The System & The Condition of Post-Modernity

One well-known critic by the name of Mike Lwin had this to say about my recent blog post on God & BIBLE:

"I don't think God arose in human consciousness because people started to understand morality as a guiding force--rather, I believe that the concept of God was created as a coping mechanism for humans to deal with two things: One, to explain things in a prescience world they could not understand, and two, easing the finality of death with a promise of an afterlife. Morality wasn't taken into account until much later is "God"'s development, in my view. Additionally, how is the outcast so successful? What are you doing that is so much better than the system at hand? Furthermore, and this is what so many outcast-outsider-wanderers don't take into account--let's say you DO cause a revolution and overthrow the current system. What system do you implement, and how is this system going to be significantly better? The problem with any outsider discourse is that, while being intelligent and independent, its actual implementation may not exactly produce a better society (by all accounts, such "enlightened" outsider attempts have resulted in *poorer* ones), and in the end what you may visualize as implementing never gets implemented in actuality the way you imagined it. In other words, it's easy to talk about bringing down the system. It's another thing to actually do it, and it's a WHOLE other animal to actually make a better system. Whenever you deal with large masses of people, compromise is involved, which destroys the fundamental credo of the outsider philosophy. What is good for one is pretty much never good for all."

Well, I don't have many answers to the questions above, but I will start to address them herein. In this so-called post-modern civilization, we have many times attempted to overthrow the "system" that regulates our biological, social, and economic existence. Individuals and groups frequently become obsessed with the notion that they have the inertial capacity to combat the entirety of this all-encompassing system. Shall we view such audacity and hubris from a cynical perspective, believing that individuals cannot effect social change, or shall we embrace the optimistic and humanistic ideal of individual empowerment in the face of nearly omnipotent societal forces?"

Does the easy answer lie in submitting to the sacrosanct powers that govern our human universe? The combined might of god, government, and social convention (which establish hierarchical authority structures in order to control human behavior and regulate the ebb and flow of human irrationality) is indeed awesome. To go along with subjugation and allow ourselves to be controlled by the herd is certainly the path of least resistance. To exist as mediocre, average, and common is to place oneself no greater or no lesser than fellow human beings. Is this desirable?