn’t about improvement or advancement, but rebirth.

[Pattern-chaser]

So, it isn’t about improvement or advancement, but rebirth.

OK, fair enough. But how will people come to accept this (again, assuming it is correct, valuable and useful)? And if they don't or won't accept it, what does this mean for our 'rebirth'?

[AgentSmith]

Modernity is defined by space exploration and ... washing machines. How, I leave to your imagination.

[Stoppelmann]

So, it isn’t about improvement or advancement, but rebirth.

OK, fair enough. But how will people come to accept this (again, assuming it is correct, valuable and useful)? And if they don't or won't accept it, what does this mean for our 'rebirth'?

i think that you and I are the oldies who are so wrapped up in modernity that we hardly realise it. We can re-educate ourselves and eventually spread the word so that a new vision grows, but there are no guarantees, and if we manage to wipe ourselves out, then that was it.

On Picard on Amazon, Geordie says to Data, who has just described their prospects as bleak, "A bit more positive, please!" To which Data answers, "I hope we die quickly!"

[Gertie]

In her book, Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira says that modernity goes hand-in-hand with colonialism, and is dying. It may be in its last throes, trying to avoid its fate, and part of that is living in denial of undisputable injustices.

There are at least four main constitutive denials sanctioned within modernity/coloniality that severely restrict our capacity to sense, relate, and imagine otherwise:

• 1. the denial of systemic, historical, and ongoing violence and of complicity in harm (the fact that our comforts, securities, and enjoyments are subsidized by expropriation and exploitation elsewhere);
  2. the denial of the limits of the planet and of the unsustainability of modernity/coloniality (the fact that the finite earth-metabolism cannot sustain exponential growth, consumption, extraction, exploitation, and expropriation indefinitely);
  3. the denial of entanglement (our insistence in seeing ourselves as separate from each other and the land, rather than “entangled” within a wider living metabolism that is bio-intelligent);
  4. and the denial of the magnitude and complexity of the problems we need to face together (the tendency to look for simplistic solutions that make us feel and look good and that may address symptoms, but not the root causes, of our collective complex predicament).

Hospicing Modernity (p. 23). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.

Do you think she is right?

Not sure this helps pin ''modernity'' down much, as it's such a broad term, but here's a bit of wiki -

Depending on the field, "modernity" may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography, the 16th to 18th centuries are usually described as early modern, while the long 19th century corresponds to "modern history" proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics.[1]

As an analytical concept and normative idea, modernity is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism, modern art, the formal establishment of social science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation, liberalization, modernization and post-industrial life.[1]

As with labels with such scope, it's a mixed bag. There's lots to appreciate, but those are four hefty fundamental probs, and modernism's voracious optimism was long overdue a reckoning. Now the harsher realities are hitting the wealthy west, that's happening. Tho two world wars gave pause for thought, we basically carried on the same way after brief reflection. What seems to be happening now is post-modernism is being absorbed into the mainstream in an understandably ad hoc way, as it suits different interests, while others cling to a rose-tinted past. And we're in a limbo, with the old optimism and certainties fracturing, but no apparent new paradigm getting a hold. It's a scrappy mess, as faith in reason, ideology and institutions flounders, and we turn on each other. It looks a bit grim to be honest.

[Stoppelmann]

In her book, Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira says that modernity goes hand-in-hand with colonialism, and is dying. It may be in its last throes, trying to avoid its fate, and part of that is living in denial of undisputable injustices.

And we're in a limbo, with the old optimism and certainties fracturing, but no apparent new paradigm getting a hold. It's a scrappy mess, as faith in reason, ideology and institutions flounders, and we turn on each other. It looks a bit grim to be honest.

It looks like you are in agreement with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira.

Not sure this helps pin ''modernity'' down much, as it's such a broad term, but here's a bit of wiki -

Depending on the field, "modernity" may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography, the 16th to 18th centuries are usually described as early modern, while the long 19th century corresponds to "modern history" proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics.[1]

As an analytical concept and normative idea, modernity is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism, modern art, the formal establishment of social science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation, liberalization, modernization and post-industrial life.[1]

It is always handy to have a quote to dissipate the use of words, but it doesn’t serve the purpose, because later you agree in principle with what the authoress is pointing out, only she is saying that the West is in denial, holding on to whatever positivity we can gain from our past. I have said earlier in the thread that the term Modernity is a well-known reference to the very real cultural, social, and economic changes that have taken place since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. There are many concrete examples in history books of how the legacy of colonialism and modernity continues to shape global relations and the distribution of power and resources today. I won’t repeat those details here.

