THE NEW WORLD OF THE GOTHIC FOX
215
carries well beyond the sports arena that Claudio deals with. How does
custom play out in a world in which winning or losing is a natural
extension of a "game" as in Anglo-American culture, in contrast to a
world in which winning or losing is "life" itself - a definition of personal
worth. We see how in close elections this difference plays out: they are
rarely contested in the Anglo tradition, nearly always contested in the
Latin tradition.
Another topic in
The New World oj the Gothic Fox
that merits close
attention is the concept of post-industrialism: Claudio is not entirely
happy with Daniel Bell's formulation of post-industrialism, especially the
idea that North American culture emphasizes desires or wants rather than
real needs. But beyond this, we have the question of whether
industrialism itself outstrips the needs of people. As Veliz argues, the level
of development is so high, the amount of consumer satisfaction is so
great, that North American society is on a different, and presumably
higher, level. I prefer to call this a cognitive style, a social order in which
the holders of power (rarely spoken of by Claudio) have to make people
want something different from what they already have, even if what they
have is satisfactory. Fashion designers have to make a woman want to
change her clothing from one year to another; automobile dealers have
to make people buy cars whether the ones they have are obsolete or
not; soft drink manufacturers must convince people to increase their
intake of sugar beverages. In short, advanced post-industrial societies seem
to be hell bent to move people away from what they need to what
they want. More bluntly, it is a cultural movement away from amuence
as such to raw avarice. Indeed, the challenge of marketing and
advertising in a post-industrial world is to make people want even what
they may be highly resistant to own or use.
These initiatives suggest that there is a certain kind of decadence
involved in a marketing environment or a system of advanced capitalism,
in which the requirements of the society are not really any longer at
stake, so much as the need to move merchandise. To what degree is this
a positive or a negative feature of modern societies? Claudio does not
quite come up with an answer, his dismissal of Bell notwithstanding. I
might add, too , that this post industrialism without equity may be a
growing problem in Latin American culture, especially its urbanized
middle sectors. One would like to learn how Claudio views such
developments which clearly are less attractive than a simple recitation of
fiscal budgets and consumer satisfactions in advanced systems.
In
The New World oj the Gothic Fox,
modernity is constructed as
having a predominantly Anglo-American character. But were Claudio to
