Fate of modern America

[broken robot]

I wanted to respond to some of ex’s, dharma’s and non’s posts and thought I’d create a new thread to try and synthesize some of these ideas. They’ve raised a number of issues recently about mass consumption and the deepening of inequality and also proposed a few solutions, but I wanted to first figure out what the core issues are.

I. Two Logics of the Modern System: Velocity and Complexity

To begin, in the historical epoch of late capitalist America, there are two logics that reinforce each other. The first is velocity. Essentially as Marx initially theorized, capitalism breaks down spatial and temporal barriers, constantly superseding limits it previously imposed on itself. Whether that means finding new markets or increasing the speed at which commodities circulate, capitalism is moving faster and faster while destroying previous industries and promoting new ones such as the “knowledge economy.”

The second issue is complexity. As I’ve mentioned in other threads, our society has become increasingly specialized and the scale of problems has become greater and greater (in this regard I now agree with ex that there is perhaps a qualitative change). Whether dealing with global warming or terrorism, the bureaucracy has expanded to a massive scale while decision-making has become concentrated among a narrow group of policy makers and administrators. This follows the historical tendency Max Weber identified as inherent to the development of modern bureaucracies.

II. The Outcome: Permanent Warfare

The American cultural response has been to develop a set of militia conspiracy theories about “black helicopters” disappearing people, government by a globally hegemonic ruling clique, and so on. Previously of course we had faith that society would develop an increasingly transparent and efficient division of labor. In contrast to our previous modernizing assumptions, however, the whole system has become incredibly opaque. Common people no longer feel capable of resolving immediate issues in their own lives, whether determining levels of household spending or making personal decisions over health and well-being. Everything is increasingly left up to “wonks” that embody specialized knowledge that is harder and harder to access without years of training in relevant methods.

The domestic response parallels our loss of faith in the American project, meaning America’s fundamental ability to solve global problems. Our foreign policy goals are increasingly devoid of meaning. When conflicts pop up, we don’t know how they’re connected, who the key actors are, or even why on a fundamental level we should intervene. At the same time, we are caught up in the existential quandary of believing we’re “saving the planet” and have an ethical obligation to do so. Despite this, we’re increasingly at a loss in understanding how different conflicts are related to each other and what the ramifications are for our own lives.

Carl Schmitt and his interpreters have argued that the contemporary global order is defined by a humanitarian logic that in fact creates a situation of permanent warfare; a low intensity conflict that is no longer defined by battle between civilizations or political ideologies, but rather the increasingly arbitrary decisions of a group of administrators and the surveillance apparatus. Our own response then is to become increasingly disenchanted with the whole process. We see “them”, whether Middle Easterners or Mexicans, as both defenseless and barbaric. This apparent contradiction, rather than reflecting reality on the ground, however, is a symptom of the crisis of legitimacy in our own society, such as the NSA spying scandal. We don’t know why we do what we do anymore. The system has a logic of its own that transcends the needs and desires of our own communities. We are pressed into the service of a totalizing military-administrative-media complex that ascribes to us its own motivations.

III. Two Responses: Bureaucracy and Community

Simply looking for answers in policy-making is no longer viable. Increasingly ineffective policy solutions such as imposing regulations on financial practices—while important stop gaps—won’t address the fundamental more pervasive need to change our cultural practices slowly, over time, in order to solve basic issues such as consumption-driven debt (something ex, for example, has mentioned). Our behaviors are a product of more complex circumstances, and the seemingly rational bureaucracy or policy-making solutions can’t whisk the problems away. In fact belief in these kinds of solutions has led us precisely into the current crisis.

In contrast we must consider re-appropriating the basic decisions that affect our communities, including developing local regulations and customs. One way of framing this as a response is in terms of anarchism. The latter is useful not as a political ideology per se, but as a basic ethos of respect that could enable us to recover value in our own lives. Rather than mass consumption-driven capitalism or the narrow instrumental needs of the specialized bureaucracy, we could develop a stronger network of institutions that are responsive to our communities and a different set of values and orientations. Political philosopher Simon Critchley among others has argued that we need to see anarchism less as a political plan of action and more as an ethical response of maintaining distance from the state, even if we aren’t able to practically realize the goal of “smashing the state.”

