Tag Archives: politics

Freedom against Power: An Historical Precedent

15 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Class War, Culture, Freedom, Hierarchy, Political Power, Subjectivity

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In previous postings there has been an identification of certain poisons in human cultures, namely legitimized violence, especially in acts of war, and radical inequality. Based on that, another way of identifying the poison in currently dominant cultures would be with the concept “power”, which is inseparable from inequality and violence. The most blatant mechanism of power in the world today is the government of the USA. Its public record of violations establishes unmistakably that what that government and its vast military and covert agencies are protecting is not the rule of law, responsible government, human rights, or anything based in bottom-up political power such as democracy. The only alternative seems to be that those institutions are projecting the will of an obscure but effective oligarchy which has nothing but contempt for such things as bottom-up politics, thus revealing a core malevolence. Malevolent oligarchy, corporatocracy, organized wealth, patriarchy, all refer to that same feature of modern social organization. As a whole, that oligarchy is not tightly enough organized to be a conspiracy, but it carries a certain cultural sense of predicament and entitlement, and a shared culture of dealing with its predicament. One way the oligarchy succeeds at controlling the levers of profound meaning on a mass scale is by constantly broadcasting the message that everyone benefits from accepting “noble lies” (rarely named as lies publicly) about a caring god with a divine plan for everyone’s life, about a meritocracy, a beloved leader, a beloved nation or tribe (usually under threat). However, the only real lever of profound meaning is the interiority of individual intelligence.

The idea of the transcendent interiority of individual intelligence enables a kind of Copernican revolution, since all human projections onto nature and culture originate as somebody’s individually dreamed up non-actualities. There certainly are plans, but all plans are the products of perfectly ordinary humans. There is no single centre, source, or foundation of meaning. From awareness of the interiority of intelligence we learn to look inward instead of outward for transcendence, meaning, and grounding. There is an intrinsic power of individual intelligence to critique the foundations of power and to construct an alternative elemental orientation. (Hegel and Nietzsche both wrote about a moral duality between master-morality and slave-morality, but there is a point of view which is neither master nor slave, namely the elemental orientation, which philosophical deliberation achieves. Living from a contemplative grounding is the alternative to the moral duality of master and slave.)

Christendom to Modernity

The claim that the interiority of intelligence (a rich subjectivity) can be effectively asserted to transcend or go beyond a poisoned culture and conceive a new culture is especially interesting and plausible because there is a precedent in history for the effectiveness of philosophy acting against propaganda streams promoting radical inequality and issued by the groups exercising power in society. The really dramatic social change that is closest to us in time, culture, and geography is the transition from Christendom to Modernity. That change is exactly the historical precedent for the culturally transformative force of rethinking Stoic interiority. The concept of innate deliberative power, a specific power of interiority, was dramatically effective, during the historical period known as the Enlightenment (roughly 1650-1789) in changing the culture that was Christendom, and leaving things somewhat better. A cultural background of humanism, classical Greek cheerfulness, especially in the Enlightenment’s Republic of Letters, also contributed to those transformative effects.

Philosophy in a Historical Context

For centuries “philosophy” meant something quite close to Stoic philosophy, which identified a separation between those things beyond and those things within an individual’s control. Emotional investment in things beyond control was considered pointless and self-destructive. Outward circumstances were to be conceived and treated as indifferent things, since they were all indifferently necessary manifestations of a coherently structured and regular nature, Logos. By focusing on inward matters, which are within an individual’s control, a person can experience transcendent freedom. The experience of intelligence as transcendent was a powerful incentive and reward for the study of Stoicism and philosophy in general in the Hellenistic era. An interiority within the mental control of each individual became especially illuminated by that.

One link between the ancient and modern streams of that focus on interiority is The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (c. 480-525 A.D.). Boethius was a Christian Roman of the patrician class who flourished at the highest level of Roman politics after the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from the west, when Rome itself was ruled by the Ostrogoth Theodoric. In addition to administrative and political engagement, Boethius conceived and accomplished much of an ambitious project to make Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle, accessible to his contemporary Romans. The humanist philosophies were already somewhat familiar. As a Christian philosopher he wrote on the relationship between faith and reason. He became a victim of political enemies, was imprisoned on charges of plotting to overthrow Theodoric, and was brutally executed. Boethius’ Consolation, written near the end of his life during his imprisonment, was read and remained influential for a millennium and more. It is still being read, and is peculiarly appropriate for consideration of freedom within a culture poisoned by legitimized violence.

One principle meaning of “philosophy” from an historical perspective is the one in The Consolation of Philosophy, namely a Stoic or Cynic indifference to outward circumstances beyond personal control, and concentration on inward mental conditions, powers, and operations which are (more) under personal control. Innate powers of deliberation are involved in achieving such consolation, and a rich and powerful subjectivity is affirmed. Humanist Stoicism is the best candidate as the eternal philosophy, and Stoicism is founded on an idea of interiority: what every individual can control, as opposed to the world of nature which is beyond control, entirely predetermined. Stoic philosophy includes the application of deliberative thinking to truths about the objective world and especially to self-knowledge and self-possession.

