February's Blog _ An Existential Moment....

Anti-conversion....

           

Just about every human child born in and after the 1960s knows about existentialism and has probably thrown around the term, or an associative culprit (e.g., Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard & Assoc.), a time or two at some cocktail party or other. All in all, it is a fine and weighty word with which to impress those who are impressionable and to offend those who seek to take offense; it is a word that has enjoyed all the status of a philosophically charged nuclear device being detonated in a conversation in which one seeks evasion from intellectual obligation, from moral responsibility, or in which one just wants to do a little intellectual sparing with a Christian-ly minded westerner.

However, although certainly of philosophical import, “Existentialism” is neither a philosophy per se, in the sense that it is not an assemblage of ideas and concepts articulated by a single and deliberate author or faction (i.e., it has no omniscient narrator!), nor is it a system of thinking. Rather, it is the situation or experience of the mind-world (the kosmos) in which the generally homogenous organization of our ambient social, religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas (the knowledge paradigm), has become progressively disrupted and porous, and thus disharmonious or heterogeneous; at which point all hell begins to break loose intellectually speaking. With the loss of a universalizing or commonly accepted notion (a paradigm) of how One might best interpret or best prioritize data or information, which is replaced by a nearly infinite variety of possible perspectives and thoughts and opinions that could be entertained in and by the ambient Zeitgeist, the intellectual “lay of the land” takes the shape of a paradigmatic wasteland, barren of any specific dominant belief or narrative. To borrow just a little from Schopenhauer’s idea that systematic thinking is an architectural structure – when the foundation begins to crumble, the edifice built upon it also becomes unreliable—so the London Bridge of interpretive intelligibility comes falling down… and pop goes the weasel in an intellectual no-man’s land!

So, for instance, an Immanuel Kant might anchor his idea of perception, which is a function of the human mind, in the (for him) necessary deduction that some unknowable Ding-an-sich (thing-in-itself) type of worldly reality is present behind the perceptions of my body, which caused or provoked my perceptions in the first place; but this other and original “world” behind the “perceived-world,” which has gotten all tangled up in my seeing and hearing and tasting and feeling and smelling, is itself unknown and unknowable precisely because it is outside of the confines of my perceptions. So as far as Kant is concerned, there is a world out-there, beyond my perceptions, which anchors my perceptions—there are two elements in this Kantian equation: 1) the world out-there, and 2) the concept of the world that I construct in my mind, which consists of the out-there world + whatever other changes my body needed to contribute to that original thing in order for me to be able to see it, hear it, taste it, feel it, and smell it. To be sure, this is a lovely philosophical paradigm in its architectural design.

            Schopenhauer, of course, kindly (or not so, if his curmudgeonly reputation is accurate and deserved) takes exception to Kant’s architectural flair, and thus dismisses the Kantian philosophical foundation (the out-there world), but decides to keep the Kantian mental edifice. So Schopenhauer chooses to hoist philosophical anchor in a distinctly non-Kantianesque movement – by arguing that the “world” is in fact no-“thing” other than the mere composition of my perception/imagination (Vorstellung) and my will (Wille).

Now, we all know, more or less, what a conversion is in the religious and philosophical meaning. The individual Turns Away From one path, and Turns Toward (con + vertere) a new path – there is a changing of the mind, which has application to my actions. So in all its various contexts, conversion is an ordering of the mind around a philosophical anchor, a very deliberate turning toward a different fundamental and organizing idea or principle. What happens, though, when the paradigm surrounding the anchor, which is composed of associative ideas and ancillary beliefs, breaks down? How do we reason philosophically, or even meaningfully, in an intellectual wasteland? What are the rules for thinking during History’s more existential and therefore chaotic moments?

            That this question is still meaningful actually shows why existentialism is not a philosophy in any ordinary sense of that word—for we are not converted to the existential philosophy. Rather, we become persuaded that the organizing worldview, the paradigm, in which we grew up, is porous and dissolving, and that it no longer holds sway over our minds. We become anti-converts.