At the same time my deployment of anarchism conflicts with the imaginary of the modern revolutionary who sees violence as the solution to our problems (here I’m responding to some of dharma’s and non’s posts). The fact of the matter is the system now operates according to its own logic. While we try to personify political power based on the “1%” or a new class of speculators, we ignore the fact that the operations of the market have transcended human will or need. Thus cutting the heads off the rich so to speak will not answer the more fundamental question of how our lives are organized and how the solutions have been taken out of our grasp. Physical violence won’t destroy, for example, the increasingly complex speculative instruments such as derivatives that have developed as an autonomous dimension of the market.

IV. Rethinking American identity

An earlier tradition in American thought pioneered by people such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that we can find value in slowing down our thinking and contemplating the natural bounty of America. I’d further add that we should consider the fragmentation of American identity into a confederal set of regions not as a problem but as a possible solution. There is no longer an overarching project that can define who “we” are. Rather than the battle against communism or the war on terrorism, we must consider that what makes us special is our ability to relate to each other on a more basic level based on more relatable regional identities.

For example, what would it mean if the Southwest saw itself as part of a historical area comprising a complex mosaic of identities, including historical patterns of migration from Mexico, rather than as a bulwark of American freedom against the brown folk supposedly threatening to swamp the country? You can see it in the creation for example of Tex Mex and other hybrid cultures that combine historical elements in order to create new narratives of American identity.

By pluralizing American identities and rebuilding institutions at a local level—creating networks among churches, activist groups, clubs, etc.—we can slowly re-appropriate decisions that are currently dominated by a narrow clique of bureaucrats, administrators, and speculators. It won’t be easy but over time the subtle mutation of our cultural practices might resolve issues spawned by the large structures of capitalism and the nation-state.

It’s clear that the current order is simply creating more chaos, while the system itself suffers from a democratic deficit. It is undergoing entropy. We increasingly wonder why bankers are being bailed out while people are losing their homes. Recreating connections on a local level, getting active in local clubs and government, and so on, could in fact promote a return to the moral regulation of wealth, as we become answerable to the people around us rather than some abstract idea of liberal citizenship and its universalizing ambitions.[1] The latter is increasingly devoid of content in our specialized, administered society.

V. The Role of Knowledge Production

Finally, rethinking academic institutions and knowledge production could aid us in this herculean task. By creating narratives that speak to people’s everyday concerns, we can combat the pernicious modern logic of specialization. One example is Christopher Nolan’s films. “Interstellar” supposedly integrates the concerns of the scientific community while injecting them with meaning by telling a story, contributing the element of human drama that makes these seemingly abstract discoveries relevant to our own lives. When I teach my own classes, for example, I often bring up examples from popular culture such as “Breaking Bad” to make stories about the decline of the American middle class more persuasive.

We need to reconsider then how teaching and research in humanistic relation to each other strengthen community, rather than us answering to the needs of say, the defense bureaucracy and its instrumental goals of promoting American hegemony. It’s clear that the latter has only caused us to question our own place in the world, as we become increasingly disillusioned with the negative and seemingly uncontrollable outcomes of our own interventions. Recognizing the finitude of political action and reasserting community as the basic horizon of our actions and goals could help stem the corrosive spread of an increasingly impossible desire to reorder the world in the America’s totalizing image.

In sum, we might have won the Cold War, but we are exhausted with our victory. It’s time to move on.

[1]Here the Left can re-appropriate local, traditionalist rhetoric from the right, recasting the Tea Party, NRA, etc. narrative of “Americans v. the government.”

[eynon81]

I will respond, I promise.

[spacemonkey]

A welfare nation such as ours playing policeman to the world. What a screwed up world it must be,lol.

[eynon81]

I think you're assuming way to much good faith here.

much of the "opaque"ness you cite is by design and not simply the result of our modern life.

[eynon81]

this is like 5 different threads btw.....which topic do you want to tackle first?

[broken robot]

I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew lol. Let's try something simple though for now, and something you brought up recently which I think deserves a thread of its own:

How much will the threat of violence actually make the system respond? I guess here I'm citing the part of my post where I point out that much of the wealth now is concentrated in anonymous mutual funds, asset management firms, and involves complex financial instruments. So the system pretty much runs itself. How would targeting a group of individuals, a French Revolution type situation you and dharma seemed to be advocating in the wealth inequality thread, actually resolve the problem?

[broken robot]

[exploited]

[The Dharma Bum]

how it worked in fascist italy

[The Dharma Bum]

you can also do stuff like build an alternative community services network that does the stuff that doesn't get down by the "official" government or big business.

the main problem is finding a viable alternative and just doing it. Then you protect it defensively however it has to be done and people will help.