Requiem for Modern Politics: The Tragedy of the Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millennium

by adminDemocracy

Requiem for Modern Politics: The Tragedy of the Enlightenment and the Challenge of the New Millennium

William Ophuls

Language: English

Pages: 336

ISBN: 0813335167

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


This long-promised sequel to Ophuls’ influential and controversial classic Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity is an equally provocative critique of the liberal philosophy of government. Ophuls contends that the modern political paradigm—that is, the body of political concepts and beliefs bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment—is no longer intellectually tenable or practically viable. Our attempt to live individualistically, hedonistically, and rationally has failed utterly, causing a comprehensive crisis that is at once political, military, economic, ecological, ethical, psychological, and spiritual. Liberal politics has abandoned virtue, rejected community, and flouted nature, thereby becoming the author of its own demise.By exposing the intrinsically contradictory and self-destructive character of Hobbesian political systems, Ophuls subverts our conventional wisdom at every turn. Indeed, his impassioned text reads more like a Greek tragedy than like a conventional political argument. He critiques feminism, multiculturalism, the welfare state, and a host of other “liberal” shibboleths—but Ophuls is not another reactionary neoconservative. The aim of his thesis is far more radical and progressive, offering a political vision that entirely transcends the categories of liberal thought. His is a Thoreauvian vision of a “politics of consciousness” rooted in ecology as the moral and intellectual basis for governance in the twenty-first century. Ophuls holds that a polity based on a renewed erotic connection with nature offers a genuine solution to this crisis of contemporary civilization and only within such a polity will it be possible to fulfill the worthy liberal goal of individual self-development.Ophuls’ work will interest and challenge a wide spectrum of readers, though it will not necessarily be well liked or easily accepted. No one will put down this book with his or her settled convictions about Western culture intact, nor will readers ever again take modern civilization and its survival for granted.

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Artificial means. In the process, the band grows into a tribe, and the chief becomes a "big man"—that is, a real ruler who possesses the means of coercion. And so the seed of tyranny is planted. The tribal ethic in which the earth belongs to no one and the fruits to all (at least Introduction 19 within the tribe) no longer holds: For all practical purposes, the earth now belongs to these "high chiefs" or proto-kings, who distribute the Fruits as they see fit. Naturally, the family, friends,.

Has not given the average citizen here more knowledge and control of his environment: on the contrary, it has only increased the velocity, magnified the complexity, and reduced the intelligibility of: public life, while furthe restricting the common man's access to relevant, information. As political scientist Langdon Winner says, "manifest social, complexity" has been overlaid by "hidden electronic complexity." In addition, the world is now so interdependent that events occurring elsewhere,.

Decades of television seem to have fundamentally transformed the consciousness of the American public, especially the younger generation. In 1968, according to journalist KikuAdatto, the average sound bite in network newscasts lasted 42.3 seconds; in 1992, a mere 8.4 seconds. But to perceive the world in less than ten-second sound and image bites is to begin to think in the same fashion: anything long, boring, difficult, unpleasant, or complicated becomes intolerable. And all sense of perspective.

Is therefore not the correct formula for achieving socioeconomic equality. On the contrary, more growth can only make inequality greater, no matter how high it lifts the general level of prosperity. Moreover, a society in which the avenues to success are few in number does not foster equality, because any one competitive arena offers real success and power only to the few. In other words, the smaller the number of arenas, the fewer the number of successful in proportion to the whole (and the more.

Of our age: it literally determines our social and political destiny. Technological decisions, especially those that are about the first introduction of a new device or practice, are tantamount to legislative acts or even to political constitutions, because they establish an enduring framework of public order. And the public order that we have established through past technological "decisions" is utterly antithetical to our avowed social and political ideals. Ultimately, concludes Winner, the.

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