In my reading of “modernity” and “postmodernism” I’ve come across
one concept that that has piqued my interest and I’ve commented
upon it before, the fragmentation of modern man.
Goethe commented on this when he said, “Alas, I have two souls
in my breast”. And the modern man says, dam, I wish I only had
two souls. The modern man’s soul has been fragmentated
like a mirror or cup that has been dropped from a great height.
But that mirrors our understanding of physics and how the universe
works……. Once our understanding of the universe was Newtonian.
Which is really the clockwork nature of the universe and how it all flowed
all together under the great laws of Newton and Math. Under Newton,
there was no fragmentation. Everything had its place and that place
could be found by the laws of science and math. The clock was really
the symbol of the age of the enlightenment because everything
was defined by its place in the universe and that was as sure as
as how direct and clear the clock worked.
But the age of the enlightenment occurred before the modern age,
before the industrial revolution. The age of the industrial revolution
also adopted the clock as its symbol but not the clock that stands upon
your desk, but as the timepiece that measures all activities. Recall
that saying, “Time is money”. That is a indication of the idea that
the industrial revolution took as its chief symbol the timeclock upon
which all workers must time in and out of everyday……
We are seen in the modern age as workers and only as workers.
What is THE modern symbol of our industrial age? Work.
We are determined and judge and measured by the work we do.
What is virtually the first question you ever ask of someone you first meet?
What do you do? What is your job. And then we judge them based on that
criteria. Not is they are good people or honest people or just people, but
do they work and what is that work? And we then judge their honesty
and value as an individual based on the criteria of their employment.
But the fragmentation comes from the fact that we are so much more then
just working individuals. We attempt, in our own way, to answer the
Kantian/Kropotkin question of "what can I know? What am I to do?
What values should I hold? among other such questions.
And in our search for our answers to the Kantian/Kropotkin questions,
we discover ourselves to be greater then just our work status. We are not
just the sum of what we do for a living. We are so much more and this is
the crisis of the modern age. We are fragmented because we are seen as
only workers (and consumers) but as nothing else which flies in the face of
who we are. In our own self analysis, Know thyself, we find ourselves to
be holders of values but these values are in conflict with the modern
age demand, that all we are is workers. I hold values that are
being negated and devalued in the modern world pursuit of profits/money.
I am fragmented because of this conflict between the nihilism of the
modern world which is attempting to crush all values that don’t lead
to profits/money and my need to hold values like honesty, justice,
truth, love. If I am to fit into the modern age, I must also negate
and deny my values because they don’t lead to profits/money.
This is the fragmentation of the modern age. If I am to fit into
the modern age, I must deny and negate who I am and my values.
Either you accept the modern proposition that profit is the basis
of existence or you don’t and if you don’t, you are committing the
greatest crime of the modern age… and that is disobeying,
disobedience. Just like Adam and Eve, you are committing the
crime that will have you removed from “paradise”.
I don’t accept the premise that the value of human beings come
from the creation of profits/money. Simple as that
and with that, I am in conflict with my age, I am alienated
from my age, I am fragmented. So now the question becomes,
like the broken cup, can I be repaired? Can I be made whole again
or must I suffer from my fragmentation till the end of my existence?
From this we can now see the demand for the search for wholeness
that dominates our age. But the fact is, we may not be able to
put humpty dumpty together again. Think of it this way,
are we the single individual atoms that society/the modern age
has created or are we part of a whole? And if we are part of the whole,
which whole shall we be part of? Hence we now see or have an explanation
for the various ism’s and ideologies that have dominated the modern age.
For the rise of ism’s and ideologies come from the fragmentation of the modern
age and our attempt to make ourselves whole again with a return to
such ism’s as nationalism and religion and such idiocy as “white is right”.
I see such attempts to ism’s as a response to the fragmentation
of the modern age.
We have been torn asunder because of the industrial revolution which
has devalued and negated humans and their values and we respond
as best we can to reuniting our fracture souls with ism’s and ideologies
that seem to be able to reunite who we are into one soul……
but is that even desirable? Should we even want to reunite
into one soul, be it in the name, the ism of nationalism or religion or
racism and bigotry? Should we attempt to reunite our souls or should
we attempt to conquer who we are and accept that we are individual
soul, individual atoms who cannot become part of any false ism or ideology?
The universe itself offers us an answer. We know that the base
of the universe is individual atoms. That is the basic structure
of the universe, the atom. But we also see atoms combining into
structures like the TV set and stoves and human beings and then
the atoms come apart, entropy, and then the atoms come together
again into a new structure. The number of atoms in the universe
has never changed since the second of the big bang to today
and it will never change till the end of time. We are just individual
atoms but we also change combine into structures and still
be individual atoms. Thus as individual atoms, we can become
part of structures like democracy and socialism and work and,
and we change and adapt, we can dissociate ourselves, as individual
atoms, and become part of other structures like dictatorships
and capitalism. These structures, like giant Lago logs,
are made up of many, thousands, indeed, millions of individual
Lago logs. but we have free will, we have the ability to
dissociate ourselves as we want from our created social structures
like communism and Catholicism, or to join other created social structures
or institutions like the party of treason, the GOP.
That is where we have freedom. to join or to dissociate ourselves
from created structures of ism’s and ideologies like monarchy
or anarchism.
The path to becoming who we are is by understanding we
are individual atoms, each and every single one of us,
but we can join or dissociate ourselves from created social structures
that are created to harbor and help us individual atoms to survive.
The key is to accept us as individual atoms and the use that
understanding to accept our fractured souls. The fracturing
of our souls is because we now understand that
our social structure of modernism, capitalism and the industrial revolution,
has fractured our soul with its nihilism/negation of who we are
and what is possible by its relentless search for profits/money.
We are individual atoms… the question becomes, what is next?
Kropotkin