Another principle meaning of “philosophy” from an historical perspective, emerging especially after 1600 in north-western continental Europe, is “Rationalism”, an assertion of the power of individual intellect to observe and think out the truth about the world, founded on the idea of an elemental congruence (Logos) between the natural world and individual mentality. The core idea of that rationalism is not innate knowledge but innate mental power to distinguish truth from falsehood by systematic observation and logical thinking, such as with the recognition of natural causation as sufficient to account for events and conditions in the world, aided by use of such logical devices as Ockham’s razor, and valid forms of inference. However, those native powers and abilities can be repressed, twisted, or ignored by cultural and social forces. For example, consider Freud’s observations of the effects of cultural attitudes toward innocent sexuality, or consider the influence of various religious beliefs about the causes of events in the natural world. “Philosophy”, then, has been mainly either the exercise of native intellect in comprehending impersonal nature, or thoughtful self-possession of a personal intelligence that is crucially discontinuous from ambient nature and culture.

Critique of the Malevolent Christian Oligarchy

The crucial force in the change from Christendom to Modernity was the rationalist critique of Christianity as the foundation of all-controlling sovereign power. The Consolation of Philosophy was one crucial link between ancient humanism and Wycliffe’s movement of proletarian empowerment through universal literacy and vernacular literature. Subsequently, deliberation on the inner-outer discontinuity, a chain of Stoic/ humanist influence, was continued in Renaissance humanism (individual self-development for literary and artistic accomplishments, or for power politics and business ventures), then in Luther, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, the rationalist enlightenment, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer. There have been many complaints about Cartesian dualism, but the dualism inherent in the discontinuity between nature and the interiority of intelligence runs through the history of philosophy, and cannot be especially credited to Descartes. The most important proposal about unification of subjective intelligence with objective nature may be Spinoza’s, but even on Spinoza’s view ‘thought’ and ‘extension’ are distinct attributes of “God or Nature”.

Next: Finishing the Job of the Enlightenment

Copyright © 2013 Sandy MacDonald. The moral right of the author is asserted.

Cultural Poison as a Challenge to Freedom of Thought

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Blind spots in thinking, Class War, Culture, Equality, Freedom, Strategic thinking, Subjectivity, Transcendence

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Violence and radical inequality (practices and justifications) are cultural poisons in the human interconnectedness. The glorification of violence is a main poison permeating existing cultures, but it is not the only one. The notion of radical inequality and the normal violence of dominance and control (ultimately by a semi-covert oligarchy) is a more inclusive identification of the poison. Carriers of those cultures are malevolent forces which practice manipulation and control by (among other ways) emphasizing the continuity of individuals with groups or collectives they are connected to, and even with unalterable nature. To exercise full human competence and freedom in that situation, it is necessary to counteract that influence by coming to terms with the discontinuity between the interiority of individual intelligence and the common world of nature and culture (as identified by the whole humanist movement of Hellenistic Greece: Cynics, Skeptics, and Epicureans along with Stoics).

If ordinary thinking is systematically impaired and distorted by every individual’s ambient culture (culture constructed in a combination of historical accidents and strategically deliberate programs) can any way be found personally to resist and transcend that influence? Even as a thought experiment, the possibility that human unfreedom is created by a pervasive culture being deliberately poisoned continuously, more or less covertly, raises an important challenge for philosophy. The question could be framed this way: In the situation of living in a culture that is pervasively poisoned, is it possible for an individual, by personal efforts, to achieve unimpaired or fully functioning human existence, to find grounding in undistorted reality? The answer is: Yes, with a combination of responses.

Two Main Points of Personally Strategic Orientation

First: Equality and the Discontinuity of Subjectivity

The ordinary sense of “subjectivity” is a declaration of the peculiar interiority of intelligence, an interiority of non-actuality. It assumes a radical discontinuity between subjectivity and the world of pre-determined nature. Something is called subjective to stipulate its non-actuality, its disconnection from the measurable actualities of objective nature. The interiority of intelligence is exactly subjectivity. In ordinary discourse the non-actuality of subjectivity is held in a negative light, as a failing. However, it is exactly the non-actuality of subjectivity that transcends the brute actuality of nature. The non-actuality of subjectivity includes personally dreamed-up visions of the future, selections of which will be deliberately projected, by effortful bodily acts, onto the actuality of nature. The future does not exist in nature, but exists emphatically in the orientation of intelligence. As reviewed in the posting Rethinking Stoic Interiority, subjective non-actuality always includes variant personal scenarios for the non-existent future, experienced as a steady approach and arrival of, framing an intentional shaping of, decreasingly remote and improbable expectations and deliberately intended accomplishments, including surprises at the point of arrival, but also including, increasingly with remoteness from that point: contradictions, negations, probabilities, possibilities, speculations, fantasies, questions, and doubts, over which subjective intelligence deliberates and designs (and none of which exist in the measurable actuality of nature).

