Modernist Hangover in a Postmodern World: Why Enemies of Tradition in Africa Miss the Point.

Brief Analysis of the Effects of Globalization in African Society, With a Focus on Church and State.

Above: Lunch atop a skyscraper. Credit: source.

It would seem as though there are actually no enemies of what can be called ‘tradition’ in Africa. In truth, however, there are all sorts of forces operating on all fronts of Church and State on this continent. For a fact, this region of the world is usually placed alongside the Arabian countries and portions of South America in discussion of areas where ‘evolution’ of the mind is ‘quite slow.’ What this means is that fewer African, Asian and South American countries have fully embraced the agenda dictated by the New World Order which urges for a shift from traditional modes of life, thought and belief to modern, techno-optimistic and materialist ways of thinking, planning, acting and believing. In other words, there is increased manifestation of a deliberate attempt by globalist agents to influence decision vectors at the levels of individual, social, national and multinational persons, communities and entities, which will be anything but favourable to tradition. This is of course palpable at conferences of parties in climate change agenda, finance and planning, health and wellness, even religion— where for example one can cite the recent attempt by the Vatican to be a fitting piece in the European puzzle of policy frameworks on homosexuality.¹

The New World Order is not without cooperators in both Church and State. Some are willing co-workers with the enemies of tradition, relying on instrumental reason and operating on a positivist techno-optimism. Voltaire whose ‘philosophy’ is perhaps best interpreted as hypothesis non fingo (I don’t feign a hypothesis) successfully handed down his intellectual escapism to the current neo-modernist thinkers, who still suffer from the hangover of drinking from the winepress of positivism. Ofcourse world powers boast of technocracy which is a major source of financial muscle among other things. This is also perhaps the reason why by the early 1990s, the Soviet Union was embracing Glasnost and Perestroika. It was time to shift from being ideologically charged to real planning and acting in the world of economics so as to make as much impact as reasonably possible in the ‘delicate’ balance of geopolitical might. The bait of this power is so tempting even for the so called ‘third world.’

My own opinion is that things like ‘first world’ and ‘third world’ are merely different cosmologies aimed at presenting opposing ontologies of the human person.² In truth, there is only one world. Moreover, technology which is the application of science in solving human problems, is itself indifferent. It doesn’t constitute the measure of how ‘human’ is human. But then of course, we must observe that in those countries which have achieved high marks in scientific progress, there has been nearly equally destructive estimation of the value of the human person. To make concrete the abstract, Pope John Paul II himself a European so promptly detected this. He writes: “Unfortunately, this disturbing state of affairs, far from decreasing, is expanding: with the new prospects opened up by scientific and technological progress there arise new forms of attacks on the dignity of the human being. At the same time a new cultural climate is developing and taking hold, which gives crimes against life a new and – if possible – even more sinister character, giving rise to further grave concern: broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the rights of individual freedom, and on this basis they claim not only exemption from punishment but even authorisation by the State, so that these things can be done with total freedom and indeed with the free assistance of health-care systems.”³

No, what the world needs is not just scientific progress. It needs human values and these are communicated through tradition by which they are handed down with a propositional logic that perdures. There are those who are of the opinion that societies should change their values precisely because the world changes its experiments. You find them in seminaries, in universities and in government offices. On a side note, this has been hinted at before in what you might call ‘The Second Vatican Reconciliation’— meaning of course the ‘reconciliation’ between Church and ‘modern progress.’⁴ Now of course, every seasoned Churchman understands that modern progress as commonly discussed by missiologists, modernist theologians and Bible Scholars is just an ideological fad. It is an attempt to get the Church as well into trading its doctrine and changing it to suit whatever random experiments tomorrow’s world might bring.

