Master Trends

The moral of the story is that liberalism as a global “epistemological regime” has failed, and in turn, a power vacuum has been left behind. The challenge is in finding something from within the West which can replace liberalism as an “epistemological regime” or borrow something from outside of the West which can then replace liberalism as an acceptable “epistemological regime.” Nevertheless, the decline and failure of liberalism as a global epistemological regime is one of three “master trends” alongside the rise of Asia and the rise of the “Global South” in this day and age. To borrow from C. Wright Mills:

“It is in this world context of total integrations and bureaucratization that we must understand the decline of liberalism as a style of thinking and the rise and spread of totalitarian slogan manipulation and opinion management. For the problems of mass insecurity and of anxiety levels, of mental imbalances and unclear definitions of unstructured situations now form the sociological context of political and economic sociology.”

We now know the basic background and context for the decline of liberalism. In large part, the background and basic context for the decline of liberalism is the rise of “a ruling class of bourgeois extraction and composition” a number of decades ago in the United States. But the visceral response to the decline of liberalism has been quite ugly in many places. To borrow from Mills again: “Totalitarianism is an imperialist response to the impasse of corporate capitalism.” But the decline of liberalism is real and indisputable, and liberalism as an “epistemological regime” is bound to be replaced by something else either sooner or later. As Mills argued: “Only the complacent and the uninformed can feel assured of liberal and democratic developments in the world today.” 

In a nutshell, Freud and Marx. There must be some form of interpersonal social relations in the world which does not need to be totalitarian in nature and can then replace the angst and insecurity of status quo liberal social relations. From a Freudian viewpoint or standpoint, the status quo that is liberal social relations are such that: “Dangerous impulses are pushing for expression; sturdy defenses are erected against those impulses. The enervating struggle between these internal forces drains energy from possibilities for more satisfying living.” 

There is a “fierce internal battle” which is raging on and being waged virtually everywhere and amidst this decline of liberalism, with this decline stemming in large part from the power vacuum which has been left behind due to the clear and self-evident failure of liberalism as a global “epistemological regime.” As things stand, we are generating anxiety as a means of combating anxiety. In other words, as things stand, we are fighting fire with fire. It all amounts to a self-defeating strategy. Moreover, and ironically, the liberal insistence on “democracy” and “women’s rights” in other places for all these decades ended up bringing out the very ugly – albeit real character and personality – of Western society in general, a character and personality defined and shaped in large part by a kind of paranoid, anxious, arrogant, racist, asexual, prude, and unattractive bundle of attributes and qualities which makes it all the more necessary and important to establish a kind of “epistemological regime” which can either contain it or perhaps transform it.