Fragment 175, word count: 604.

Tags: war, dystopia, creativity, gratification, reality, hive mind, 

Every instance of collectivism known to us is dystopian. All are institutional systems of human-on-human macro-parasitism: exploitative, unequal, misogynistic, devoted on principle to arbitrary hierarchies of gender, race, and class, poised for overwhelming violence, controlled by patriarchal factions which channel disproportionate benefits to themselves at the expense of the marginalized majority. This is not a product of divine will or natural law, but an historical aggregation of inventions, actions, communications, and imitations by individual humans in particular situations. The existence and effective activity of creative ideality at the level of the embodied individual completely invalidates any claim of an immutable natural order or a fixed hierarchy of being. Reality as experienced is completely structured by the interests, ideas, of particular humans, which means reality is mutable because ideas make up much of its structure.

Superego

Ambient society presents itself as the indispensable means for realizing every individual’s vestigial core being, the truth of who and what we really are. As young innocents we are guided by its assertions of what we must do to manifest and display our quality and potential. Since we need to function within the norms of our society to survive, we accept its sovereignty, its hierarchy of esteem and supervision, as a guide or roadmap of personal expectations and intentions. Civilization is a structure of increasingly prized and exclusive gratifications instituted as rewards and incentives through which people prove and reveal themselves. Internalizing norms means submitting to supervision within the chain of official power, doing a personal best with the incentives and rewards, conceiving an identity within exemplary career arcs in their cultural context encompassing nature, community, human fulfillment, and the supernatural, which, taken together, define a culturally stipulated collective orientation, effectively a human-style hive mind. Hive minds make war.

Self-Possession

Given the profound dystopian characteristics of all known societies, it is not surprising that individuals experience a discordance between cultural role models (presented in schools and popular culture, for example) asserting praiseworthy behaviour, values, aspirations, and beliefs, on the one hand, and on the other, their own actual experience of gratifications, reality, and fulfilling self expression. This discordance reveals important aspects of existence as an individual and is inescapably political in the broadest sense. The individual, as a fountain of creativity and freedom, is inherently greater than the cultured conceptions of any hive mind, always bigger than placements on offer within competitive hierarchies or culturally identified functions (tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor). The felt discordance is a questioning of not only the narrow functioning of institutional sovereignty but also the wider systems of authority (economic, patriotic, religious, and social) which are the cultural foundations of sovereignty. The experienced discordance manifests an antagonism felt by individuals against any conception of them as owned, as property for use by some external entity.

The socio-cultural formations which are collective hive-mind identities have dominated much of human history but will eventually be an artifact of the past. Human hive minds, each unified culturally by false metaphysical assertions and shared narratives featuring emotionally triggering tricks, are always dystopian in conceiving value in exclusivity. Happily, you don’t have to wait for the ultimate fall of dystopia to be free of it. When you encounter creative personal interiority, ideality, as the fountain of value it is, you don’t need to construct an exterior ego-facade of trophy possessions. You don’t have to peg your value to markers or applause from the ambient cultural and economic system. Even within dystopia, it is already common for people to quietly experience their best gratification from creating and nurturing instead of from trophy gathering.

Copyright © 2021 Sandy MacDonald.