As with labels with such scope, it's a mixed bag. There's lots to appreciate, but those are four hefty fundamental probs, and modernism's voracious optimism was long overdue a reckoning. Now the harsher realities are hitting the wealthy west, that's happening. Tho two world wars gave pause for thought, we basically carried on the same way after brief reflection. What seems to be happening now is post-modernism is being absorbed into the mainstream in an understandably ad hoc way, as it suits different interests, while others cling to a rose-tinted past.

Which is another way of saying what I have said here in my interpretation of the OP. Only Vanessa Machado de Oliveira tries to prepare for a time when people will have suffered the consequences of the harsher realities that are hitting the wealthy west and could have global implications because the mindset of modernity as used above is not something that is only represented in the West, and Russia and China have their own versions of it. As I said to Pattern_Chaser, we could in fact be the last of modernity, and the future needs to kick off what took us down and learn to overcome any tendencies to repeat it.

[Pattern-chaser]

i think that you and I are the oldies who are so wrapped up in modernity that we hardly realise it. We can re-educate ourselves and eventually spread the word so that a new vision grows, but there are no guarantees, and if we manage to wipe ourselves out, then that was it.

Maybe you have it right. But, as I sit here, contemplating my response, it occurs to me that this topic is much more than its starting point.

Denial is a core feature of human culture and understanding. We pretend all manner of things. We pretend that we don't have a natural smell, and we wash and scrub to rid ourselves of it, then we douse ourselves in the smell of other things or creatures to hide what remains. We pretend we are younger than we are, and use make-up to disguise our true appearances. We pretend that the damage we have done, and continue to do, to the environment is not significant, and there's no need to change or moderate our luxurious lifestyles, or alter the way our Capitalist world depends on reality-defying continuous-growth economics. We lie to ourselves, perhaps to avoid the shame and despair that might result from an honest view of our own conduct.

Denial is not just the (important and significant) denials that the OP lists; they are just examples. I think the topic we are discussing here is much deeper than I thought when I started reading...

[Pattern-chaser]

As with labels with such scope, it's a mixed bag. There's lots to appreciate, but those are four hefty fundamental probs, and modernism's voracious optimism was long overdue a reckoning. Now the harsher realities are hitting the wealthy west, that's happening. Tho two world wars gave pause for thought, we basically carried on the same way after brief reflection. What seems to be happening now is post-modernism is being absorbed into the mainstream in an understandably ad hoc way, as it suits different interests, while others cling to a rose-tinted past. And we're in a limbo, with the old optimism and certainties fracturing, but no apparent new paradigm getting a hold. It's a scrappy mess, as faith in reason, ideology and institutions flounders, and we turn on each other. It looks a bit grim to be honest.

Isn't this the core of human denial? That we deny our own actions, or at least their consequences? We choose not to recognise what we've done, and what we still do, perhaps out of shame or embarrassment, or something akin? Our denial(s) may be unconscious, but they are still deliberate; intentional. We hide what we have done, even from ourselves, and denial is our weapon of choice in achieving this.

Denial does not apply only to things we didn't know about, or for which there is no clear evidence. We continue our pretences even in the face of directly-contradictory evidence.

[Stoppelmann]

Maybe you have it right. But, as I sit here, contemplating my response, it occurs to me that this topic is much more than its starting point.

Denial is a core feature of human culture and understanding. We pretend all manner of things. We pretend that we don't have a natural smell, and we wash and scrub to rid ourselves of it, then we douse ourselves in the smell of other things or creatures to hide what remains. We pretend we are younger than we are, and use make-up to disguise our true appearances. We pretend that the damage we have done, and continue to do, to the environment is not significant, and there's no need to change or moderate our luxurious lifestyles, or alter the way our Capitalist world depends on reality-defying continuous-growth economics. We lie to ourselves, perhaps to avoid the shame and despair that might result from an honest view of our own conduct.

Denial is not just the (important and significant) denials that the OP lists; they are just examples. I think the topic we are discussing here is much deeper than I thought when I started reading...