Modernism as we know it, is basically the negation of all religion. Thus of course it lays the axe to the root even of African Traditional Religion, which was a protective frame for traditional values before the advent of Christianity to many parts of Africa. In the system that is termed ‘African Traditional Religion,’ one finds elements based on a becoming philosophy and even foundational doctrines that are cornerstones of revealed religion— such as for example the immortality of the soul. Hegel, Kant and Levy-Bruhl but especially the first of these hid behind the mask of hatred of ‘magic’ or ‘magical thinking’ to disparage, destroy and attack religion— for which purpose his rationalism is rarely pointed out as the source of his error even by the most seasoned of professional philosophers. Maurice M. Makumba for example scans the opinions of Hegel on Africa, citing the statement of the latter: “The only Thought, which Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of History, is the simple connection of Reason; that Reason is the Sovereign of the World (my Italics); that the history of the world, therefore presents us with a rational process.”⁵

According to Hegel, “in the Negro life the characteristic point is that consciousness has not yet attained to the realization of any substantial objective existence.”⁶ Makumba intepretes these statements and others by the likes of Levy-Bruhl to imply that the ‘magical thinking’ of religion doesn’t work. The Western societies are dominated by analysis of reality basing on atoms and other terms, while Africans still talk of ‘spirit essences’ and even God. In fact to substantiate the allegation of modernist leanings, Gaudium et Spes promptly explains that man has evolved or ‘moved’ from a ‘static concept of reality’ to a rather ‘dynamic, evolutionary one.’ This evolution is more palpable in nations “which already enjoy the comforts of scientific progress.” The document further states: “On the one hand a more critical ability to distinguish religion from a magical view of the world and from the superstitions which still circulate purifies it and exacts day by day a personal adherence to the faith.”⁷ Top this with yet another one: “Through his labours and his native endowments man has ceaselessly striven to better his life. Today however, especially with the help of science and technology, he has extended his mastery over nearly the whole of nature and continues to do so. Hence many benefits once looked for, especially from the heavenly powers, man has now enterprisingly procured for himself.”⁸

Let us however wind up an otherwise interminable discussion of how modernism has infiltrated the Church and invaded the State. What we draw from the statements of Kant, Hegel, Levy-Bruhl and ultimately Gaudium et Spes is that science should be the beginning and end, that one should no longer talk of ‘spirit essences’ but matter from which everything knowable can be predicated by science. Now we know that science explores how matter behaves in space and time, and for the modernist this is all that matters. Discussions on sin and grace then seem to be redundant, and this atmosphere is ripe for atheism upon which today’s State is typically built. There is no other way of understanding Comte’s assertion that man has evolved from the primitive stage (theological) via the metaphysical and will be actualized in the scientific, or Gaudium et Spes acknowledgement that man has moved from a rather static concept of reality to a dynamic, evolutionary one,⁹ and that“This kind of evolution can be seen more clearly in those nations which already enjoy the conveniences of economic and technological progress.”¹⁰

But who misses the point more than Africans themselves? They do not seem to observe that such statements attack the humanity of Africans and shred it to the core, because as John Mbiti has said, Africans are “notoriously religious.” For that matter it seems to me that the framers of the statements implicated above do not believe in the humanity of Africans.¹¹ Every “Prometheus like” attempt to make them evolve has met with colossal failure. Then what? Do tall ‘domino like’ buildings called sky-scrapers determine how ‘human’ is human? Must Africa change its values because the world changes its experiments? I think not. The world itself is tired of modernist hangover whether the seminary and university professors wish to continue day-dreaming and perpetuating the same falsehoods they themselves were taught. In truth, we find it true that postmodernism signifies (as a sign of the times) that the world is tired of modernists and their lies. One can find the application of postmodernism in critical studies in the West, but also in Africentrism.

