GATTACA is after-postmodern mythology

In 1997, maybe the movie Gattaca could seem strange, or just Sci-Fi, or not real, but now, in the after-postmodern times, it seems more and more real.

In the beginning of the picture, the couple that wants to have a child in the “natural way” is featured as a kind of “old fashioned people”, dressed in a kind of “pre-2WWar way”, or in a “modern”, or yet “old modern” fashion.

So, we can see that Gattaca is pointing to what comes next to that “old fashioned couple”, it is pointing to a “postmodern dream”: control and efficiency.

But the “postmodern dream” came in the “after-postmodern times”, and so it comes with failure in control and efficiency.

Gattaca shows an “after-postmodern mythology”, in a Jungian sense where “mythology” is something deeper than the apparent reality. The Greek myth of Procrustes is represented in an opposite way: the main character make some kind of surgery to stretch his legs, instead of cut it. That main character is a symbol of someone that trespass time and space, he comes from modern, trespass postmodern and arrives at post-modern times achieving his own dream of freedom, despite the supposed control and efficiency of a world dominated by gene-owners, gene-rulers, gene-power.

Innovation in after-postmodern times

Thomas L. Friedman, at The New York Times, March 30, 2013, wrote about Tony Wagner ideas. Wagner is a Harvard education specialist that said about his job today that is to be a “translator between two hostile tribes”, the education world and the business world. He said also that young people still need basic or academic knowledge, but also skills and motivation. “Of these three education goals motivation is the most critical”, If someone have motivation, he can get knowledge and skills continuously.

Traditional careers are changing or disappearing. Today someone can even create a new job, and so, can innovate.

Creativity and innovation can be the main tools for new business and jobs. Skills like communication, critical thinking and collaboration can be more important than academic knowledge. Wagner also said that the schools of 21^st century must change to teach all these goals.

We want to add “information” as a “transversal” element to those three cited factors. Information is a biologic, cultural, cybernetic “fluid” among all kinds of knowledge, skills and motivation.

We also want to add subjectivity and emotion. When we talk about motivation we talk about emotion and subjectivity; when we talk about innovation capacity we talk about emotion and subjectivity.

But, as Felix Guattari wrote, if we do not cultivate our own subjectivity it will be “cultivated” by some kind of “power” of someone else…

Anyway, After-postmodern is an “open space” for innovation…

A new step or an end of “galenic science” in physiology and molecular biology: a new after-postmodern paradigm?

Galen (c.130 – c.210 AD) was a Greek physician that lived in Rome and influenced occidental medicine for fifteen centuries.  Many of his knowledge were based on comparative anatomy. In ancient Rome it was forbidden to do autopsy (in pagan Rome). So, it was necessary to study anatomy of animals and compare it to humans.

In the 16^th century the Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) rebelled against the galenic anatomy adopted in the University of Paris and went to the University of Padua, where he could learn about human autopsy. So, he became the founder of modern anatomy based on the direct study of the human body.

It is interesting that sometime after that, in the 17^th century, the study of physiology started based on vivisection of Descartes and empiric science of Francis Bacon, both using animals and comparing to humans; maybe we could name it, in a certain way, a kind of “galenic science”.

Recently, in The New York Times it was published an article about a paper of Dr. H. Shaw Warren and collaborators in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That paper was about the misleading of research based on mouse model for at least three pathologic conditions: sepsis, burn and trauma. They found that the immune response of the mouse is very different of that response in humans. So, the response to the same drug is not the same in mouse and in humans. The genomic knowledge could explain that difference.

In the last decades new scientific and clinic knowledge brought new light to biologic mechanism of sepsis. 

It does not mean that any animal model is not anymore useful. But it is necessary understand better the complexity of the human body itself in its singularity, or even comparing to animals.

So, notions of Complexity, that was proposed first in the field of Biology in the beginning of the 20^th century, are now again necessary to understand peculiarities in a “transdisciplinary” approach of knowledge in several fields of science. 

