 I Do Not Want to be Modern!
Marshall Berman argues in his book “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” that, “To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and, at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.”
Are you wondering why I am dealing with the issue of modernity this week? There is something that disturbs me concerning the usage of the word “modern.” People tend to attribute positive meaning to being “modern.” Being “modern” makes you more “progressive” than others, and it even gives you the duty to lead the “non-modern,” that is the alleged “white man's burden.”
Modernity is a Janus-faced phenomenon with its dark sides and bright sides. All we have that makes our lives better, easier and more humane is the product of modernity. Enlightenment principles of equality and freedom and democracy are what modernity equipped us with. We owe the comfort of technological and industrial development to modernity as well. But what about the other side of the coin?
We are guaranteed rights and freedoms by the constitution, even though its distribution is assymetrical across the country and even within the same society among different groups. However, this does not change the fact that today we are living in a “surveillance society.” Every step we take is under the scrutiny of authority. Your entire life story is hidden in your national ID. Someone may push a button, and your entire life appears on their screen. We are being watched on street cams. Who can guarantee that somebody does not share my fingerprint, let's say, with the Canadian government, where I have never been , for so-called migration measures? The promise of freedom makes us more thirsty for freedom!
As important as the question of freedom is, the crisis of identity is what modernity has made us face . Human action has been an attempt to search for new gods since Nietzsche declared that “God is dead” in 1885. Modernist suggestion for the new god was science, but it obviously failed to make masses follow . One does not need to be an expert to see how people filled the space left by god by running for ideologies, nationalism, religious fundamentalism. Nationalisms gave a way to the rise of fascism. The rivalry on the basis of ideologies during the cold war brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Religious fundamentalists recognize no limit to go beyond. The global North is blind and deaf to the demand of the global South for a just global economic order. New gods are no better than Nietzsche's “dead god.”
Here I can not help but remember the poet Nazım Hikmet. He says, “We humans are the ones who both destroy and create in this beautiful world.” In another poem, he writes, “You are the stranger creature on earth, that is, even stranger than the fish in the sea. And in this world, this tyranny is thanks to you. And if we are starved, tired, covered with blood and if we are still being crushed like grapes for our wine, the fault is yours….”
Maybe, he is right. God is just you and me. We were the ones who created all these bloodthirsty gods and then became the devoted bloodthirsty followers. Is there not any chance to make the world a better place without the need of the idea of god?
BY GONCA ŞAHİN (IR/IV)
sahin_g@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
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