Post-capitalism

'It's embarrassing to say this to a generation where individual tuition has become a privilege; where non-examinable knowledge is perceived as a waste of time; where every thesis and dissertation must begin with a mind-numbing rehash of existing knowledge, written to a formula as rigid as that demanded by the Qing-era Chinese civil service. But here goes: the past was better.'

--Paul Mason.

~

I never realised just how radical Macintyre is. Of course, the radicalism originates from a religious perspective since religion, in its best sense, will always stand opposed to worldliness. Which is not to say that a proper perspective should not take in the world; just that one should not be taken or taken in by the world. 

'It is also a time for resisting..as temperately as possible the dominant social, economic, and political order of advanced modernity.'

This, to some ears, will no doubt sound too harsh, and smack of a spirit that is too generalizing, too broad-brushed in its judgement. Well one might ask: is there nothing in the times we live in that is worthy of our attention, that redeems, at least in part, some its flaws?

I think part of 'the Muslim problem'-though its never characterized as such-is that insofar as the religious spirit survives it is never fully at home in a world that has been formed by the Enlightenment. There will always be, I suppose, this nagging sense that for all the progress, for all the advancement that has been achieved (and that is not in question, of course), and for all the wonders of science, something of importance has been irretrievably lost. A way of looking at the world, a way of being in it.

Particular modern notions of rationality, self-interest, individuality and liberty jar with that older outlook or world view. Religion, in that sense, is on the side of poetry and art.

Dynamism, which in youth is a sign of vigour, is often quite the opposite at a later stage of life. Ceaseless flux and restlessness are not necessarily an open-ness to the world-at least not when they're manufactured by an economic system that must keep the juggernaut moving. Bloch was right here: continuous change isn't necessarily the same thing as freedom. The dissipation of forms, the shedding of identity can just as well be signs of decay as they can of growth.  

'The self is nothing, not a substance, but a set of perpetually open possibilities.'

In one succinct line Macintyre has summarized the centrality of existentialism to modern culture (existence precedes essence, the leap of the will) as well as hinted at the dissolution of a substantive notion of the person at the hands of scientific and economic ways of thinking. 

What remains is the abstract, ghost-like creature who, like the American woodsman, has no sense of place, no time or patience. Everything must be sampled, tasted, skimmed through. Attachments, far from being a source of enrichment are either a distraction or an encroachment on the true, inner self (Gnosticism). What is freedom but to be 'free from'?

And in a parallel fashion the freedom of the market mirrors the actions of a man with no qualities. The possibilities are endless, at least in a 'quantitative' sense; in another sense they're just a refashioning of age old tracks that humans have, since time out of mind, traversed.

But the allure of living more than one life, the plurality of the self, is undermined by the thought that what we end up with is not a double life but half a life.