A Sense of Placelessness: Modernistic and Postmodernistic Alienation

Recently, I have been reading through a book on globalization, and an aspect of the author's analysis of cultural globalization stood out to me largely because it seemed very similar to modernistic alienation, a concept I often think about. Yet, it seems that since this is in the setting of a more globalized world, that the alienation is akin to postmodernism. Additionally, one can look at this aspect and draw out the common principles shared by both modernistic alienation and this supposed, postmodernistic alienation.

The contemporary experience of living and acting across cultural borders means both the loss of traditional meanings and the creation of new symbolic expressions. Reconstructed feelings of belonging coexist in uneasy tension with a sense of placelessness. [...] it appears that the old structures of modernity are slowly giving way to a new 'postmodern' framework characterized by a less stable sense of identity and knowledge.

Manfred Steger

According to what I've learned so far, modernistic alienation had its roots in the industrial revolution, which resulted in alienation largely in workers becoming more alienated towards what they produced and what they used to produce it due to the dehumanization by the mechanization process involved. Additionally, the traditional family structure was changed by an increased disconnect between a family's father due to a greater displacement by industrial jobs that kept him farther and longer from the home.

The proposed postmodern alienation seems tied to today's information society, where people are more alienated towards information in general. Examples of problems birthed from this can be seen in the struggles of knowing what is true without acquiescing to relativism, a greater simplification in appearances of daily life due as a response to a sense of information overload, the prominence of diversity dialog in television shows such as The Office. So, it seems that modernistic and postmodernistic alienation differs greatest in the aspect of information and material. Of course, this is not to say that postmodernism is against materialism, for that can be one of the ways to experience information as well as to conveniently simplify its presentation.

Considering the details of each kind of alienation, it seems that each have commonality in the sense of placelessness, that the author mentions. In modernistic alienation, this likely was produced out of having no way to distinguish one place to another due to the increase in material homogeneity of products. Placelessness for modernity could also be seen in how the individualistic / emotional tendencies, that in the workplace established a sense of place, were repressed in men due to the use of Scientific Management. For the postmodern, placelessness is produced by the challenge of distinguishing one informational / cultural sphere from another as being that which one chooses to identify with. Since identity in the Western mindset is tied to ideas, when one is faced with a multitude of seemingly endless right choices, one is unable to provide distinction by choosing one because they all seem largely valid. Hence, postmodern man can cognitively choose to agree with the cultures he experiences in travels (on foot or through the Internet), but cannot, on an emotional level, identify with any of them.

Male Gender Roles in Leadership, Then and Now

The other day, I was thinking about the period of the 60's and 70's and the topic of gender roles. It seemed interesting because of the potential reasons why the sexual revolution of that period took place. The specific aspect I'm going to focus on, is the period's stance towards gender roles, and why perhaps the roles in gender shifted from previous years. Flashing forward, I'm going to also try and address the impact this is having on current generations and why that's interesting.

From what material I have exposure to, it seems that during the 60's and 70's, for one reason or another, it tended to be that male leadership in the home was weak, whereas female leadership was strong. Now, this state of leadership didn't appear to exist prior to this period; the 60's and 70's were a transitional period where male leadership had been strong before, but now was becoming weak. Why exactly male leadership weakened, is a topic that won't be broached here, but it is certainly important. Now, following this transitional period, women began to take on more responsibility over the home; for the men were becoming less. For some reason or another, it doesn't seem like the society of that age criticized men that much, even though many of them were giving up the degree of responsibility they once held. Some could argue that the reason criticism was held back was because people had accepted that females were to be given more power over the home; more delegated, egalitarian power structures. Based on what I've seen, there were people who understood and accepted the change, but there were also many who didn't understand and were confused by what was going on around them; some even men themselves who were following society though confused as to why things were falling apart for them. Perhaps it is because the period was such a flux point in the culture, and so this caused inability to discern whether men were in the wrong for foregoing responsibility (whether they accepted feminism or not).

I contrast this response to lessened male responsibility with that of today's culture. There has been in popular thought, for the past 3-4 years at least, the idea that the typical modern male's sense of responsibility is lower than it should be, and therefore it is wrong. This is seen in that men are portrayed in the national media as being weak, irresponsible, impractical, too emotional, and baby-like. An excellent portrayal of this is in the film Knocked Up. Before, it seems as if men who held these qualities weren't seen as in the wrong, whereas now, it seems all over the national media, that men like this need to change. Not that I don't disagree, I tend to lean towards being more responsible, but why exactly this is happening now, is the question.

