My “nows”
Walter Benjamin’s concept of now-time posits two “nows,” the present era and another that resonates for us from our current standpoint. I asked myself, “What are my ‘nows’?” They relate to the modern project.
The appeal of Walter Benjamin for me lies in his sense of history’s fragmentary potency, how the past is again pertinent when we face an impasse that resembles one that confronted our predecessors. It may have sparked responses that resonate anew and make us feel that we can take them up again, better equipped. The era that registers with me, emerging from a war, looked back past where the modern project went off the rails, trying to reclaim it for a radically different world. This reclamation was widespread, even taking in the postwar Soviet Union, finally rid of Stalin. Its first 25 or so years, 1945 to 1970, were productive, drawing on the optimism with which the generation of my parents emerged from World War II, even in the countries that were defeated. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of the next generation, then students, looking back and across at social and revolutionary movements, and the numerous problems the modern project failed to solve.
My “now” from this era isn’t about the forms the modern project took, but rather its optimism that a modern life could be forged based on abundance — Maslow’s pyramid, aiming for self-actualization — and cosmopolitan, international cooperation. All of it was distorted by the vying forces of U.S. capitalism, Soviet communism, and Maoist Stalinism, each seeking to define “modern” in its own terms. The actualization Maslow looked for was personal for the first and social for the other two. The present “now” for me is about the convergence of these conflicting visions.
My writing partner Richard Bender and I contributed to a book honoring the Italian architect and planner Giancarlo de Carlo, a founder of Team X, a group of likeminded younger architect-planners who broke with CIAM, an earlier group that bridged the war but failed to satisfy its impatient successors. In a letter I wrote to the book’s editor, Paolo Ceccarrelli, I said that the time seems ripe for Team XX, as I called it — a new group of architect-planners prepared to revive the modern project in light of the global problems that threaten planetary life, our own included.
The pandemic, which exposes the frayed structure on which so much depends, is a preview of the much more serious impact of climate change. Ironically, the pandemic also exposes how our energy-based, factory-derived economies, rooted in another era, can if halted rapidly clear the air and finally hit the brakes instead of the accelerator of global warming. The revived modern project needs to negotiate a continued halt and a rapid shift.
My “nows” look across the wasteland of the regional wars fought first over “system differences” and then over access to energy. The juncture we’re at now is either to perpetuate this wasteland, which will surely push us to ignore all the warning signs and make the planet dangerously worse, or to revive the modern project we set aside — self-actualizing, cosmopolitan, cooperative, and attuned to nature. The modern project started here. We have to connect our new imperatives to its initial vision, expand on it.
Make no mistake, this will be a different way of life. I think it will combine organized science with a good deal of heuristic — local and individual practices that mediate regional and global guidance. We could call this local cosmopolitanism, based on interchange and consultation that will stay global no matter what.
The skill the future demands if the modern project is be revived effectively is network savvy. By this I mean learning how to work across networks to make local cosmopolitanism possible. Social media and Zoom to two obvious precedents, still primitive though they are. Despite determined efforts to stop it, the word gets through (or passed around). “Now” will build on this.
