thinking about our “modern” world…
think about our world before say, the French Revolution or the Industrial
Revolution…think about the Art being made, think about philosophy
or science or theology or politics and the “viewpoint” that people held……
In other words, science had one basic viewpoint… Newtonian physics,
Literature had novels that were pretty much following the path of
Don Quixote…published in 1605 and part two was published in 1620…
you had ART which was, in part, painting which identifiable as being
similar to painting done after 1500 to 1880… the art work done in
this time period were variations of a theme…but painting changed
starting roughly 1880…
you have plays which were following themes set up by the Greeks
and Romans…until, 1900 when plays began to change their nature…
the thing to understand is that “Modernism” affected different aspects of our
lives at different rates…
you have viewpoints which exists in time…
…. so, we have the Middle ages viewpoint which is a style
that was about the paths to god…everything related to
some aspect of the pursuit of god… the art, the buildings, the literature,
how one lived……everything was related back to some viewpoint about god…
then we have the changing viewpoint of the Renaissance… in which
the pursuit of god was gradually being changed into an pursuit of
man… “Man is the measure of all things” could be this motto…
and we have a Renaissance viewpoint which is expressed by painting
and Architecture and statues and plays and writings…
then gradually over the years, we have another viewpoint which is the
enlightenment viewpoint…where we have more changes in how we
view paintings and plays and history and Art and statues…
then, beginning with Sturm und Drang… we have the next phase of
viewpoints in literature and music and paintings and plays and Architecture…
which is the Romantic viewpoint which dominated Europe and the
America’s for roughly 100 years… think of it as an anti-enlightenment…
movement…
then roughly 1880 in Art and at different times in different countries and
in different disciplines, we have changes in Paintings and literature
and plays and philosophy and history and economics…
let us take one example… communism… Marx began to write in the 1830’
1840’s and continued into the 1870’s… but his critique wasn’t possible,
his viewpoint wasn’t possible until the material conditions of various
countries had change enough to allow Marx’s viewpoint to become
widespread… what that means is that, the Industrial Revolution
changed people’s basic understanding of what it meant to be human…
Marxism simply wasn’t even viable until the economic and political
changes made it possible…as a viewpoint, Marxism wasn’t even possible
until the Industrial revolution made it possible…
and all of the “modern” viewpoints of Art, Symbolism for example,
wasn’t possible until the conditions on the ground changed…
the philosophy of a time… say, 1700, must match the conditions
on the ground… Marxism just wasn’t possible in the year 1700 because
the conditions that Marxism describes wasn’t created yet…our theories,
our viewpoints must match the conditions on the ground that we see…
so, in science for example, the Newtonian theory of the universe matched
what people saw on the ground…in 1700… it match the various theories
and idea’s that people had about the universe and what it meant to be human…
but if Marxism cannot fit into 1700, it certainly did fit in 1850 or 1900 because
of the changing conditions on the ground that people saw that made Marxism
a better fit for what was the political, social, economic conditions on the ground…
so how did the “modern” world change in terms of viewpoints?
we can see the changes in paintings, Architecture, plays, novels,
and philosophy and politics, all beginning around the 1850 in
politics for example… and in paintings around 1880, and philosophy
in 1900 and science after Einstein in 1905… different viewpoints of
disciplines changed at a different rates in time depending…….
for example, take literature… we can see changes in poetry beginning in
the 1870’s with Arthur Rimbaud for example and the changing viewpoints
in novels and plays… the rise of modernism in novels has been very well
established and easily researched…but we have novel/poems that are the
“stream of consciousness” novels/poems that begin from 1870 on…
those “stream of consciousness” writings are simply not possible before
1870 because of the already established viewpoints that were current at
the time…
in other words, the viewpoints we have are viewpoints that
can only exists during a specific time period, ours……
we cannot hold to ancient viewpoints like the Medieval viewpoint
because those conditions no longer hold… and as our current conditions
change, our viewpoints will change with it…the literature, the painting,
the poems, the Architecture, plays and movies will all change as our
material conditions change…our viewpoints must change with the material
changes we see around us…and our viewpoints that seem to “up to date”
only last as long we remain static in the conditions on the ground…
so, the viewpoints of literature and plays and philosophy and music
and poems are a reflection of the conditions on the ground…
and we see that the “modern” viewpoint starting in 1880’s on,
were reflections of what is going on in society at the time…
and see “modernism” as being mobile and active, variable
and changeable, shifting as being representative of what
the conditions on the ground were……fluid, molten…
a famous saying was this… “All that is solid, melts into air”
and that little saying exemplifies everything we need to know
about our modern times…viewpoints that were solid
and firm, melted under the heat of our modern times…
because of the changing conditions of our times, we no longer
seem to have solid, firm convictions or viewpoints that we
can point to and express our everlasting agreement with…
the diverse and every changing conditions on the ground is reflected in
the diverse and every changing viewpoints of people…
we don’t have a fixed and set viewpoint of say, Liberalism, because the
conditions on the ground isn’t fixed or set… the ideology of Liberalism
requires a set and fixed situation on the ground but we can see that
modernism has turn all past certainties into possibilities, at best, possibilities…
or said another way… our modern life has taken the ambiguity of language
and set its way into all parts of our life… we cannot say for certain that
liberalism is the best way or conservatism is the best way or democracy is
the best way or that communism is the best way because we are now
aware of the ambiguity of liberalism and the ambiguity of communism
and the ambiguity of democracy…with ambiguity comes uncertainty…
and if there is a modern viewpoint, it is of ambiguity and uncertainty
and doubt and puzzlement about who we are and what is our meaning…
“all that is solid, melts into Air”
that is the “modern” condition right now…
and into that uncertainty comes the political drive for tyrants
and dictatorships like IQ45… to remove our doubts and
uncertainty… all we have to do is follow those would be
tyrants and dictator’s……
and is the solution to turn to political tyranny?
no, the solution is to accept and learn to live with
ambiguity and uncertainty and doubt……
for the path to wisdom lies with doubt, not with certainty…
for the certain man never challenges if he is really on the path to
wisdom… having certainty means never having to doubt if
you are on the right path… it is assumed that you are on the right path…
I cannot make any such assumption… you have a set and certain viewpoint,
if you do not doubt, you can only assume that you are within bliss and wisdom…
a set and fixed viewpoint in these modern times doesn’t fit the conditions on
the ground… we have rapidly changing conditions which forces rapidly changing
viewpoints…will we ever have a set of fixed viewpoints again?
yes, but not now… right now we are in an transitional time period between
set and fixed viewpoints… at some point in the future, we shall have
a fixed and set viewpoint, but not today…not now…
soon…
Kropotkin