We believe that postmodernity is but one dimension of a broader process that encompasses all areas of world reality: globalization. Within this term we include the aspects referring to the economy, ideology, and social processes; we leave for «postmodernity» what refers to art, philosophy, and politics.
Globalization is an unstoppable process, we cannot oppose it, it is good that this integration of men, peoples, cultures, and civilizations is taking place, the problem lies in the how of globalization and not in the what of it. In the same way that Habermas speaks of the unfinished project of modernity, we could speak of an unfinished globalization, built solely from an economistic perspective in a capitalist version, but not from a human perspective. Globalization implies that man is radically guilty of everything that happens in the whole world. Before, we could take refuge in the excuse of «I did not know; what can I do», but today this is no longer possible, we have been left out in the open, we can no longer hide behind our ignorance or our uselessness. The metaphysical guilt of which Jaspers speaks has become moral guilt. There is no way of knowing that we are not responsible, there is always something in our behavior or actions that can be changed to alleviate the suffering of those excluded from globalization.
Postmodernity has brought to light those elements inhibited in modernity, the ugliness of forms and the patenting of the nostalgic impossibility of utopia. The postmodern is not something new but has been born from the very entrails of modernity, like its son, but a son who has defeated it, as Zeus defeated his father Cronus, after saving himself from being devoured, with the astute help of his mother. The postmodern moment destroys or deconstructs everything that modernity has carried out without leaving anything on which to sustain itself, therefore, only the vertigo of an absolute void remains.
The intention during postmodernity on the part of the factual forces that have provoked it from the financial power that governs globalization, has been that no one can appeal to reason or to the creative subject to propose something different from the global project that has been generated. If there is no reason to think and create an alternative reality, there will be no possibility for it, and history will tend to repeat itself inexorably.
The dissolution of modernity has taken place at all the levels necessary for the underlying process to remain intact. What has not changed is the process of appropriation of the world’s wealth by a few while the vast majority remains in misery or poverty. The victims multiply while the beneficiaries remain the same: a minority of the world’s five percent.
I invite everyone to read Matias’ post with the topic of the day
El Arbol de la Vida - Tercer Ciclo 