TOP・UPDATES・FOUR PILLARS・CINEMA/TV・GAMES・MANGA/ANIME・MUSIC・WRITINGS・FAQ・LINKS
TOP・UPDATES・FOUR PILLARS・CINEMA/TV・GAMES・MANGA/ANIME・MUSIC・WRITINGS・FAQ・LINKS
Man puts the longest distances behind him in the shortest time. He puts the greatest distances behind himself and thus puts everything before himself at the shortest range.
Yet the frantic abolition of distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distance, by virtue of its picture on film or its sound on the radio, can remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not in itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness.
What is nearness if it fails to come about despite the reduction of the longest distances to the shortest intervals? What is nearness if it is even repelled by the restless abolition of distances? What is nearness if, along with its failure to appear, remoteness also remains absent?
What is happening here when, as a result of the abolition of great distances, everything is equally far and equally near? What is this uniformity in which everything is neither far nor near--is, as it were, without distance?
Everything gets lumped together into uniform distancelessness. How? Is not this merging of everything into the distanceless more unearthly than everything bursting apart?
Martin Heidegger, "The Thing" [1]
The above words were written in 1951. Could today's world have ever been imagined by Heidegger? In this essay Heidegger mentions examples of "all distances in time and space shrinking" such as the widespread use of airplanes and automobiles and the increasingly omnipresent and immediate diffusion of information via radio and television. These, of course, seem quaint to us in 2024 when everyone has a smartphone. But the effect he describes should sound quite familiar. Before any merely social, political, or cultural effect of modern technology, there is a profound ontological dimension to how it is changing the world we live in. When you come to understand its effect, you will realize that modern technology is merely the instrument of an ontological power that we do not control. But it is one that we have the agency to react to in the proper way. In this essay I want to address what seem like two opposing political ideologies and argue that both are faulty and harmful for our current age and our future.
The word "globalism" gets thrown around a lot. Usually it's used as a nice way of saying DA JOOZ if we want to be honest. This term gets thrown a lot for a very specific propaganda purpose: to make it seem like the ill effects of globalization are being directed by ideologically-minded indidividuals. The truth is much more boring, and for that reason much more sinister.
Everything around the world is starting to seem much more similar and much more lifeless. All big cities look and feel the same. They all have the same restaurants and stores. Everyone watches the same movies and TV shows (or, more accurately these days, YouTubers and streamers). Everyone speaks English because they all use the internet and take the path of least resistance which gives them the greatest ability to gather information worldwide. No one has a special attachment to their city or landscape. The world of "work" is increasingly abstract and capable of being transplanted. Travel feels pointless because you have trouble really experiencing any "culture shock" when everywhere is a "melting pot" of world cultures. Anything that is genuinely "cultural" is offered up to buy and collect like a little souvenir.
Some of this is probably inevitable. I don't necessarily believe it's all merely because of capitalism and greedy multinational corporations. The worst of it? Probably. But even if a Chipotle didn't open up in some small town in Siberia, some Russian guy who had travelled abroad and tried Mexican food would make his own restaurant. The whole world is now up and available for everyone. It can't be contained except by force. And even then it'll start leaking in. K-Pop bootlegs even make it into North Korea. Nowhere is safe.
And I don't think anyone is directing this. What is "globalism" then? It's how I refer to anyone who does not recognize the what is at stake in this abolishment of all distance. Neoliberal capitalism is as much a "globalist" ideology as Marxism and pan-Islamism are. All of them treat the whole world and all the people in it as fundamentally the same, as material to mould and effect. All of them foster imperialism and destroy diversity and uniqueness and the special spiritual powers of parts of the earth by forcing them all into the same cookie cutter shell. Heidegger realized this early on:
Russia and America, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and the rootless organization of the average man.
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics 1.29 [2]
In America and Russia, then, this all intensified until it turned into the measureless so-on-and-so-forth of the ever-identical and the indifferent, until finally this quantitative temper became a quality of its own. By now in those countries the predominance of a cross-section of the indifferent is no longer something inconsequential and merely barren but is the onslaught of that which aggressively destroys all rank and all that is world-spiritual, and portrays these as a lie.