Perhaps the death of modernism is obvious from a statement like this one: “If we are merely uncertain regarding what the institutional life-world is coming to, I would say that we are positively befuddled at the cultural and ideological level. But rising as Minerva from the ashes of contemporary positivism, scientism, and modernism, we find postmodernism offering to guide us. What a strange notion is postmodernism, associated first with movements in art and architecture, characterized by pastiche and collage. Then adopted within movements of literary criticism as a method of deconstructing text, and by so doing serving the important function of decentering interpretative authority from authorial intention and text structure to the subjectivity of the reader. More recently still, within the framework of social analysis, postmodernism has served two contradictory functions. On the one hand, it has abandoned the core principles of modernism by rejection of grand narrative, questioning the epistemological primacy of positivism and scientism and challenging the motive force of instrumental reason.”¹²

Apparently it doesn’t matter, and contemporary society doesn’t seem to care whatever statements the modernist narrative seemed to entail, which might undermine the truth one way or another. Perhaps this is why the youths want tradition even in the Roman Catholic Church, even if they often have to contend with selfish and manipulative powers that be. A re-awakening is not just in the offing. The world itself is simply tired of modernism, and only Churchmen suffering from a modernist hangover and addiction seem not to notice it. As for the State, it struggles with the minions of those who wish to serve the New World Order but that is as far as politics can degenerate. And so of course the globalist octopus is aware of hangover, the repetitiveness of modernism and the boredom it causes in the minds of youths. It is like the same threefold temptation which never becomes innovative, and this rule of confinement makes everyone tired. It seems then, that only tradition is innovative enough, and has the most appealing propositional logic that youths are coming to discover, to the discredit of modernism.

1. Pope Francis’ Fiducia Supplicans is hereby given as an example, among other documents and incentives that came about under his pontificate.

2. Thus the diametrically opposed positions of Western society to Africa or the Arabian lands on matters like marriage, the sanctity of life and family.

3. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (March 25, 1995), no. 4.

4. As articulated perhaps most eloquently by the charter that might be synthesized out of the document Gaudium et Spes, which Joseph Ratzinger called a “Counter-syllabus” (cf Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987) pp. 381-2), meaning that it is opposed to the indictments of modernism since Pius IX: “If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus,” he opined.

5. Maurice M. Makumbi, Introduction to African Philosophy, p. 38, cf Georg W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History.

6. Ibid., p. 39.

7. Ibid., no. 7. Here, the introduction of a thesis diametrically opposed to African values and traceable to Levy-Bruhl and his philosophical ancestors Kant and his racist colleague is obvious. My point is not to accuse an ecumenical council of using ambiguous terminology or supporting epistemic arrogance and Eurocentric hegemony. In fact, it is demonstrable that Karol Wojtyla (future Pope John Paul II) himself found a problem with the schema that produced this document and had to intervene, because a Marxist thesis was about to be introduced into the teaching of the Church. He complained that it should be deleted: ““Lin,. 29: est: « . „ et redigendo eos quodammodo in servitutem sub iugo propriorum operum ». Haec thesis, quae a marxista theoria de operariorum alienatione in capitalismo inspirata esse videtur, prima vice, nisi fallor, introducitur in doctrinam socialem Ecclesiae. Omittatur haec thesis, quia implicite ducit ad oppugnationem salariatus atque proprietatis privatae bonorum productivorum.” [cf Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, Vol. III, Periodus Tertia, Pars VII (Congregationes Generales CXIX-CXXII), p.382.]

8. Gaudium et Spes no. 33.

9. Ibid., no. 5.

10. Ibid., no. 6.

11. By the time Gaudium et Spes was promulgated, there was insufficient knowledge of African anthropology and values. Simultaneously, there seems to have been a cras ignorance of the operations of dialectical modernism, of the epistemic arrogance in rationalism and the craftiness of some philosophers where they hide under the guise of attacking primitive cultures to destroy the whole edifice of religion. My point then is that a whole ecumenical council could have used better expressions but it chose not to, definitely under the influence of the so called ‘European alliance’ (cf Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows Into The Tiber).

12. See Bill J. Johnston (North Carolina State University), “Critical Theory, Critical Ethnography, Critical Conditions: Considerations of Postcritical Ethnography,” in George W. Noblit et al. eds., Postcritical Ethnography Reinscribing Critique (New Jersey: Hampton Press Inc., 2004), p. 60.