Modernist Lifestyle Patterns and Sources

The past several months have been very illuminating in understanding the properties of modernism (including its gratifications, pressures, and vices), and understanding my need to have distance from it due to my pre-modernism ideals. I have understood first hand the ways in which modernism as a way of life causes participants to support a system in unity and with all knowable efficiency even though its appearance is largely alien, but also ironically (though not causally) in which such a pursuit causes a regular need for gratification through equally-as detached sources. Before this experience, I had little empathy for people who seemed to be in endless pursuit of clean and packaged sources of gratification. In my past, I had heard statements indicating that such a pursuit of gratification was caused by modernism. Reflecting now, I do not think that is the case.

When considering what kinds of alien gratifications that are pursued, I think the nature of desire comes more to light. For the majority of society, indicated by the prevalence of this type of consumer good, all gratifications have their primary asset as sensual enjoyment. Cognitive or logical constructs (which are themselves modernistic) are a lesser priority. Since these sources are sensual, I think people pursue them because they’re trying to detach themselves wholly from a lifestyle that does not comprise of what feels natural to them. Childhood and upbringing for most is a particularly sensual experience, and it becomes the strongest familiarity (at least until later age). Entering into the adult world and being thrust forcibly into an industrial system opposed to the personal causes an eventual and inevitable mild level of rejection by those whose experience up to that point was primarily personal. The choice then for sources of alien gratification, sources which ask nothing of the taker, is ironic due to the nature of the item being alien (likely even created by modernism), but is caused by a need to re-acquaintance with what is natural and familiar. The reason people take this action changes slightly over. Those new to modernism choose sources of gratification out of rejection (hardly a choice really at all). Those who have lived longer choose these sources out of a need to detach from the modernistic system and attach to another; in the process adding to the irony.

Upon reflecting upon my reflections, I’m not all that sure what is written here is much beyond what I can be expected to understand. Coming from an intellectual background which promotes the idea that humans add practices and beliefs unnecessarily to their lifestyle (a non-denominational Evangelical perspective), it seems only natural to conclude that most people spend their lives in constant readjustment back to what makes them core; what is natural and true about them.

A good question therefore to ask of myself is whether there are new lifestyles within these modernistic systems that humans can adopt. Is it truly possible that mankind can evolve such that he is defined by something other than a core that for most people is derived from their childhood experiences?

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.

Abstractions and Learning

The Enigma of the Hour
- Giorgio de Chirico, 1910/11

Thinking about how irritating it is to acquire various abstracted perspectives on reality due to our alienating society because of its roots in modernistic-industrial beliefs.

Emerging Video Game Trends, Culture, and the End of the Hero

Since I've been on the topic of how society reacts to modernistic alienation, I came to think of some emerging trends in the medium of video games to be of interest to this discussion. An old model that has been used in video games for the past many years; likely since it became popular, has been to place an individual hero type against impossible odds. Most games, especially action games, tend to use this model where the power to save humanity is found in the one, singular hero.

With the coming rejection of modernity and its alienation therein, as well as with the events of 9/11 which arguably humbled the nation and changed its culture to seeing the real relevance of the dangers of a service-based economy that relied upon other cultures and nations, people have had to struggle with the structures that modernity has left. So, even though the postmodernists largely reject the previous culture for those reasons and the modernist choices that created the service economy, they still must confront the structures that have been left in their wake.

Confronting these alienating and proven dangerous structures (ala 9/11), video games merge into this with some of the emerging trends we're seeing now. As stated, the modernistic video game structure tended to focus on the power of the individual. A more postmodern view then tends to put more focus on the power of society, for the reasons just stated. An example of this is the game, Left 4 Dead. The game isn't quite the postmodern social game ideal in that it confronts these problems, but it is a step in the right direction. The game can be described as a zombie horror multi-player game. The relevance is that the symbols of human civilization; the unaffected humans themselves, are fighting a human, but unhuman force that is both confusing to understand and powerful. Both of these can be applied to having to confront a force that one is alienated towards because of a lack of understanding, and hence deals with the current cultural discussion.

Now, Left 4 Dead could be an important and used piece of media to discuss these cultural issues, and it may do it better than zombie multi-player attempts of the past. I'm not saying that past attempts were invalid, its just that Left 4 Dead may be getting significantly closer to the goal. The reason for this is that the opposing force, that which the players are alienated against, can be controlled not by humans, but by a computer. This is important because a computer can follow pre-described purposes and action relentlessly; just the way that these forces genuinely appear to do so in our current society. Human-based opposition is much less powerful because it can be seen that humans, even in the MMORPG world, have little sense of purpose and duty; they are listless and cannot focus strongly enough on much of anything enough to resemble something close to actual purposed pursuits.

And so, the emerging trend in the medium of interactive media (video games), seems to be that of putting together a group of players communally and pit them against a force that they are alienated against and that is relentless in its pursuit to destroy them. If you can't wait for Left 4 Dead, a game that may work similarly, is the Half-Life 2 mod, Synergy, where one can play as a team through the entire Half-Life 2 game, where of course, there is also a zombie-like force present; the Combine.

