By Alexander Perepechko

Published on February 17, 2015

To be honest, I am late with this post because I was waiting for Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address (delivered in 2015). In his speech, the President did not signify that his vision of the technosphere and anthropos had changed. He pointed out that fast economic growth combined with several new ecological regulations demonstrate the successful development of the technosphere. He repeated in fact one of last year’s key proclamations. In the 2013 State of the Union he declared that “we can make meaningful progress on [climate change] […] while driving strong economic growth” (2013). As for the anthropos, in the 2014 State of the Union Address the President praised the melting pot of cultural groups and expressed excitement about identity politics. He named new minority groups: religious, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. It seems as though the continuing reformatting of human society requires that more groups be created on various criteria. Glued together by the strength of the American work ethic and the scope of American dreams (State of the Union, 2014), a growing number of ever-changing, old and new, real and surrogate groups symbolizes the march of the human progress in the United States.

Based on our earlier analyses and this new text, we infer that these days development of the West is not the progress described by Kant – it is not a change for the better in terms of science, technology, and modernization. Progress does not increase exponentially. No exponential curve of economic growth or scientific development can continue indefinitely. In other words the technosphere has limits of growth.

The theory of elites claims that development of the technosphere and development of the anthropos are interrelated but the mode of this interrelation is not straightforward. This theory argues that human qualities play a key role in the interrelation, which needs to be explored in the context of our epoch – the epoch of Modernity.

The theory of elites states that the central subject of Modernity is a sinful, imperfect, and wicked human being. Any attempt to improve man is harmfully utopian. Nevertheless, this sinful, imperfect, and wicked human being can be managed. To put him to work in the name of progress, a certain socio-political framework is required. In other words, specific regulators are needed (for example, Kurginyan, 2012: 106-109, 112). What are these regulators?

Secular law, secularization of social life, separation of church and state, individualization, and atomization are among the most important regulators. Using these contollers, a socially, economically, and technically efficient world can be created, according to the theory. But given that religion is a private matter under Modernity, the secular world does not offer consolation for human spiritual suffering. Therefore, economic, technological and scientific progress and prosperity can be achieved without consolation.

Modernity has few crucial projects for human beings. Industrialization, modernization, and scientific-technical revolution are the most important. Keep in mind that Modernity is not equal to development. The Modern epoch with its projects is only a part of human development. The development of the technosphere and anthropos has multiple options and is not limited by the framework offered to humans by Modernity.

Indeed, how in daily life does a man of Modernity work for the sake of progress? How does this fit within the Modernity framework? Viewing society as a collection of groups—whether real or surrogate, old or new—as Obama has done, does not shed light on the matter. Let us look at an individual through the lens of the theory of elites.

 

 

Figure 4. A man of Modernity. The separation of transcendent inspiration (ideal motives) and everyday drives (real world activities) (Source: Generated by the author).

In modern western society, higher (transcendent) motives and mundane (everyday) motives are separated (Kurginyan, 2007: 24-28). Put differently, the actions of an ordinary human being and especially group actions in the real world should not be motivated by higher values and ideals (figure 4). For example, a man of Modernity overcomes grief and finds solace in a special place (e.g., church). The quantity and size of these places are limited, and time schedules are tight. When a man leaves a sacred place, he should leave God’s realm behind. In the real capitalist world, a man needs to think not about Christ, but about opportunities, jobs, money, and the stock market. The real world and success in this world go first and foremost!

In the real world a man needs to operate according to the regulators imposed by the Modernity framework. If he applies Christian ideals to his real world activities, he will inevitably fail. He does not need to feel guilty because his transcendent standards are separated from his behavior in the real world. Mundane reality is organized in such a way that the transcendent activities of a man in the real world would usually fall short. And since failure is a synonym of sin, the man who failed in the real world will be guilty before God. To avoid this guilt, one should not apply Christian standards to mundane activities regulated by laws, unless these activities are consolation practices in sacred places at special times.

This soteriology of success – separation of the transcendent and everyday – is also applicable to the secular populace of Modernity. In individualist, capitalist societies, nonreligious idealistic motivations are likewise separated from the domain of real world activities. Social control under capitalism prevents idealistic motivations from penetrating and changing the everyday world. Western societies are based on a real-world consensus which requires neither religious nor secular idealistic zeal. Modernity can hardly tolerate zealots and in fact compels them to live in like-minded secluded groups and communities. If these radicals openly challenge society, excommunication, loss of income, and other deprivations can follow.

