The Scourge of Postmodernism
Militancy is something I have been thinking a lot lately, I would like to know your opinion on it. OK, so basically, the traditional definition of a militant is someone who fights aggresively for a cause, although the popular definition of this word basically includes anyone who fights for a political cause with some passion. Yeah, going to a demonstration against the war ain’t exactly what I would call militancy, going to many probably is. I know I am making a vague definition, but to make an example, I consider a militant, for example, the guy who is affiliated to a political party or a general political organization, demonstrates for his cause, he sometimes organizes activites, goes to political meetings, concerts organized by organizations friendly to his ideas, etc, etc. You get the idea. Militancy can be deep and felt or can be superficial, but we can leave the superficial one asides for now.
Currently, the western culture is under crisis. Although I write from the European point of view, I think the problems in Europe can be somehow applied to the general western world. Basically, post-modernism could be considered as a crisis of values, the transcendental ideas are being set apart by new values which could be considered superficial. In front of this problem, some still hold to the values of modernism, in an attempt to resurrect the transcendental values. On the other hand, many others hold to what I call “occasion philosophies”, theories I happen to find pretty superficial and not satisfying at all, many of them obviously sustained by those who defend the current culture. On this postmodern philosophies, I could find examples like some branches of anglosaxon pragmatic philosophies, or pseudo-religious new age taken under superficial ideas, I am sure anyone who has read Paulo Cohelo knows what I am talking about. I do not wish to close it here, as I believe there is one large branch I want to consider in this post. After the death of God Nietzsche predicted, we face nihilism. Nihilism comes from latin “nihil”, meaning “nothing”. The nihilist, seeing the death of all transcendental values, the decadence of metaphysics, simply puts asides any beliefs and falls into a total political skepticism, he does not believe in trascendence seeing it dead, he doesn’t believe in the cheap philosophies that last for ten years if lucky. It’s not being apathetic, it’s more like being hopeless.
Now, here comes my problem. I used to consider myself on the side of modernism, I used to consider myself as a friend of the Enlightenment. Yet, through this past year I have been able to read from other ideas, which have awakened me from the dream of reason. I don’t want to go much into this, as it will come off as excessively pedantic, and I hope you can forgive me, but I believe this names are to be taken into account if you have never read them. First came Charles Baudelaire, and then it was when I read a branch of philosophy that had always tempted me, but I had never got into: Goethe, Hölderlin, Shelling, Nietzsche, Baruch Spinoza, Herman Hesse…one would say, the romantics (or neoromantics and pre-romantics, cause Nietzsche, Spinoza and Hesse are not romantic). Here I found what had been lacking in the Enlightenment, this is, the great transcendental idea of Beauty, rescued at last from Plato, the greatest of all thinkers. And as reason is doubted, one abandons modernism. As one embraces the fading vestiges of romanticism, what waits at the end of the path seems to be the precipice of nihil, and as one gazes into the abyss, the abyss gazes back. The romantic, upon the face of nothingness, becomes what I like to call- in lack of a better word- a cynical (not understood as the Greek school, but more as the noir detective cynism). The cynical is close to the nihilist, cynism is probably a postmodern attitude too, maybe the cynical is the postmodern romantic, the disappointed romantic, one that, seeking the transcendental idea of Beauty, finds himself in a world of make-ups and pedlars, a tacky mask dance. From this disappointment comes irony, irony because in front of all this one can only laugh, yet of course, it is not a happy laughter, but acidic.
And here I close my part in this post. There are the ones who still believe, that fight on and on in what seems Sysiphus at work. Not because fight never gives result, it does work, but in front of the great monster of postmodernism, the hungry beast of capitalism, war passing by like a million of grey dogs, is there really any hope? The popular tango says the world was and will always be filthy, but in today’s crisis one would think it is more than filth, it is a large desert. Yet, as Catalan poet Marti i Pol says, “there is no use for the yearning or the sadness,/ or the touch of discontented melancholy,/ we wear as jumper or tie/ when we go to the street. We have only/ what we have, that’s all: the period of concrete history/ we are in, and a minuscule territory to live it”. The poem ends for militancy, it asks us to fight:
“Posem-nos dempeus altra vegada i que se senti
la veu de tots solemnement i clara.
Cridem qui som i que tothom ho escolti.
I en acabat, que cadascú es vesteixi
com bonament li plagui, i via fora!,
que tot està per fer i tot és possible.”
Let’s rise again and may
The voice of all sound solemn and clear,
Let’s shout who we are and may everyone hear it.
And in the end, may everyone dress up
As they wish, and move forward!
Because everything is yet to be done, and everything is possible.
I used to believe in it. Once reason is doubted, you do believe everything is yet to be done, but it seems nothing is possible. Nothing but nothingness.
