Saturday, March 5, 2011

WWII's biggest battle happened inside our collective conscience

History is written by the losers, not the winners - the winners have better things to do.

It is written by the losers with l'argent .

As a result, history's losers say that Modernity won WWII -  by defeating the forces of darkness that were the Nazis and their friends.

So why then was the film TRIUMPH OF THE WILL was replaced at the moment of victory by the film ... DOUBLE INDEMNITY ?

!!!!!!!!!

 Surely this must rank as the sourest victory pageant ever staged.

It rather casts doubt on just how strong a triumph for Modernity were the victories of 1945.

I argue that ,in fact , the unexpected events of 1939-1945 dealt Modernity such a severe blow that it never recovered.

 And that the last 65 years have merely recorded its slow steady death throes.

No where is this more clearly seen than in the concept of the unfit, a concept that held wide support among the world's educated middle class from Berlin to Boston and from Toyko to Moscow  for almost a hundred years.

But that concept 'unfit' was transformed - in the narrow Henry Dawson sense of that word - by the actions of the 'unfit' and the 'fit' during WWII.

Remember the unfit's ranks could take in not only most of humankind but also most of the planet's lifeforms and even most inanimate planetary activities like the weather.

You and I probably fitted into it at various times and circumstances.

So a change in the concept of the term was bound to change almost everything.

But pushed to the wall in 1939-1945 by the fit, the unfit unexpectedly bit back hard and Modernity itself faltered.

This was because the conscience of educated middle class was gradually badly troubled by the events of WWII.

Slowly but surely, its members became progressively less and less glib about making easy assertions that the world neatly (and permanently) divided itself into the fit and the unfit.

After 1945, PostModernity then slowly arose from the resulting  moral ruins....

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