I agree with your examples, but aren’t they just cosmetic in the face of consequential denial?

The phenomenal aspect of the way we understand life, is that we are in denial of basic facts that are discomforting. These facts have to do with our interaction with nature, with soil, with animals, with insects, etc., but also with our interaction with each other. It has now reached a peak with the whole trans issue, but began a long time ago, when stronger people used their strength to subjugate people who were weaker. Once human beings find a means to exploit something or someone, it is done without the slightest compunction, until somebody raises the question of moral scruples. A man without scruples has no conscience or denies the feeling that normally prevents us from doing something that could be morally wrong or makes us uncertain about doing it. But a moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one's behaviour, must grow out of experience.

Only someone who experiences, either themselves or from others, what exploitation has for consequences, whether it is starvation, oppression, or the destruction of community, we know that, if we all we only out to exploit each other, we wouldn’t get far. We realise that there is behaviour that is wrong because it suppresses human development and well-being. The golden rule applies, that the wrong you wouldn’t want to be subject to, you shouldn’t do to others. But we know that to get the goods in the supermarkets, and the clothes shops, or wherever, at the cheapest price, we must exploit someone. We know that because we outsource production to sweatshops in Asia but choose to forget it when we complain how everything has got so expensive. It is easy to say, it’s a free market, but that’s a lie as well.

As with labels with such scope, it's a mixed bag. There's lots to appreciate, but those are four hefty fundamental probs, and modernism's voracious optimism was long overdue a reckoning. Now the harsher realities are hitting the wealthy west, that's happening. Tho two world wars gave pause for thought, we basically carried on the same way after brief reflection. What seems to be happening now is post-modernism is being absorbed into the mainstream in an understandably ad hoc way, as it suits different interests, while others cling to a rose-tinted past. And we're in a limbo, with the old optimism and certainties fracturing, but no apparent new paradigm getting a hold. It's a scrappy mess, as faith in reason, ideology and institutions flounders, and we turn on each other. It looks a bit grim to be honest.

Isn't this the core of human denial? That we deny our own actions, or at least their consequences? We choose not to recognise what we've done, and what we still do, perhaps out of shame or embarrassment, or something akin? Our denial(s) may be unconscious, but they are still deliberate; intentional. We hide what we have done, even from ourselves, and denial is our weapon of choice in achieving this.

Denial does not apply only to things we didn't know about, or for which there is no clear evidence. We continue our pretences even in the face of directly-contradictory evidence.

Exactly, and every one of us, except perhaps the vicar’s daughter (and there are rumours), has something in our past where we know we behaved badly, or not up to even our own standards, which we try to avoid talking about. I was in a football club and was a soldier, so you can gather that my grasp of moral encroachments is from a quite unruly past. Looking back, and having attained a moral benchmark along the way, I can see how my exploitations were done despite knowing better, not because I didn’t know the harm I caused.

[Gertie]

In her book, Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira says that modernity goes hand-in-hand with colonialism, and is dying. It may be in its last throes, trying to avoid its fate, and part of that is living in denial of undisputable injustices.

And we're in a limbo, with the old optimism and certainties fracturing, but no apparent new paradigm getting a hold. It's a scrappy mess, as faith in reason, ideology and institutions flounders, and we turn on each other. It looks a bit grim to be honest.

It looks like you are in agreement with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira.

Not sure this helps pin ''modernity'' down much, as it's such a broad term, but here's a bit of wiki -

Depending on the field, "modernity" may refer to different time periods or qualities. In historiography, the 16th to 18th centuries are usually described as early modern, while the long 19th century corresponds to "modern history" proper. While it includes a wide range of interrelated historical processes and cultural phenomena (from fashion to modern warfare), it can also refer to the subjective or existential experience of the conditions they produce, and their ongoing impact on human culture, institutions, and politics.[1]

As an analytical concept and normative idea, modernity is closely linked to the ethos of philosophical and aesthetic modernism; political and intellectual currents that intersect with the Enlightenment; and subsequent developments such as existentialism, modern art, the formal establishment of social science, and contemporaneous antithetical developments such as Marxism. It also encompasses the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism, and shifts in attitudes associated with secularisation, liberalization, modernization and post-industrial life.[1]

It is always handy to have a quote to dissipate the use of words, but it doesn’t serve the purpose, because later you agree in principle with what the authoress is pointing out, only she is saying that the West is in denial, holding on to whatever positivity we can gain from our past. I have said earlier in the thread that the term Modernity is a well-known reference to the very real cultural, social, and economic changes that have taken place since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. There are many concrete examples in history books of how the legacy of colonialism and modernity continues to shape global relations and the distribution of power and resources today. I won’t repeat those details here.

