Bloodless Coup

"Modernity, Weber said, is the progressive disenchantment of the world. Superstitions disappear; cultures grow more homogeneous; life becomes increasingly rational. The trend is steadily in one direction. Fukuyama, accordingly, interprets reactionary political movements and atavistic cultural differences, when they flare up, as irrational backlashes against modernization."
So "The trend is steadily in one direction," and the revolts against it prove this to be true. Is that like saying the revolts against the new Iraqi government are proof that it's succeeding?

If you are looking for someone to defend Fukuyama, or THAT silly books of his, you're probably commenting in the wrong thread. That issue of The National Interest that critiqued the first version of his "End of History" was devastating. I said that he thinks big thoughts - I didn't say I agreed with them.

I'm just struck by how arrogant it all is. A modernist (who believes spirituality is without value) call a jihadist (who believes the material world is without value only if it fails to serve the spiritual) a nihilist? I admit I have trouble with the jihadists seeking to destroy human beings who I see as creations of something greater that have potential spiritual value and the potential for spiritual growth. But rationalists and modernists are committed to the destruction of of all spirituality that doesn't fit into their context of reason and logic. It appears terribly arrogant in the context of depression rates that appear to be escalating without end and evidence that people with a spiritual style incorporating the influence of a higher power cope better with life's problems. If the spreading rationalism were the great end of history, then why aren't people happier about it?

Maybe because the asshole godbags are still in charge?

Man, I'm going to have to work on my fake provocations. Morris isn't getting his blood pressure work out.

And just by happenstance this popped up on the screen. Hmm, maybe not so conclusive after all, eh?

Binky,
The trend towards depression was going on while Clinton was Prez too. And I wasn't talking about prayer research (to paraphrase Fight Club, you have to accept the possibility God doesn't like those people). I was talking about research on spiritual style.

Rationalism and religion are both terribly arrogant in that they think they can put little boxes around reality and declare that they've found/invented "truth". At some level we all know they're both wrong, and yet we argue.

Morris this is just too funny - "But rationalists and modernists are committed to the destruction of of all spirituality that doesn't fit into their context of reason and logic." It's like you are suggesting that biologists (for example) spend their nights huddle in caves, taking part in cabals aimed at wiping "spritiuality" off the planet.

And I find the notion that people were happier before the Enlightenment than after it a bizarre proposition. Uh, how exactly would you know? And life under the Inquisition or the Mongols surely doesn't strike me as good times.

Jacflash,
Well said. My interest in this subject has led me to Bohm's "Wholeness and the Implicate Order," in which he gives a lengthy description of the process by which fragmentary (analytical) thought is mistaken for a fragmented/atomistic reality, and this reality is mirrored by the environment (including a person's world view and perception of self) which responds by becoming increasingly fragmented. In this sense, jihadism could be viewed as seeking simplicity by destroying that which in material reality does not correspond to its spiritual reality, though of course this solution comes from mistakenly perceiving only some parts of this world as "God's world."
My dear brother,
I would not suggest that the destruction of spirituality is sought in secret by rationalists, it's done in the great wide open. The debate on evolution is nothing but proof of this, in which scientists have brought their forces to bear (the list of 1800) against the threat posed by alternate ways of perceiving reality, what Bohm would likely call yet another case of mistaking a theory for the whole truth of all reality, rather than seeing it as a way of thinking about a part of reality that is adequate within a certain context from a certain perspective.

A few weeks of wrestling with Bohm's work does tend to make everything else look silly, or at least incomplete. I wonder if he'll ever be widely taught -- for him to be taken seriously on a mass scale would require the slaughter of an awful lot of sacred cows. On the other hand, that might lead to the "End of History". Somewhere the Buddha is laughing.