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics 1.35 [3]
But Heidegger isn't talking about something that happens because a shadowy cabal of Jews organized it... even if most of his colleagues probably did, unfortunately. This tendency towards closeness is blending everything together and removing so much of the variety and richness of the human species. But no one is directing it. It's a force that we humans do not ourselves control, but can only respond to. How do we respond then? The unfortunate tendency in much of the world is to retreat back into nationalism as a way to safeguard against this homogenizing force. This is bad. Very bad.
The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life [4]
And since you cannot speak of national character without referring to large masses of people, it is impossible to be loud in your praises and at the same time honest. National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. If we become disgusted with one, we praise another, until we get disgusted with this too. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life [5]
What is in danger of being eroded by all of the above? What is it that we want to preserve? Diversity. We want to be able to travel to far corners of the earth and see places that are truly, truly unique and nothing like other parts of the earth. How is that sustained? Culture. But nations are not inherently tied to cultures. Cultures can survive while the nations they were born in die. Nations can die while the cultures that were born in them survive. Any culture worth its salt has roots that go back before a "nation" ever emerged around them.
Today's world is already too interconnected for any kind of nationalism to be meaningful. Anyone intelligent will abandon it. Nationalism is only used to fan the flames of war and justify tyranny. Nationalists are the ultimate NPCs. Nationalists are bullies who hate humanity. And they come in many forms. No one ever deserves to be defined by their country. Because all "countries" are evil. Nor is this limited to affairs between countries. I can't tell you how many times I've had a pleasant conversation with someone and I mention where I'm from and suddenly they feel like I'm somehow more "dangerous" or "scary" just because of a kind of "contamination" from the retards in charge that I didn't vote for. That shit is cancer and I hate it and we don't need it anymore. The inability to distinguish people from their leaders is neanderthal thinking.
There are too many problems that are global in character today (global warming and pandemics to name just two) for nationalism to be meaningful or helpful. Nationalism fosters competition, and when there is competition there are losers and thus more cultures that we lose and less glorious diversity to the human species. Fuck nationalism, piss on its grave, and leave it in the 20th century.
If we want to address global problems while not turning the whole world into a homogenous mush, it seems like the only way forward is to learn to peacefully coexist with people who are different from us--VERY different from us. It is not easy. But it can be done.
That said, what applies to relations between global entities (nations, countries, cultures, tribes, etc.) does not apply for individuals. We are not meant to be isolated from others, even if we all existed as peaceful individuals who respected each others' autonomy. The globalized world is no longer able to accommodate us as a meaningful place. The "nation" is no longer able to accommodate us as a meaningful place. But we cannot merely become individuals with no broader groups to integrate and find meaning in. We must find a tribe to belong to. We have an evolutionary need to do that.
Seeing yourself as belonging to a race or nation fosters hatred and distorts your capacity to love and humanize others. Seeing yourself as belonging to the "world as a whole" fosters mediocrity and destroys the possibility of diversity and uniqueness. But we have to belong to something. What is the way forward?
We are all deracinated and uprooted. Everything is now borderless. Traditional notions of distance and nearness mean nothing. All the lines have to be rewritten. If we want cultures to survive, they must be cultures of the spirit. New tribes that are spiritual in nature must be established. You will meet people from the US, from Sweden, from China, from Russia, from Brazil, from anywhere... and they will be your spiritual brothers in a way someone in the apartment next to you never could be. Before long someone could have lived their entire life halfway across the world but still feel a greater connection to some piece of land than those whose families have lived on it for centuries. The cultural bonds are all becoming spiritual.
Right now this is not sustainable because we are not purely spiritual beings. We need to be with a tribe that is in person and not just online. I don't know how. But it seems to me that if people are to recover the tribe in a peaceful, productive, healthy way, it should consist of some degree of intentional communal living. The only other way forward I see would be an unprecedented amount of evolution that makes us able to feel completely satisfied with merely online tribes to belong to. I'm certainly not there. The best way forward I can think of would be to find cultural values that are of the spirit and create communities on the basis of that. It's what I fantasize about. Until you all come join my commune and drink some totally-not-poisonous Kool Aid, this site will have to do.
1. Martin Heidegger [trans. Albert Hofstadter], Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2001, "The Thing," p. 163-164
2. Martin Heidegger [trans. Gregory Fried & Richard Polt], Introduction to Metaphysics, Yale University Press, 2000
3. Ibid.
4. Arthur Schopenhauer [trans. T. Bailey Saunders], Monadnock Valley Press, The Wisdom of Life, Chapter IV, Section 2
5. Ibid.