Aphorisms on Modernity

Intelligence exists at various levels: individual, sociocultural, historical, instinctual. What makes a modern individual reject anything but what seems individual intelligence?

The alienation of the modern individual has a history beginning with the formation of the neo-cortex. To be "nature" is not alienating. To mold it, consciously, is the beginning of separation, the end of "innocence".

Innocence of a child, or of an animal, is the absence of its ego-self, its neo-cortex based identity. A child, or an animal, is more "natural" than an adult.

With the cumulative historical knowledge of the neo-cortex, and with its successes in the outer world (the power of applied thought), there is an inevitable growth in its importance.

This emphasis on the ego-self is an inevitable consequence of a world where thought is more important than feelings. You cannot be an empathetic being and beat the market.

As structured thought becomes more preeminent in its abstract and its applied forms, the other forms of intelligence, which are unstructured, lose their force.

Hence the modern man is amoral, not having a sense of history, rejecting the cultural mores, focused on himself, living for himself, and so on and so forth.

The breakdown of religion and morality is inevitable with the advent of science and technology, because religion and morality are forms of mass intelligence, whereas science and technology makes the individual more choice-capable and powerful. As you become more powerful, you will reject external power and influences.

Of course, indirect influences (which seem to bolster your sense of power and ego-identity) become more and more potent, without you realizing it. That is modern media, advertising, etc.

The collective and primal forms of intelligence are crude, and sometimes are at odds with individual wishes, as well as have contradictions within them (the primal lust being opposed to the religious injunction to be monogamous).

The disengagement from primal and historical forms of intelligence makes one an autonomous individual, but also, alienated and disconnected. What drives his choices now except hedonism (pleasure seeking) and narcissism (me and me alone)?

The breakdown of family, society, community, traditional religions, traditional morality, and the advent of the hedonistic-narcissistic modern man, is not the fault of an individual. And therefore, neither is it possible to completely reverse this, even at an individual level, by the force of individual will.

You cannot regenerate the potency of morality, once you are out of it and once you are knowledgeable about the evolutionary forces which shaped moral behavior. The force of morality depends on its mystique and awe-inspiring origins.

The fate of the knowledgeable man in the modern world is autonomy. Can autonomy be separated from alienation? Can a man live for himself, without illusion, and not feel the angst of absurdity and meaninglessness, inside?

When biological goals lose their importance, when survival and comfort is easy to achieve, and when social cohesion and objectives are no longer meaningful, the goals of living have to be invented. Each day, sometimes.

This is the emptiness of the modern man. There is no getting out of this. For someone whose neo-cortex is far too much in the know to fall again into the pursuit of a social or biological goal, emptiness (meaninglessness) is inevitable.

One can keep it at bay by distraction. By indulging in sensory and cognitive smothering. But not for long.

Some say: act as if. As if your actions have significance, even if at some level you know that they don't. It is the same as believing in God.

Beware of shattering someone's delusions. You may leave him empty (-handed).