A few reasons that I can think up now could shed light in future thoughts: first, that the 60's and 70's were so tumultuous that no one really knew what was going on and whether it was right or wrong, thereby correcting the mistakes of the past. Second, that criticism now has only come from the Gen-Y crowd because they have been brought up to believe in the gender roles that existed before the 60's and 70's. Third, that the Gen-X crowd is trying to correct Gen-Y's veering towards such male gender roles because Gen-X doesn't see any real reason for Gen-Y's adoption of such cultural ideas other than men likely indulging in truly wrongful irresponsibility. In other words, they haven't sought these roles out of necessity, but out of selfish gluttony.

A Culture of Essentials

Considering our place in history the other day, I came to realize further that today's current generation (and by that, I mean the generation that is around adulthood: 20 - 30), and possibly upcoming generations, sees what is important in life out a perspective I'd like to call, essentialism. I believe essentialism has its root in what can be labeled since the early 20th century and now, as a crisis of culture of sorts. This "crisis of culture" can be seen as the wearing down of cultural-historic norms to put in its place ahistorical norms. An expression of this could be seen in how value has been lessened towards relationships of one's heritage while value has been increased towards the concept of money. Money in comparison, is very fluid, temporal in nature, and not stable. A better comparison could be between money and wealth, where wealth clearly has enduring qualities to its worth.

Now, some argue that one can stave off this cultural erosion, by putting considerable bulwarks in one's home that stand in contrast to these norms. This indeed, may be possible. However, the children will likely reveal the true effectiveness of this effort. I argue that because the majority of children, even children coming from these types of homes, have adopted essentialism, that these efforts are not as effective as the parents think. Further, the parents themselves involved in these efforts likely don't even believe strongly what they're making efforts to stand for.

The way that essentialism reveals how ill these efforts are, and how parents may not be properly handling their stances, is due to how the children view these factors growing up. If children saw that these norms to fight off the "crisis of culture" were good, then they would follow them themselves. However, essentialism doesn't contain much of the norms held by these stances, but more of the norms that make up the "crisis of culture." Essentialism is defined to be a way of seeing reality such that only essentials are valued. What then are these essentials? Based on my observations, I've been able to pin down at least the following:

Tenants of Essentialism

• Community
  
• Identity in Oneself
  
• Survival of Oneself
  
• Material Practicality above Immaterial Idea-ism
  
• Emotions above Reason

Another good way to phrase Essentialism is by calling it "Survivalism," valuing only what it takes to survive, which the above list describes. The truth is, most of the expressions of these values listed above I have seen, have been less in the area of durable actions, but temporal, ahistoric nature. Sure, community could be something that builds up culture, but the way the value is expressed is typically in how a group of people can cohesively, in the moment, have times of gratifying emotion. Typically this involves discussion that builds towards how absurd life is, rather than building towards an enduring purpose. This then causes community to be used in a way that is not cultural-historic, but ahistorical and acultural.

Now, the way I see that people have adopted this essentialism mentality, is because in their childhood homes that have stood against the "crisis of culture," the parents didn't hold strong enough value in their stances. The result is not that the children intellectualized about whether their parents really believed in what they said, but that they simply saw that the people weren't following much of anything (remember, degradation of values is part of the crisis), and so gravitated towards whatever was consistent and gravitated away from what was spoken of, but not practiced, thereby forming the values of essentialism. The problem with this, is that by the process of forming these values, the children had to adopt acultural and ahistorical views, which are exactly what the parents were striving to fight against; the values found in the "crisis of culture." This cycle is very ironic.

If the current generation is to truly stand against the crisis, it must stand against its current expressions of values, values which only in appearances resemble something better, and must take up cultural-historical views towards the values it professes, so as to express them in ways beneficial to the purpose.

Characteristics, Limitations, and Heritage in the Political Leader

I've been thinking some about how might a person become a political leader. This has been on my mind due in large part to trying to further understand my tendency towards holding a dynamic that balances strong leadership and strong deep relationships. These two, in my mind, tend to be at odds with one another. If one is to be a political leader, it seems by necessity that their relationships must be less deep than that of a person who desires not political leadership. This is justified by the fact that a leader really must understand the people they are leading. If the person is leading millions, such as with a senator or president, then they need to know what the people are thinking. This task is impossible without using representatives that give the leader insight into what the people think.