            However, there certainly were, are, and can be a variety of plausibly meaningful intellectual responses to the existential moment, and these responses certainly can be articulated philosophically. An example of this may be found in Camus’ volume of philosophically oriented essays entitled The Rebel.

           

As a condition marking the human intellectual condition, existentialism is not a state of the physis-world, but rather of the kosmos-world. It is a state of mind provoked by the disintegration of the religious world-view. To date, there have been two existential periods in the history of the western thought tradition, both of which have been triggered by a breakdown of a mytho-religious intellectual paradigm. The first dissolution, which began in ancient Greece prior to the 7^th century B.C., resulted in the birth of philosophy with the Greek natural philosophers, such as Thales, Heraclitus, et al. And the Really Big Idea that was brought forth from this first and primary intellectual response to the breakdown of a mytho-religious paradigm was the articulation of the Just Life.

            In Greece the idea of Justice, as a Big Idea, derived from an understanding of the physis-world as system where process occurred correctly or rightly (i.e., justly). This idea is not dissimilar to the Asian understanding of the Tao. Human understanding was anchored in the right understanding of the “way” of the natural world – phases of the moon, wind blowing, water flowing, etc. Naturally, then, if there was a rightness inherent in the way the natural (physis)-world operated, the next logical step would be to search out the rightness, or justice, that must also be inherent in men’s relationship to their world in general, and to one another in the polis in particular. On the question of Justice, of course, the great Socrates comes to mind among others.

           

The second existential period in the western thought tradition was provoked by the onset of the “Fall” or dissolution of the Christian worldview. What was to become an anchoring idea for this existential period, was the articulation of the idea of Man as thinking subject – the Cartesian cogito, an idea that has continued on to the fantastic, albeit muddling success we see around us still today.

            It is interesting to note that, yet again, a dominant response (Really Big Idea) to this second breakdown of the mytho-religious paradigm remains the question of justice. Hence, there is Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, in which the author invites us to observe that God’s justice has no effect on, in, or for this world of men, and that men’s justice is, frankly, no better – for it only manages to muddle its way to concluding that an innocent Dmitri Karamazov is guilty of and should be punished for patricide. Thus, Nietzsche’s pale criminal (in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, book I) rebuts the judge for his hypocrisy – there can be no justice (but also no true crime) where all men (including judges) are born native predators, and where all men must, of necessity, work out their native predatory destinies in the world of predatory men. Thus, also, Joseph K’s fruitless search to discover the crime he must have committed, because he has been sentenced to capital punishment for that crime, in Kafka’s The Trial. All that K manages to discover is that he is guilty and that the “system” has the power to exact punishment on him. Thus, finally, Meursault’s trial in Camus’ The Stranger, in which he is put on trial for the murder of a man, but condemned, really, because he apparently, in his remembering her death, did not show the proper love and appreciation for his mother.

A lesson in Hermeneutics - How do We Translate a Two Hundred Year Text into the Ideas of the 21st Century

President Barack Obama's inaugural address – full text

"Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

For more than two hundred years, we have.

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society's ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today's world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we'll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America's possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear. America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice – not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

That is our generation's task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today's victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service. But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream. My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.

They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope.

You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country's course.

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America."

The Man Who Would be President

This is a man who would be President of the United States.

This man believes that no laws pertaining to guns can save children, or could have saved the children in that school. Yet, there are laws controlling the ownership of bazookas, tanks, mines, machine guns, hand grenades, missiles, nuclear devices, and other military arms or weapons of mass destruction, with the result that few American children are dead on American soil due to the proliferation of such weapons in US cities. So is it not conceivably the case that had there also been other laws controlling ownership of other types of military weaponry, such as those used at Sandy Hook, Aurora, and elsewhere, surely fewer people, fewer children, would be dead? Perhaps the argument now for America has to be about "fewer dead."

