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Modernity

Kan Li

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Modernity was founded upon a principle of purification: the separation of a transcendent human mind (res cogitans) from a purely mechanistic natural world (res extensa), a bifurcation that, as Bruno Latour observes in his articulation of the “modern constitution,” established the detached observer as the sole arbiter of an inert universe and thereby enabled the pursuit of objective certainty. This framework, however, sets up a fundamental paradox: it defines the world as an external, static ground governed by fixed laws, against which human reason – the figure – can act, manipulating and re-engineering that very reality at will.

To manage this paradox, to act upon the world while maintaining the illusion of purification, a powerful apparatus was required. The scientific pursuit of “matters of fact” functioned as this primary apparatus. It operates through a self-reinforcing and repetitive process with a binary logic that cannot tolerate ambiguity, deploying oppositions to suppress challengers. Its method is not one of mediation but of iconoclasm, demanding that new facts eliminate old ones in a perpetual cycle of replacement. This logic extends beyond the laboratory, shaping a politics that perceives the world through distinct divisions. The purpose of this entire apparatus was to produce facts seemingly cleansed of any social or material entanglement, thereby upholding the constitutional separation. The price of this simplification, however, was not merely ignorance, but a catalyst for a vast, unacknowledged realm where suppressed entanglements escalate in unpredictable ways.

It is from this unacknowledged realm that the project of purification met its failure. The work of hybridisation produced entities – complex environmental, technological, and financial systems – of such magnitude and entanglement that they can no longer be conceptually managed or purified away. These phenomena are not mere side effects but hybrids that emerged from our simplified worldview. Their existence now forces us to re-examine that very worldview and the actions it generated. The societal condition sociologist Ulrich Beck termed the risk society is not a paradox of modernity's success but the historical moment when these hybrids breach the constitutional wall. The ideal of a detached observer collapses because the foundational illusion of our separation has failed, revealing that we are inherently part of the systems we create. The pursuit of a stable, predictable ground has instead revealed our inescapable entanglement, forcing us to confront a world where our actions continuously remake both our environment and ourselves.

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Pantheism

Kunlin He

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“Ya, I am a sky dog!

I have swallowed the moon,

I have swallowed the sun.

I have swallowed all the planets,

I have swallowed the entire universe.

I am I!”

—Sky Dog, Moruo Guo


The first time I encountered a critique of dualism was during a public lecture at Google by Sadhguru, who countered Descartes’ framework with a Hindu perspective grounded in a more holistic monism. His argument addressed the long-standing Western reliance on reductionism in grappling with the complex interplay of mind and matter. In Silicon Valley – a community brimming with elite professionals and highly educated technologists – religious culture has not been excluded from local life. On the contrary, as Carolyn Chen’s research suggests, traditional religious values such as belonging and devotion have been appropriated by neoliberal tech corporations to foster managerial efficiency and enhance employee focus, effectively transforming spirituality into a tool for productivity.

For scholars like Fred Turner, who draw upon Max Weber’s emphasis on subjective agency in social sciences, the rise of the American internet industry post-Reagan era represents a tangled synthesis of conservative Protestant values and countercultural engagement with Eastern philosophies from the 1960s and 1970s. As an Asian immigrant in the Bay Area who daily encounters the tangible realities of cultural shifts, I find it essential to examine this dynamic from the perspective of Chinese and Indian laborers in the local AI and IT industries. Their experiences shed light on a broader narrative linking cultural agency to the economic structures of the global South within the context of the tech industry.

A historical parallel emerges in the New Culture Movement, exemplified by Guo Moruo’s 1920 poem The Sky Dog, where he proclaims individual agency through 39 repeated instances of “I.” Decades later, his contentious intellectual trajectory ended with the 1978 essay The Spring of Science, reflecting the Chinese intelligentsia’s uncritical absorption of the West’s so-called progressive knowledge and its worship of science. This phenomenon contributed to the collective unconscious of the technocratic elite that would later emerge in officialdom. The fervent agency displayed by Asian intellectuals under the shadow of imperial trauma was so urgent that it led to an unreserved assimilation of Western modernity and its inherent flaws, including the dichotomy between nature and culture. Today, it is less about condemning the emotional intensity of these youth from a century ago and more about critically reassessing the legacy of modernization in Asia, informed by contemporary critiques of Western modernity and subjectivity.

In the geography of the San Francisco Bay Area, no two nation-states epitomize the Great Acceleration, a population-driven intensification of the information technology industry, more than China and India. This phenomenon manifests locally in staggering living costs, frequent wildfires, and ceaseless tensions between long-term residents and incoming tech migrants, which have defined the region’s core issues since the millennium. By 2020, Asians constituted an astonishing 42% of Silicon Valley’s population. The pantheistic and agency-driven spirit found in Guo Moruo’s early poetry – an eclectic blend of Tagore, Whitman, and Goethe – seems to have materialized in Silicon Valley. Yet under neoliberalism, the fervor displayed by Chinese and Indian tech migrants extends beyond a drive for innovation and competition. It also signals the resurgence of Asian nationalism within the region, intertwining global economic ambitions with identity politics.

In contrast to the Cold War’s binary oppositions, we are now witnessing more intense friction between empires operating within the framework of nation-states. Life in Silicon Valley reflects this Great Acceleration, encapsulating the escalating conflicts of contemporary empires. As Tagore warned China a century ago, vigilance against the imperialist undertones of progress narratives remains critical. Re-engaging with intellectual resources from the Global South and drawing upon Asia’s philosophical traditions may offer a more grounded path for artists working within these contested spaces.

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