Another issue of modernity that’s not-so-often considered
The most immediate level of our critique and advocacy has to do with vital issues such as injustice, inequality, discrimination, militarism, imperialism, ecological unsustainability, etc. The progressive program to deal with such is pretty common to Greens, socialists, Bernistas, and leftists generally.
A deeper analysis of the modern human condition recognizes the above as symptoms. Among the deeper issues are over-development, over-domestication, over-specialization.
The latter is rarely considered. At the current level of institutional and technological complexity, over-specialization is inevitable. It’s impossible for a person or a family to accomplish most tasks fundamental to the productive economy. Institutions have the necessary technological and operational resources. Lewis Mumford pointed out how they operate like machines, people being cogs within.
It’s even difficult for a community to be anywhere near economically self-reliant. That’s one of the reasons why community life has withered.
Mumford was the one to recognize the modern world system as a globalized productive megamachine having deep social, cultural, and psychic ramifications. He dated its genesis from five thousand years ago. The concept describes “the social and bureaucratic structure that enabled a ruler to coordinate a huge workforce to undertake vast and complex projects. Where the projects were public works such as irrigation systems and canals or the construction of cities, Mumford referred to the ’labor machine,’ and where they involved conquest he used the expression ’military machine.’ The term ’Megamachine’ connotes the social structure in its entirety.”
It’s powerful. From inception in Sumer, Egypt, etc. it spread and became ubiquitous. It’s the basis of modernity.
