Nikitas Aliprantis is a specialist in labour law relations, economic and political sociology, sociology of labour and theory of law. His recent publications include: Will the Twenty-First Century Be Illiberal? Subversive Sociological Developments with Historical Parameters Lambert
Academic Publishing, 2020, Les héritages cruciaux du XXe siècle aux sociétés d’aujourd’hui, Paris: l’Harmattan, 2017; Les droits sociaux dans les instruments européens et internationaux, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2009.
The barbarous obliteration of culture. A critical sociological study
Iconoclasm is a conceptual movement that prevailed during the Byzantine era (8th century) and concerned openly expressed opposition against the worship of icons. It materialized with the purpose of rejecting – if not obliterating through destruction – the viewing of any
religious image. This movement ended with a reinstatement of the icons, since, according to the Christian byzantine faith, icons, by merely reflecting real persons, were just objects inspiring respect.
Today’s attempts at re-establishing iconoclasm are based on the following premises: (1) the global levelling of humanity with the purpose of reducing and restraining it to mere biological and economic subjects without any perspective expanding further than this life, thus obliterating roots to cultural traditions; and (2) their connection with old-fashioned political ideologies, practices and arbitrary governance, which lead to a distortion and an undermining of democracy.
The trend to level and cancel the history of human culture can, above all, be thought of as an expression of a present-day peculiar form of nihilism and as an expression of a blinded religious fundamentalism. Today’s trend is definitely a cultural decadence, a mark of impoverishment and of man’s pulping and degradation through the loss of his bearings and of the deeper meaning of a life, gradually encaged within the narrow ring of man’s daily present.
Key words: narrow-mindedness, arbitrariness, blinkers, deceit, decadence
