Modernity's claim that "Might was Right" (and correct) is a significant expansion from the Bible's mere temporary linking together of the two separate entities, the Mighty and the Wise, for the purpose of warning of hubris.
Now, under Modernity, the Mighty were (and invariably were) the Wise, by definition, simply for being mighty.
"Hubris will write the definitions from here on in, thank you very much." (!!!)
To be wise is not to be the truth, but to be able to seek it out and successfully separate it out from the non-truth and thus to be worthy.
The wise could triage truth from non-truth, could put truth and non-truth in a clearcut, eternal and universal vertical hierarchy of worthiness.
In addition, by definition, to be weak and small (beings) was to be foolish, unwise , unable to discern truth from non-truth, unworthy.
Under Modernity, big nations would indeed have more Nobel price winners, per capita, than small nations.
But for Modernity, small physical nonliving objects like atoms were the core of The Truth, seen as something able to be reduced to a few simple explanations about the motions of a very small number of very small, very simple, very stable, objects.
Truth was seen as eventually being contained in a short simple all-encompassing "Theory of Everything" : a few laws of physics would explain and predict everything in the past, present and future Universe, up to and including the workings of the human mind.
Modernity's Universe of Worthiness saw a tiny number of very big objects (the Great Powers nations : perhaps only Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia) and a tiny number of very small objects (perhaps only the atoms of the most usually elements : oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and iron, because the others could be atomically transmutated upon request.)
First those humans and nations unworthy of life were dispatched, then plants, animals and microbes regarded as weeds and pathogens.
Finally all plants, animals and microorganisms were dispatched, defined as useless competitors, competing over limited space and valuable atoms.
Now, working on a surface as sterile and as wide-open as the surface of Mars, Modernity could really start with a clean slate.....
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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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