This man believes that laws are the tools of the secular, or non-religious state-- that laws are the fruit of Reasoning Men, rather than Religious Men, and that this is not good. It is true in fact that laws, such as are found in the Democratic Republic with its rule of law structure, are the fruit of Reasoning Men. So is the concept of We the People, which is the philosophical cornerstone of the very human and rational idea of Democracy. Every Religion is, by its very nature, a Theocracy, which is structurally equal to every other form of totalitarian or authoritarian rule, except that it clothes itself in the robes of virtue. Reason, on the other hand, leads to concepts like We the People, and Democracies. So there is no space where Religion and Reason can meaningfully intersect in the Civil Society -- never should the twain meet.

This man believes that laws in the hands of reasoning men are not sufficient to create a State that is both just and safe. He believes that We the People should put Law and Reason to the side, and that we should return passively to our churches. That We the People should exchange civil action for religious inaction. This man would exchange a State of the People, by the People, and for the People--a Democracy, for a State of God, an Authoritarian State, a divine Tyranny.

This is a man who would be President of these United States.

Sandy Hook School.... in memoriam

15 December 2012 -- Reflecting on the Sandy Hook School shooting, and about some of the "bright lights" out there who are trying to make the case that teachers could have minimized the tragedy had they only had guns.

 

For a reasoned analysis, and information, on the hysteria surrounding the Gun Control conversation in America, view the link to Rachael Maddow here.

Bellybuttons in the Lost and Found.

Sometimes we are just lost. Not necessarily in the “real” or outside world, but internally. It may be, though, that the Human Mind-Body comes equipped with its own built-in navigation system, in the form of the modest bellybutton, which can help us to get back home again if we just stand still long enough to pay attention.

The umbilicus, the navel, the tummy-button… the (seemingly) commonplace bellybutton, is actually much less anodyne than it might appear at first blush. There are in fact many denizens of the bellybutton world. There are innies, which, according to at least one source, may serve a variety of interesting purposes ranging from storage space (our own personal lint containment center…), to a handy way to tell twins apart (who’d a thunk?), to a drinking glass (don’t ask). Then there are outties, which also, according to the same source, express a diversity of functionalities, from trampoline, to microphone, to doorbell. Just for the record—it does seem rather clear that the hyperlinked source of this information is not really in the business of information, but rather of working through the ramifications of the 3^rd grade imagination and the one-track mind.

            That said, however, the belly button has not only been an inspiration for humor; it has also been a source of controversy.  In the throes of newfangled evolutionism, for instance, the nineteenth century understood that the bellybutton was central to understanding a great mystery about Adam and Eve. If Adam was like all men, and the Apostle Paul does remind us that Adam was our “father” according to the flesh, then Adam must have had a bellybutton; but this would also imply that he had a pre-history that is neither recorded for us nor suggested in the biblical texts, and which in fact even flies in the face of the Edenic narrative. Eve, of course, did not partake in divine equality and is therefore let off the hook; she could not have had a bellybutton of her own to contemplate because she was drafted from the rib of Adam. Unless of course she did. Imagine the nightmare for the Renaissance artists, who must have struggled with the idea of how to depict an Adam and Eve who looked like our human ancestors, but who were not, logically speaking, inalienably endowed by their Creator with all that our post-natal humanness implies.

            And then, of course, there is also the controversial viewpoint expressed by the Greek comedic poet Aristophanes who, in Plato’s Symposium, reached the epitome of his humoristic glory, and erotic insight, with his discourse on Eros. Aristophanes imagines original man as a sort of one-eyed jack, only plumper, joined in the middle with heads on both ends, who was prone to insolence toward and undue aggravation of the Gods. Says Aristophanes: when the Gods reached the end of Their collective rope with these tiresome human trouble-makers, Zeus directed Apollo to slice them all in half, creating a bunch of one-eyed, one-legged folk, each fully sexed and hopping around looking for their other half to rub up against, but, failing that, certainly willing to rub up against just about everything else. But this was only the beginning, of course, because the Greek Gods also seemed to be artistic in Their creative problem-solving with respect to humans (the problem was how and where to tuck in all the skin left over from the cutting and slicing of the original human); so reads the Jowett translation:

Apollo was also bidden to heal their wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called the belly, like the purses which draw tight, and he made one mouth at the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the navel); he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles, much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few, however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the primeval state.

