Stuck in a Bind: The Internal Contradictions and Conflicts of Our Modern Age

By Latoya Abulu

Conflict. Confusion. Instability. Contradictions.

These are just some of the words to describe the state of social life and the world in the beginning of the 21st century.

Here, this book explains that the root of the problems lies at the feet of the philosophy of ‘deculturalization’ that underlies the cultural and ideological fabric of most Western institutions and thought, and whose unstable social effects are now fully materializing as time runs its course.

Deculturalization is explained as the contradictory phenomenon of the removal of cultural and ideological processes from society, while also being blind to and masking its own biased cultural and ideological foundations and ideals which cannot be held stably in society. This is done due to it eliminating truth in what is ideologically influenced and in power, though it is itself part of the same cultural phenomenon it rejects and tries to remove.

Traveling through how its contradictions affects social life, the Culture Wars, liberalism, individual anomie, community disintegration, capitalism, socialism, the left-right consensus, international relations, technological development, post-truth confusion, post-modernism and others, ‘Stuck in a Bind’, shows how contemporary society is suspended and stuck in a bind of its own contradictions around social relations, truth and power, and offers a solution of the way out.

However, this creates another bind:

Are those attached to deculturalization willing to escape from it and open up the floodgates of fundamental epistemological, cultural and political changes?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Latoya Abulu
• Release date: Aug 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005085438

Latoya Abulu

Latoya Abulu is a freelance writer and avid reader interested in politics, the environment, indigenous issues, and East Asian geopolitics. She has written for Asia Times, The Diplomat, Mongabay, Earth Island, The Ecologist, Fair Observer, Intercontinental Cry, Global Voices and others.Passionate about environmental and international stability in the world, she resolutely believes it can be achieved. You can often find her behind a pile of books or working in various countries around the world when she's not in Montreal, Canada.Contact email: [e-mail]

Book preview

STUCK IN A BIND

THE INTERNAL

CONTRADICTIONS

AND

CONFLICTS

OF OUR

MODERN AGE

BY

LATOYA ABULU

We’re stuck in the binds of contradictions of deculturalization, and in a bind of whether we want to get out.

Without an openly acknowledged ideological, metaphysical, ontological and axiological base to use as a grounding foundation - the ground - to answer and explain to others an ideal and belief that people can walk on, deliberate upon and convert to (as this would show that it is ‘constructed’ and is then ripe for deculturalization’s ‘deconstruction’), it must therefore push itself from the top and tie people into it in order to believe it. As they are suspended from the ground, they think they are ‘out from culture’ and uninfluenced by bias, but they are rather now blindly caught in the binds of contradictions of their own ideology and its upending social course, without an understanding of where they situate themselves and how to get out.

When the way out is presented, they are stuck in another bind: whether they would want to release themselves from the foundational narrative that creates their ideals and worldviews, and open up the floodgates of fundamental epistemological, cultural and political changes.

ISBN

9781005085438

EAN

2940162901563

Copyright © 2020

No part of this book may be reproduced or sold in any form and by any means without the prior permission of the author.

Book Cover: Graphic art vectors designed by Freepik

Some of the words to describe the state of social life and the world in the beginning of the 21st century are conflict, confusion, instability and contradictions. Increasingly, these words have made headlines and become the main subjects of discussion by social, cultural and political commentators. Among these many analyses have been critics pointing to liberalism and modernism as the root of the problem through their upending and disintegrating social and cultural processes, and offering tentative solutions of the way out. However, it seems that the problem may go deeper than this. On the other side of our trial to remove cultural processes as they are seen to chain individual liberty, is the operation of a wider cultural and ideological process we are bound into that masks and is blind to itself due our very relationship and perspective of culture and biased ideological and metaphysical perspectives.

Calling this phenomenon ‘deculturalization’ (or de-culturalization), a term coined by Ton Groeneweg, it is now putting societies and its social functions in deep and fundamental binds (Annex 2) as time runs its course through its webs of contradictions that transcends all spheres; reaping social unsustainability, breakdown of relations, economic turmoil and crises of knowledge and. However, though being able to point out what is behind our tangled web of contradictions produces a way out of it, it creates another bind. This is because it would mean a fundamental change in the way we currently relate to the world, and the insecurity of those, perspectives and institutions, that have been legitimized by deculturalization’s existence.