Now, one could say that deep relationships could then exist with the representatives, but that seems unlikely if the representatives main role is to relay accurate information. Sure, this could be done in a manner respective to one's humanity in that it would be more than simply information relay, but the relationship between the leader and the representative would not be of the form of what could be between a non-leader citizen and his fellow non-leader citizen friends, where the relationship would be defined by sharing what is more individually-personal with one another. The representative and the leader would have a relationship based on talking about and understanding the populace they are representing; individually-personal information would be rarely spoken of.

And so, I seem to define "deep relationships" as being those in which two people share their individually-personal thoughts with one another; thoughts that do not hinge on others, but entirely on themselves.

Many balk towards leading politically if it necessitates an absence of such "deep relationships," but that topic, which involves the origins of emotions, is for another time.

Now that a basic understanding of the relational dynamics of political leaders has been set in place, I will go back to the original question: how might a person become a political leader? Well, in my thoughts, I believe that it takes at least a couple of things. The first, is one's mindset. Leaders tend to have mindsets in the following ways: strong awareness towards systems, unemotional (in the pop-culture sense of the word), analytical leanings toward broadly-arching patterns. The second seems to be from one's heritage. It is very difficult for one to differ from the way one was brought up. Children tend to reflect their parents, and so if they are of political leaders, then they are prone to have qualities that predispose them also towards political leadership in the future.

I've thought a lot about mindsets in the past, so it is little news to me about what my mindsets are. Considering heritage, I decided to come back to what could be seen as strengths for future pursuits.

Ancestral Traits / Dynamics:

• Dynamic: Reason and Emotion
  
  • Strong in depth of reason
  • Weak in depth of emotion
• Strong System Awareness
  
  • Strong general understanding of groups of at least ~100 people\
  • Strong analytical ability of organizational matters / issues
• Political Intelligence
  
  • Ability to represent groups of at least ~100 people
  • Ability to track political dynamics of small groups
• Dynamic: Above the People (impersonal) and With the People (personal)
  
  • Strong in being above the people
  • Moderate in being with the people
    
    

After considering these, I came to realize that what inhibits me from being able to lead greater numbers of people, is likely the desire to maintain the dynamic of being above the people I am leading, while with them at the same time. Human brain capacity can only hold so much. Time is also not eternal. Increasing the number of people one is personal with will only lead to noticing generalities, and time will limit the number of people one can get to know on a personal level. This will all be very important in understanding potentials for future pursuits.

Origins of Genuine Emotion

Last night, my brain was very busy pondering the nature of emotion and what differentiates artificial emotion from real emotion. This thinking has come up before out of my impression from seeing fellow men who fake their emotions and are fine with it. Looking at such an act, I used to be comfortable with it, as it used to be the way that I saw that emotions could be expressed; by forcing what wasn't there and so to somehow create an emotional base out of nothing. But it seems according to my recent thoughts and impressions from seeing so many other people do it, that it doesn't work and that over the long term, it is still not genuine.

To try and communicate the impression I've been receiving, I'll give some examples. Usually when I'm in a crowd of people that are younger than me and who are engaged in something most of them attribute to high emotion, this impression is received. The only situation I've seen much of this occur in has been in faith settings, where fellow believers are trying with all their emotional heart to reach to God. In some congregations, the people seem genuine in their emotions, in many others; particularly Gen-Y groups, the people seem to be trying to force something that doesn't exist. In those settings, the impression is strongest.

Anyways, not to dwell on impressions that much; there's plenty of rational arguments as to nature of the problem I've described other than my personal experiential impression (but that is important). One idea that I'm becoming more convinced in, is the idea that emotions attributed to certain actions / places / people are created after having long-term experience with those actions / places / people. If this is true, then genuine emotions cannot come from experiences that are temporal. This of course seems incorrect because dramatic experiences clearly emotionally imprint everyone, but to me that seems because dramatic experiences are typically dwelt upon. Another supporting reason to this concept of emotion is that for the most part, emotions have their biological origins in being little more than strong neural pathways in the brain. Positive and negative emotions come from either going with or going against these hardened paths to some degrees. Other expressions that have mixed emotions could be a combination of going both with and against (or having some other kind of way of associating good and bad value to the emotions; I'm not sure, I'm not a cognitive scientist).

