Why are modern academics so damn gloomy? The past three years of my university degree in contemporary culture studies have been about me reading book after book, research papers, articles…. on how modern society is the worst thing to have ever happened. Industrialization, globalization, urbanization and all those modern phenomenons that were introduced in society as a result of industrialization are painted as the driving force behind our loss of morals. Modern man has been called selfish, indulgent, morally corrupt, impulsive, unmotivated and a bunch of the other smart-sounding insults that I can not be bothered to remember. And as someone who happens to like the present time, this deeply troubles me.
I have been reading a book, La 'scomparsa dei riti' which translates as the disappearance of rituals in English by contemporary philosopher Byung-Chul Han and to every page I turned on I was being called a narcissistic, consumer girl of modern society who has lost morals and the spirit of community. He defines rites as symbolic actions that represent the values of a certain community. They create a community without the need for communication (as they understand each other pronto) while presently we have communication without a community(technology but no relationships).
-Today’s community lacks structure as there are no rituals while rituals are the ones to stabilize life.
-Life has no rites of passage that give conclusions to different phases of life which serve as a way of concluding a chapter and starting another one.
-We have lost the spirit of playing, we no longer participate in games, even word games like poetry as the world has become all about working and producing.
-There is also a whole chapter where he argues how war is also a ritual and that war before the industrial revolution was better as apparently there was reciprocity that is lacking in today’s wars.
These are some of his main ideas and while reading this book I often found myself pausing and asking myself, who hurt you?
Even though he put a disclaimer at the start of the book informing us that he was expressing his thoughts void of nostalgia I couldn’t help but think that this book was just an essay on how much he was nostalgic for the past times. Times where people were more 'authentic and less narcissistic', where life had more 'structure' that was gained from rituals. I often ask myself when reading these books, what kind of people are you all meeting, those humans that are so non-authentic and fake that makes them generalize that we are all like this. I do not think people now are more or less evil than people from the past. Bad people have existed and always will just as good people have existed and always will. Genuine people also are still around, passionate and talented people are still around too and you do not have to go far to find them. So I always fail to understand where this hate of modern times starts from among philosophers. From religious people, I kind of understand that nostalgia is kind of at the core of their belief. The whole thing of humanity being so unpure that we distanced ourselves from our perfect self that God had created before so our lives on earth should be spent being good so that we can gain our divinity after this life. So the nostalgia is justified as it is the belief of going back to the 'perfect' being we were before committing sin. I mean even in the early days of religions today the idea was still there, going back.
I have decided to refer to this hate for modern times as nostalgia(excessively sentimental yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition). And for this nostalgia, there are many people who I can blame for it, all dead of course. Personally, I think we should blame romanticists and their dramatic asses for making nostalgia trendy and turning it into a whole damn cultural movement. For you who doesn’t know what romanticism is, it was an art/cultural movement that emerged in the late 17th early 18th century in Europe. It is not a coincidence that the industrial revolution was happening then, it was a kind of rebellion against the industrial revolution and all the changes that it was bringing. The whole idea of romanticism was to return to nature, man according to the romanticists was lost and unpure in the modern world (of that time) and progress was evil. So consequently, they had a nostalgia of the past when man was still pure and emotions were flying everywhere and they had glorified this idea of the middle ages as the period in which all was perfect. Which I find very funny as the middle ages might have been the worst place to ever live through in Europe cause what the hell was that?
The middle ages were from the 5th to the 15th-century -più o meno- anyways and as someone who up to now fails to see anything good about that period this glorification is comical to me. Because tell me what is attractive about religious wars, being ruled by the monarchy which most of the time was in turn under the power and hold of the church. As always the rich and noble were okay while the peasants slaved away for them all while being told that they had to pray their problems away and that it was the only solution to their poverty. A new disease was around the corner every single day and people were ‘free’ only because they had no control over their lives. And let us not talk about hygiene. EWW
I bet the people from the middle ages wanted to escape to the past too, reasoning that they wanted to go back to purity as told by religion, the period when we had not sinned yet, the genesis. I bet to them that was when man was free and pure, just as the romantic writers think that man was pure and free in the medieval age. So is it just a curse of existence? I might also be wrong as maybe it is in human nature to not realize the beauty around us and instead dream about past times. Appreciating those who are long gone while failing to acknowledge how our surroundings are filled by beauty.