  

     

G-zero of Stiglitz and after-postmodern

In Project Syndicate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote about The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this year. He remembered that before 2008 “the captains of finance and industry” could speak about a “new era of relentless growth” that could reach everyone since “the right thing” would be done.

Now that things are changed, the debate in Davos is not anymore the same. The emerging countries are not looking the advanced countries as they did before.

Economic inequality was the topic that concerned more the assembled leaders, according to Stiglitz’s text.

The meeting had more problems than solutions to focus, even with some good perspectives from the developing countries point of view.

International organizations that were supposed to solve the unemployment are in paradoxical conditions, between fine speeches and no action, or between questions of political unification and the hypothesis of each country search for its own solution.

Stiglitz concludes that today G-7, G-8, G-20 are not working anymore and we see now a kind of G-0 (G-zero), meaning the absence of leadership.

The postmodern globalization seemed very efficient before the crisis. Now it shows the end of efficiency.

Maybe the “G-zero” can help to work with new paradigms in the era of “after-postmodern” to find new bindings among human communities.

  

  

What word could replace “globalization”?

“Globalization” was one of the paradigmatic words in the apex of postmodern era.

It was a word carried with strong attractive almost magic meaning, suggesting a kind of “economic peace”, “end of poverty”, etc., although some movements opposed to it.

Now, in a crisis since 2008, what could be the meaning of “globalization”? Could it be “unemployment”?

Postmodern was an “efficient” time…

Is after-postmodern an “inefficient” time?

As Thomas Kuhn said about scientific paradigms, the time of a scientific paradigm is ending when it cannot answer questions or find solutions to problems.

Under this thought we could say that the postmodern paradigms are over…

People are running in circles trying to find solutions using overcome paradigms, overcome concepts that seems to be still efficient, because society is still working in several issues despite the crisis…

Maybe it is necessary to find the new paradigms… Maybe it could come from several different fields beyond economy, although together with economy…  

Social regression and after-postmodern shadows…

Each person has its shadow side where difficulties, weakness, faults, troubles, etc. are kept hidden or aside of day-to-day life. But that shadow has its own energies and sometimes it arises in thoughts, emotions and behavior. When two or more people live together comes a time when arise a kind of “collective shadow”, that is a result of intertwined minds, behaviors, fears and common believing. 

Through history mankind learned to deal with those energies in several different ways under law, religion, rules of behavior and respect to other people. 

In the first half of the 20th century, the world had two great wars and mankind had to deal with the confrontation with collective shadows. The horror of war awaked consciousness against the danger of global annihilation. 

But mankind always has some kind of ambivalence and paradox feelings…

In the second half of 20th century, at the same time that it was a fear of that annihilation, the science helped to develop more and more destructive weapons…and the post-modern speech was “efficiency” in every field…

In the transition between 20th and 21st century started to happen in several parts of the world situations of carnages and growing violence…

Now, in after-postmodern times, mankind should learn to deal with that kind of shadow… 

Are we having a regression in society to pre-historical conditions, or “pre-Hammurabi conditions”?

After-postmodern is open to complexity and complexity studies could help to deal with that shadows…    

Macroshift and after-postmodern

Since the end of 20th and the beginning of the 21st century the philosopher Ervin Laszlo talks and writes about “Macroshift”. He uses this word meaning an association of several big changes in the society in general, and even in individual lives, in a relatively short space of time. He felt that the macroshift was already starting and had an optimistic vision, even explaining the possibilities of different scenarios for the future.

After the historical occurrences of the first decade of 21st century, Laszlo adapted his ideas and wrote about the possibilities for the years from 2012 to 2020.

Those reflections of Laszlo indicate a perception about something that we call “after-postmodern”. “After-postmodern” is not only a time of transition or shift because we cannot surely say when that change will end, or when a new era start… Maybe “after-postmodern” includes even a time after the shift… After-postmodern time opens space for complexity; complexity can bring different notions of limits: there is not a fixed barrier between eras, they are intertwined.