as I struggle with understanding…
I am struggling with who we are and how did we get here…
not necessarily with where do we go from here as I usually struggle with…
I am trying to understand modernity… what does it mean to be a “modern”
man in a “modern” world… and I do so by comparison with an earlier
age, the enlightenment…what does it mean to be modern?
and I believe it means this… you can’t go home again…
this is the entire point of modernism…you can’t go home again…
but don’t mistake home as being the place of residence, either past or present…
no, home here means something far greater…home means something…
it is not just a home, but it stands for something…home means safety and security
and comfort and for some of us, home means love…to share a home with the ones
we love…wife and daughter in my case, but every case is different…
but to be a modern man means, you can’t go home again…WTF does that mean?
we exist within other homes and we have existed in prior homes…
now don’t mistake home here to be a fixed, material place…
home is also where we hold our ism’s and ideologies and habits,
myths, prejudices and superstitions… because those habits and
myths and prejudices and superstitions also mean safety and security
and comfort…home is not just a physical place, but it is a mental
construct with idea’s and ism’s and myths that we have either once believed
in or do currently believe in…
and what does Modernity have to do with home?
my past is full of homes… my childhood home in Illinois… long gone,
decades ago… the house still exists, but it isn’t my home anymore…
I can’t return there anymore…the home I once knew, of family and of
habits and of ism’s and a dog named Troubles…all gone…for me anyway…
and that is modernism… the past no longer exists…one of the sad
parts of education nowadays is that they don’t teach history anymore…
modernity has no interest or understanding in history…
we live in the midst of long gone homes and of long gone
ism’s and ideologies and prejudices and superstitions…
you can’t go home again to ism’s that no longer exists…
to be modern is to exist without the ism’s and ideologies and habits
that nourished human beings for centuries… the ghost of ism’s
still exist today… of ideologies like Catholicism and religions like
capitalism and superstitions like god… they still exists…
but as ghosts in the modern age…
you can’t go home again… once you have lost the faith and devotion
that ism’s and ideologies must have, you cannot rekindle it again by
the false devotion you see in the false idols of our times…
the essence of our times is you can’t return to the ism’s and ideologies
that created safety and security and comfort that existed in our
homes of yesterday…we have to rewrite what it means to
be safe and secure and be comfortable in the new homes of
ism’s and ideologies that are struggling to be created today…
to be modern means to be without past…the past of ism’s and ideologies
that feed our forefathers…you can’t go home again… speaks the modern man…
a home that no longer exists…no matter how hard we try to recreate
the myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions of yesterday…
what myths or habits or ism’s or ideology is possible in the
shadows of Auschwitz or Hiroshima or the two World Wars?
you can’t go home again… to the time before Auschwitz or Hiroshima
or the World Wars…to the beliefs and myths and ism’s that fueled
those “modern” events…
I am a modern man, who in good conscience, cannot accept ancient
fables and myths and habits like religion or god or ism’s like
Americanism…
I cannot go home again…
Kropotkin