Another Day in San José

Well, I ended up being too lazy to go catch the bus yesterday to head back to town, so I bought the bullet and paid for another night at the hotel. I've just done a lot of reading and thinking - reading the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, which I found here with some public books that other travellers have left behind in the hotel, and which I intend to steal. I've felt too tired to really go to the trouble of exploring San José. Besides, it was Friday night and was just going to be some wierd party scene, anyway. I didn't have the energy to handle it.

Anyway, I've written a lot in my journal and I thought I'd share some of it here:

"[...] It occurs to me that it is an exceptionally difficult thing to come up with significantly fresh and innovative ideas. Another couple of things occurred to me today:

Existentialism has become such a widespread, accepted philosophy that it seems that the time for another major paradigm shift has come, as the Avant Garde cannot abide the masses being in agreement with them - I know this is true in my case, at the least. The time is ripe for a new great vision. Additionally, it has occured to me that it is most probable that historians will view September 11th, 2001 as a turning point for human history, and for American culture in particular. Given these two thoughts, it seems clear to me that I, as a member of the "Generation of '01," could play a role in defining the next paradigm shift."

Another factor occurs to me: This time around, more people than ever before will be both mentally and technically capable of real participation in this new world-shift. The development of email, the internet and other forms of rapid and low-cost publication [like this blog site] has put us in a position for a far more participatory discourse this time around. No longer a place of a small elite, virtually all educated people - and many uneducated ones - are now capable of taking part in the intellectual collective decision-making process that is always subtly taking place in human society."

Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" focuses on the idea that there are particular key moments in history in which change on a massive scale is temporarily possible. Human society, normally far too weighed down by the pressure of inertia, finds itself, for a small window of time, at a crossroads of possibility. In these times, humans must make a decision, consciously or not, as to what route they will follow."

These times, these peculiar and special epochs, are characterized by a bottleneck in possibility, by a crisis. The crisis must be such as to deeply challenge the prevailing social, cultural and philosophical order. These times must be defined as the time when "common wisdom" becomes meaningless, when the status quo comes to be seen as a false currency that cannot buy a future. The last such time, it appears to me, occurred in the 1960's. Before that, at least in the West, it was probably World War One [giving this more thought, I'm uncertain as to whether WWII was the same kind of event. I would have to ask my grandmother.]."

I believe that now such an epoch has arisen with the events of September 11th, 2001. Of course, the terrorist attacks themselves, were not enough to cause a historical key era. While deeply traumatic, the attacks did not, in and of themselves, cause this new crisis in human history. The key factor in creating a moment that demanded a paradigm shift was the Bush Administration's reaction to the national crisis. Bush's creation of the "War on Terrorism," his decision to divide the world into camps of "for or against," his decision to invade Iraq without the support of the major world powers, his decision to begin the suppression of civil liberties within the United States, and his constant maneuverings to undermine any authority that the United Nations once had, have thrust the world community to begin to question the fundamental nature and premises of a global order that could allow the current destabilization of the international community."

We are, today, at the pivoting point of history; we are experiencing the most severe crisis the world has seen since the 1960's. And, just as during the 1960's, we face not merely a political, economic and military crisis, but also a crisis of ideals. The frameworks, ideas and attitudes that preside over the Bush Administration must be questioned to their very core; and if we must throw to the dust bin of history everything we find in the present order: So be it! We will create ourselves anew."

The certainty, I believe, is that the world community of humanity will not continue blindly down the path that has brought them to this crisis. The solution cannot be religious fanaticism, be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish or otherwise; we have seen the effects of that madness. Our new vision can neither be one of moral relativism, as we have clearly seen that the moral imperatives of our neighbor rarely remain strictly our neighbor's affair. A moral system that calls for my destruction is one to be fought without mercy!"

Passivity in the face of aggression, it is already generally agreed, is not a value that will be incorporated into our new philosophical order. Violence, however, is to be questioned as a solution. While the 1960's, to some extent, produced a glorification of revolutionary violence, my generation has seen what these "revolutionary" fanatics do. We've seen the infidels jumping out of skyscrapers. We've also seen the bombed-out Afghan wedding parties and exploded civilian shelters in Iraq. Yes, my generation knows very well the meaning of "revolutionary violence.""

I see a new paradigm emerging: My generation says: "Stop this destruction and death that you commit in our names, as well as in the name of God. We demand this, not as pacifists - for we are not - but as people who recognize that violence is not a feasible or desirable way to create change in our world.""

Mine is a generation that has seen such obscene excess, in every sense. We have seen the extreme in collectivism, as well as the extreme in individualism, and both disgust us. We recognize both extremes as a smoke-screen for powerful elites to take advantage of us and our countrymen. We recognize that the individual and the collective are inseparable, and that neither can exist without the other. [...]"