Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 145

REVIEWS

Pontynen points out the perverse irony of this new culture
model: while vested in the authority of facts, the specialist is both
completely incomprehensible to the common man, yet slavishly obeyed by him. This creates a new mysterium, though one
not religious in character: "a vast quantity of specialized data is
manipulated by specialists and applied by technocratic bureaucracies. The scientist and the technocratic bureaucrat alienate the
public via a coercive mysterium of expertise."
Another insight in Cultural Renewal is Pontynen's argument that
the violence of quantitative culture is driven by what he calls an
unanalyzable "inner necessity" in nature and humanity. If facts
simply exist without God, context, or cause, then we observe
them in the world, and they simply must be what they are. Who
is to say they should be otherwise? Human perception of facts is,
for the individual and groups, relational; they are conditioned by
our perspectives, our sentiments, our desires.
At the level of culture, human action simply becomes a compulsion to realize our urges, what Pontynen labels "inner necessity." He observes that postmodern culture is the "subjectively
willful pursuit of experiential perfections. That pursuit centers
on self-expression and self-realization, and it is the realization
of our inner necessity that constitutes being if not civilized, then
at least self-righteously authentic." The only option a merely
fact-populated universe leaves us is the need to realize who
we are, as individuals, groups, or entire societies, and this sense
of self-realization takes on the character of an irrefutable inner
necessity.
It is an urge so powerful it trumps any theological teaching,
moral precept, state law, or social policy. The tyranny of inner
necessity has created true horrors in the modern era: Pontynen
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Modern Age - Winter 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2016

Contents
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