Art, Representation, and Interior Sensibility

It would be difficult to make sense of art without some conception of the interiority of subjective intelligence. There is a kind of art which is crafted representations of the appearance of things in the objective world, but representations suffused with the sensibility of the crafting artist, (sometimes of a character, point of view, imagined by the artist). The tension across the gap between ideals of exact representation and subjective sensibility is highly valued in that art, and qualifies an artifact as art. The advent of photography presented a challenge by seeming to remove the human interior sensibility from representation. Photography inspired a shift away from the traditional representational practices of painting and sculpture, for example, and placed greater emphasis in those forms of art on presentations of pure subjective sensibility, manifestations entirely of the interiority of subjectivity, often emphatically emotional. However, it was soon understood that the placement of the camera and the conditions of the chosen moment of image capture, for example, all communicate subjective sensibility in a photographic image.

The rich interiority of subjectivity is the basis of equality. Inwardly, every intelligence is a universe of creative non-actuality, with its own centre to find and own, discontinuous from the actuality of nature. Consequently, everyone has his or her private interior grounding, a separate universe. (Philosophers who assert that cultural artifacts, text or varieties of sign, are all that philosophy can clarify or conceive refuse to have any notion of powerful individual subjectivity.) Every individual’s interior wealth and power can serve as the portal to reality unspoiled by a culture twisted by malevolence. That is the spring of clean inspiration and questioning curiosity that can liberate every individual from cultural poisons. Therefore, when living within a poisoned culture, be aware of your personal discontinuity from nature and culture. Own and assert the discontinuity between your subjectivity and everything else. You are, as a human, a transcendent creative force, ultimately incomparable to any other. Own your interior surprise horizon, and its creative power of orientation. The journey there is solitary, private. No one is competent to judge a universe they cannot know, and incomparable entities cannot be ranked.

Second: The History of Cultures in the Interconnectedness

The interconnectedness is the product of a peculiar history created by previous humans, limited and desperate. As already mentioned, the glorification of violence and war is a main poison permeating existing cultures within the interconnectedness. The notion of radical human inequality, and the violence of dominance and control that results from that, is another concept of the poison. In the human interconnectedness, there are slavers, enemies of human equality, self-possession, and autonomy, so that, within the interconnectedness, individual self-possession, dignity, and autonomy are constantly at risk and must be personally protected and cultivated at all times. In aid of being appropriately sensitive to that, keep building an awareness of cultural history within the interconnectedness, and construct it by reference to the actual conditions around you. Be assured that violence and inequality are not pre-determined or necessary in the human interconnectedness. The interconnectedness itself is the most magnificent creation of multiple intelligences (mainly the work of women), and it still needs a lot of work. From the history of the dominant cultures in the interconnectedness, it becomes clear that to prepare for construction of a new culture we must finish the work of the enlightenment, as will be explained in postings to come.

Copyright © 2013 Sandy MacDonald. The moral right of the author is asserted.

The Poisoned Culture

03 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Blind spots in thinking, Class War, Culture, Freedom, Narrative, Political Power, Subjectivity

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The human interconnectedness has been poisoned by a violently rogue cultural faction, resulting in endless wars among communities, and violence between classes, genders, and individuals. That poisonous faction, which imagines that it benefits from controlling and perpetuating violence, has been successful in convincing everybody that violence is simply the working of nature, and so inevitable, pre-ordained, and ultimately good and wholesome as an ultimate test of health, fitness, and value. The deception works by misidentifying culture as nature, and very much which is presented as nature is merely human cultural conventions, and as such replaceable. That is the context in which the rich interiority of individual subjectivity (Stoic interiority) is of crucial importance. The human interconnectedness has been so poisoned by deceptive culture that there are no trustworthy foundations of profound meaning available there. Science, engineering, art, music, architecture, literature, religion, business, journalism, institutional research and teaching, the professions, and government are all infected by and carriers of the cultural poison. However, the intrinsic transcendence of individual interiority means that there is no need for external tests of value, meaning, or fitness. Deliberate individual innocence, strategic innocence, is a potent corrective force available to everyone. The ultimate dignity of knowing and feeling the human situation is available directly to every individual, experienced inwardly.