And so the knotty (naughty?) history of the curious bellybutton began its meandering journey through the world of men.

The physical bellybutton, however, this very material center of our bodies, is not exactly the subject of this Reflection. Rather, what really interests us is the immaterial bellybutton, which constitutes the internal center, the North Star of our-Self. We reflect in metaphor, of course, for the Self is not precisely a thing, nor does it “have” precisely a center. There is no true center of the Self beyond the physical location of our bodies standing behind their very-physical bellybuttons at any given moment. Our Self is not defined by some “What” that is at our core, but rather by all the stuff that moves directionally away from, or toward, the locus “where” this body (center, ego, self) lives… everything is going in every direction to or from this locus, this ambulatory GPS point in the center. Yeats saw this metaphor-idea as a general truth about the world, which also necessarily tells the story of our bodies – that things fall apart; there is no center, and even if there were, it still would not hold.

            The model for this idea of the immaterial bellybutton, which was understood originally to be the bellybutton of the world, comes from highest antiquity, from the Greek omphalos, which was found in Delphi at the oracle of Apollo. Plutarch tells us that Epimenides of Crete, sage and epic poet (early 5^th century B.C.), “refuted the [original mythological] story that eagles or swans setting out from the ends of the earth met in the middle at Delphi, the so-called Omphalos): There was no Omphalos, either in the center of the earth or of the sea. If any there be, it is visible to the gods, not visible to mortals.”

            This concept went on to have a very fruitful career in the history of ideas with Mircea Eliade, the famous philosopher of religion, who, in a very Jungian theory, identified the immaterial omphalos of the world with man’s collective unconsciousness. This is not inconsistent with the greater Greek worldview, however, which saw the material world, the earth, as a physical type of dwelling, a physis, but the immaterial world that is created by the interpreting mind (Descartes’ later imaginando or the imagination), as an intelligible kind of dwelling, the kosmos, the world “seen,” then organized and tidied up by human thought and language.

So why are we interested in reflecting on internal bellybuttons? Perhaps just to give ourselves some perspective so that the next time we are throwing stones into a pond in our external dwelling in order to watch the concentric rings, we remember that with our mind’s eye we are actually also “seeing” that in those very physical rings the metaphor of our internal dwelling-life is also being writ, but just in a visible language. When we realize that Our Life, both material and immaterial, happens in the midst of concentric rings moving out away from us, then we also begin to understand certain organic relational truths – that things that are closer to us are inevitably more relevant to us, and why it is also and necessarily true that things in our more remote rings “feel” less relevant to us. To be sure, things remote to us are not in and of themselves less important, they are just ex-centric to us – more removed from our center, further away, less immediately imposing.

            It is also important for us to keep our Internal Bellybuttons turned on and tuned in for all sorts of relationships (personal, interpersonal, and other), because relationships are, well, relational or perspectival. There is no such thing as neutrality. Points of view, both for the philosopher and the psychologist, begin with the Self/I; then they expand to include the immediately surrounding environment.

The bellybutton, both as a material and then as an intellectual location of the individual, allows us to pinpoint our position within the cluster of relationships and gridlines that crisscross the map of our Life, to determine where exactly the Self is with respect both to the earth (physis), and to the world fashioned by our understanding (kosmos). On this very special map, however, there is no true and unmoving North Star; there is only us standing alone at a very odd Corner where the earth and the world intersect. This is the intersection of the Lost & Found, where sometimes we find the Self we seek, and sometimes we lose it; but the truth is that all the possibilities of our life meet and crisscross at that Corner.

