High Modernist
Article
High Modernist is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 30, 2021 and September 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “could serve as the epitome of the High Modernist mindset in American libraries”; “It’s not an impossible High Modernist pipe dream”. It most often appears alongside Egypt, High Modernism, US.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: April 30, 2021
- Last seen: September 17, 2021
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Egypt (2 shared issues)
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- High Modernism (2 shared issues)
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- US (2 shared issues)
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- 6 insurrection (1 shared issues)
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- 1893 (1 shared issues)
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- 1970s (1 shared issues)
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- 1980s (1 shared issues)
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- Abdel al-Sisi (1 shared issues)
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- Abu Ghraib (1 shared issues)
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- Adina Hoffman (1 shared issues)
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- Alan Greenspan (1 shared issues)
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- American libraries (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
He does, however, manage to find a quote by Patricia Battin, which could serve as the epitome of the High Modernist mindset in American libraries: “the value, in intellectual terms, of the proximity of the book to the user has never been satisfactorily established.” Everyone might have hated microfilm, everyone might have preferred working with the original historical artifact – but as long as the value of the artifact wasn’t satisfactorily established, there was no reason why not to trash it.
And also - consider universal health care. Lots of countries have universal health care. It's not an impossible High Modernist pipe dream that can never be accomplished. Or stopping illegal immigration - many countries manage this just fine, America could do it if it wanted to. Democrats hold protests and get angry demanding things like universal health care, Republicans hold protests and get angry demanding things like an end to illegal immigration, and both sides lose some faith in government when they don't get what they want. But these aren't insane demands which inevitably bleed into nihilist temper tantrums after predestined failures. They're just normal political requests for achievable goals, which various interest groups will fight over and then the government will either do them or not. Yeah, Occupy Wall Street was kind of silly, but most of politics continues to be the struggle for normal potentially achievable stuff. If we admit that, what's left of Gurri's thesis?
Gurri talks a lot about Center and Border, but barely even mentions Left and Right. Once you reintroduce these, you have a solution to nihilism. The Left can come up with a laundry list of High Modernist plans that they think would solve all their problems, and the Right can do the same. Then one or the other takes control of government, gets thwarted by checks/balances/Mitch McConnell, and nothing happens. No American Democrat was forced to conclude that just because Obama couldn't solve all their problems, the promise of High Modernism was a lie. They just concluded that Obama could have solved all their problems, but the damn Republicans filibustered the bill. Likewise, the Republicans can imagine that Donald Trump would have made America great again if the media and elites and Deep State hadn't been blocking him at every turn. Donald Trump himself tells them this is true!