Total rejection of modernization is not viable in the modern world

Evidence

In the twentieth century improvements in transportation and communication and global interdependence increased tremendously the costs of exclusion. Except for small, isolated, rural communities willing to exist at a subsistence level, the total rejection of modernization as well as Westernization is hardly possible in a world becoming overwhelmingly modern and highly interconnected. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 196 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In an interdependent modern world, “traditional cultures” do not spontaneously grow or develop into “modern cultures.” People are pushed, seduced, coerced, or persuaded into trying to change themselves into something else, something that allows them to be redeemed. It may not be possible to stop this process; it may be a wonderful thing that the process takes place as it does because people really are redeemed through it. I do not argue for or against such directed changes here. I merely emphasize that they are not possible without the exercise of political power that often presents itself as a force for redeeming “humanity” from “traditional cultures.” Or—and this comes down in the end to the same thing—as the force for reclaiming rights that belong inalienably to man in a state of nature. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 743 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Global interconnectedness made total rejection of modernization untenable. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 196; Modernization of traditional cultures always requires political coercion — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 743; Modernity is best understood as compulsive, self-propelling modernization, not a completed state — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 651

Broader Connections

• Global interconnectedness made total rejection of modernization untenable. #corroborates (0.92) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 196
• Modernization of traditional cultures always requires political coercion #complicates (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 743