It’s been a few years since we ushered in the new millennium. The twentieth century is fading in our
memories. Some of its images are not
missed; I can live the rest of my days without seeing another polyester suit
from the seventies – how did I see the bright yellow sport jacket as cool? But there are other aspects of the twentieth
century we cannot afford to forget. That
century hit untold heights of inhumanity.
It’s not that inhumanity was invented during the 1900s. Other centuries have had ample examples. But due to a couple of “advancements,” our
capacities to inflict harm, suffering, and death increased many fold. These changes included industrialization and
urbanization – products of mostly the nineteenth century – and a “crease” in
history. By a crease, I mean a turning
point from traditionalism to modernism, a process that began before 1900 and
continues today. It is even expanding
beyond modernism with its mechanical views of ethics and detached scientism.
Broad historical developments manifest themselves in a
variety of ways. This crease can be
noted, for example, in the number of European colonies around the globe,
particularly in Africa and Asia, attaining their independence during the
century. It is in those areas that we
see the after-flow of the tension between the biases and interests of the
developed and the lesser developed worlds.
Of primary focus are our problems with extreme religious groups and
their accompanying tribalism. On one
side there are bureaucratic social arrangements that present themselves as
legalistic rationalism that, to a great deal, have left behind as mostly
unimportant the concerns for interpersonal relations. At least, that tends to be the persona peoples
ensconced in traditional settings and see their counterparts in the developed
world. Yet, the chasm is heightening
with the developed world judging the other side as victims of superstition and
dysfunctional familiarity that serve as breeding ground for corruption in those
artificial nations’[1]
polities and businesses. Their polities
are not judged to be based on the rule of law but on whom you know.
That’s our situation today, but during the last century,
these countervailing focuses were found within “advanced” nations. There, we had the deadly concoction of the
modern advances – advanced technologies in killing – and the prejudices
associated with the traditional.
Preeminent was the role that racism played in the carnage of World War
II.
So, a central legacy of the last century is the ability to
inflict pain, suffering, and death and the unresolved tensions between
traditional modes of seeing social realities and the modernist and
postmodernist views of social organizations.
This is the context of our central conflicts. There are others, but this seems to be central
thus far in the new (or mostly new) century.
[1]
I write “artificial” in that many of these countries
are the product of borders drawn by Western powers.
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