Hypermodernity and Paradoxical Individualism

December 20th 2011

Hypermodernity and Paradoxical Individualism

1. Some writers like to say that the eyes are the mirrors of the soul. They are wrong: fashion is… at least in our 21st century society. Foucault has greatly contributed to shape our understanding of the consequences of disciplinary power on us through time. Modernity was the time during which things such as the rise of bureaucracy; institutions and other psychologically enslaving features were beginning to be openly talked about and criticized with hope for change on the long-term. Fashion has been used to picture and reinforce the disciplinary system established by society: people have had to dress in certain ways to “describe” who they were and what their societal function was. The postmodernist society has seen a different alteration occur; the mindset of people radically changed and the mass started to seek autonomy and freedom from those disciplinary methods and one easy way to pursue that goal was to do it through fashion: “fashion’s constant shifts result above all from a new position and representation of the individual in relation to the collective whole”.
Our rational ego relativizes and still wants us to believe that we are defending the “everybody’s equal” theory but the spreading fashion is a conspicuous signifier that directly contradicts our main belief without us explicitly realizing it, this is the strength of personalization. But it does not matter because the new ideology is one that lies in the present. Looking back to the past is poisonous and we should not waste time doing that at any time. To oversimplify the matter, I would say that the simple call for thinking might be considered too much; we shall live off from impulses condensed through fashion. Postmodernism has divided the functions of fashion into three categories: ephemerality, seduction and marginal differentiation. In a way, this reinforces the arguments I have been giving here above: ephemerality is living in the present; seduction is a way like another to fulfill some of our impulses and differentiation is in fact the unconscious reinforcement of the previously societally imposed class differentiation. In short, give the people some freedom and they will abolish your rules to reinstall them using different names. When Lipovetsky argues that postmodernity is the achievement of the principles of the enlightenment, and despite the balancing restrictions he highlights for this comparison, I am not sure if I really agree with him. In fact, I see the form as similar but the content is different. The humanistic approach of enlightenment philosophers would never be fulfilled with the vision of our postmodern consumerist diagram. To sum up, history repeats itself and sociocultural demarcation is not an exception. I am not sure if by any means we could stop this repetition from occurring but one thing is certain, it is not through capitalism that this will change. In the current system, people will always need to stand out from the crowd or to belong to a certain group. Hypermodernity just gives us more opportunities but we do not really beneficiate from them to go forward and make the most out of it and we always end up copying, in a way the old way of behaving. But one thing definitely changed: we became hyperconsumers and we consume even more than ever. Why? Because we can.

2. Hypermodernity is the result of tens of decades of mixed ideologies and theories that shaped a socio-cultural category in which some people, including Gilles Lipovetsky, think we fit today. I believe it all started with Epicurus, his philosophical research and the introduction of Epicureanism. It is incredible to look back and realize that the ancient Greeks already shared the same ideas as we do today and this also proves that ancient Greece’s literature is still a source filled with an incredible amount of wisdom and answers waiting to be debated and interpreted today in our “place the prefix you like”-modern society. Epicurus’ doctrine relied on the perfect balance between work and pleasure. Those who could afford it (and many were able to at that point of history, given the inexistence of hyper-consumerist structures) easily immerged themselves into it. But we know human beings, and their thirstiness for “more, always more”. And as Epicureanism was increasingly normalized as time passed by, the contemporary citizens of society began to look into hedonism. The historical root and nature of hedonism seems to be older than the one of Epicureanism but it has only truly been adopted as a lifestyle later on. I do not think that hedonism is reachable; it stands in front of one’s philosophy as a carrot is held in front of a donkey’s mouth to make him walk on. Contrarily to Epicureanism, which establishes and defines quite clearly an approachable way of living, hedonism is something that stands at another level, unreachable but ever-attracting human beings and their selfishness. The hedonistic culture was a lifestyle that has its own value, and its slogan soon became “Carpe Diem”. “Seize the day” not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow, everyday. Maybe but it still seems to be inclined in the present mode. Do not give too much importance to the past, and do not worry about the future. The source of happiness lies in being able to enjoy the present moment. Not only is this argument quite individualistic in the sense that it classifies the group relationships as another mean of reaching the inner satisfaction eternally sought in the “Carpe Diem” but it is also the perfect ally of consumerism, itself known as capitalism’s favorite motto. The reason why we have fallen into present mode adoration might be technology and science. In fact, I think that the everyday more accurate predictions that science is able to forecast are quite negative overall. We know about many global problems that we are far from having solved: world hunger, Ozone, natural resources, wars and catastrophes are only some of them. Once these concepts are fully grasped, it comes to a various amount of shades revolving around the modern society and the way in which everyone perceives it (whether modern, postmodern or hypermodern). Hypermodernity is one of the most recent theories defining the lifestyles to which we potentially succumbed. Personally, my main query is to discover if hypermodernity might in fact be one of the predecessors of neo-nihilism, as described by Taguieff. Are we still humanist? I would answer by saying that some of us might still be, but that our societal main ideology is attempting to get rid of that feeling and to replace it by some selfish hypocritical values that fit the system more effectively. In a world where “nothing enables us to discriminate between information and disinformation”, where media, our watchdogs are less independent and more corrupted everyday, the answer lies at the center of our heart. To sum up, hypermodernity is a step forward from postmodernity, which means that it is even further from modernity. This signifies that the consumerist behaviors have been replaced by hyperconsumerist ones that would fit the system even better. I believe that the main shift that has occurred is taking the contemporary man away from the social group he was classified into during the 20th century and brainwashed him, by sending him specific signifiers, so that he now believes that by the restriction of institutional power by authorities, he can become freer to live the way he likes. We have learned to stop worrying about the mass consequences and to focus on the personal level. However, this was meant to be the case and despite their few numbers, some people are still aware that this is an orchestrated capitalist move and they thrive to resist. I am not sure if it would be pessimistic or realist to say that if no real change is ensured in the near future, the media will end up converting us all.

