If so, what is the modernity this book is talking about?
In order to fully answer to that question, we need to know with what perspective(s) this book approaches the problem of modernity. As the authors explicitly acknowledge throughout the book, it employs the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s understanding of modernity as its analytical tool in unfolding its arguments. Thus, other than its utility of making a great preliminary work for reading the book of Revelation, this book is also attractive to those who are interested in pursuing Charles Taylor’s thought on modernity and the secular. (A companion volume to this book might be James K.A. Smith’s How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, which I also bought yet have not read it.)
Before moving into the core of this review, I would like to make a note of the fact that not all shows and dramas perfectly fit into the stereotypical case scenarios of dystopian eschatology. (For example, Mad Men or Breaking Bad, which are dealt with in chapter 3, could be explained in so many other ways than that of dystopian eschatology.) However, at least in the context of the dystopian eschatology which is the flipside of the coin of modernity, this book at least comes with enough explanatory power. Namely, while seemingly impertinent to eschaton, underneath the manifest pathologies of modernity lie the confusion of modernity and its corollary fear and anxiety. Interestingly enough, at the center of such dystopian eschatology is the identity crisis. Therefore, I will scrutinize closely why the crisis of identity consists in the core of modern pathologies and its dystopian eschatology through Battlestar Galactica and Hunger Games.
Let me begin with defining terms. I have already contrasted eschatology with its dystopian version. First off, eschatology is a field of intellectual inquiry into the end of everything. In the Bible, there is the book of Revelation, and there is the book of Daniel and the Gospels. What these books have in common is that they try to convey the message of hope through picturing what the end will look like. On the contrary, the dystopian eschatology flatly denies such hope as the eventual ramification of any regular eschatology. As for the origin of dystopia, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill coined it in the 1880s. Afterwards, George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World have followed Mill’s lead in articulating such dystopian vision of the future according to the respective social context, eventually resulting in the TV shows in US popular culture. Unlike religious eschatology, the biggest commonality among all types of dystopian eschatology is the virtual nonexistence of God or the gods. Rather, in the absence of such God or gods, they draw a pessimistic future (especially through bare-knuckled technological advancement). Even so, one more commonality that might pique the curiosity of many is that its peak is revealed through the crisis of identity, which is an exciting spot from the authors’ analyses. Quoting Taylor, they link such crisis of identity to the culture and ethics of authenticity, arguing that the dystopian eschatology is the very undercurrent of all these things. To make my case more clearly, I will have to go into historical narrative.
Generally speaking, Jean Jacque Rousseau and his The Social Contract are said to be the main culprit of the spread of the culture of authenticity. Through his The Social Contract, Rousseau contended that only through listening to the voice of nature within would each person be able to restore to who they were meant to be originally. The implication of this claim is the rejection of externally imposed tradition or morality upon individual, thereby (according to Taylor, German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder articulates this very well) laying the groundwork for the culture and ethics of authenticity, as most moderns understand it. This big presupposition that we all have to trace back to the voices of nature within our own selves has everything to do with another assumption that I am the only person who can figure out who I am. Ironically speaking, the only way to figure out who I am is to be recognized by others, for before modernity has fully blown, people were confined to traditional hierarchy and morality, as well as all the roles given to them from family and other extended social networks. In the eyes of modern people, such confinement might be regarded as something onerous, yet people in the past were able to facilitate such confinement in figuring out who they were. (This familiar narrative is also recounted in Alain de Botton’s book Status Anxiety.) In contrast, no such limit is imposed on us moderns. We can be whatever we want socially, economically, politically, and even sexually (given that whatever we pursue must not hurt others.). No limit in choosing. What matters is to be authentic to who you are. Again, ironically, before the limitless parade of choices and more choices, we moderns experience confusion rather than freedom, for the fact that there is no limit to whatever we can do or be is making us hesitant about committing ourselves to some particular choices. Of course there is a principle to this, which is based on the culture and ethics of authenticity. Namely, the axiom of my life fully maturing into what it was meant to be, and whatever seems to contradict or challenge that ideal is apt to be precluded in the first place. Instead, as I have already alluded to it, a prevailing way to find one’s own self and achieve self-flourishing is to seek others’ recognition. This is because, according to Taylor and many other scholars, we humans are beings who discover who we are through being recognized by others. In other words, we are born with inbred desires to be recognized and loved by others, and fulfilling such desires for love and recognition has turned out to be of paramount importance in this time and age, when the task of discovering/finding one’s identity is assigned solely to each individual. If this be the case, the dystopian eschatology of modernity, according to the authors, i) in the face of the question of who they are; ii) where the only hint is the culture and ethics of authenticity; iii) to which the answers are limitless; iv) the predominant answer seems to be seeking recognition from others, while it cannot be the only valid answer. Hidden in this picture is the unfortunate, or even tragic, self-image of most moderns who are lost in direction. Such crisis of identity naturally brings about people’s inability to be sure of anything about their future, and when it comes to eschatology, there is virtually nothing they can confidently assert about it. Hence, the crisis of identity IS the crisis of eschatology, and it seems a natural step to move from modernity to dystopian picture of the future, say the authors.
Hunger Games, in the face of these questions, seems to suggest some tentative answers. The protagonist is a person named Katnis Everdeen, who inhabits the world strictly divided into two regions, one of which is District 12, where poor people and untouchables reside, and they are ruled by those living in the other region called the Capitol. This is the picture on the surface. However, those in the Capitol are also not as free as they seem at first, for they are enslaved by their own desires. The authors say that the Capitol in this show is modelled after the corrupt Roman Empire right before its collapse, yet one can even say that it is modelled after the modern world, for the most pressing problem in modernity is the urgent need to figure out who we are in the absence of anything externally supportive of our identity formation. And the solution that most moderns make for themselves is, just as those living in the Capitol do, to follow after their desires, almost slavishly. What needs to be pointed out at this juncture is that, as the authors also said, such pursuit of desires is not a unique phenomenon in modernity, but the reigning social structure of modern society makes it possible for people living in it to pursue their desires without any compunction or discomfort in doing so. At the same time, modern people are trying to establish their identity by seeking to fulfill their desires, which is the only era people live like this in the history of humanity. Therefore, the prevailing of the dystopian vision of the future cannot but follow all the previous steps taken here, and shows like Battlestar Galactica and Hunger Games could be the epitome of such Zeitgeist.
Overall, this book is excellent in diagnosing the state of modernity, which will be particularly conducive to the upcoming task of reading the book of Revelation. Its weakness is that it is not as pronouncing in providing a cure for all the pathologies well described in it, leading its readers to ask, “So what?” For our purpose, this review has established a great stepping stone for our next task, especially with regard to the question of how the book of Revelation could provide a message of hope in the world fraught with hopelessness and anxiety, not in the ways of the Left-Behind series, where Christians are lifted up out of the world, escaping from it, but in the ways of establishing solidarity with the world, just as our Lord Jesus Christ did. Next week, I will do a review of Richard Bauckham’s The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Looking forward to reading it myself!