Day 115 - Recalling Life in the Global Social Monoculture

Rise of the global social monoculture has coincided with the depletion of individual achievement. While we all (at least in the developed world) enjoy the benefits of the common comforts of our uniform lifestyles, the creative impulse has receded in direct response. While only a century ago we could look to different cultures, different ethnic heritages, different deep historical identities for the spark of uniqueness and challenges to our well-worn and well-rehearsed ideologies -- those are all but gone now. Erased by the monetization of the familiar, the uniqueness of alternate ways of viewing the world can no longer stir us out of our complacency and our acceptance that what is now must ever be. The urgency of our renewal stands singular, to which we alone and naked must rise.

We sometimes forget that we live in exceptional times. The words above were written over 200 years ago by the brilliant Reawakening philosopher Nils Konieczny (more familiar for his scholarly books than this revolutionary screed) in a world that we can scarcely imagine. At the end of the Financial Age there was nothing that couldn't be bought or sold, and that included the comforts of childhood. Towering edifices of capitalism rose all over the globe as monuments to churning pleasant memories into goods, comfort into services, and even moments of daring and exploration into safe thrill rides. Regular people would sell to others like themselves by day and buy from others by night, all the while grinding more and more of the difference and interest in the world down to a fine paste that would be palatable to less and less open-minded consumers.

The power elite skimmed off some of the excess activity and lived like kings, or so they thought by the standards defined by the mindset of the Financial Age. Power meant wealth, and wealth meant comfort, despite the fact that every day they contrived to make comfort such a bland product that what they purchased for all their "wealth" was qualitatively no different from anyone else. They might travel more places, but the places they would travel would be no different from the places they left.

The governmental structures of the age were past the point of corruption to the degree that they were little more than extensions of the corporations they served. Financial Age thinking was unable to solve the global problems it -- or the Industrial Age that preceded it -- created. At the time Konieczny and Princeton and the rest began their quiet revolution sea levels had risen 110 centimeters in the previous century, half of that just within the previous 25 years. Infrastructure designed in the Industrial Age lay in disrepair while ineffectual politicians marketed as bland, comfortable products defended the status-quo with cost/benefit analysis while nothing ever changed.

I try to remember. I read their words and the histories and try to understand what it would be like to live in a world where creativity, discovery and invention have no value unless they can turn a profit. It's hard, but it's worthwhile. We are children of a different age, and it pays to understand how we got here -- and on whose shoulders we stand.