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tions . That doesn't mean one refuses the model , but there is endless
change, a fin al boredom, a search for transcendence. This remains at the
horizontal, immanent level, and that is part of the cost of living in a
one-power world, because however bad and evil the other power was, it
reminded one of otherness. One had it in front of oneself, and one could
aim at transcultural otherness even if one didn't want to finally embrace
it. I find an incredible undervaluing of the cost of industrialization.
My second point is, you have been less than candid in insisting that
you do not attempt
to
predict the future, when you state: "the possibil–
ity of its Ithe Industrial Revolution's] metropolitan center emigrating
elsewhere in the foreseeable future is virtually insignificant." In a sense,
you wish
to
stand at the end of history. In fact, history is going to go
on, and diversity will necessarily reemerge as human experience. Is there a
great deal of changefulness in this long list of things, objects, which have
traveled from one culture to another? After a while, it is inevitable that
the human being seeks another transcendence, spiritual transcendence -
about which there is no reference in your book.
You also undervalue the evangelical experience. I am a Catholic, but
you seem to see the conversions
to
evangelical Protestantism in Latin
American as an appendage of the economic artifacts; as a cargo cult. I
think it is something else. I think the society is becoming more associa–
tive than communitarian at a faster rate than you perhaps perceive. It is
becoming more morally confused; it offers a greater margin for having
to make discretionary choices which are difficult. It is less emotional in
its religiosity. I see the conversions as "wanting
to
save the tradition in a
heretical way ." It is a spiritual experience which I don ' t share, but it is
telling us about a void that people feel, particularly at the levels of soci–
ety that have less access to the new consumer society. They can see it and
feel the impac t of it and they can't share in it, so they look for an escape
from it, rather than an associative entrance into it. I think we have
to
widen the dimension of our discussion to address some of these phenom–
ena.
Claudio Veliz:
Let me agree with you that the cost of industrial
modernity is high , and that if one is prosperous within a traditional
community, one is altogether better off. The problem, as I see it, is that
modernity is very much like the proverbial "slight case of pregnancy."
Once on its way, virtually impossible
to
stop. Why? Among many other
reasons, because those who are most keenly aware of the high cost ex–
tracted by industrial modernity, are not those who most readily respond
to its lures. Academics, intellectuals, and their friends and relations are
obviously in a better position to know about the consequences of the
