[This is Chapter Seven of
Murphey’s book Understanding the Modern
Predicament.]
Chapter Seven
In Chapter 1, I said that I would be looking at the modern predicament on three different levels. These would, in turn, place it in the broadest possible historic context, define its specific elements and look at the respective "worldviews" that have reflected the divisions within modern society.
The
first aspect was the overall phenomenon of human immaturity, which carries over
into our own day framing much that we do, but that needed to be seen in
long-term historic continuity if we were to avoid blaming it provincially upon
ourselves. This has been the subject of the first several chapters.
The
second level referred to the divisions that have existed during the past two
hundred years. We entered modern Western civilization richly fertilized from
the past. But we have faced the problem of immaturity in a unique way: the old
aristocratic elites have been knocked out and there has been a spectacular rise
of the average man into participation and predominance since the eighteenth
century. The fact that this is a problematical basis for a civilization is reflected in the skepticism voiced by so many modern
thinkers. Still further, our civilization has had to "find itself"
after emerging from an age of theology and status; and it has had to do so even
in the absence of satisfactory paradigms suggested by the past. The result has
been existential uncertainty, if not crisis. Both as a result of this
uncertainty and as an exacerbation of it, there has been a profound
socio-ideological division between the major social groups in modern society.
The intellectual has long been bitterly alienated from the broad middle class;
from there, he has gone on to form an ideological alliance with society's
have-nots. The consequence has been a uniquely bifurcated civilization with
built-in tensions and a dynamic toward change in a certain direction. The void
of existential uncertainty and social division has been filled with flaming
passions or by the apathy of meaninglessness.
Our
civilization, then, is not a settled fact, a final Being. It is a
Becoming, a complex and moving system of forces and interactions. These aspects
are what I will want to explore during the middle chapters of this volume, and
I will want to go into as much depth as I can about them. Then in the final
chapters we will take up several of the situations, which have resulted from
them in modern history, to illustrate the actual ways they have appeared.
The
third aspect was on a still more ontological level. It has to do with the fact that there is no
consensus about what the modern social reality really is; that there is a
welter of conflicting perceptions. These perceptions are not isolated; they are
organized into competing systems of interpretation, ideologies, and worldviews,
each seeking to put together a mediated reality that is comprehendable.
They interpret reality, but at the same time constitute a major part of the reality
they seek to understand.
In
subsequent volumes, I will review each of the major worldviews. As I do so,
they should be seen not just as bodies of thought, but also as both a major
part of and a product of the modern predicament. In large measure they spring
from the divisions. At the same time, they deepen the predicament because their
conflicting presence means that modern men are divided profoundly in their
perception of social reality; which is to say that they are divided as
profoundly as if they were divided over matters of religion.