When large groups of zealots appear and new idealistic motivations arise, that consensus in a society can be broken and Modernity put in danger. Indeed, transcendent inspiration in the form of radical ideology penetrates the real world, inspires this real world, and can shake the basic foundations of Modernity. Nationalism, which fired the French Revolution, bolshevism, fascism, and nazism, is among the most famous of these ideologies…

The clock for Modernity is ticking. We are now living in the twilight of this epoch. The Christian culture that dominated western civilization during the last five centuries (my earlier posts mention several times the magic number 500) is now in its overripe stage (see Sorokin, 1991). Modernity separated Christianity from and emptied it of religion and metaphysics and mercilessly exploited its culture. Without a transcendent drive, Christian culture cooled down and left behind a secular, mechanized man. Indeed, this man is the only creature on earth who knows that he is mortal. Religion used to help him to overcome his mortality by offering consolation in the form of myths and rituals. The grand ideologies of the 20th century failed to replace this transcendental (religious and metaphysical) vacuum. Moreover, the rise of ideologies in the West engendered two devastaring world wars, the Gulag, the Holodomor, and the Holocaust. Next came the time of identity politics. The basic assumption of these politics is that each individual has his or her own unique cultural attributes. Individuals interact and compete and progress moves forward. It seems as though these politics are a metaphysical illusion. In fact these politics aim at destabilization and discrediting or stripping away reality by parody, mockery, or masquerade. In some extreme cases this politics depreciates all values (Baudrillard, 2010: 48). Fukuyama (2014: 438, 531-532) speculates that these politics are simply a powerful mobilization tool diverting political agendas from questions of economic policy to issues like fights over the status of women. Through the various cultural and political phases, human nature remains essentially the same. The anthropos does not want to develop. Why?

When a man achieves material success in the nonconsolation world of Modernity, he becomes desperate. Despair is an existential sickness caused by a tension between the finite and infinite self: “In several years I will die. So, why does everything I achieved in this world matter?” Kierkegaard (1983) called this despair the sickness unto death and attributed it to the decline of Christianity. Emptied of metaphysics and religion, this waning culture makes a man lonely and spiritually sick. Dostoyevsky (1971: 54) wrote about despair: “The whole law of human existence consists merely of making it possible for every man to bow down before what is infinitely great. If man were to be deprived of the infinitely great, he would refuse to go on living, and die of despair.” The knowledge of death is the origin and stimulus of all searching for the infinitely great. Through the trajectory of time, in practical terms, the anthropos seeks to comprehend the relationship binding reality to ultimate meaning, the link between man’s own transitory nature and the eternal (Gaussian, 1998: 29-31). And over and over again, these higher intentions fade away in day-to-day routine life…

Our excursus of considerable length helps to make the following conclusion: the development of anthropos in the course of Modernity can be seen as an oscillating line with a low amplitude. This line has a rolling wave-like appearance and is in fact a constant variable: humans did not change much in the course of Modernity. We can speculate that this continuity is reflected in the 2014 State of the Union Address: “They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend […] on […] the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams” (2014).

Thus, in the epoch of Modernity, the last 500 years, the technosphere has demonstrated an exponential growth and the anthropos remained constant. Let us map these two lines.

Baudrillard, J. (2010) The Agony of Power. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

Dostoyevsky, F. (1971) The Devils. Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Fukuyama, F. (2014) Political order and political decay: from the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Giussani, L. (1998). At the Origin of the Christian Claim. London: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Kierkegaard, S. (1983) The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kurginyan, S. (2012) Sut’ vremeni [Essence of time]. Moscow: ECC. Vol. 2.

Kurginyan, S. (2007) The Weakness of Power/The Analytics of Closed Elite Games and its Basic Concepts. Moscow: ECC.

President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Speech (Transcript). Time, February, 12, 2013. Available at http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/12/president-obamas-2013-state-of-the-union-speech-transcript/

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address. The White House. Office of the Press Secretary, January, 28, 2014. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/28/president-barack-obamas-state-union-address

Sorokin, P. A. (1991) Social and Cultural Dynamics. A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art, Truth, Ethics, Law, and Social Relationships. London: Transaction Publishers.

State of the Union 2015: Full transcript. CNN, January, 20, 2015. Available at http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/20/politics/state-of-the-union-2015-transcript-full-text/