As with labels with such scope, it's a mixed bag. There's lots to appreciate, but those are four hefty fundamental probs, and modernism's voracious optimism was long overdue a reckoning. Now the harsher realities are hitting the wealthy west, that's happening. Tho two world wars gave pause for thought, we basically carried on the same way after brief reflection. What seems to be happening now is post-modernism is being absorbed into the mainstream in an understandably ad hoc way, as it suits different interests, while others cling to a rose-tinted past.

Which is another way of saying what I have said here in my interpretation of the OP. Only Vanessa Machado de Oliveira tries to prepare for a time when people will have suffered the consequences of the harsher realities that are hitting the wealthy west and could have global implications because the mindset of modernity as used above is not something that is only represented in the West, and Russia and China have their own versions of it. As I said to Pattern_Chaser, we could in fact be the last of modernity, and the future needs to kick off what took us down and learn to overcome any tendencies to repeat it.

As I said, Modernism was a mixed bag. The world wasn't ever going to stand still once we'd reached The Dark Ages. (Feudalism wasn't fab either, unless you were one the elite few). We call the way it went 'Modernity', which covers a vast range of thinking and occurences over centuries. It might have gone better or worse in different circs. . So it's hard to come up with a snappy answer. But the specific issues your quote points out are things I'd hope we learn from. I see the value of post-modernism as a sort of taking stock, re-examining the bases for norms, and hopefully doing that learning. But what it lacks is unifying world view we can come together around. When the Enlightenment effectively questioned religion as the right way to serve that role, it offered us reason and progress to replace it, putting faith in ourselves - or at least the people who had the power and influence to create and shape the new narrative.

That eventually got us here, and post-modernism is rightly critiquing that narrative as it crumbles in the face of pressing contemporary factors which rightly bother some of those with influence today. As your quote illustrates. But it doesn't offer a new narrative for us to move forward together in our globalised world. Learning from our past mistakes is obviously a good thing, and yes clearly a lot of people are in denial, influenced by vested interests in how things are. But a critique of social deconstruction is only a first step, it's not a way forward for us to cohere around.

[Stoppelmann]

oops!

[Stoppelmann]

As I said, Modernism was a mixed bag. The world wasn't ever going to stand still once we'd reached The Dark Ages. (Feudalism wasn't fab either, unless you were one the elite few). We call the way it went 'Modernity', which covers a vast range of thinking and occurences over centuries. It might have gone better or worse in different circs. . So it's hard to come up with a snappy answer. But the specific issues your quote points out are things I'd hope we learn from. I see the value of post-modernism as a sort of taking stock, re-examining the bases for norms, and hopefully doing that learning. But what it lacks is unifying world view we can come together around. When the Enlightenment effectively questioned religion as the right way to serve that role, it offered us reason and progress to replace it, putting faith in ourselves - or at least the people who had the power and influence to create and shape the new narrative.

That eventually got us here, and post-modernism is rightly critiquing that narrative as it crumbles in the face of pressing contemporary factors which rightly bother some of those with influence today. As your quote illustrates. But it doesn't offer a new narrative for us to move forward together in our globalised world. Learning from our past mistakes is obviously a good thing, and yes clearly a lot of people are in denial, influenced by vested interests in how things are. But a critique of social deconstruction is only a first step, it's not a way forward for us to cohere around.

The problem is that, until you get over denial, and in this scenario, until you get a lot of people acknowledging the ills of modernity, you can't start looking for a narrative that describes another version of what civilisation can look like. If the only version of civilisation that people have on their minds is that which modernity and colonialism enabled, built on systemic, historical, and ongoing violence, which is swept under the carpet, then nothing new will arise, and the exploitation will go on. If we can step away and no longer identify with that, we can start something new. Post-modernism is, as far as I can tell, still obsessed with coming after modernism, and kicking at its carcass, instead of getting up and away, and starting something new. I find the exercises that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira gives her readers in her book tend to cause an emotional response, but they are purging the denial that keeps sticking to the side of the pan. I have found it in myself, and I suggest anyone would who honestly wants to find that new narrative of what it means to be the human race.

