I went to Reset Modernity! having already seen some of the exhibits through the Web. My response after being physically there is twofold. An abrupt one and a more gradual one.
I will speak of the gradual repsonse after finnishing the book that accompanies the exhibit.
1. The abrupt one was felt while seeing Pauline Julier's film "after" (though I had already seen it in http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k4x0cUe7J1ew4M4ELJ9)
I felt strongly something like the following:
"These people, the moderns, do not know well what it means to be a father or a parent. They speak about limits. As if a parent is a big policeman. But what about the sacrifices a parent does, the putting down of one's own self for his/her children, the kindsnees and loveingness of the parental relation? "
and then
"because they mix being a parent with being patronizing, they are not willing to take up the responsibilities and the beauty of a parent's role relative to other peoples, although they have catapulted themselves in this role relative to the whole humanity. Are not the moderns part of the parental unit (I use it in a similar sense that we speak of the Decision Making Unit in buisness) for all of the hybrid moderns of the world? To be a parent does not mean to demean the others in a child's role. It means to shoulder the growing of the others even along directions that the parent has not foreseen. Even more than their technologies, the moderns have left fatherless all those for whom violently they (the moderns) demanded to become their parents and guides, forced it on them, and then left them in a pseudo-fraternity"
"Because they feel they are too big for their Christian past, they feel post-Christian, they have lost touch with all the means that Christianity provided for setting properly the meaning of being parent, being teacher, being shepherd. Or perhaps what they had made out of Christianity was the basis for this next step. "
(which brought to my mind Bess McNeill in "Breaking the Waves". Bess McNeill is what the moderns will not be, in the face of terrors they themselves helped bring forth. They prefer Jan Nyman or the sailors, living Bess for the willing non-moderns)
2. I also thought. "She -the modern who speaks in the movie- found herself after the feast was over... Yes but the parents had left her a handsome income -though she still has to work to keep it- and also they left their "people" all over the world, part of the elites educated in the best western centers, people to take care of her interests, of their interests which are connected to "her interests", who have to remind her of the glory of her parents, who may perhaps one day find that they are the true inheritors of the glory of modernity in the face of a decadent Old World" (Sunday after Sunday the journal I read in Greece tirades against "metamodern supidities" and exalts neoliberal reason.)
3.The I asked myself: "You are part of a people that owe 30 000 Euro each. Your close family owes 180 000 Euro. How come you find yourself here, in the midst of Europe, contemplating in an exhibit about the moderns? It did cost much more than 6 Euro for you. And now here you are in the house of your masters. How come there are not here others who owe much less, Africans and Turkish and Arabs and ...?" I felt like a thief that have sneaked inside the beautiful European family. A bastard that wants to pass for a real son, one that they have not decided yet if they will adopt or not.
4. As time passes I recall the beautiful places I passed from, first in Germany and then in Belgium. I saw descency and I saw good people. It was as if I was living in a well ordered sphere, and I knew (all this project halped me to know) that there are different lines extending all around what we call "the crust of the earth" that allow for this air-conditioned "sphere" that the hard core of EU is. I thought to my self: "These are good people. But the times do not demand good people. They demand saints. (I wander, am I understood?) And moderns have abandoned this project".
5. I also think that on the whole the exhibit functioned on me along two big axis:
a) Procedure A (Relocalizing the Global)- Procedure B (Without the world or within) - Procedure D( From Lands to Disputed Territories). This confirmed my feeling of being asked to recompose "myself-together-with-others- in-the-world". I felt is as the "new Physics" of the exhibit, the new ontology of what really "is". But as in category theory in mathematics "beings" (me included) are experienced side-ways, they are experienced while in action, while entangled in relations. They are an after-effect that backfires to experience. I think that in Voegelin's terms one would connect this with the experience of a beginning, of creation (connected to myths of origin)
b) The Video by Julier - Procedure C ( sharing responsibility: farewell to the sublime)- Procedure F (Innovation not Hype). This creates to me the feeling of a call, the sense that within this turmoil we (humans) have a choice of disposition and the responsibility that comes with it since we can motion large numbers of other actors (technology is like church). I think that in Voegelin's terms one would connect this with the call of God that we feel in the ordering of our soul.
and Procedure E (Secular at last) is the point through which these two axis comminicate. The point that could energize them towards transformation. Or the point that transformation can fail through crime or indifference.
6. Where is the Earth in all these? What is the Earth? The Earth that is lived within, that cannot be seen from above
I think that the term "landing" is well chosen. I also feel that terms like "meeting again", "find ourselves sitting in the feast table" (I am Greek, we like participating in feast tables) "fulfilling justice", "freedhom (are they not, grandiose hopes, some of the worst masters?)" are relevant.
We will probably never land on Earth. The traditionalist in me sees in the image of landing on Earth the image of arriving to the heavenly Jerusalem. (is it so different if one ascends or decends?) The difficulty is not that Jerusalem is high up in the sky, for the kingdom of heavens is in our hearts. The difficulty is that the war with the "world" (till the second comming of Christ) is continual. Yet the tension of trying to land is like the magnetic field that can turn the compass of disposition.
I feel that the "if you knew the gifts of God" is balanced by the Luke 16: 11-12
So in the end the image that I have of the whole exhibit is this of a moving stillness. The machinery (exhibit) is there, but it works as a machine that stamped tension in me. And, as I go out, I have accepted a gift that will somehow play out and I glimpsed a responsibility.
