FPR v. PoMoCon, Part Deux
Some heat and even some light have been generated in the numerous comments that followed upon my original posting in which I threw some gauntlets around. However, some inevitable reductionism has taken place (on all sides), and so I tried to actually put some substance on the bones of an interesting debate on a comment posted late last night. Because it’s now down around #39 on the comment list, I thought I’d post it here:
The reason it’s an interesting debate (putting aside all the unhelpful name-bandying) is that there is actual agreement about something important – that nature is true and that it exists and its dominion is inescapable. However, how this “reassertion” will unfold is the source of some rather profound differences on the ground.
For PoMoCons of Lawlerian variety, this is a source of optimism – our human condition of alienation and misery will not be “cured” by any amount of technological manipulation, and so the misery and glory of being human will endure, and because of the inescapability of this condition we will all be stuck with virtue more than ever. That said, while the human condition will not be overcome by technological mastery, much of the natural world will be, and that’s ok, so long as we understand that we won’t cease being restless and alienated. So, no amount of McDonalds or living in suburbs will make us truly happy, but it’s ok to be stuffed and comfortable even amid our glory and our misery. Some fast food and poorly-built McMansions won’t make us any more or less miserable. For Lawler, everything is always getting better and worse, so a certain easy-going quiescence should be our default position most of the time. A basic Lawlerian dictum: don’t worry, be unhappy.
The PomoCons are revised versions of first wave liberals (according to Strauss, inaugurated by the thought of Hobbes and Locke), strenuously urging the expansion of human control of the natural world while believing that human nature remains untouched and untouchable by such efforts. Lawler is himself much more ambivalent about Locke, but accepts the Natural rights regime under the pretense that the Founders built better than they knew. He views the pre-modern inheritance as sufficiently vital to withstand the corrosiveness of Lockeanism, although there are times he’s not as confident about its staying power (see my lengthier assessment, here).
For (at least some) FPR’ers (if I may), there is a similar belief that nature will reassert itself, but that reassertion will take a very different form. If we don’t strive to conform ourselves to nature’s laws and limits, that reassertion will be quite unpleasant, even downright ugly. The effort to manipulate the natural world to the ends of human desire have been catastrophic, in the view of FPR’ers, and have resulted in a condition in which modern humans have lost the capacity to exercise prudence, wisdom, and above all, the capacity for self-governance (especially the ability to say NO). The reassertion of nature will be most fundamentally experienced not as a comfortable and well-fed condition of post-modern Augustinian angst, but in the form of a potentially catastrophic confrontation with natural limits and attendant human suffering. There is far less sanguinity among most FPR’ers about our future, though we agree with Lawler that we’ll be “stuck with virtue,” although it will be virtue that we will be forced to relearn by dint of circumstance, not necessarily by “choice.”
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