Singularity and After-postmodern

Singularity is a word that is used in some ways not exactly with the same meaning.

In Medicine we can use Singularity to mean that we try to see each paciente with its individual characteristics. Other way in Medicine to use this word is to refer to the individual genetic code. Another way is to mix the both.

In Transhumanism, the word Singularity is connected to the individuality, but in a sense of the possibility of changes in the body, whenever necessary to keep alive, without limits. What can be asked about it is: where is the “subjectivity”? All those changes that happen are objective changes, not subjective.

In the 1980s the french philosopher Guattari was worried about “the end of subjectivity” in the West Culture.

Nowadays, in After-postmodern times, Subjectivity is coming back, because Objectivity is not enough to find and keep a meaning for life.

And we are trying to find the singularity of subjectivity.

The Crisis and "The End of Normal”

“To keep growing” is the usual way to look for the global economy, in global or local vision. However, natural resources cannot grow forever.

James K. Galbraith wrote about it and emphasize that the “normal” paradigm did not look for resources, but other variables as gross domestic product, work and jobs.  

In after-postmodern times, “normal” is not enough anymore for mankind to keep living well. Maybe we need to change the concept of “growing”. Maybe the “new growing” is a kind of “balance” that keep natural resources at same time that people can change its way of life to a better level, but without too much consuming and excessive accumulation.  

“Slow Medicine Movement” and After-postmodern

The standard of modern university was the University of Berlin founded in 1810 by Wilheim Humbolt. At this institution, for the first time the laboratory, that was inside Academies and outside the universities, started to be together with the traditional faculties. The Modern University had the ideal to make the “cultural person” and this model spread around the world.

After the Second World War, with the beginning of the Postmodern Era, the University became also “postmodern”. So, pragmatism, production, results, were the main objective of the university and not the “cultural person”.

Together with these two movements in history, the Medical Thinking and Medical Attitude had also two patterns. In the Modern Period, from 1800 to 1950, the Medicine was also idealistic, humanistic. In the postmodern era it became pragmatic, reductionist, dehumanized...

We are in a time of “macro shift” as Erwin Lazlo said. The first decade of the Millenium started with a time of transition, as we saw with the tragedy of 2001 and the crises of 2008. The model of postmodern times is exhausted. It does not work as before, even still working a little for while, as a transition goes...

We are in a after-postmodern era, with new paradigms arising. So, the postmodern model of medicine is changing. The Slow Medicine Movement is a sign of a new way of teaching and pratice of medicine. In some way is a return to the medicine of modern period; in another way is a new pattern to deal and understand the technical progress of medicine. 

About “The End of Normal” by James K. Galbraith and after-postmodern times

     James K. Galbraith writes in the book about the Great Crisis of 2008, “The End of Normal”, that there was a belief that “growth was not only desirable but also normal, perpetual, and expected”; and “the idea that unlimited growth and improvement were possible, with each generation destined to live better than the one before”.

     It seems to us that this kind of thinking is something original from mankind itself, something “normal”. In true, it is a theory invented by economists after the Second World War. This theory is still orienting many institutions, but in the After-postmodern Times it is not working like before.

    Someone could say that “the crisis is ending”, but we can see, for example, that the Brexit is not yet really resolved. We are in a transition from Post-Modern to After-postmodern Times.

     The growth based on competition maybe has to be substituted by collaboration.

     Theories (until 1970ies) about the beginning of mankind stipulated that evolution was based on competition. In the end of the 20^th century there were new theories that stablished “collaboration” (more than competition) as a mechanism for humanity to evolve: mankind needed to be together to face several difficulties.

     Maybe now we are discovering that we need to come back to a similar step to evolve again…      

Liquid uncertainty in current history…

The liquid modernity concept of Bauman is present in the after-postmodern times.

Modernity for Bauman can truly be after-postmodernity for us, because its liquid condition expresses more of something that is going through every political economic social cultural globalized localized event in the world, than the occurrences before de postmodern era of the second half of the 20^th century.

Liquid are comes and goes of the agreement among governments, comes and goes among several lefts and rights…

There is a liquid transition era with the paradox of scientific achievements still progressing…

Maybe human condition is leaking immersed in the leaking liquid of present days…

   

Pendulum of History in After-postmodern

If we take a look to the history of after-postmodern times, we look inside our own current history, our evolving history surrounding us…

It is not easy to have eyes to see the present in a big picture, at same time with some contextualized details.

The pendulum of history inside After-postmodern is moving quickly from side to side and it is difficult to know the near future.

The near future is less predictable than before, because we are in a Macro Shift.

Today the world is going to some kind of division; tomorrow this division will be no more and we will see a new kind of junction or coalition.

The only stable thing is the pendulum of history coming and going…

Post-globalization and after-postmodern part 2

   Post-globalization does not mean "no-globalization". Post-globalization means the current kind of "globalization" that we can see in the world. It is not exactly the "salvation" of the world by the free market that was thought in the end of the 20th century. 

     Even the political globalization, aimed in the postmodern era, is not present anymore. The new political globalization is a kind of aggregation of “micro-globalizations” walking side by side with a arising quilt of new economic globalization…

The real and inevitable globalization of the after-postmodern times is the human communication under the technology of information. 

   

After-postmodern intermezzo

The world is in a special transitional condition where everything is in a kind of a corner among several roads and people try to choose one of those ways, but they are stagnant, numb… 

That corner is a big corner, with many things that make difficult any decision. 

These things make a kind of maze.

The postmodern decided, pragmatic times are gone. It does not mean that it was better or worst. 
Maybe the “corner maze” is necessary for the after-postmodern…