The Industrial Age of Government and Economic Systems

After watching a recent episode of South Park, in fact the latest one as of this date, I came to think about how it might be that a fear based on a distant, alienated understanding of some aspect of life, might come to be within the areas of economic and governmental systems. That is, how it might be that one can be frightened by an force of some kind because of a lack of understanding of that force. A good example would be say, people's natural phobia of aliens, if they came among us. As such, an force in which we have alienated understanding of, is frightening, and even more dangerous then is such a force that is malevolent. All these relations can be seen if one looks at the latest episode in how it comments on the recent economic meltdown, the nature of the United States' economic system being service-based, 9/11, and more details than I can think of.

Now, after considering how this alienation of understanding and subsequent real threat is tied to governmental and economic systems, I came to see that the Industrial Revolution not only applied to the sciences and production methodologies, but also to governmental and economic systems in America. The idea of modernistic alienation is an impression in the United States that existed after the Industrial Revolution took place. Typically in my exposure, this has been shown to have been applied to material goods and the sciences; the alienation is caused essentially by making the production of goods and progress in science dependent upon machines rather than actual humans. One cannot see as easily that which came from a human (production of goods) or can comprehend with the human senses (atomic sciences) that which is before them; it appears to be from machines.

The same impression of alienation exists in the United States' economic and governmental systems because the process of industrialization was applied also to them. For government, the leaders structured it such that it became highly reliant upon a system that allowed greater number of people to be governed using less actual people. A couple of illustrations that reveal how this was expressed is, first the increase in internal structures of organization in how government was handled (bureaucracy), second the increase in importance of citizens of following laws. These two expressions caused man to follow dutifully the intricacies of detailed organizational procedures and caused the populace to not be as governed by actual people, but by laws.

The industrialization of economic systems followed the same mentality of streamlining how a nation approached economics such that making profit, liking making products for the factory sector, was streamlined using highly mathematical systems. The need to keep progressing (a value strengthened greatly by the Industrial Revolution) is now so intrinsic within the United States' view of economics that it isn't acceptable to have a level market; but rather one that is always increasing. And so, of course, it is a crisis that a market would turn in an opposite direction, as it is now.

An important extension to the industrialization of economic systems that one should note, is that it led to the creation of the service economy we now have. This is due to the fact that people were already comfortable with an alienating system; a system that becomes more reliant upon people far away is less daunting. Of course, that sneaky alienating force that is built within such a service will make some people frightened, and rightly so, for we are reliant upon others who could easily destroy our way of life because we are so strongly tied to them; a modern Republican-esque belief. This extended idea could really be gone into more fully in a separate posting all together.

Difficulties in Objectivity

So, the other night, I had a hankering for looking further into a series of related topics that I tend to find interesting: globalization, and whether the United States' use of labor from other countries could be modern-day slavery (globalization of labor). This topic seems of paramount importance, simply because the majority of items that the majority of the citizens from the U.S. buy, are from other countries. The scale on which this is done today is likely greater than in any other time in history due to the United States having cheap enough technology and oil to ship imports at low cost. This novelty in history is important, for it bodes the potential to reshape the paradigm of international economics as the United States moves from being an industrial nation, to one that relies on other nations to provide services (a service-based economy). This does not mean that what is occurring is bad, but as in all things novel, care should be taken to watch out for misuse, and potential problems.

However good my intentions were, they did not prevail in bringing a comfortable new level of understanding to the topics. This inability to produce a new level of understanding is very important; for I came to realize two things. The first is of the need at times, to re-adjust one's source of authority; one's source of discernment about the happenings in the world. The second is of modernistic alienation.

When researching online, I generally am able to make new ground in topics because I believe I know how to discern good material from bad material (that which has a good foundation in the pursuit of objectivity; a method I attempt to employ often). This method of research often involves taking what someone is arguing, and to detach the person from the argument they are making, which then results in having an idea that can be taken and applied to more situations other than that which it was originally presented in; the person's original statements of argument. If someone has not presented their material in a objective, academic style, then I am not likely to even consider their idea.

That's enough of my method of research. What I learned from my experience in looking into globalization, is that I lacked greater understanding of globalization to such a degree that I couldn't read through content online and find myself able to understand the depths of what the people were saying. Based on my experience, it takes a very long time to develop an understanding if a layman attempts to read high-level material. One can realize this in practice: take a topic one is not an expert in, say politics. Even in reading a common newspaper article, if one does not have a decent basis of understanding, one will not be able to conclude the importance of why something is written. For example, if I don't understand the history of two countries, then news of them beginning a new trade agreement will not seem important to me because I lack the knowledge to know why it is important. These deeper threads can only be discerned the more one is aware of a topic.

And so, my traditional pursuit of facts can not proceed; I can't thresh out what I want because I don't have a basis to work from to gain the facts that I want. Perhaps that seems impatient, and perhaps it is, but what this has caused, is to realize that in order to, by my practical measures, to come to knowledge, I must change my source authority in my research. I can't seek to go through further mountains of information; it is arguably much more worth it to find a faster way. The change in authority that I found myself moving towards, was that of an existing expert that was willing to provide ample information so that a layman can come to understand the topic well.

