Two ideas popped into my head at about 2 a.m. today and I thought that it would be best to write them down. They are somewhat connected, albeit loosely. I am still processing them, so they are more postulations than conclusions, but in the words of JBP, you write to find out what you think!
The first idea is that as a civilisation moves beyond its physicality, it begins losing its identity and the people within it also become more prone to losing their identities.
Western civilisation has moved more and more away from the physicality of industry and more and more towards a digital age of ideas. Things which have been traditionally physical, such as newspapers, money etc. have gone digital for the most part and have gone through process of stripping them down to their bare bones. The idea of a newspaper or of money is what remains.
Similarly, the idea of identity seems to be less tethered to the body and what it does. There is a popular description of things as social constructs and seemingly constant experimentation in that regard on the one hand, yet people seem to be in more identity crises than previously.
My suspicion is that this social trend towards disembodied identity is a response to the world itself becoming less embodied. Humans are, after all, a part of their world. It would explain why these ideas take root much easier among intellectuals than working class people.
The second idea is much easier to conceptualize, though I am not entirely sure if it is original. I think that western civilisation has an autoimmune disorder.
As information becomes more available, it seems that autoimmune disorders are linked to leaky gut. The tight junctions between intestinal cells are weaker because of some chemical process and so things which typically would have remained on the outside of the body (the digestive tract is actually a long tube through rather than inside of the body) are leeching into it. This seems to be tied, at least in part, to ingesting certain proteins like gluten in quantities which are too large and for periods which are too long. The weakening of these tight junctions and the leeching in of these toxins cause the body to malfunction and mount an immune response against itself.
Similarly, western civilisation seems to have ingested the ideas of postmodernism that there is no inherent value in its precepts and that everything is relative. These ideas are leeching into its institutions and these very institutions are malfunctioning and self-destructing by adhering to select values. e.g. openmindedness, intellectualism, markets.
Anyway, those are some crude explanations which are far from thorough I’m going back to bed.
Her Caribbean Legal Musings 