Alexander Etkind

In 1992, Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish-born sociologist who saw it all, wrote that "communism was moder­nity's most devout, vigorous and gallant champion ... It was under communist, not capitalist, auspices that the audacious dream of modernity... was pushed to its radical limits: grand designs, unlimited social engineering, huge and bulky technol­ogy, total transformation of nature."

Gaiamodernity is real, but not quite; it is also Utopian. This modernity is utilitarian, provided that it includes the elements of nature and people in its calculus. It is democratic: experts represent nature, but judgment is left up to the people. Most importantly, it is reflexive. Having failed in so many other tasks, we contribute our reflexivity to the life of Gaia.

Ironically, cul­tural factors are more consequential in authoritarianism than in democracy. In democratic governance, political choices follow economic and ecological realities, as the people articu­late them in their debates and elections. With authoritarians at the helm, it is their idiosyncratic preferences - aesthetic tastes, cultural and sexual prejudices, historical

views and ethnic stereotypes - that shape social structuration and dictate the policies of the realm.

The new modernity will eschew the transportation routes that were the darlings of paleomoder

With no pipelines or tankers to feed us there will be fewer pirates and terrorists to harm us, and fewer security experts to exercise control over us. This Utopian modernity will differentiate between public goods and public bads, which were stuck together in paleomodern society. Cherishing anthropological diversity - racial, sexual and intellectual - the new moder­nity will abhor monopolies and oligarchies. It will digitalize education and entertainment, saving materials and emissions by going

online. Gaiamodernity will be cosmopolitan: it will not profit from globalization but will work for the good of everyone because, as in certain Gnostic heresies, either all will be saved or all will perish. Gaiamodernity is a Utopia in the making. We are living through its birth pangs, and history is accelerating.

This cultural gap between the elite and the commoners never stays empty. The folk fill it with immaterial subtleties - popular culture (Mikhail Bakhtin), hidden transcripts (James Scott) or conspiracy theories, as we now call them.

Their reenactment of paleomodernity merged legacies from the Soviet era - resource waste, cynicism and distrust - with the radical novelty of

massive and ever-increasing ine­quality.