The regress of culture, the end of the future and the end of development – reading culture with Bauman and Wilber

Abstract

The text presents two important analyses by experts of contemporary culture in the context of the regression and crisis of culture. On the basis of a Zygmunt Bauman’s “retrotopia” and the work of Ken Wilber concerning the breakdown of the course of the evolution of culture within the last decades, I intend to present the significance of these problems in the context of the dispute concerning the status of the social theory. An analysis of the peculiar “theoretical testament” in the form of a “retrotopia” by Bauman, an exceptional contemporary thinker, becomes a significant category allowing to read important relations between the culture and its domains, including education. Whereas, in the case of Wilber, analyses of the regression of culture and the breakdown of the course of the evolution of culture are shown in the light of his own integral theory. In the work presented here it is precisely Bauman and Wilber’s body of work that constitutes a source of inspiration for me to perform a creative analysis of culture through the references to interpreting culture in the condition of regression and crisis carried out by these researchers.