            The bellybutton is the fulcrum of the individual’s mooring, the starting point at the interior of the circles from which he is able to see his world, and then to create it. The bellybutton therefore is as interesting as it is important. It is interesting because of the onion-skinned nature of our reality, which means that according to our Will and Whim we can flip, or invert, the various layers of interpretation and meaning. This is one reason why Art, in all of its forms and manifestations, intrigues us so; because both conceptually and materially, Art asks of us that we should apprehend truly, that we should actually see both with our body’s eyes as well as with our mind’s eye, the world as transformed, as turned on its head. Human perception of the material world is essentially a bellybutton type of experience, because it is centered upon and framed around the mind’s activity of reality-construction.

            We live in a rather curious moment of human history, a moment when the world has become small. The big, wide ‘World’ has been transformed into global village, which in turn demands from us that we very deliberately invert from the Self outwards, both philosophically and psychologically, the normative and natural order of embracing our world … where we are asked to include the Self rather as an integral piece of the surrounding world… where we are asked to consider a dissolution of the Self into the interests of the whole. Welcome to the Lost & Found.

On Protest Movements & Conspiracy Theories, in 2-part Harmony. Common Time. Part II

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side…
            (Allegro)

Our original reflection was concerning how a Paranoid Author would conspire, were he so inclined, to develop and implement a plan to subvert a nation like America. Richard Rubenstein suggested a model for such a conspiracy in The Cunning of History, and defends his philosophical mooring, and by extension my futuristic fantasy, with the following points.

1)   Scientific Theory. In the scientific way of speaking about nature there is the principle that biological life is imperialistic, which is to say that living things, in their populations, will naturally expand into available space in order to dominate that space and to ensure their own survival.

2)   Rubenstein’s Conclusion (100). If this is an accurate description of nature, then it is useless to speak of the ethical life of the individual, because "In all biological populations there are innate devices to adjust population growth to the carrying capacity of the environment. Undoubtedly, some such device exists in man."

Rubenstein (8-11) also enumerates and then illustrates what he thinks are at least two of those plausibly “innate devices” or “control mechanisms” that, even perhaps without our “conscious knowledge,” regulate human population and ensure its suitable expansion.

1)   War as a mechanism of population control. At the Battle of Verdun (begins February 1916) the German general’s strategy, says Rubenstein, was entirely biological in nature. “For the first time in memory a European nation had attempted to alter the biological rather than the military and political balance of power with an adversary." In this 9-month long battle, approximately one million men died. At the Battle of the Somme (begins July 1916), the British lost approximately 60,000 men the first day.  By December 1916 approximately 1,100,000 British, German, and French were dead in order for the British lines to move forward just 6 miles.

            On Rubenstein’s calculation, in WW I there were on average 6,000 state-made dead per day for 1,500 days, which means that each and every one of the countries involved in this conflict (i.e., Albania, Arabia, Austria-Hungary, Belgium and colonies, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Finland, France and Empire, Great Britain and Empire, Germany and Empire, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Italy and colonies, Japan, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Nicaragua, Panama, Persia, Philippines, Poland, Portugal and colonies, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Siam, Turkey, Transcaucasia, and the Unites States of America) were in tacit agreement that some 10 million state-made dead represented a satisfactory, acceptable, and indeed desirable, political, economic, and moral loss.

2)   Bureaucracy as a mechanism of population control. It also seems pretty self-evident that in order for States to function as the gatekeepers for the regulation of human population and expansion, there needs to be some sort of fundamental organization or bureaucracy. One of the tools for this in the Nazi period was denationalization, the use of the status of statelessness for certain selected populations inside the greater population. Rubenstein (33): “Men without political rights are superfluous men. They have lost all right to life and human dignity. Political rights are neither God-given, autonomous nor self-validating. The Germans understood that no person has any rights unless they are guaranteed by an organized community with the power to defend such rights. They were perfectly consistent in demanding that the deportees be made stateless before being transported to the camps. They also understood that by exterminating stateless men and women, they violated no law because such people were covered by no law.”

What we need to retain for our Fantastic Reflection, then, is that there are two natural “control mechanisms” that regulate human population and ensure its suitable expansion:  War and Bureaucracy.

