(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Every era has its major or minor challenges and needs for change – they say. But today, the challenges appear fundamentally different than before. As in the full-speed plane heading for a rock wall, where the pilot is only now desperately trying to find the instruction manual for his vehicle's dashboard. All of us are participants in an all-encompassing metamorphosis into a world that is becoming increasingly complex and complex – cf. the title of the late German sociologist Ulrich Beck's latest book The Metamorphosis of the World. Even on the path to the abyss, we do not yet have the concepts in place to talk about what an appropriate layout of our lives on earth entails.
A new language
I Kældermennesker is it exactly metamorphosis author Carsten Jensen uses as a characteristic of the historical period we are now going through: a chaotic state where one no longer knows where it all goes. Difficulties in orienting themselves lead to widespread fear and anger without a parenting guide appearing. In this chaos are needed the words and concepts that can describe the new normal situation we are all brought into – a whole new language. In this language – which must also include a presence in action – sprouts must be found to see and move forward to the next stage in world history. Jensen notes that we need to reinvent ourselves and start searching for answers to why we are here on earth.
68-coup
What is happening to the eyes of us that we all know cannot continue? It is an order – a new religion – with demands for economic growth, which, after the end of World War II, has brought civilization into such a deep crisis that «the great transformation» represents a must.
The objective conditions for such a transformation are present today, including technology – but the subjective ones still remain. We saw this in 1968: Only the absence of international leadership made a paradigm shift impossible. At that time, there was a need for a top government that could match the coincidence of upheavals on three global fronts: the anti-colonial struggle in the so-called developing countries, the anti-bureaucratic struggle in the Soviet-dominated world, and the anti-capitalist struggle in the OECD countries.
In parallel with the commercialization of social life followed a brutalization of working life and a tivolisation of leisure life.
The window overlooking an extensive revolution which, however, had been open for some months after the October Revolution of 1917, remained closed in 68; the uprising even became the prelude to a major offensive from the establishment, strategically designed in the spirit of neoliberalism. With this system, not only was a revised economic model introduced with the marketing of the life support systems – it was a worldwide culture who was introduced.
Agents of neoliberalism
So massive has the simultaneous transition from the industrial to the knowledge society been that people employed in private and public companies have been subjected to a discipline with totalitarian traits. Employees and their organizations have been transformed into single consumers who, in a manipulative market, have been subjected to increasingly poor working conditions. Exposed to the scrutiny of social media and the lure of taking out bank loans in order to buy goods with a designed maturity and otherwise keep capitalism going, they have become a kind of isolated agents of market liberalism. Today, the consumer society is a worldwide lifestyle that, despite cultural differences from place to place on the planet, has exactly the same backdrop.
Thus, Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" was in fact the end of it the experience of being a part of history To be able to influence it or help to shape it. Our own power of action as a community then felt as if it had been laid in the grave, states Carsten Jensen.
Fragmented crisis
In parallel with the marketing of social life followed a brutalization of working life and a tivolisation of leisure life. The feeling of freedom only applied to the consumer. Countless were the attempts at societal reforms, but without it getting so far that these were put into the necessary system-critical perspective.
With the reduced growth rates, the welfare schemes that were possible during the economic upswing are exposed to pressure. Inequality is rising. Entire sections of the population now feel let down and seem to be captivated by the fears of the right-wing populists. In a period where there is otherwise a need to view the crisis globally and systemically critically, the crisis is instead fragmented into themes such as race, nation, class and gender. The welfare state comes under attack. Basement people – with reference to Dostoevsky's book of the same name – become in these contexts catalysts for bringing "evil" into the world, claims Carsten Jensen.
Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" was in fact the end of the experience of being a part of history.
The author refrains from making recommendations for a strategy for conversion, but nevertheless refers his readers to the optimism of the will (Antonio Gramsci) in the new opportunity that lies in the all-embracing catastrophe. "We" must come up with suggestions that it can be done differently, because if "they" win, we will all be losers. The them-and-us thinking is «the same as the recipe for our own downfall».
The basement man must join
But what is Jensen himself doing by exhibiting and distancing himself from the basement man? We must then "win" the basement man. And where do we have his bottom-up perspective with the formation of new inclusive communities?
We are facing an extensive healing work – on the environment, the people and not least social institutions that have had the growth demands of capitalism as a basis for existence. The right-wing battle brother, the modern consumer-fixated neighbor and the bank manager with the high salary – yes, also the basement man – each from its place must be involved in «the great conversion». Jensen could have clarified this. Humans must be won over to participate in this transformation and not be exposed to the various degrees of brutalization and tivolization they have been subjected to.
With global warming, all the people of the earth have a common problem. The task can not be solved as when the Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack transformed their industrial production into a war production and entered the fight against Nazism: the front can not today be drawn on any world map, as the war generals did then. No – today the war must be fought everywhere, and the front intervenes in every human being.
