Abstract
I have presented some symptoms of the unraveling of our age. Positively construed, they herald a growing attempt on the part of individuals to rely more on themselves, a strengthening, thus, of self-reliance. But these symptoms leave many unresolved questions regarding the optimal conditions for and the true nature of self-reliance. They also move us further into the coming Age of Thresholding, for individuality, self-reliance, and thresholding are significantly interconnected, and, at a minimum, this interconnection is undoing coercive formations.
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George Orwell, “Politics and the English language,” in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell; Volume 4, 1945–50 ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978 ), p. 16.
This aspect of Francis Fukuyama’s thesis in The End of History and The Last Man is surely correct, however questionable other of his assertions are. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and The Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992).
Paul Kennedy’s Preparing For the Twenty First Century (New York: Vintage, 1994) does a remarkable job of bringing the negative consequences of such policies into clear focus.
The word ‘archeological,’ however tempting, is problematic, for it strongly suggests the influence, even dominance of what has been, but no longer is. Thresholder concern relates to the future, a new rather than an excavated and thereby recaptured frontier.
As found in Peter Ackroyd’s extraordinary Blake (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), p. 367.
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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Erickson, S.A. (1999). Democracy, Disillusion, and Thresholding. In: The (Coming) Age of Thresholding. Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9271-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9271-0_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5309-1
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