3. There is no clear direction to follow in our constantly expanding world. Lately, the more we have evolved, the more uncertain we have become and therefore the most confused about the right path to follow. It is quite easy to understand as we have taken steps back from the mass culture and focused superficial attention to individual behaviors. “The era of hyperconsumption and hypermodernity has sealed the decline of the great tradition structures of meaning and their recuperation by the logic of fashion and consumption”. This sends us a message informing us that there won’t be any easy direction anymore as there might have been in the past when people fell into specific groups such as middle class, bourgeoisie or else. Today, the gap between rich and poor is widening and the attention is directed to the self rather than that issue. This also has a quite consequent effect on faith and religion: people believe less and atheism is flourishing everywhere, desacralizing all the forms of structured cultural sources surrounding them because of their potential influence on the self and therefore the shaping of one’s values. I am personally not seeing this as entirely negative as religion has indeed proven to be quite brainwashing in the past. However, there are some noble values and important signifiers lying in faith that can educate and help people to psychologically develop and become wiser. Lipovetsky also tackles the changing ability of people to forge opinions. By becoming more open to change, people might also become more vulnerable to superficial or negative information, which could be defined as disinformation. I agree with this claim and I personally have seen myself very unstable in terms of choosing sides in conflicts. For example, 9/11, man on the moon, pear harbor and other conspiracies theories have previously been efficiently shaping my opinion without any critical judgment and limitations from my own point of view. Luckily, in the past years, I have learned not to be so vulnerable and I have acquired skill to analyze given claims more critically in order to get the superficiality out of them. This example proves that the border between information and disinformation is very threatening and the lack of serious sociocultural higher structure to control and maintain it might be threatening the future generations. I believe that this might also be a result of the contemporary media, particularly because of the Internet. We used to comply with the system to receive information, in the sense that we had to read newspapers or watch television at specific times. Now, information is available everywhere, and there is no specific way of empirically judging it falls into information or disinformation. I see the future (and it is not easy to predict as I am myself, against my will, a product of the “seize the day”, enjoy the present motto) as falling into on of the two upcoming diagrams: First, we could become vegetables with a self-image of free individuals, easily influenced by consumerist propaganda. Secondly, we could eventually truly become free from external ideologies and realize that consumerism is wicked and therefore behave in a quite different way. The effects that this will have on political culture might please the current great powers, as it seems to be likely to shape the world as liberal on the long term. The reason is that in theory, increased individualism on the long term would lead to a decreasing attention for the group mentality and therefore a trend towards valuation of self-accomplished projects, entrepreneurship and such, believing that the government itself cannot bring much positive structure to the economy. However, throughout the development of this answer, the assumption that individualism was affecting every part of people’s life has been made and there might be limitations to its validity. Indeed, the fact that people might become more selfish in terms of consumerism to stand out from the crowd does not automatically means that they do not care about the rest of people and a more leftist ideology might nonetheless emerge in the future. The predictions are of course only assumptions, as every claim about the future is and only time will bring the answer. On thing is certain: we shall not forget about the future and the important actions that we undertake should analyze the consequences that this will bring for the future generations.