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Postlocal Culture

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Postlocal Culture English summary Matti Sarmela POSTLOCAL CULTURE Finalization of development ISBN 978-952-99977-5-6 (PDF) ISBN 978-952-99977-6-3 (CD-ROM) Helsinki 2013 290 The English summary contains the general, theoretical chapters of the work. The actual text with references describes how ‘postlocalization’ is progressing in Finland. Contents of summary Foreword 291 Background notes Terminology 293 – Mechanism of structural change 296 Religion of development Hegemony of evolution 297 – Development mythology 298 – Development cults 299 – Guardians of religion 299 Towards postlocal culture Society of world citizens 300 – Culture of technosystems 303 Table 1. Three environment systems 301 Synopsis Postlocalization of Finland CONTINENT STATE Postlocal world economy 306 – Demise of the nation state 307 – Demise of nationalities 307 – Surveillance of man and nature 308 POSTLOCAL LIFE Demise of communal morality 309 – Religious entertainment 310 – Power struggle of gender groups 310 – Demise of marriage and family 311 – Free intoxicant use, permanent state of happiness 311 POSTLOCAL CULTURE Mobile citizen Creation of new man 312 – Man – miracle of consciousness technology 315 – Liberated world citizen 318 – Planet of herds 320 Digital society Cultural structures without boundaries 322 – Primitivization under way 325 – At the mercy of technomachinery 331 Table 2. Old and new structures 329 Appendix The Postlocal Era Structural change in a non-local environment 335 – Delocal society 336 – Postlocal future 338 – Will national cultures die out? 341 – What is the finalization of culture? 343 – Will local culture return? 344 Bibliography 347 291 Foreword This work is a description of the future, the postlocal era, when current development is completed, finalized, and reaches its end point. After it, a new era – and a new structural change – can begin. I will examine the changes in cultural structures and their natu - re within the scientific-technological world environment of the future. I will use Finland as my example, but the same development is taking place all over the world. The theory of structural change, which I have used for some time, departs from the assumption that culture is a comprehensive system, all the elements or structures of which are adapted to the environment of each era, to the possi- bilities and threats brought about by environmental change. The cultural environment is created by the technology used by man and the concomitant strife for economic and social benefits, a new environmental power. The foundation of the future postlocal environ- ment is digital data technology; the period of its dominance creates a postlocal environment, a global economy, and a planetarial, universal world culture. My writings on postlocal culture have not aroused the interest of debaters, because I lack a message of salvation or any one po - wer holder, upon which to lay the blame. To be credible, a meritocrat should be able to provide a declaration of new, wonderful de - velopment, a doctrine of how the future may be saved. Naturally, I stand with those demanding an end to the waste of natural re - sources and constant economic growth, if we wish to save man's living environment and nature. But these demands are not enough. Current development will not be stopped, even if some individual development paths were to be corrected through policy decisions. What is happening is a much greater, total process of change affecting the entire culture. My demands are for much greater things: the time has come for people to employ all possible means to resist the supremacy of the development religion, con - tinuous centralization, creation of the continent state, construction of gigapoles, and the ubiquitous surveillance culture now reac- hing every aspect of living. Above all else, those concerned about nature and the condition of Earth should make sure that the futu - re is not taken into the possession of those guardians of ideology for whom nature conservation is just an instrument of their own power. I am still unable to put forward a great salvation programme, but I do ask the readers of this book: why are you allowing all this to happen? I am of the generation that has experienced the greatest structural change undergone by Finnish culture to date. In my books and writings, I have traced the structural changes from Nordic hunter-gatherer culture to swidden cultivation, and from agrarian communities to modern state culture, both in Finland and elsewhere. In this work, I will examine the structural change of Finnish na- tional state culture towards a postlocal (global), universal world culture, the end point of cyborg culture, finalization. At times, I talk about the same things and even in the same terms as before. This is intentional. I do not believe today’s readers have come across my writings. Many europoliticians proclaim that there can be no postlocal culture and that Finnishness or Finnish culture are not about to fade away. My writings have followed a certain logic, a theory of structural change affecting culture systems, and before refuting my ideas, it should be shown to be incorrect. How could development religion, which has become the most powerful ideolo- gy in the world, lead to anything other than a finalized culture, a ubiquitous security society, within which man and nature are totally controlled by technosystems? The basic tenet of my writings is that as major structural changes progress, earlier cultural structures are not reformed or ‘repro - duced’, but a new culture creates entirely new structures. A new culture is a completely new system, in which old structures stop functioning and disappear. Culture does not consist of traditions, but adaptation to a future environment. Today’s cultural develop- 292 ment is adaptation to a boundless, placeless, postlocal environment controlled by ubiquitous digital technology that infiltrates everyt- hing. The postlocal (global) environment creates a universal, scientific-technological culture system, in which all the structures of the earlier local and present delocal (state) culture system lose their significance. Global computer centres and internet webs, smart cards, bioidentifiers, robots have made it possible to control a boundless planetarial economic and cultural system, which is centralized in ever larger metropoles, gigapoles. I am not talking about the magnificence of a world created by digital, nano- , bio- or space technology, but about the status of an ordinary, average world citizen, a scientific-technological cyborg with his mobile devices and implants, about the probable content of a virtual reality, about the non-material essence of a world culture. The laws governing change are centralization, structural uniformity and lowering of ethical standards, ever-present commercial cultural imperialism, a consciousness industry, the success of which is based on unlimited exploitation of the biological drives and needs of the human species. Today, we can witness the disintegration of the Nordic welfare state, the formation of continent states in place of nation states, and how possession of human life is taken by planetarial technosystems that control the production, technological development and future of their cultural sphere. The next developmental stage is the ‘billion state’, a techno-economic and administrative system en- compassing whole continents. The European Union is already turning into a federal state; it is becoming the United States of Euro - pe, the new Utopia of the euroelite. As the federal state is created, small countries like Finland lose their independent state agen- cies, even the country’s parliament has already lost most of its real powers of decision. At the same time, other collective local go - vernment is lost; Finland is undergoing a programme of running down its provinces, municipalities and parishes. Social and health services are privatized and turned into businesses run by global technomachinery, and before long the same process will be applied to the education system. In several European countries, national military services based on conscription have already been disban - ded and replaced by professional armies. The structural change reaches all details of present state cultures, people's lives, customs of the locality era, religious ideas, mo - ral norms, sexual behaviour. Along with local structures, the present marriage and family will disappear: procreation of citizens is ta - ken care of by a dedicated technosystem, which controls man’s genetic make-up, scientific-technological production of humans. Postlocal world citizens live in a borderless environment where the free mobility of capital, goods and labour has become reality. Man is a lonely wanderer, single, a precariat, who seeks employment all around the world, enters into ‘rotation marriages’, hetero , homo-, inter- and polysexual relationships of different age groups, mono- and polygamous families, lives in a state of unrestricted sexual freedom, in his own self-centred world of intoxicants and entertainment. Small nationalities like the Finns will vanish from the face of the earth, and the white race will be absorbed among darker-skinned peoples. Once there are no more moral norms, mutual trust between people will disappear, as will long-term relationships and commitment to communities; human relationships can only be founded on detailed mutual agreements. World citizens flock into common search engines, drift along in the temporary opinion, hate and worship herds of the social media,
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