Having said that, "new" mustn't be novel, there are examples from the past, but only if we can free ourselves of our denial.

[Gertie]

As I said, Modernism was a mixed bag. The world wasn't ever going to stand still once we'd reached The Dark Ages. (Feudalism wasn't fab either, unless you were one the elite few). We call the way it went 'Modernity', which covers a vast range of thinking and occurences over centuries. It might have gone better or worse in different circs. . So it's hard to come up with a snappy answer. But the specific issues your quote points out are things I'd hope we learn from. I see the value of post-modernism as a sort of taking stock, re-examining the bases for norms, and hopefully doing that learning. But what it lacks is unifying world view we can come together around. When the Enlightenment effectively questioned religion as the right way to serve that role, it offered us reason and progress to replace it, putting faith in ourselves - or at least the people who had the power and influence to create and shape the new narrative.

That eventually got us here, and post-modernism is rightly critiquing that narrative as it crumbles in the face of pressing contemporary factors which rightly bother some of those with influence today. As your quote illustrates. But it doesn't offer a new narrative for us to move forward together in our globalised world. Learning from our past mistakes is obviously a good thing, and yes clearly a lot of people are in denial, influenced by vested interests in how things are. But a critique of social deconstruction is only a first step, it's not a way forward for us to cohere around.

The problem is that, until you get over denial, and in this scenario, until you get a lot of people acknowledging the ills of modernity, you can't start looking for a narrative that describes another version of what civilisation can look like. If the only version of civilisation that people have on their minds is that which modernity and colonialism enabled, built on systemic, historical, and ongoing violence, which is swept under the carpet, then nothing new will arise, and the exploitation will go on. If we can step away and no longer identify with that, we can start something new. Post-modernism is, as far as I can tell, still obsessed with coming after modernism, and kicking at its carcass, instead of getting up and away, and starting something new. I find the exercises that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira gives her readers in her book tend to cause an emotional response, but they are purging the denial that keeps sticking to the side of the pan. I have found it in myself, and I suggest anyone would who honestly wants to find that new narrative of what it means to be the human race.

Yep.

Having said that, "new" mustn't be novel, there are examples from the past, but only if we can free ourselves of our denial.

Novel doesn't worry me. The big picture shows neither religion, autocracy or modernism has worked as we'd hope. What we need is something meaningful which meets our psychological and practical concerns, and is a fit with our contemporary world. It's a tall order. But it would be nice to see philosophy pull its socks up and play its part. What should a 21st century social contract look like, or a twenty first century morality...

[Gertie]

As with labels with such scope, it's a mixed bag. There's lots to appreciate, but those are four hefty fundamental probs, and modernism's voracious optimism was long overdue a reckoning. Now the harsher realities are hitting the wealthy west, that's happening. Tho two world wars gave pause for thought, we basically carried on the same way after brief reflection. What seems to be happening now is post-modernism is being absorbed into the mainstream in an understandably ad hoc way, as it suits different interests, while others cling to a rose-tinted past. And we're in a limbo, with the old optimism and certainties fracturing, but no apparent new paradigm getting a hold. It's a scrappy mess, as faith in reason, ideology and institutions flounders, and we turn on each other. It looks a bit grim to be honest.

Isn't this the core of human denial? That we deny our own actions, or at least their consequences? We choose not to recognise what we've done, and what we still do, perhaps out of shame or embarrassment, or something akin? Our denial(s) may be unconscious, but they are still deliberate; intentional. We hide what we have done, even from ourselves, and denial is our weapon of choice in achieving this.

Denial does not apply only to things we didn't know about, or for which there is no clear evidence. We continue our pretences even in the face of directly-contradictory evidence.

Looks like my reply to you disappeared PC - might be a glitch or this new moderation. If it doesn't come back - I basically agreed. I think the long term emphasis should be on learning and looking forward, beating ourselves up or those who've exploited us in the past should be a phase, like the analysis. Then we need to get to work on seeing how the wrongs are playing out in the here and now, systemically and personally, and finding ways to do better together.