Learn freedom: How to live in the new, postmodern world

Learn to handle freedom. Learn to enjoy it. Learn to grow in it. Learn how to swim in deep water. Breathe in and out and be happy with the new life.

Get used to parachute jumping without landing. Take a course in skydiving. Learn to speak another language, as if it is your native tongue. Learn to use the other hand than your usual one.

Learn to learn.

Learn not to depend on outer certainties. Learn even not to depend on inner certainties. Relieve yourself of being self-convinced. It may restrict your senses and your survival. Learn to be alert. The old jungle genes are patiently waiting to get re-mobilized into situational awareness again (see my blog on situational awareness http://petervanderwerff.blogspot.nl/2017/03/situational-awareness-conversation-at.html ).

Do you plan to resist the worldwide upcoming changes? Will you chain yourself to a large rock? The rock will explode or disappear in the abyss. Will you plant your boots solidly on the ground? A storm will rise up from the earth and blow you high into the sky. What, then, is the use of boots?

Will you cling to the biggest oak tree in order to survive the tsunami? Forget it. The oak tree will evaporate or jump into the air and open a parachute only for itself. Are you organizing a new social group to live on an island? The tsunami will make you all swim in the ocean.

POSTMODERNITY

Why is this fundamental reorientation needed? What the hell is going on?

Postmodernity is going on. It’s a worldwide set of trends and they grow in force. Social trends can have that strength.

And mind you, these changes in society, observable for each of us, are very different from 'postmodernism' in philosophy and art. Check the last two letters.

The overall trend of postmodernity undermines traditional forms of family settings, regular media, permanently employing companies, only one-time sales offers by companies, rather predictable markets, reliable banks and retirement funds, social welfare and health care arrangements, universities, trade unions, religious organizations, political parties and the custom of elections.

The rise of the video clip, with its fragmentation and rapid change of images, exemplifies postmodernity.

Nation states lose their clear demarcation with the growth of cross-border economic production lines, financial transactions, information, entertainment, migration, tourism and business.

National armies, identifiable by their generals and uniforms, transform into disguised guerilla bands, drone technology units, hired private armies, combat units of secret services and commercial bodyguard companies.

CONNECTIONS

These changes do not occur in isolation. They mutually influence each other. Together they constitute the overall trend that is called postmodernity.

In terms of social actors, the word postmodernity refers to both the contributors to the social changes and the people reacting to these changes.

Contributors to postmodernity are found in business and finance but also among IT pioneers, governments and armies trying to escape from exposure, children escaping from family control and migrants escaping from village control or poor countries.

How to see the reactions involved. A variation of the three Fs distinction may help.

FLIGHT

The loss of stable social structures creates deep uncertainties in many of us. Feelings of a nearing catastrophe are on the rise. The tendentious operations of banks and armies add to the bewilderment. Regular media overexpose terrorism to attract audiences while in terms of casualties terrorism is negligible.

For many people dealing with an abstract idea such as a trend is beyond reach. Planning to resist immensely powerful companies, governments and armies is also felt to be pointless.

One way out for the fearful is to identify less powerful people and turn them into scapegoats, including immigrants. Another way out is the romantic retreat into small-scale life and diving into family histories or the local past.

But is the world really caught in a downward spiral? No, not at all. Look at some facts. Diseases are more prevented than ever. Less babies die. Old people live longer. Less people get killed in warfare or other violence. Prosperity grows for most people and the percentage of people below the poverty line decreases.

The bewilderment, feelings of catastrophe and xenophobia can be reduced by understanding and dealing with postmodernity.

FREEZE

Willy-nilly or not, we adjust to rapid change, acquire flexibility, develop short spans of attention, shield ourselves off from an overdose of information and hope for the best.

FIGHT

Alternative lifestyles are abounding. Social networks in neighborhoods arise, inspired single issue organizations replace outdated political parties. Spiritual movements compensate secularization.

The Internet does not only reveals scandals but also provides solutions for better physical and emotional health, and opportunities for effective action.

THE REAL DANGER

Unfortunately, the large range of postmodernity keeps many of us from seeing the real danger for humanity.

Sure, there is a growing gap between rich and poor but for most people in the world prosperity grows. But the expectation that this growing gap will lead to violent protests is not confirmed by social research. Revolts and revolutions have other causes.

The real worldwide danger that we face is of an ecological nature. It constitutes, more than only climate change, the rapid depletion of natural resources. Stocks of groundwater, ocean fish and forests are depleted for nearly 70% already since World War II. Some depletions are beyond the point of no return. Did you know?

These depletions result from economic growth of about 3% per year. Population growth of 1% also counts but is on the decrease. Meanwhile, there are hardly attempts to stop or diminish economic growth and redistribute the remaining spoils.

So, what to do in our postmodern times? Consume less, learn to fly, keep looking around like we  once did in the jungle and enjoy liveliness.

A true democracy has no government. It is government

To put it radically, a true democracy has no place for politicians. People rule the country. 

Anything that brings this closer to reality, I welcome.

