After-postmodern “Pax”

On the apex of the Roman Empire, it was created the expression “Pax Romana” meaning the roman way to establish world peace under roman rules, mixing army strength and some level of tolerance with the local cultures. Pax Romana built concrete and symbolic bridges among several European e beyond cultures that resulted in some roots for many modern states and nations.

After the Roman Empire, other models of world peace came under different historical moments. Now, when we live a transition from Postmodern to After-postmodern times, we do not know yet what is going to be the new model "of and for world peace".

It seems that the After-postmodern “Pax” configures a new pattern of tools, a new paradigm of relation among peoples; now the main tools are becoming the dialog and the courage to go back and forth all the times necessary to practice more dialogs and more understanding. It is not easy and simple because weapons are still roaring, but we see that it something new is happening between war and peace in the world…       

Hypermodern times of Lipovetsky

Gilles Lipovetsky wrote about of what he considered a “third phase of modernity” that came after postmodernity. He calls it “hypermodernity”.

The Modern Period started at the beginning of 19^th century, with Industrial Revolution, Modern Science and establishment of Modern State. At same time that it was an acceleration of history, “discipline”, in a general sense, became stronger. It was also a time of dream and hope about possibilities of science and appreciation of ideals. The countercurrent of the scientism was the Romantic Movement.  

In the second half of the 20^th century the Postmodern Period was characterized by an accentuation on efficiency, results, individualism and less discipline.  The countercurrent of part of it was “the counterculture movement”.

Lipovetsky understands that in the last two decades of the 20^th century some characteristics of modernity and postmodernity improved and it was starting the “hypermodern times”. Together with hypermodernity came “hyperconsumption” and “hypernarcisism”. Lipovetsky thinks that one important factor of all that is the “logic of fashion”. Fashion started in modern times inside the aristocratic class. Step by step it achieved some level of society. In after postmodern times it reached almost all social classes, mainly in occidental world. In hypermodern times the “logic of fashion” was universalized and everything, or even everyone, can be a “product to consume”. So, the consumption became a activity by itself, under the desire of the consumer “to consume”. To be “up to date” all the time became a need, a commandment. This kind of consumption came together with a new hedonism under a feeling of insatiable pleasure, or insatiable aims of consumer. So, the impression of more liberty to buy  and choose actually disguise new kinds of discipline…   

  

   

Energy and waste in after-postmodern times

The unsustainable sources of energy are still working…

The sustainable ones are not enough…

Crisis is someway everywhere although sometimes it doesn’t seem too much.

The post-modern dream that hard technology could solve any problem doesn’t work so much.

We need new ways and new paradigms, creativity and initiative.

Maybe each one or each small community could take care of its own energy and waste.

It can be an “after-postmodern dream”, but we can see that step by step a kind of “delicate technology” is progressing in cybernetics or nanotechnology for example.

Maybe the power plants and the garbage solution can stay in the next corner ahead…

Social network, noosphere and new “mycro-revolutions”

Before the French Revolution, the meaning of the word “revolution” was a kind of “mechanical movement” like that of the Galilean Mechanics.

After the French Revolution, this word got the social and political meaning that everyone knows.

In the last decade of the 20^th century and the first decade of the 21^st century, children, teens and young people learned a new way of communication among them with and into the internet, mainly by social networks. That communication worked like a “neuronal network”. Each person made a new kind of exercise with fingers and muscles, with a new language that operated new “neuronal networks” inside each brain. At same time, all those brains, and fingers and screenings were connected by this new language.

At some point, all of those things started to work as a “big brain”, an “earth brain”, a “noosphere”. As any brain, this new “collective brain” activated “social muscles” to produce “movements”. So, through all the world appeared a new kind of “revolution”, maybe a “mycro-revolution”...

To understand “mycro-revolution” we need to find new tools…

Experts of politics and sociology try to apply old foundations to study new phenomena that are configured in new and unknown paradigms.

We cannot apply the word “revolution” to explain some social phenomena that happened before French Revolution, because that sense of the word did not exist. It could be an anachronism. Maybe we could say that “it seemed like a revolution”, but it was not quite the same thing. In that way, the “Scientific Revolution” of the 17^th century was invented after that new meaning of the word. Was it a true revolution?  

Maybe the meaning of the word revolution used in the last two centuries is changing, or going to be more complex, adding new meanings…

In after-postmodern era we must apply new concepts and tools to read the signals of “mycro-revolutions” coming from the noosphere of the earth brain…      

Big Data and Teilhard de Chardin

Big Data is, at same time, chaos and organized system. Apparently it is a paradox, but in a transdisciplinary vision it can be the both. The three pillars of transdisciplinarity can embrace that possibility: multiple levels of Reality, the logic of the included middle and complexity. The cyberspace has several “layers of Reality”, or we can even think that there are people behind machines and so we have the level of Reality of the machines and the level of Reality of people. In this way, each person can be a level of Reality. The logic of the included middle is logic beyond the traditional Aristotelian logic, and can embrace things that apparently don’t match, because the Reality is not reduced to just one level, the level where contradiction is present. Complexity implies that Big Data happens in an open field among disciplines and knowledges.

Teilhard de Chardin thought that evolution of humanity would achieve a level that he nominated as “noosphere”. At that level each human being could be like a kind of neuron and all mankind could be like a kind of brain; so they could be all connected in a new kind of link. The coming of the cyberspace could be the first step of something like noosphere. People, machines and Big Data can compound a new net, maybe a new collective thinking. The human mind is also at same time chaotic and organized, even continuing to be human mind. Big Data can be the current step for some kind of noosphere, even it is not quite the same as established by the French philosopher.  

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…