Of course, any objective-style-loving person will observe that such a turn to another source of authority allows one to be impregnated with volatile opinion. This is true in many ways; one cannot easily separate the wheat from the weeds until one can see the weeds for what they are. However, such is the necessity of human life. What one can do is two things: observe how much the author submits to writing in an objective style, and then through that assume that what minor opinion exists, will not become too great a future inhibition to seeing the truth behind the opinion. Second, trust standards of authority; there really is no choice here if knowledge is to be gained in a timely manner. I have found myself leaning towards finding an author of a detailed, simplistic, and likely somewhat opinionated work. Essentially, this means a necessity in the greater trust of fellow humans; not something easy for an objectivist pursuit. Yet, I find myself turning this way more and more often. Whether this is is for good, or due to the winds of the culture, it is hard to say.

The second realization that I came to in attempting to research about globalization and labor, was the inherent feeling of an unnaturally high obstacle in trying to understand the nature of the problem. This feeling can be attributed to the concept of modernistic alienation, and it applies here well. The nature of an outsourcing market as the U.S. is having, produces alienation because more and more, the items being constructed are more and more often not coming from local sources, but far away countries. Understanding the validity of this economic system is far more hairy than talking directly to the salesman. One has no easy way to speak to someone who has complete understanding of that which was involved in the trade that resulted in bringing something as simple as a plastic doll over from China. The number of hands involved in its construction and the number of business agreements made to bring such a simple item across the sea is enumerable in appearance, nearly mind-boggling. And so, completely understanding the topic is woefully impossible in today's age of the U.S. being a consumer of global sources.

This causes great inhibition to even beginning to look into the topic; no doubt it stops dead multitudes more simply by its appearance. This causes me to bring to question a few ways to resolve this issue of alienation: begin relying upon something one hasn't before (assume something / rely upon something new as a truth) so that understanding can be grasped, spend much greater time learning the intricacies of the process so that complete understanding might be gained, conclude that the system is bad by its very nature. These three responses likely don't encompass everything, but they seem the most realistic to me.

Interestingly, but perhaps as a side-note for future topics, is that in college, many people seemed to claim apathy towards politics for how woefully complex and alienating the system was. Whether this really means that the system is too complex or that these were immature responses to problems that require time and discipline to solve, is another topic, but important to relate, for its relevancy.

Anyways, the complexities of pursuing a topic that is new as well as massively imposing by the nature of its function, is intriguing to me, and provides important insight into the nature of understanding things of novelty and complex nature.

Research Night - Energy Use Online and Offline

I originally started looking around tonight with the objective of weighing the ecological costs between electronic and (old fashioned) paper means of creating and keeping personal data. It seemed likely that there were environmental benefits for news and media companies who send paper to thousands, but it seemed more nebulous to discern whether personal activities that have involved paper would yield such benefits. Unfortunately, that will have to wait for another time. What I did find was interesting anyways, and it actually begins to solve half of the original issue.

As I started, the first piece of interest I came over was an article from MIT Technology Review. Mostly, it informs about how all the computer servers in the entire United States us up as much power as the state of Mississippi. Interesting, but not the right information to get into whether there are ecological benefits to using or not using such electronic data stores. Not knowing the amount of paper such servers have eliminated (and thus energy to produce such paper) compared to the cost of running them leaves us without a conclusion to current benefits.

Looking further, I came upon an article focused more on what I was thinking. A blog from the Los Angeles Times compares the energy use of new E-Book readers (iRex Iliad, Amazon Kindle) to that of traditional paper. Although more of a post about how an in-depth scientific analysis should be done, it is a good introduction in the dynamics at play, specifically by promoting that in order to understand the trail modern consumables leave, one must analyze its life cycle.

This didn't really satisfy my original goal, but it did lead me to thinking about half the problem; that of reading paper sources versus electronic. It wasn't hard then to find a detailed life cycle analysis of the said E-book devices and compare them to paper. Not that I ever have read articles from the ACS (American Chemical Society), but they did have what I was looking for. You can read it for yourself. If you're an avid book or newspaper reader, the analysis seems to say that switching over can be a good choice. Although this could apply to me, it doesn't yet. However, I do find myself reading articles online, which the analysis also addressed:

Reading online on a desktop computer for 10 minutes produces the same load on the environment as reading an e-book for half an hour, and reading online for 30 minutes has the same overall effect as reading a print newspaper.

I know I spend at least a couple of hours per day on my computer for personal use, and I know I don't browse through a newspaper's worth of information. For me, this is compelling enough to look into perhaps buying one.

After going over that, I kept searching online; now a bit more interested in how much of a footprint that digital journal sites use in comparison to paper. This is partly back to the main intention of the research, but also not; because online journals such a Blogger and Facebook are mass-distribution outlets, not designed for personal use only. Still, I did find an interesting article that shows a pretty theoretical comaparing of how much energy avatars in Second Life use compared to the average Human Brazilian. If anything, it seems like a good stimulus on the topic of the benefits and cost of the developed world's digital lifestyle. And, if you want something that's a little fun, you can check out this (apparently) cult-classic / historical blog posting about a cheeseburger's footprint.