Modernity, BIG MO, was soooo very big during the years of WWII.
It was supported by the vast majority of the world's middle classes
and by all sorts of elites, from low to high, left to right, everywhere.
Above all, it was the value system of all the men running the world's governments and that mattered greatly, for at a time of Total War, no government burked any opposition.
But if it was big, it was big like a ballon and just as easily pricked and deflated.
Modernity finally had a war it could call its own and it was messing it up totally - in its own terms and certainly in the view of many ordinary individuals.
It might seem ready for a rebuke.
Still it does seem oddly poetic that BIG MO was able to be piqued by such as a small, sorry, odd of misfits as Dawson's little team was.
It does make for a sort of "the little project that could" ,come from behind, underdog, type story.
But, for once, all true ...
Showing posts with label peak modernity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peak modernity. Show all posts
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Project "BIG" brought down by the smallest imaginable opponents...
Enraptured by Platonic delusions,the Modernity Project imagined Life to be basically stabilizable and hence oriented to the K-selected and the Very Large.
Ironically,but appropriately, when Project "BIG" finally fell, it was brought down by the smallest imaginable of opponents.
Martin Henry Dawson was actually a rather typical scientist in his willingness to pique Peak Modernity.
He did so because of his faith that his new Science was a more accurate interpretation of the world than their old Science -- that's pretty conventional scientific behavior.
It was the steel of this new belief that added backbone to his Jello-like conventional morality.
This steel encouraged him not to be content to simply regret the wrongs done to the weak during the war as 'horrible but necessary' , as so many American do-gooders did.
It led him to fight, with his dying breath, to improve the plight of the weak -- even if that meant taking on all his colleagues and his all-powerful federal government.
Yes he was a 'good person', a very good person --- but he also was a good scientist.
His chosen pique , ie Old French for prick/ needle/syringe, was only about .002 microns wide, the width of a strand of his transformation material (aka HGT DNA).
But while it was very small, it also went very deep; deep into the heart of Charles Darwin's predictable biological world of
Vertical Gene Transfers that fueled the certitudes of Social Darwinism and Eugenics & Biopolitics.
Equally small were the Anti-Matter fragments of Paul Dirac's
Sea that did so much to toss out the bland certitudes of John Dalton's vision of a predictable world.
Dawson and Dirac were basically ignored by mainstream science when they announced their discoveries in the early 1930s.
Neither, frankly, was the sort of charismatic personality that fire up a scientific audience with soaring phrases and visions.
But by 1945, Modernity - once given its oats in a war it could finally call its own - found that its predictable world was not in fact very predictable at all.
Slowly, for Science really only changes when enough Professors Emeritus die; slowly, slowly scientists began to see that Dawson and Dirac had better described Reality than Darwin and Dalton had ever done.
To today's leading-edge scientists, MO (Modernity) has indeed gone CO (Commensality) .
Our world is not something we can predict and control by Big exclusive projects, but it is something we can survive in, if we display the flexibility and inclusivity of the small.
HGT is the model Humankind must emulate if we are to survive and endure on this planet that Modernity's projects have so messed up.
We can all help MO go CO.....
Ironically,but appropriately, when Project "BIG" finally fell, it was brought down by the smallest imaginable of opponents.
Martin Henry Dawson was actually a rather typical scientist in his willingness to pique Peak Modernity.
He did so because of his faith that his new Science was a more accurate interpretation of the world than their old Science -- that's pretty conventional scientific behavior.
It was the steel of this new belief that added backbone to his Jello-like conventional morality.
This steel encouraged him not to be content to simply regret the wrongs done to the weak during the war as 'horrible but necessary' , as so many American do-gooders did.
It led him to fight, with his dying breath, to improve the plight of the weak -- even if that meant taking on all his colleagues and his all-powerful federal government.
Yes he was a 'good person', a very good person --- but he also was a good scientist.
His chosen pique , ie Old French for prick/ needle/syringe, was only about .002 microns wide, the width of a strand of his transformation material (aka HGT DNA).
But while it was very small, it also went very deep; deep into the heart of Charles Darwin's predictable biological world of
Vertical Gene Transfers that fueled the certitudes of Social Darwinism and Eugenics & Biopolitics.
Equally small were the Anti-Matter fragments of Paul Dirac's
Sea that did so much to toss out the bland certitudes of John Dalton's vision of a predictable world.
Dawson and Dirac were basically ignored by mainstream science when they announced their discoveries in the early 1930s.
Neither, frankly, was the sort of charismatic personality that fire up a scientific audience with soaring phrases and visions.
But by 1945, Modernity - once given its oats in a war it could finally call its own - found that its predictable world was not in fact very predictable at all.
Slowly, for Science really only changes when enough Professors Emeritus die; slowly, slowly scientists began to see that Dawson and Dirac had better described Reality than Darwin and Dalton had ever done.
To today's leading-edge scientists, MO (Modernity) has indeed gone CO (Commensality) .
Our world is not something we can predict and control by Big exclusive projects, but it is something we can survive in, if we display the flexibility and inclusivity of the small.
HGT is the model Humankind must emulate if we are to survive and endure on this planet that Modernity's projects have so messed up.
We can all help MO go CO.....
Peaked Modernity or Piqued Modernity ?
Both, actually.
World War Two, 1939-1945, was both the Apogee and the Nadir of the Enlightenment-Modernity Project.
In '21st Century-Speak', 1945 saw Peak Modernity staring down at a long, slow, slide into oblivion.
In the early 1940s, most middle class members of world civilization supported the Modernity project, almost without question.
But the war wasn't going as predicted, on any side.
And while 'Power Over Others' isn't really intrinsic to Modernity ( Pol Pot did pretty good in that department with pre-modern shovels and sticks), Precision is truly intrinsic to Modernity.
Put simply:
"Modernity without Precision is not Modernity".
The flustered Modernity supporters had enough self-created problems of imprecision of their own, without needing a dying doctor and his tiny team flaunting their own defiance of Modernity in everyone's face.
Martin Henry Dawson piqued Peak Modernity.
In return, Peak Modernity supporters, when it came to write the official and semi-official histories of World War Two, never forgave him.
But our world, today, looks a lot more like his than it does theirs, so I guess he got the last laugh....
PS: a note to grammarians : I look forward to explanations to flustered writers not to confuse 'Peking Modernity' with 'Piquing Modernity'. Puns, you gotta love 'em ---- at least if you read me !
World War Two, 1939-1945, was both the Apogee and the Nadir of the Enlightenment-Modernity Project.
In '21st Century-Speak', 1945 saw Peak Modernity staring down at a long, slow, slide into oblivion.
In the early 1940s, most middle class members of world civilization supported the Modernity project, almost without question.
But the war wasn't going as predicted, on any side.
And while 'Power Over Others' isn't really intrinsic to Modernity ( Pol Pot did pretty good in that department with pre-modern shovels and sticks), Precision is truly intrinsic to Modernity.
Put simply:
"Modernity without Precision is not Modernity".
The flustered Modernity supporters had enough self-created problems of imprecision of their own, without needing a dying doctor and his tiny team flaunting their own defiance of Modernity in everyone's face.
Martin Henry Dawson piqued Peak Modernity.
In return, Peak Modernity supporters, when it came to write the official and semi-official histories of World War Two, never forgave him.
But our world, today, looks a lot more like his than it does theirs, so I guess he got the last laugh....
PS: a note to grammarians : I look forward to explanations to flustered writers not to confuse 'Peking Modernity' with 'Piquing Modernity'. Puns, you gotta love 'em ---- at least if you read me !
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