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid…

            (Obbligato - Allegro)

So, as the paranoid oracle-author of a potential American future, what philosophical ingredients would I need to assemble in order to transmogrify the E Pluribus Unum into the Nazi State of Rubenstein’s vision? Straight-forward wars and official state-made dead are integral to our plottings, of course, but there are also other, less noticeable steps that can be taken to dehumanize or destroy humanity beyond the destruction of individual bodies. The State can dehumanize or disappear the philosophical idea of the Individual.

            Now a promising recipe, which the Paranoid Author could follow in order to prepare the ground for the philosophical death of the Individual, would be the following: I) find ways to neutralize the idea of the cogito-Individual, as did the philosopher Martin Heidegger for his Nazi State; II) create an economic setting in which there was a strong and independent economic culture that The People believed in or valued or needed, and that The People could not control or dominate; and III) design a type of general cultural or State environment,

·      where All and Sundry were somehow being controlled,

·      where there is an appearance of Freedom reigning,

·      but where no one actually has the practical freedom or leisure to act against the agendas represented or furthered by Moneyed Interests.

Plot-lines in the Fantasy.

I. Neutralize the idea of the cogito-Individual. In order to make a philosophical reconstruction of America along the lines of Rubenstein’s vision, the Paranoid Author would need to start a process of dismantling the philosophical idea of the cogito-Individual. One part of this neutralization or dismantlement is the creation of a pervasive atmosphere of Fear, because it is necessary to convert the listener into an Emotional Person, a strongly feeling (believing) person who will naturally follow, rather than the calm path of rational consideration and analysis, the impulsive inclination of irrational emotions. In such a widespread environment of fear, the People would learn to respond with fear in the following general areas:

a)    Fear relevant to Religion – Fear of displeasing God, end of the world, destruction of the planet, fear of hell, damnation, eternal punishment, loss of heavenly crowns, etc.

b)   Fear relevant to Economics – Fear of job loss & unemployment, banking issues, crashes, downturns, big business, financial mismanagement, Ponzi schemes, mortgage defaults, debt ceilings, bankruptcies and liquidations, financial instability, debt in general, money shortage, rising cost of education, economic ratings, etc.

c)    Fear relevant to Politics – Fear of immigration, health care reform, civil liberties, political difference, defense spending, socialism, Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, wars and more wars, Iran and the bomb, Arab Spring, Islamic fundamentalism, War on Terror, War on Drugs, War on Poverty, War on Christmas, War on Women, etc.

d)   and Fear relevant to Social Issues – Fear of abortion (because it displeases God, see above), gay and lesbian rights (because it displeases God, see above), diversity, sexual predation, smoking pot, race issues, global warming, pornography, contraception, the environment, stem cell research, et al – see also Politics, Economics, and Displeasing God.

Ia. Neutralize the idea of the cogito-Individual. (Ostinato). Additionally, the Paranoid Author could create a society that neither values nor rewards learning, that systematically vilifies teachers, that places the bar low enough for pupils and students so that measurable standards of learning progressively decline over the long-term. It is a reasonable prediction, all factors considered, that low and under-achieving youth will develop into low and under-achieving adults, thereby reducing the competition pool for labor at the upper levels; so the State that deliberately adopts a social principle of undereducating its young people will have an undereducated, and more easily swayable, adult population in the following generation. Cheap labor will attend on every corner; fears and emotions and conspiracy theories will abound.

Ib. Neutralize the idea of the cogito-Individual. (Ostinato). Finally, to neutralize the idea of the cogito-Individual in America, the Paranoid Author would polarize the population at large on general issues. Individuals would be encouraged to identify emotionally with a major political party, or group, or platform; the increase in group identification would psychologically diffuse the “individual-ness” of the individual, would encourage the growth of Unreasoning Emotionalism in the general society, and would contribute to the overall culture of generalized Fear. To polarize people in this way would also serve to breed into We the People a fundamental social dysfunction based on an emotional dissonance –

ü  together with our own feelings of patriotism or love of country, we also believe that most other Americans are profoundly confused or misguided or simply wrong in their feelings of patriotism;

ü  although we all learned in school that we are individual elements of We the People, we still have the strong feeling, indeed the conviction, that we are nationally yoked together with people who are not our religious, economic, political, intellectual, and/or social equals.

