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Nicole's avatar

Very interesting and I will probably go back to reread some parts later. But my initial thoughts are that this is why I prefer the way Dougald talks about it, as opposed to Vanessa. (They are the two I have experience reading) We are at the time of choosing what to hold on to. No one knows what exactly will happen in the future, although if you are looking I believe it is obvious that some sort of collapse is coming. I've been thinking that for quite awhile but the last three months in the US has only solidified my opinion. We are at a time now, where we can begin to decide on an individual level what we want to keep. For me, I am keeping the skills needed to grow food and cook it. Once I feel like I have a good handle on that, I hope to begin to save other things. My husband is looking more towards politics and community. He is reaching out to others through the Internet and locally to preserve connections. When I am living in the ruins, or my children are, or my children's children are, I hope that they will still have those skills and values that me and my husband are trying to learn, live and teach.

I guess that is not an exact response to the content of your post. 😅 I suppose, I don't think it matters what the definition of modernity is. I don't think it matters how exactly society will collapse. It matters more what you do with that knowledge.

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Whit Blauvelt's avatar

Nicely put, well elucidated. Thanks.

May "modernity" be too reified a concept? Consider the Mods versus the Rockers in mid-60's London, and the moral panic of the British press, in which both were presented as signs of the coming end of civilization. This is not to say the metacrisis wasn't already looming. The later-60s perspective from within the American counter-culture contained an awareness of it. That was my perspective then, carried forward since. I'm just not sure that being concerned with being "modern" is even the right street light under which to search for the keys to our best tomorrows.

In a line of Plato celebrated by Beat poet and Fug Ed Sanders, "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake." May we shift our psychological and social tones, tunings, harmonies, syncopations, even discords such that beauty, virtue and honesty become more fully expressed in societies, interpersonally, politically, and spiritually, in the near-enough future? As Sarah Wilson (yet another Realisation speaker) posted yesterday, on her return to Australia she's seeing more kindness than she'd expected from past years there, following on the landslide electoral victory of the saner party. Perversely -- and incredibly dangerously -- may Trumpism turn out to be the fever which breaks "modernity's" illness? What comes next may be left best named by future historians.

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