This reminds me of the movie Midnight in Paris where the character played by Owen Wilson is a guy who is blinded by Nostalgia of the golden age of Paris, the ’20s. It was a period where all the cool kids of the cultural and art world were gathered in Paris, important figures like Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemmingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and many more. Anyways he is in Paris with his fiance and he wants to stay as he is convinced that it is where he will find inspiration for his writing, I guess he was channelling the late authors. He by some magic that I have not understood yet, is granted his wish of going back in time. He falls for a woman of the ’20s who in turn was convinced that la belle epoque (1871-1914) was the most perfect period to have existed in history. Together they will go back in time and meet her faves like Paul Gaugin, Edgar Degas and some other famous artists of that time. I remember that Wilson’s character wanted to go back to the Paris ’20s but The woman did not want to and ended up staying in the belle epoque. So she was taking for granted a period which to Wilson’s character was the most perfect but she failed to see in this perspective as she was filled with a nostalgia of the past too. And that pretty much summarizes everything for me, we take for granted our present while maybe future generations will look back and think that this was the peak of humanity, the most exciting time to have been alive.
‘The past seems so much more vivid, more substantial, than the present, and then it evaporates with the cold touch of reality. The good old days are so alluring because we were not around, however much we wish we were.’
The world has become evil, people no longer have souls, social media turned everyone into a narcissist, people no longer care about the community and the others…. Personally, I think the modern thinkers who are insistent on this narrative are just consumed by said nostalgia of the old lost world. The time when Europe/the West was at the peak of the cultural food chain. When there is a lot of changes happening in the world, we just feel disconnected as we are not used to this new way of life that we want to turn back to what already makes sense to us, to what already has a clear explanation. Are all these modern intellectuals afraid of how Western values and ways of thinking are fading, mutating or being innovated that they feel like they do not understand modern society so they want to turn to what makes sense to them, to what brings them familiarity?
I happen to like the modern world and to me, it never seems like the world before was better than it is now. I am a combination of two things that proved to be a disadvantage historically; a woman and black. That also kind of makes it unimaginable for me to see the appeal I guess. I find nostalgia to be an endearing emotion, I even have a playlist and all but it is not one emotion I wish to feel for the rest of my existence, ya know. Maybe it could also be because I am excited about the future, as much as I find progress scary I am more curious than afraid to see what will go on and where the world will end up.
The way I see it: good and bad people have always existed and they will always exist and time periods do not change it. Authentic people are still around just as narcissistic people are still around just like they have always been. The conditions for human life will always be in constant mutation and change is inevitable, I do not know if that is bad or good but I know that there is not much to be done about it. Today the world is generally safer and more accepting compared to how it was 50 years ago and 200 years ago and globalization is not as evil as they make it seem. And maybe instead of saying that we have lost rituals we could say that our rituals have changed, it is no longer in our ritual to sit by the fire at night before bed to tell stories with families just as it used to be done in pre-colonial Rwanda but instead, in some families dinner is always served together at the table and at the end, they watch a movie together which will be the subject of conversation for the time being. We still have moments of free time, maybe online games and as much as the old school seem to despise them I do not see how different the idea of them is different from say a game of … I don't know, what games did people play long ago? But my point is the idea behind is to have fun so how different is it? Poetry/wordplay; how different is it from the lyric writing of today, maybe it is not up to the snobbish tastes of the ‘intellectuals’ but it is a modern form of wordplay. So new rituals and ways to be in communities have been formed, they are definitely different from rituals from three decades ago but it does not change that behind the idea of it all is the spirit of spending time together in the community.
Art came, art evolved from one aesthetic to another. What was beautiful 20 years ago is seen as weird now. Music changed, rituals changed, humour changed. Change has always existed, nothing lasts forever. I am not saying that we should not admire the past and how good it was, we definitely should remember and get lost in the thoughts of those who came before us and the beautiful things that they have created, but that should not cause us to dread the present or the future. Not everything is lost. Personally, I like that I found myself in this timeline and I am excited about the future. (that is if some nuclear war doesn’t happen and we all end up blowing up or the earth's climate decides that it has had enough of us, but exciting ain’t it?).
Now is good.