Within a very few generations of orchestrating into existence a generalized culture of Fear, the Paranoid Author of America’s Potential Future would have generated a population that identified itself through collectivizing values, such as patriotism, which are grounded in the individual emotionally rather than intellectually; this would effectively allow a partial transfer of practical democratic power to emotionally inspired groups instead of to thinking individuals.

                                                             

II. People, Belief, and Economic Culture. In order to construct an America that would look like the German State of the Nazi era, the Paranoid Author would also need to grow a strong and independent Economic Culture that The People valued, then believed in, and then needed for their economic survival, but which The People could not control or dominate. Such a value could be created along the lines of a Corporate Culture, which would encourage the existence and growth of a massive conglomeration of companies driven by profit, whose profits could be guaranteed that much more because these companies would be exempted from a tax commitment to the U.S. due to their international legal status. An additional “touch” would be to make it so that this C-Culture has legal standing, so that it can influence in turn the direction of political elections in the U.S., and especially those at the highest levels. This would naturally encourage the C-Culture to make financial contributions to politicians who favor the economic agenda and philosophical vision of the C-Culture, thus furthering the acceptance of that economic cultural agenda as an “American” value.

            A possible example of the type of Corporate Culture that our Paranoid Author might create, would be reflected in the American political setting that enabled the United States Supreme Court 2010 ruling on Citizens United v. FEC.

III. The Appearance of Freedom. For the purposes of plot, however, it would not be sufficient simply to create a dependent relationship between The People and an Economic Culture whose mission is assessed in terms of Compulsory Profit. The Paranoid Author would also have to create a general cultural environment where, as we said above, everyone thinks they are free, but where no one actually has the freedom to act in opposition to the agendas of the Moneyed Interests.

            So once we had generated an adequate Corporate Culture, and had brought The People around to valuing, believing in, and then needing that C-Culture, the active icing on the passive (cup-)cake would be to restrict and obstruct the power of the individual worker-laborer to stand against that C-Culture. So the Paranoid Author would then invent a labor pool that is powerless to oppose the interests of the massive corporate entities, either to control wages, or to determine working conditions, health benefits, retirement, etc. In a hauntingly parallel, union-breaking plot line from American current events, Wisconsin and its governor Scott Walker, have furnished interesting and relevant food for my fantasy-laden thought over the past year:

Ø  Wisconsin Governor Threatens To Replace Union Workers With National Guard

Ø  Wisconsin Union Law To Take Effect

Ø  Scott Walker's Collective Bargaining Law Keeping Wisconsin Unions From Seeking Recertification

Ø  Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Law Struck Down By County Judge

Ø  Wisconsin Union Law Challenge Heads To Federal Appeals Court

Ø  On Governor Walker in general and teachers in particular

IIIa. The Appearance of Freedom. (Ostinato). I can also imagine that if, for purposes of plot development, a Paranoid Author needed to restrict the power of both the State and the individual to stand against the Corporate Culture, he might introduce into his narrative the device of giving almost unlimited credit to almost everyone. The idea of debt, both individual and national, is a great and very effective means of enslavement, because Individual Debt actually functions just like State Debt in compelling the debtor to yield up Power (i.e., transfer Loyalties) to the creditor. The idea of Individual Debt allows the individual to hamstring himself all by himself – to buy houses, cars, appliances, furniture, televisions, stereo systems, clothes, jet skis, jet ski trailers, vacations, food, gas, etc.; and the evil bit of beauty in this narrative device is that even when the consumerable object itself is long gone on its journey to built-in obsolescence, the financial debt for the purchase of the object remains. Business wins; or as Hercule Poirot might have said: Cherchez l’argent.

