On all sides, WWII (Modernity's War) was exalted to be the planned Triumph of Man's Will over the Ways of Nature.
But it hardly turned out that way did it?
There is little consensus on what exactly PostModernism is or is not , but all observers agree that VJ Day 1945 marked the beginnings of PostModernity ---- and the death throes of unreconstructed Modernity.
Actually I should say that is the academic understanding of 1945's consequences (few would disagree that Modernity finds little traction on your average university campus these days !)
But things are quite different down here at Ground Zero : there is little evidence that the Chambers of Commerce and the conservative Political Parties have ever heard about PostModernity's triumph among the thinking class.
For here at Ground Zero, practice is dominated by those who do (and deny) , not by those who think.
Man's Will is still expected to overcome, in the best 1930s style, any limits Nature may impose on Life.
Its not that Republicans and corporate CEOs totally deny there are any problems with our relations with Nature - far from it.
It is just that they steadfastly deny these problems - and others - can not be solved in time by Man's mental ingenuity, a little hard work and some cash.
World War Two should remind us that while Republicans,Soviets, Nazis and CEOs can govern more or less successfully in peacetime, war has a way of revealing the flaws in Modernity's Platonic certitudes....
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Why My Urgency ?
- Michael Marshall
- Nova Scotia
- Histories of WWII all start with the presumption that it was a war raged between humans and human ideologies, with Nature’s climate and geography as side issues easily surmounted.My blog, on the contrary will only accept that it was conflict between humans and their ideology that STARTED the war but that it was the barriers thrown up by Mother Nature (geography & climate) that turned it into a war that lasted between 6 to 15 years and expanded to thoroughly involve all the world’s oceans and continents. High Modernity may have started the war convinced that Nature had been conquered and was about to be soon replaced by human Synthetic Autarky and that only human Tiger tanks and human Typhoon planes were to be feared. But by the end, more and more people had lost their naive faith in Scientism and were beginning to accept that humanity was thoroughly entangled with both the Nature of plants, animals & microbes as well as the Nature of so called “lesser” humanity. By 1965, the world was definitely entering the Age of Entanglement. Billions still believed - at least in part -with the promises of High Modernity but intellectually & emotionally, it was no longer dominant...
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