Every so often I read an Analysis of the Modern Condition by some offbeatly insightful commentator like @raggedjackscarlet or @hotelconcierge or someone. And at some point, after it’s diagnosed the suffering of modern life and painted a really compellingly horrific portrait, the piece will come as close as it ever comes to offering a solution – it will talk about the need to (somehow) get past the madness and the validation-seeking and the self-absorption so that you can take action, so that you can be strong and free.
Which demands the question: Take what action? Be strong, be free, in order to accomplish what aim?
Because I’m pretty sure that this knowledge is the thing that that is actually lacking here. And all the “obvious” answers are total failures.
Be strong and free so that you can act to defeat the enemy? Please. There is no enemy, the enemy is some shmuck who’s as dumb and lost as you, the very idea of an enemy is a pornographic fantasy designed to foster the fantasy that you can undertake an unambiguously worthwhile enterprise in fighting him. And all the Analysis of the Modern Condition writers understand this perfectly well.
Be strong and free so that you can provide for your family, or otherwise become a Decent Productive Upstanding Person? Nice thought, but you don’t actually need strength and freedom to do that, if anything they make it slightly harder. The world of worldly success mostly rewards dumb luck and to some extent rewards feverish validation-seeking. The kind of integrity that’s being prescribed here is really good on its own merits, but like much of the best stuff in life it’s taboo and genuine-not-pretend-countercultural, it’s not going to make you more employable.
Be strong and free so that you can pursue all your wildest ubermenchlichkeit desires? Plausible at least in theory. But unless the recommended endgame is “think about the sun, Pippin, immolate yourself and flare bright and burn out fast, dash yourself to pieces against a system that is infinitely stronger than you are,” there’s not much future in it.
I’m a little more optimistic about the psychology of the Modern Condition than these essays tend to be. I don’t think that we atomized anomic contemporary folk have allowed our souls and our wills to wither as we shoot social media into our veins, or whatever – most people today are kind of contemptible, sure, but most people have always been kind of contemptible, and for various reasons (to be discussed elsewhen) I suspect it’s probably better-than-the-historical-average now rather than worse on the spiritual-strength front.
But we’re closing in on science-fictional post-scarcity levels of ease and comfort for the most fortunate tiers of society, which means that we’re just starting to wrestle with the Next Very Big Problem. What do you do when there is no task to which spiritual strength can be usefully applied?
Morality, or rather that morality which doesn’t cross the line into unhealthy levels of excessive altruism, produces positive externalities that bring prosperity, harmony, and unity to societies.
We live in a world of competition, and therefore while might may not make right, it does make real. Strength is required to realize good in this world, physically instantiate virtue, and prevent enemies from destroying it.
And there are enemies. Real enemies, not just some deluded rival national partisans. It’s not all people who were just poisoned by the wrong memeplexes. Not all fights are physical ones.
But we’re closing in on science-fictional post-scarcity levels of ease and comfort for the most fortunate tiers of society, which means that we’re just starting to wrestle with the Next Very Big Problem. What do you do when there is no task to which spiritual strength can be usefully applied?
History isn’t over yet, and isn’t going to be over for a long time. The idea that it is over, is just a component of the dominant ideology, meant to convince you of that ideology’s inevitability.
Humanity will be facing multiple tests of moral character this century and the next.
History isn’t over yet, and isn’t going to be over for a long time. The idea that it is over, is just a component of the dominant ideology, meant to convince you of that ideology’s inevitability.
This
is entirely true. The future, as far out as the eye can see, contains
lots of interesting and hideous struggles – both struggles over actual
scarce resources (including social ones) and struggles undertaken
because, when given great freedom, many people will choose to make their
lives meaningful by waging meaningful war.
…that last
thing is definitely part of the answer to “what do you do when there is
no task to which spiritual strength can be usefully applied?,” by the
way.
And yet it’s worth noticing that we are, in fact, starting
to come up against a boundary that represents a shift in the
teleology-as-experienced of a human life.
Classically, the “point” of day-to-day living was to be able to keep on living the next day, and to defend and support the small coterie of individuals to whom you were closely bound. It’s been a long time since we’ve moved past that model…at least for the upper classes…but it was replaced with something very similar on a functional level, where the point of day-to-day living was to maintain access to various privileges and luxuries without which life would have seemed vastly worse for you and your family.
Now we’re getting to a place where the world is starting to be able to provide everything you want, on an individual / small-group level, without your having to do anything for it. And a damn good thing too. Resource struggles are horrible and soul-killing, even if [ahem] they do pass the time. But it does mean that “what’s the point of it all?” starts to be a pressing question even for people who are not dedicated philosophers.
There’s one set of answers that corresponds to the stuff that you’re talking about. “Fight off our civilization’s many real enemies,” “employ your strength and bravery defending the goose that lays the golden eggs,” etc. etc. My feelings about this are…complicated. Because, yes, it is in fact needed, and is going to be needed at least intermittently for a very long time indeed. A society that ceases to have any soldiers won’t last long, probably even if it already has overwhelming military dominance over all of known human-space, and definitely not without that. (One of many reasons that I favor generating a society that has such dominance. Something about which you and I will eventually have an entertaining fight, I’m sure, but not this day.)
But there may not be much correlation between “when/how this kind of struggle is actually needed” and “when/how this kind of struggle will seem like it can assuage the souls of ennui-laden humans who have yet to figure out how to deal with post-scarcity.” This is double-plus-true when you factor in…
And there are enemies. Real enemies, not just some deluded rival national partisans. It’s not all people who were just poisoned by the wrong memeplexes. Not all fights are physical ones.
In the post-scarcity future, while the search for meaning is still ongoing, I’m pretty sure lots of people are going to love the idea of starting actually-pointless wars over memeplex status, and “we have real enemies” is going to be their rallying cry.