And so, the less experience one has with certain actions / places / people, but with a variety of actions / places / people, the less that person is likely to have genuine emotions. The more that one focuses one's time, thoughts, and energy into these actions / places / people, the more one will gain emotional attribution to them, and hence emotion will come forth while putting further time, thoughts, and energy into these actions / places / people (now, I've only defined emotions that are experiential; its quite possible there are other forms, but they are the ones I've been able to identify most easily).

So, in order to facilitate the creation of emotions, one must not look to take action in "being emotional;" that is, to say to oneself: "It is time to act in the emotion of happiness, so as to practice it, so that it will be genuine some day." To believe that emotions can be done, just like tasks can accomplished, is a misunderstanding of the very nature of emotions. To be emotional, one must put time, experience, and energy into what one desires to grow emotional in; and then emotions will grow from that. Again, emotions cannot be the focus of one's actions, otherwise they will not truly grow (if anything, the artificial concept of what one thinks emotions are will grow, but not truly the emotions themselves).

So, in order to promote the creation of emotion, one must give experience, time, and energy to certain pursuits over other. Neither a jack of all trades, nor a task-centric perspective will bring about the change desired.

Between God and Truth

I cannot think of as much to write in this post as the last one. Fear not, this isn't because I'm getting used to the blog; it's because for the past week, I've been with my family here, which has a way of unsettling one's discipline and focus of mind. So now, I return to write again with regularity.

A prominent thought on my mind of late, has been of purpose. That sounds general, so to narrow it down, it could be said that I've been thinking about what God has for me here. His direct purpose for me is something I strongly desire. However, this is not pursued easily because right now it is competing with a desire to know God personally. These two conflict because purpose is typically associated with knowing a truth or fact; something one can take and run with without looking back. Relationship is associated with not being independent of God in any circumstance. This example of relationship seems a bit in the wrong however, as it seems that God wants some level of independence. Yet, in something so important as one's purpose, I would imagine that being independent of God in that would be wrong. And so the issue remains: I desire purpose, but my definition of purpose is a truth that allows oneself act towards that truth without ties to the original source of that truth.

Existentialistic thought is very prominent throughout popular Western culture, and I am no exception. This is not to say that all of the individualistic traits of existentialism are wrong, but they do create this point of tension; especially in light of how I have lived and thought according to mindsets that support a view of existence that allows and even holds up (indirectly) a separation between God and man. This indirect allowance and holding up is perhaps what keeps parts of the church so tied to the issues that stem from this perspective.

Mostly, the indirect force seems to come from the belief that God is Truth, that man has been separated from God, and that this Truth should be pursued above all else. The issue with this is that Truth is almost always associated with Concept / Idea and not Being. Concept and Ideas are objects that exist in the Western mindset as something within the mind of an individual and therefore isolated. Therefore, it's not easy to stretch that internal construct to another being via a relationship. Furthermore, ideas according to this mindset are often ruled by logic and reason, which according to Western thought are also void of external connections.

And so, I wage war between these concepts; to find God hopefully along the way.

This Place...Like Any Place

As I've been down in San Antonio, I have been thinking over the experience of transitioning from the Midwest to the Southwest. Cultural homogeneity has been on my mind for a good portion of the time as I've noticed that there hasn't been much of any culture shock. I expected there to be at least some, and the absence of it has me wondering whether that has been a good thing.

Cynically, I can argue that the similarity in culture is due to the eroding of culture being defined geographically with the advent of a nationalized American culture due partly to the influence of this age's technology. There is likely some truth in this, but lately I've been wary of analyzing too strongly on the basis of technology; something some would argue I could be very biased in, since I have more experience with technology than most.

On the other hand, I can see a lack of sensitivity due to what has been lately, emotional inertness. I wouldn't admit this to anyone I don't know, since being in touch with emotions is all the rage right now. Still, the concept of being detached emotionally from one's surroundings seems highly plausible to me right now. With that, I believe it has been creating inner stress as I know most of my day I cannot use emotions too freely lest I start to lose productivity at work. And I do love my work, but I also love culture and being sensitive one's environs, so this creates some inner arguments.

Regardless, the concept of one place being like any place intrigues me because of its broader linkages. Most of these deal with the strong philosophical undercurrents in our culture of existentialism: individualism, love of free will, isolation. If you want creative exposure to the topic:

- Book: The Sheltering Sky
- Visual: Cowboy Bebop