This is an extract from an article from the Irish times by Yuval Noah Harari, one of my favourite modern thinkers/historians/philosophers. (the link is at the end if you want to read the full article which I recommend you do). I like his approach to the modern world, he does not seem as pessimistic as most modern thinkers. His book, one of my favourite books ever Sapiens; a brief history of humankind (if you have not read it yet please do) offers a big picture of history, of all the events that have happened ever since the start of the history of man and offers some theories on the future. He has different interesting theories and most of all I love how he seems to interpret progress as something more positive than negative. His book has been criticized for being superficial but whatever the opinion is on the book it is still an interesting read to put things in perspective.
‘Humans have existed for more than two million years, while all nations and religions we know today are the product of the last 3,000 years. All “ancient traditions” are actually quite new. They are changing social constructs rather than eternal truths. Even more importantly, the nostalgic fantasies of nationalism and religion will not solve the big problems of the 21st century. How do we deal with climate change? What to do when AI pushes billions of people out of the job market? How to use the enormous new powers of genetic engineering? You won’t find the answers to these questions in the Bible, because the people who wrote the Bible knew little about global warming and knew even less about genetics and computers.
The reality of the 21st century is frightening, so I understand why people wish to turn away from it. But we don’t have any choice. We have got to co-operate on a global level. Will we actually do it? I don’t know. Human wisdom is very powerful, but we should never underestimate human stupidity.’
‘There is much to be hopeful about. A good starting point is to realise that despite all the problems, humankind today is more prosperous, healthy and peaceful than ever before. For the first time in human history, starvation kills fewer people than obesity; plagues kill fewer people than old age; and violence kills fewer people than accidents.
Indeed, we are living in the most peaceful era in history. There are still wars in some parts of the world – I live in the Middle East, so I know that perfectly well. But large parts of the world are completely free from war, and many states have stopped using war as a standard tool to advance their interests. In ancient agricultural societies, about 15 per cent of all deaths were caused by human violence. Today, in the world as a whole, less than 1.5 per cent of deaths are caused by human violence. In fact, the number of suicides is today greater than the number of violent deaths. You have more chance of killing yourself than being killed by some enemy soldier, terrorist or criminal. Similarly, the number of people who die from obesity and related diseases is far higher than the number of people killed by human violence. Sugar is today more dangerous than gunpowder.
What brought about this era of peace? First and foremost, nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into collective suicide. So the superpowers had to completely change the international system, and find ways of resolving conflicts without major wars. Secondly, economic changes have turned knowledge into the main economic asset. Previously, wealth was mainly material wealth: wheat fields, gold mines, slaves, cattle. This encouraged war, because it was relatively easy to conquer material wealth through war. Today, wealth is increasingly based on knowledge. And you cannot conquer knowledge through war. You cannot for example conquer the wealth of Silicon Valley through war, because there are no silicon mines in Silicon Valley – the wealth comes from the knowledge of the engineers and technicians. Consequently, today, most wars are restricted to those parts of the world – like the Middle East – where wealth is old-fashioned material wealth (primarily oilfields).
But that should not make us complacent. What we need to realise is that in recent decades war declined not thanks to any miracle or the intervention of some god. War declined because of wise human decisions. And if humans start making unwise decisions, war will return. It takes a lot of wise people to make peace, but it is sometimes enough to have one fool to have a war.’
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READS
-Sapiens; a brief history of humankind; Yuval Noah Harari
-The disappearance of rituals; Byung-Chul Han
- https://www.theartstory.org/movement/romanticism/ On Romanticism
- https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/yuval-noah-harari-it-takes-just-one-fool-to-start-a-war-1.3610304#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20we%20are%20living%20in,I%20know%20that%20perfectly%20well.&text=First%20and%20foremost%2C%20nuclear%20weapons,between%20superpowers%20into%20collective%20suicide. Full article of Yuval Noah Harari on modern progress(but the book is still heavily recommended)
Quite an interesting read! you've outdone yourself once again.
I know nobody asked but if any body had asked for two lines that stayed with me, I'd say: 1.'I am excited about the future, as much as I find progress scary I am more curious than afraid to see what will go on and where the world will end up.'
2.'Human wisdom is very powerful, but we should never underestimate human stupidity.’
Mi fai pensare a lot about the past and nowadays