            Likewise, the idea of State Debt allows The State to hamstring itself through collective liability – to pay for wars, infrastructures, schools, hospitals, social services, etc. It was due to support from Business, after all, that Napoleon Bonaparte succeeded in his coup d’état following the French Revolution. His financial indebtedness to those same Business Interests (primarily a coalition of slavers and exiled plantation owners) who funded his rise to power, also obligated Napoleon to reciprocate the favors, £ for £, by introducing legislation that would reverse the course of revolutionary France, and cause its return to an extremely aggressive and repressive form of Business Slavery in the French colonies – all in the interests of the Sugar Trade. Cherchez l’argent.

           

IIIb. The Appearance of Freedom. (Ostinato). Even more icing on the proverbial cupcake of debt could be provided by health care—not the having of it, but the individual and societal indebtedness caused by the lack of it. Medical expenses were the top cause of bankruptcies in America in 2011 – a total of 1.6 million people, a stunning number that surpasses the population of 82 of the world’s 230 countries.

Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down…

            (Resolution - Repeat and fade)

So is there something happening here, or am I just paranoid? How realistic is such a Fantasy Future for America? Well, it certainly would not be the first time America had been caught out on such a turning in the road; fortunately, though, Germany lost that war for all of us, which corrected that particular potential wrong-turn in America’s history.

            Nations-going-wrong is not new in this telling. But what do we do as individuals when we suspect that our Nation is going down a Wrong Path in the Woods, and there is no handy GPS to right Us? Well, the Americans have a long tradition of protesting, in a bluesy kind of way, by singing their anger and grief. This is a kind of populist public airing of dirty laundry, which is certainly idiosyncratic, and also, at least anecdotally, effective. According to the Internet God: “In the 20th century, the Union Movement, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, and the War in Vietnam all inspired protest songs.” Concerns for the environment in America are already evident from an 1837 song, Woodman, Spare That Tree, although, fortunately, the song never caught on.

            From 1900 to 1920 there were Protest Songs inspired by the Labor Movement, and what Americans would tend to call Class Struggle (which in the U.S. took the form of conflict between labor and management, rich and poor), and also The Great War. Popular songs from this period were, The Preacher and the Slave and Bread and Roses.

            The 1920s and 1930s echoed with songs of protest against The Great Depression (see Class Struggle above) and Racial Discrimination, which will have a good long run in America. A popular song from this period is Ragged Hungry Blues.

            In the 40s and 50s there will be protest songs in favor of the labor movement and against McCarthyism, as there will be Anti-Nuclear protest songs. From this generation comes the Pete Seeger tune, Which side are you on?

            In the 60s, of course, there were protests for every taste and every budget. One could sing and protest about the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and Peace and Revolution. These songs and protests would wend their way into the 70s, as did the war, and would join their dithyrambic countrified beats to the newer cadences of soul music.

            The 80s would hear Anti-Reagan protest songs, and would oversee the birth of rap music; and the 90s would hear the advent of Hard-Rock Protest Bands, songs of Women's Rights, and Protest Parodies.

So I suppose that a traditional response to the America of my paranoid fantasy would be, when and if, for The People to sing out its disapproval very publically.

            There are also very concrete steps The People can take, though, when it seems to them that the Nation is going down a wrong national road. In the case of the Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, for example, what happens when The People do not support a Supreme Court ruling? Is there any recourse for The People, or is the National Monolith gone awry? Yes, there is recourse and remedy. State initiatives, motivated by Concerned Citizens, could push Congress to create a constitutional amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would allow the legislature to overturn decisions arising from a judicial branch of government gone on philosophical walkabout.

Let The People write songs in protest and sing them; sign petitions; be concerned; have a big loud voice and make it heard; READ. In the end, though, it would seem that all these Big Thoughts take us right back ‘round to the cogito-Individual, to a Socrates, who, in the name of Justice, stood his ground in the face of undeniable State corruption… till death did them part.