conspiracies, the work of Satanic mills, loose morality. Wernhardly take them—as yet—seriously or investigate their roots.rnWe are in a state of astonishment, as the last Greco-Roman pagansrnmust have been when their temples were closed in favor ofrnChristian churches, and the administration of provincesrnslipped out of the hands of imperial officials into the hands ofrna new authority—the bishops. (“Diocese” used to be a Romanrnadministrative unit.)rnAnd so it goes with most other transformations of “modern”rnacts of life, from the rules of childrearing by single parents tornwomen in high political office and in business. Do I have tornadd the changes in language, grammar, and the redaction ofrnadministrative, literary, and religious texts? The new culturalrnworlds (manners, speech, taboos, ceremonies, gatherings withrntheir novel liturgy) indicate a revolution of considerable magnitude.rnChanges in themselves are not new phenomena, exceptrnthat they were brought about in the past by laws, reforms, shiftsrnin social classes, conquests, national catastrophes. Ours is thernfirst age when the laws of nature are themselves legislated, abolished,rnreinvented in a different way, first “desacralized” andrnthen redirected, modified in their fundamentals.rnLet us consider what happened in the 11th century. At therntime, power belonged to the Church, including the power tornenact reform on the level of society’s structure and the ceremoniesrnwhich went with it. The basic question was land property.rnThe feudal lords’ sons were conceived by official wivesrnand concubines. The law of inheritance was not fixed, landrnownership was up for grabs, either by the rightful or by the falsernheirs (bastards). Then papal decrees began to hold the powerfulrnprovincial rulers to the unilinear inheritance, to the exclusionrnof the illegitimate. In order to forestall troubles on the partrnof the latter, Rome created the institution of miles Christi, thernorder of the consecrated knights, members of which acceptedrnthe new discipline, sought adventure (and fortune) elsewhere,rnand left the feudal structure to its own evolution. Needless tornsay, the milites Christi worked out the ceremonials of knighthoodrnwith quasi-ecclesiastical resonances—echoes of whichrncame down to us in the adventures of Don Quixote.rnAll vast social movements elaborated their own ceremonialrnsystem. The question is, will the same schema continue?rnThe 19th and 20th centuries saw the liquidation of the nobilityrnand the emplacement of the bourgeois order. There followedrnthe classless society with its mass-values, mass-taste,rnproduetion-mindedness—whether of the Marxist or the democraticrnkind. The novelty seems to be that in our day we do notrnwitness mere rearrangements of social reality (from peasants tornworkers to managers, etc.), but a biologically aimed legislation,rninterference with what once had been regarded as the sacredrnfeatures of life itself: equalization of the sexes, the use of spermrnbanks, intervention on the cellular and genetic level, attacks onrnthe psychological integrity of the family, laboratory experimentationrnwith human/animal combinations, and so on. In otherrnwords, ideology with its uncertainties has turned into technologicalrnprecision-work.rnAs we saw, at each stage of social transformation new formalitiesrn(ceremonies, language, conduct, sacralization versusrnthe profane) were introduced, most often through conflict withrnthe previous formalities. It is problematic whether today’srntransformations, conducted without a sociological base andrnjustification, but invented by curiosity and imposed by abstractrntechnocrats, will have to fight for their modalities against thernolder shapes of tradition. In other words, is tradition able tornpreserve its cultural superstructure—the sacred—against a newrn”profane”?rnWe are witnesses to the conflict, the duplication of the tradition-rnsacralized forms (manners, code of conduct, rules of allrnsorts, prayer to a transcendent/personal God) by the technologicalrnformulae. The question is whether the latter are a merernnovelty as so often in the past, to be later absorbed in the historicalrnseries of saeralized forms, or a break with this series, arntime machine speeding toward the brave new worid. Taken asrnthe law of existence, thus hardly ever consciously mentioned,rnour life has been immemorially articulated into chapters—rnbirth and its ceremonies, initiation into adulthood with its ownrndiversified ritual, membership in the military with impositionrnof a code of behavior, work, marriage, old age—all raised tornmcaningfulncss by an appropriate cultural “superstructure.”rnEven philosophical thinking (Hegel’s owl taking wings afterrndark, that is, after the events), is a reflective commentary onrnevents and occurrences. But gnawing at our inside, we still ask:rnWill this rhythm not change with speed and immediacy, instantrnand mostly artificial reactions to events, the iconographyrnof the television and computer screen? Simultaneous watchingrnof what goes on in the world suppresses the distance and the interval,rnand leaves no room, no time for the old order of thingsrnthat were dictated by wisdom, or, if you wish, by the nervousrnsystem and blood circulation. It is possible that the Kevorkiansrnin our midst are working on a profane prayer to be offered to thernmedically induced Thanatos. But even if such a prayer isrnadopted (and Congress makes it a law), even if abortion millsrnorganize ceremonies for hecatombs of fetuses, we witness arnqualitative leap away from the laws of existence, toward the machine-rndirected automata.rnAs long as human beings and institutions were initiators ofrnhistorical and social change, it was legitimate to expect transformations,rnfor good or evil, in laws, manners, values, collectivernaspirations. Each was escorted to the stage of history by an ensemblernof ritual legitimation that raised the mere acts ofrnchange to the level of spiritual, moral significance. The newrnfactor in our modern times seems to be the mechanical characterrnof change, its independence of human initiative, of humanrninterest, of human comprehension. It is thus justifiable to ask:rnDoes the new kind of change need a higher legitimation, therntype which used to manifest itself in ceremonial accompaniments?rnDoes a machine-made need (institution, cultural creation,rneivilizational value, a laboratory-produced organ orrnrobot) call forth in our depth a consecrating ritual? Will ourrncivilization require liturgy and ceremony? It is just possible—rnhence our “age of anxiety”—that this civilization closes therndoor on anything beyond itself and proclaims its functionalrnself-sufficiency. That would be the true Dark Age.rnWhen the individual sees himself as a citizen or other memberrnof a limited group (nation, generation, profession, religion),rnhe understands he must differ from other groups through arncode, a ritual, morality, and behavior which identifies him. Inrnages of faith, such distinctions followed from the object of faithrnand the accompanying convictions and rites. In a technologicalrnworld-society, the limitless framework and the cosmopolitanrnperspective discard the transcendental objects and the codernthey impose. They turn into immanent objects because technologyrnadores only its own drive, its own accomplishments; itrnworships action with its visible products and suppresses thernspace and time for ritual. The profane alone remains. crn22/CHRONICLESrnrnrn