Martin Jacques writes in the Guardian today like someone who's getting old - and I say this on the basis of assuming he's a bit younger than I am. The organizing theme of his piece is stated more than once:
The very idea of what it means to be human - and the necessary conditions for human qualities to thrive - are being eroded.And Jacques then spells out the ways in which he sees this happening. Let me make it clear that I don't, for my own part, dismiss the idea of there being universal human qualities, as is the fashion with postmodernists and cultural relativists. Nor would I take issue with Martin Jacques about all of the tendencies he enumerates and laments. But 'what it means to be human'... He's not writing here about people being subjected to savage tortures, being held as slaves, having their children compulsorily seized from them to be used for the sexual gratification of the powerful. These are some of the things Jacques is upset about:
> ... there is the rise of communication technologies, notably mobile phones and the internet, which are contracting our private space, erasing our personal time and accelerating the pace of life.Naturally, one can discuss these things and come to different views about them. But eroding the very idea of what it means to be human? I wouldn't say so.
> ... almost half of all marriages end in divorce...
> Unsurprisingly, love - which belongs in the realm of the soul and spirit rather than the body - becomes more elusive.
> The birth rate has fallen to historic new lows. That most fundamental of human functions, reproduction, is beleaguered by the values of the ego-market society.
> We have become less intimate with the most fundamental emotions, without which we cannot understand the meaning of life.