I will speak of the gradual repsonse after finnishing the book that accompanies the exhibit.
1. The abrupt one was felt while seeing Pauline Julier's film "after" (though I had already seen it in http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k4x0cUe7J1ew4M4ELJ9)
I felt strongly something like the following:
"These people, the moderns, do not know well what it means to be a father or a parent. They speak about limits. As if a parent is a big policeman. But what about the sacrifices a parent does, the putting down of one's own self for his/her children, the kindsnees and loveingness of the parental relation? "
and then
"because they mix being a parent with being patronizing, they are not willing to take up the responsibilities and the beauty of a parent's role relative to other peoples, although they have catapulted themselves in this role relative to the whole humanity. Are not the moderns part of the parental unit (I use it in a similar sense that we speak of the Decision Making Unit in buisness) for all of the hybrid moderns of the world? To be a parent does not mean to demean the others in a child's role. It means to shoulder the growing of the others even along directions that the parent has not foreseen. Even more than their technologies, the moderns have left fatherless all those for whom violently they (the moderns) demanded to become their parents and guides, forced it on them, and then left them in a pseudo-fraternity"
"Because they feel they are too big for their Christian past, they feel post-Christian, they have lost touch with all the means that Christianity provided for setting properly the meaning of being parent, being teacher, being shepherd. Or perhaps what they had made out of Christianity was the basis for this next step. "
(which brought to my mind Bess McNeill in "Breaking the Waves". Bess McNeill is what the moderns will not be, in the face of terrors they themselves helped bring forth. They prefer Jan Nyman or the sailors, living Bess for the willing non-moderns)
2. I also thought. "She -the modern who speaks in the movie- found herself after the feast was over... Yes but the parents had left her a handsome income -though she still has to work to keep it- and also they left their "people" all over the world, part of the elites educated in the best western centers, people to take care of her interests, of their interests which are connected to "her interests", who have to remind her of the glory of her parents, who may perhaps one day find that they are the true inheritors of the glory of modernity in the face of a decadent Old World" (Sunday after Sunday the journal I read in Greece tirades against "metamodern supidities" and exalts neoliberal reason.)
3.The I asked myself: "You are part of a people that owe 30 000 Euro each. Your close family owes 180 000 Euro. How come you find yourself here, in the midst of Europe, contemplating in an exhibit about the moderns? It did cost much more than 6 Euro for you. And now here you are in the house of your masters. How come there are not here others who owe much less, Africans and Turkish and Arabs and ...?" I felt like a thief that have sneaked inside the beautiful European family. A bastard that wants to pass for a real son, one that they have not decided yet if they will adopt or not.
4. As time passes I recall the beautiful places I passed from, first in Germany and then in Belgium. I saw descency and I saw good people. It was as if I was living in a well ordered sphere, and I knew (all this project halped me to know) that there are different lines extending all around what we call "the crust of the earth" that allow for this air-conditioned "sphere" that the hard core of EU is. I thought to my self: "These are good people. But the times do not demand good people. They demand saints. (I wander, am I understood?) And moderns have abandoned this project".
5. I also think that on the whole the exhibit functioned on me along two big axis:
a) Procedure A (Relocalizing the Global)- Procedure B (Without the world or within) - Procedure D( From Lands to Disputed Territories). This confirmed my feeling of being asked to recompose "myself-together-with-others- in-the-world". I felt is as the "new Physics" of the exhibit, the new ontology of what really "is". But as in category theory in mathematics "beings" (me included) are experienced side-ways, they are experienced while in action, while entangled in relations. They are an after-effect that backfires to experience. I think that in Voegelin's terms one would connect this with the experience of a beginning, of creation (connected to myths of origin)
b) The Video by Julier - Procedure C ( sharing responsibility: farewell to the sublime)- Procedure F (Innovation not Hype). This creates to me the feeling of a call, the sense that within this turmoil we (humans) have a choice of disposition and the responsibility that comes with it since we can motion large numbers of other actors (technology is like church). I think that in Voegelin's terms one would connect this with the call of God that we feel in the ordering of our soul.
and Procedure E (Secular at last) is the point through which these two axis comminicate. The point that could energize them towards transformation. Or the point that transformation can fail through crime or indifference.
6. Where is the Earth in all these? What is the Earth? The Earth that is lived within, that cannot be seen from above
I think that the term "landing" is well chosen. I also feel that terms like "meeting again", "find ourselves sitting in the feast table" (I am Greek, we like participating in feast tables) "fulfilling justice", "freedhom (are they not, grandiose hopes, some of the worst masters?)" are relevant.
We will probably never land on Earth. The traditionalist in me sees in the image of landing on Earth the image of arriving to the heavenly Jerusalem. (is it so different if one ascends or decends?) The difficulty is not that Jerusalem is high up in the sky, for the kingdom of heavens is in our hearts. The difficulty is that the war with the "world" (till the second comming of Christ) is continual. Yet the tension of trying to land is like the magnetic field that can turn the compass of disposition.
I feel that the "if you knew the gifts of God" is balanced by the Luke 16: 11-12
So in the end the image that I have of the whole exhibit is this of a moving stillness. The machinery (exhibit) is there, but it works as a machine that stamped tension in me. And, as I go out, I have accepted a gift that will somehow play out and I glimpsed a responsibility.
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