ECONOMICS, MODERNISM, AND CIVILISATION:
LATE CRITICAL THESES ON THE TRANS-ANTHROPIC EPIPHANY OF SPECIES-ETHICS AND THE IMMANENT CLIMACTERIC OF MODERNISM

Rajani Kanth

The European Enlightenment sanctified the domain of the material interests, supplanting the hoary paradigm of primal affections that ruled the world for millennia.

I. We stand today on the brink of several extinctions, the most significant of which is the legacy of the European Enlightenment, which , for all its meretricious show of high Ideals, was the ultimate exemplar of Misanthropy, Misogyny, and Materialism unbound.

II. For almost 4 hundred Years, this Paradigm, which I title Modernism, has run amok, conquering Europe first, its Colonies next, and then the World, at large, afterwards.

Far from the expectations of the naive, this unbounded rationality of material interests did not harbinger an era of pacification of human existence, but indeed savagely disbanded societal forms, debunked harmonies, and destroyed ecological felicities, making this the most unstable and dangerous of all eras.

III. Self-interest, unbridled by Communitarian sentiments, contrary to the wretched fables of Smithiana, real and apocryphal, is NOT what binds us but what divides us , creating the Hobbesian, adversarial, universe we now cheerlessly inhabit. Euro-Capitalism has carefully and forcibly fashioned such an inhospitable world for us deceiving us into accepting it as natural, indeed as a ‘higher’ form of social existence.

IV. The real societal history of humankind , in contrast, has always rested on other , distinctly different, preceptual Metafoundations, taking Two General Forms, existing either apart or in combination.

V. The FAMILY, as MODUS ONE (immanent in the Tribal Form), has always been the eternal SOCIAL ECONOMY OF AFFECTIONS, nurtured by the FEMININE PRINCIPLE and bonded by the activities of WOMEN, despite (and within) the oppressive grids of PATRIARCHY.

VI. The STATE (typified in Empires) as the OTHER archetype, was the equally Perennial Abode of the MASCULINE PRINCIPLE i.e. Patriarchy, populated by Men, and their rank ambitions in the areas of POWER and DOMINATION.

VII. The so-called CIVIL SOCIETY , in Europe, arose, at least conceptually, as a MEDIAN FORMATION, hypothetically purged largely of Both these ancient drives , ensconcing itself instead in the banal sphere of the POLITICAL ECONOMY OF (self- serving) INTERESTS, i.e. GREED.

VIII. Not a society at all, except as pure ABERRATION, the eager propagandists of civil society nonetheless touted this novel version of the SOCIAL as Universalised EGOISM, as ‘Progressivist’ despite its provenance in the entirely negatively conceived notion of a BALANCE OF INTERESTS, a misanthropic, Masculinist, Hobbesian view that still dominates all MODERNIST formations today, and informs all of its institutions. It is this vacuous, and Meaning-free Social Form that is the Real Provenance of all the ANGST and ALIENATION as has informed European life since.

IX. POLITICAL ECONOMY, as the dismal Self-Reflection of this arid formation, is but the privileged Crown Jewel of the Hegemonic Ideology of this very Civil Society (i.e. MODERNISM).

X MODERNISM , the more encompassing Matrix Credo of
Civil Society, was itself erected on the Base METAPHYSICAL TRIAD of A) a near blind faith in SCIENCE, B) an eschatological, if self-serving and Triumphalist belief in PROGRESS , and C) a Philosophy of rampant MATERIALISM.

XI . The Emergent CAPITALIST SOCIAL FORMATION , taken
as a whole, was the undergirding STRUCTURAL DUAL of Modernism.

XII . As this so-called Civil Society expanded, the INTERESTS necessarily gained at the expense of the AFFECTIONS, MEN at the expense of WOMEN, EXPROPRIATORS at the expense of TOILERS, the MATERIAL LIFE at the expense of the SOCIAL and the NATURAL, the EUROPEAN at the expense of the NON-EUROPEAN, the MODERNIST at the expense of the TRADITIONALIST, GESELLSCHAFT at the expense of GEMEINSCHAFT, BECOMING at the expense of BEING, MONISM at the expense of PLURALISM , EFFULGENCE at the expense of REPOSE, the ABSTRACT at the expense of the CONCRETE, and APPROPRIATIVE DRIVES at the expense of CARING and CIVILITY.

XIII. In effect, Modernism , at its very inception, swiftly demolishes both the Ontic and Epistemic foundations of CIVILISATION.

XIV. Contrary to the hallucinations of the Enlightenment, however, real, ANTHROPIC SOCIETY is not a Balance of Interests but a Balance of Affections. It is held together by the seamless affinities of SENTIMENT, not by a presumptive ‘Division of Labors’.

XV. Thus, even a COMMUNATARIAN Intent , when conceived within an oppressive paradigm of MATERIALISM, like Euro-Socialism, devastates, surely and swiftly, in consequence of its metaphysical foundations, both Social and Ecological felicities.

XVI. As such, both European Capitalism and Socialism , the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Modernist Discourse, their separate and often lofty ideals notwithstanding, have succeeded only in bringing this fragile world to the very brink of disasters, known and unknown.

XVII. In sum, Modernism destroys, and absolute Modernism destroys absolutely.

The human prospect is bleak therefore and will not brighten until we re-embrace those simple, perennial, convivialities, , unmediated by the corporatist logics of State and Market.

XVIII. The Human Prospect today is bleak , therefore, owing to this Modernist Agenda and its implacable Masculinist vision of uninterrupted accumulation based on SCIENCE, MATERIALISM, and VIOLENCE (against women, workers, native peoples, dissenting minorities, and nature).