There are groups who believe their best interests are secured by taking advantage of the helplessness of others to control them, which is an incentive for those groups to do as much as possible to create and maintain widespread helplessness. Those groups conceive the advancement of their own interests in doing all they can to weaken individual autonomy and then making use of that weakness to exercise control over community events and developments. In support of their malevolent cultural program, those groups have encouraged development of cultural messaging over the vast infrastructure networks of television, radio, movies, religion, and education, that are powerful influences on popular behaviour and thinking. With the most sophisticated science supporting them, they are completely confident that anyone and everyone is being controlled using those techniques, combined with acts of violence for the broad manipulation of fear and trust, and the elimination of probable threats to their dominance.

Posting 48, December 19, 2012, Rethinking Stoic Interiority may make dry reading, but it is important because the interiority of intelligence provides the defence against, and a portal beyond, the streams of psychological messaging effectively distorting reality within the influence of politicized culture, and pretty much all culture is politicized.

Copyright © 2013 Sandy MacDonald. The moral right of the author is asserted.

Working

21 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Class War, Culture, Embodiment, Leadership, Political Power

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In ancient Sumer the grandest monuments were temples on high platforms, called ziggurats. Like pyramids and Gothic cathedrals, ziggurats have a mountainous and sacred quality. Each is a monumental elaboration of its piece of ground, too much to be taken in from any single view. A considerable organization over a long time was required for these structures to be created and this level of organization is possible only in special circumstances. One looks at old ziggurats, castles, and pyramids and sees their beauty or functional design, but not the work required to bring them into being. When the work was finished, the scaffolding and the construction organization vanished and left the visible structure in mysterious isolation. It might be a surface feature of the local geology except for something about the shape, and perhaps an inscription cut into hard stone in the structure. The buildings appear miraculous because the work that built them is not part of their appearance. Work tends to go unidentified in many situations.

Bricks were the main building material of the most ancient civilizations, Egypt as well as Sumer. Their bricks were made of mud mixed with straw, moulded and dried in the sun. In the hot, dry climate of those places mud bricks are durable. Bricks are heavy and hard, good material for walls and support columns. The clay or mud for a brick has to be lifted into a mould and dried or baked in an oven to transform it into stone. The thought of using mud out of its natural place, made into a new solid form and subjected to the vision of a builder, is invention and imagination and involves initiation into cultural secrets. A brick is a piece of borrowed ground, placed in a new relationship to the firmament of ground, in a wall or column of a house, temple, or castle. Walls of brick are cultural elaborations of ground, and we find their essential qualities first in the hardness and heaviness of ground itself. The ground, planet Earth, keeps pulling the brick back toward its centre. The worker must exert effort against that. The cost in effort required to raise a single brick is not very great. As the size of construction increases, the effort becomes more and more difficult and reaches a point of tedium and fatigue that goes far beyond what anyone would choose. The worker feels his vital energies go out of him into the shape of the rising wall. After a day at the job, the strength of the worker is gone, he or she is empty and sucked dry. This is the bargain, a day’s strength for another day’s subsistence.

Effort on that scale is normally demanded by somebody’s project of making a gigantic mark on the environment. The worker takes on some relation to that mark in the process of spending his vitality on it. The intimate contribution he makes to its realization justifies and maybe demands that he feel some ownership. Yet there are a number of circumstances that conflict with his sense of ownership. The design and inspiration are not from him, but are foreign. Between his shifts and when his work is finished he is required to leave the thing he has made. The shape of his relationship to it in space and time is controlled by others. The wall he builds shuts him out. Credits for the construction, maybe inscribed somewhere on the structure to be witnessed by the world at large, do not include his name or an account of his part in authorship. So the worker’s attachment to his product is both inescapable and unacknowledged, stipulated by his investment in the job and then severed, alienated, stolen.

Property-possession and labour have been rival claimants to society’s rewards and honours. Like work in one way, property such as land and money is often a source of income. “Let your money work for you.” Income from property, investment, and speculation always depends on and derives from the actual work of someone. Lack of productive property forces some to submit to the dominance of people who control such things as land and money. Labour has always been the under-dog. Deprivation of property forces people into a physical dependence on resources controlled by property owners, a sort of slavery. To some it has seemed the plainest injustice that inheritors of property should be rewarded more than those working daily to produce necessities of community life. Work is a life-warping burden. It would seem that the bearers of the burden of producing what the community requires should earn most benefits.

That is all common knowledge and the injustice is plain to see. However, the injustice is not often identified, is not prohibited by law, for example, because of the pervasive dominance of crime-family cultural values in the conceptual structure of sovereign power, executive privilege, and wealth as a trophy. The injustice of that relationship of labour to monumental architecture, as well as to all forms of high culture dependent on the tastes and pleasures of those able to afford luxury goods and services such as decorative, performance, and plastic arts, undermines any claims to a legitimacy of command through contributions to civilization. Those forms of high culture are merely another crime family technology for exercising radical inequality.

This is still on the way to Machiavelli and Nietzsche.

Copyright © 2012 Sandy MacDonald. The moral right of the author is asserted.