What is Deculturalization?

At the source of the problem is the inherent contradictions of ‘deculturalization’ that exist under the fabric of modernism, secularism and liberalism. Normally used as a word to describe the removal of cultural customs, norms, values, relations etc., typically by an outside dominant group, here it refers to the wider phenomenon ‘to deculturalize’ (‘de-culturalize). This means the process of removing and undressing cultural processes and biased ideological, metaphysical, epistemological, ontological, theological and axiological perspectives from a society, and being blind to and masking its own which it uses (Annex 1). It is a process that simultaneously disclaims and uses cultural and ideological processes.

Note:

The word ‘deculturalization’ specializes the discourse and makes it more precise to bind together and explain the shared phenomena and logic occurring under and developing liberalism, modernism, secularism, post-modernism, Marxism and other realms of Western thought and institutions.

In societies, movements and perspectives, deculturalization operates as a narrative that is against the operations of culture, ideological views, metaphysical perspectives, religion and belief systems, epistemological particularities, ontological inclinations or axiological positions – in other words, anything that shows an inclination of a biased and influenced thought (of being a ‘particularity’ and ‘constructed’) - as this thus demonstrates falsity and is an aspect chaining, submitting or outcasting the individual through power dynamics and hierarchies (conformity, the mainstream, the status quo etc.). However, as everything uses a cultural, ideological, metaphysical, epistemological, ontological or axiological conceptualization, new or old – (such as morals, values, beliefs, symbols etc.) including its own influenced and created in a strand of Enlightenment theory, an ideology based in particular Christian, Protestant beliefs and worldviews and drawing from European cultural beliefs and particular historical developments - deculturalization is based and utilizes past ideologies itself within its conceptualizations of the world.

When mixed with biased cultural and ideological perspectives and a particular Western ontological belief of individualism, it further forms its own new biased ideals, conceptualizations, or perspectives which cannot last as they ‘become beliefs’ and are normalized like those of the past it rejected. An example of its own ideological bias in its ideals is seen even the oppositional position it takes to certain past perspectives it disagrees with and tries to overturn or replace in society. This opposition shows its own biased positioning which is a position it is blind to and masks from itself in order to be true. Like everything, it is a positioning and perspective that requires a sort of thought, a predetermined and used metaphysical, epistemological, ontological or axiological view that has a line demarcating what it believes in or thinks appropriate or true, and what it doesn’t and would thus outcast.

Note:

Throughout this piece, the term ‘ideal’ is used not only to mean morals and aspirations, but all general beliefs, such as perspectives, conceptualizations, positions, principles, viewpoints, norms, values, preferences and phenomena, ranging from philosophy to fashion.

Note:

The WEIRD acronym (meaning, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) shows how particular minds (especially those that see themselves as un-particular, unbiased and unmoored - thus making them true) are informed by precise contexts and beliefs.

It is especially when comparing our thoughts, behaviours, ideals, beliefs, interpretations, perceptions, actions and reactions with other cultures around the world - past and present - that we get a deep sense of the way we are currently formed and influenced by our beliefs. We get a sense of our difference - of our own particularities - of the hidden beliefs and ideologies that form the way we think, see the world, interpret it and act in it. This is particularly true and pervasive when we get a sense of how deeply acculturated and informed even the most simple views we have taken for granted are, such as what constitutes reality or the concept of saying please, which are themselves based in ideological, metaphysical, ontological and axiological standpoints.

Thus, a) the wider deculturalization narrative is contradictorily a specific cultural, ideological and epistemological worldview itself that has been formed by a specific strand of thought in Enlightenment theory, an ideology based in Protestant beliefs and specific cultural historical baggage and worldviews, while b) the ideals, conceptualizations and perspectives deployed and created from deculturalization are also biased - as they utilize both the deculturalization narrative and pull from other external cultural, ideological, epistemological, ontological and metaphysical views, that are either pre-existing, newly formed or tied in a web of