XIX. No Modernist POLITICS can find a cure for this malaise, left wing or right wing.

XX. Modernism can only be overcome by rejecting it altogether, not by internal reforms.

Women, workers, tribals and minorities outside the sway of modernist formations constitute the still standing Ontology of Cultural Revolt within whose matrix of nurturance we may yet discover the means with which to save this world from materialist depredations.

XXI There are many Strata, Groups, and Peoples only marginally incorporated into the Modernist fold , either for cultural, anthropic, or structural reasons; these are, in the main, WOMEN, WORKERS, TRIBALS, and various Cultural, and other, Minorities.

XXII They might be thought of as constituting a Perennial MORAL ECONOMY subsisting uneasily in the interstices of civil society, lodged within the Great Inclusive PARADIGM of FEMININITY, wherein rest the ever Affective Values of Care, Consideration and Consilience, upon which eternally leech the founding relations of Family, Kinship and Tribe: all our notions of Society, Culture and Civilisation are simply extensions of this Vital Paradigm of the SYMPATHY OF LIFE.

XXIII It is within them that the Seeds of Modernist Dissolution have always been nurtured: it is amongst them that the Great Rejection will commence, as indeed it already has.

XXIV In effect, it is the Philosophy of Materialism Unbound that is at war today with the Many Matrices of Nurturance extant in Anthropic society: the Mammals are at War with the Reptiles, the Primal Passions with the Material Interests, the Predations of Masculinity with the Regenerative Modalities of Femininity, Abstract Idealisms with Concrete, experienced CO-RESPECTIVITY.

XXV. Modernism will be overthrown and Materialism decisively rejected , for being both Unnatural and Asocial in the near, and contingent, future.

XXVI. The European Enlightenment was conceived within the Movement of a Great Philosophical Revolution, though itself of unrecognized Non-European Provenance, highly local to Europe; it will be overcome by an even more mammoth but Universal and inexpugnable Cultural Involution.

XXVII The Great Historical Irony is that the very SUBALTERN peoples, practices and affections , that an Arch-Triumphalist EuroModernism hoped to leave behind forever, are now awake and ready to engulf the Thermonuclear, TECHNOFASCIST , Regimes of Rational Greed.

XXVIII Humankind’s indelible TRIBAL (i.e. familial) nature, which Modernism ignores and derides, will reassert itself, and the primal passions , simmering beneath, will once again tether the vampire obsessions of its calculating cupidity. Contrary to our ANTHROPOCENTRIC delusions of grandeur, we will be yet restored to our true species-being, i.e. to our larger TRANS-ANTHROPIC Mammalian Family. The (vainglorious) Great European Divide between NATURE and CULTURE, but one of the host of perverse, Adversarial, Dualisms inaugurated with the Enlightenment, will thereby cease to exist.

XXIX Contrary to the Dualist, ANTHROPOCENTRIC , delusions of the Enlightenment we are, in Essence, but a Sub-Species of Hominids, self-glorifying MAMMALS, but vested with indelible Species Characteristics that we ignore only at peril. The human Herd is a Tribal formation corralled into Nations and States by the cupidity and cunning of Modernist predators.

XXX. This ‘Human Essence’ – our SPECIES BEING - is not primarily ‘social’ but is truly TRANS-HUMAN, belonging to the larger species nature of Hominids. It cannot be ‘realised’ in the vacuity of Modernist constructions, in either Civil or Political Society.

XXXI. In effect, Modernism is Alienation, writ large.

XXX. ANTHROPIC Civilisation , an extension only of our Trans-Anthropic Roots, is forever built quite simply on the foundation of the universal Anthropic , Communal ETHIC OF CONVIVIALITY: EuroModernism, in violent rejection of that Essentialist Paradigm of THE SYMPATHY OF LIFE, in Fatal Conceit, disdained that pedestrian truth: and now faces certain Extinction.

XXXII. As but a trivial sideshow to this Great Historical Spectacle, Political Economy, the last epideictic parapet atop the Great Berlin Wall of Modernism – separating humankind from its own essence - will succumb to the sweep of this species-driven , trans-anthropic, Transcendental Ethics.

XXXII. The MATERIAL LIFE will be restored to its true proportion, as a necessary , but mundane, complement/adjunct of living, minus the stultifying Reification it suffers at Modernist hands. No further need thereafter for an abstract ‘Economics’, the certain index only of our loss of control over the material conditions of our own existence: only Transparent , Expositive Communitarian Choices , with respect to pecuniary Means and preferred Ends, inspired by prevailing norms and respectful of larger Cultural Covenants.

XXXIII The various PRODUCTIVIST and/or CONSUMPTIVIST Paradigms of Modernism which demand the ever extortionist sacrifices of involuntary human Labors, to propitiate its incontinent, satyr-like, lust for gain, will yield to the more gentler, lambent , irrefragable persuasions of BEING , not BECOMING or DOING ; with LIVING – and the extension of the quantity and quality of LEBENSZEIT , Living Time – as the only, and possibly ultimate, ‘Meaning of Life.’

XXXIV It is only in these myriad latticed Matrices of Conviviality, that nurture our deeply Communitarian Natures, that we might yet find the diacritical potential for TRANSCENDENCE of the divisive Dualities – the bane of binarism! - that dog and deform the desperate drudgery of everyday life within modernism.

XXXV As such, the Project of UTOPIA is not one of Construction, or Invention, but rather the simpler one of RECLAMATION.

XXXV. However, the very real danger to all life forms today, even in the very face of this still unfolding Evolutionary Redemption, is the fact that, in its valedictory last agonies, Modernism may well destroy, not merely the baseline normative scaffolding of Civilization, but much of human HABITAT as we know it, even as this Planet , a living thing in its own right, fights back to restore lost felicities, defiled boundaries, and fractured balances.