A true democracy structurally undermines leadership and generates management tools and knowledge needed to arrive at best compromise decisions, to be enacted by employees.

A true democracy structurally generates broad and free sources of information, and human capacities to aquire information and turns knowledge into compromise decisions.

What we want comes closer if we formulate it clearly.

How to explain and redress the matreatment of women?

If a society wants to reduce the maltreatment of women by men, it may look at how its child rearing turns the sons into cocky machos, male chauvinists, frontier cowboys, eternal Casanovas or habitual rapists.

This approach does not blame, it explains. It does not see mothers or fathers as causes, it sees kinship systems as causes. In that way it can be tremendously helpful. But it is not for sissies.

This does not mean anyone is to be blamed. It means we may look for an explanation. It does not mean to see women as the cause, it means to see kinship systems as the cause. In that way it is tremendously helpful. But it is not for sissies.

If mothers, in the emotional or physical absence of their husbands, have unhappy marriages, they may direct their love and admiration to their newborn sons. The baby boy may feel like a god who enjoys all admiration and servitude from women and takes it for granted.

But he may also feel unshielded against the overwhelming presence of his mother and builds up fear about her and other women. That fear can turn into rage against her and other women in later years. There you have the wide-scale maltreatment of women.

Once married, the man may try to stay away from an intimate relationship with his wife, and the causational cycle starts again.

Many societies show such a pattern, be with variations. Think of the matrifocal family in the Caribbean, soldiers or fishermen and their left alone families or widows, and the proverbial American cowboy leaving the woman he rescued for a horse ride to next adventure. Or consider symbols such as the both loving and murderous goddess Kali in India and the Madonna-whore complex in southern Europe.

So what to do? Zee that maltreating men live in fear. Disrespecting men cannot respect themselves, cannot love themselves. See and feel the kinship system as the repeating source of their fear or lack of self-respect and self-love. Improve their upbringing by breaking the vicious cycle. It’s up to the fathers and the mothers to change the future.

The call for strong leaders and looking behind screens: child rearing shapes politics

As long as parents and teachers install more structure, obedience and fear in children than required, instead of encouraging independent thinking and curiosity, the world will be populated by fearful followers.

Or the future adults will reverse the learned obedience and copy their bossy parents and teachers to, in turn, become restrictive bosses. The risky call for strong leaders and the shouts of would-be leaders will echo around at the globe.

But less noticable is the effect of discouraging independent thinking and curiosity in children that makes them reluctant to look behind the screens and under the surface. They will not see that successions of dictators or democratic elections do not change the power system.

Presidents of Egypt, Russia and Pakistan are rarely better than their predecessors. The Clintons and Donald Trump belong to the same elite who enrich themselves at the cost of the common citizens who mostly remain silent while obediently go on voting for one or the other member of the elite.

Trump a blessing, Clinton a curse

The emergence of Donald Trump is a blessing, because he is busy ruining the Republican Party and bringing the poverty, discontent and fear among masses of people to the fore.

The emergence of Hillary Clinton is a curse, because she looks good compared to Trump while she herself and many democrats are part of the power system that creates the poverty, discontent and fear among masses of people as revealed by Trump.

Olive oil, stomachs and Black Pete

When the Dutch went on holidays in southern Europe for the first time, in the 1950s and 1960s, many complained about the food prepared with olive oil. They really got stomach problems.

Nowadays we don’t hear of this massive complaint anymore. In fact, olive oil is used in many kitchens and sold in every common supermarket in the Netherlands.

Did the Dutch stomachs adjust to olive oil or did the Dutch lose their fear for something new and are their stomachs no longer affected by that fear?

The Dutch resistance against letting go of Pete’s blackness sometimes reminds me of the Dutch reaction against olive oil and the later incorporation of it.

Black Pete in the wide world

We Dutch have a lot of racism. A number of studies are showing this.

However, in that sense we are not an exception. The surprise is that Dutch racism runs counter with our name of aiming at equality, freedom, tolerance and democracy. This idea seems to be false.

Equality, freedom, tolerance and democracy are reserved for the original Dutch population. If newcomers do not assimilate into that Dutch culture they run the risk of getting socially excluded or seen as inferior. This is the paradox of Dutch culture.

In contrast to tendencies of exclusion and stigmatization, official policies were to ignore cultural differences and hope for foreigners to smoothly assimilate into the Dutch culture. But this assimilation did not work out fast and smooth and with the population becoming vocal, racism exposed itself more publicly.

Along with this change in Holland, there is a worldwide reaction against global integration, disregarding its material and immaterial benefits. The explanation may be that the reassuring sense of national identity gets undermined. Moreover, international affairs grow both beyond our understanding and beyond the control of national governments.

This creates all over the planet a rising fear. It is this fear that spurs nationalism and racism that, in Holland, disregard the culture of equality, freedom, tolerance and democracy.

And, in the next step, it spurs reactions against nationalism and racism. That is why radical social currents in favor and against the blackness of Black Pete are fiercely battling now.