[P2P-F] Fwd: FW:

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanth, Rajani <rkanth at fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 7:09 AM
Subject: FW:
To: "michelsub2004 at gmail.com" <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>



                                        The Great Impediment
                                         (For Noam Chomsky)

My critique of Eurocentric Modernism (EM) lays its manifold  ills bare.
However, only those with a full knowledge of (EM) social science and
social history will glean its import.
The rest – much of the EM  intelligentsia - will see it,  I regret
superficially: as an ‘externalist’ diatribe holding Europe responsible for
the ills of the modern world.
Indeed, the superficial kind have already turned a deaf ear (or a blind
eye)  to my writings.
Now , as it happens, I have the facts to prove my platitudes: but , of
late, I care not to provide it in each instance.
Life is, simply,  too short: and cares are long, far too long (these notes,
for the most part,  I write in under 15 minutes, daily, so one can’t
address all issues at once).
For those who are serious,  I might add, it is not an  insuperable task to
read my books and decide for themselves.
If they then find themselves  yet in disagreement, I am  virtually certain
that they are, in effect, in disagreement  with  verifiable facts: i.e. ,
they are driven  by cultural  pride to offer  resistance.
So be it.

I know enough of European mores to know that they would far  prefer their
own self-criticism to a critique from the ‘Other’: it is somewhat
equivalent to men who ‘understand’ feminist issues,  personally, but quail
when accosted by angry feminists – at which they become vehemently
’defensive’.
But I am not of their ilk: few are more aware of the inadequacies – ontic,
epistemic – of the “Other’ than I.
And I would not be even slightly  ‘defensive’ when those are pointed out:
indeed, I myself point them out as/when needed.
In other words, I am not ethnocentric (could be  a lapse on my part?).
Nor do  I  project  a ‘good vs evil’ story of our kind.
I do suggest a ‘mammalian’ vs ‘reptilian’ ( as sets of  traits) contest at
play, but that is not at all the equivalent of the former.
To an extent, it is not ‘moral judgments’ at all  that are at issue.
It is palpable differences in ideology and practices that can lead to
outcomes that, in a realist/rationalist sense, are to be preferred/resisted.
Stated starkly, human survival is at issue.
One set of traits (EM) spell our collective destruction, in the near
future: the other, our continued survival in the usual prosaic, hum-drum,
unromantic manner.
So it is NOT a debate over ideals, or utopias.
Or East and West.

***

So, what is this Great Impediment (to amelioration, to a drawback, to a
return to  less destructive  modes of living)?
I will be expedient, and sum it up succinctly.
The EM paradigm has resulted in the deep  ‘embedding’ of  untrammeled
self-interest, amongst its audience (i.e,, the vast majority of the peoples
under its sway, East or West) to the point where there is little hope for
an en masse embrace of  more benign societal possibilities for the higher
good.
This is another key difference between the EM world and the Other.
We may all be ‘selfish’ today, the world over: but its degree, intensity ,
and scope is much muted in societies  still within a traditionalist
‘ideological’  (philosophical)cast where communal norms still have some
core value and significance.

To be sure, they can still act, and do act,  asocially, even anti-socially,
but  remain in full awareness of the transgression as a violation of norms.
In short, they may be immoral, but  they cannot be amoral. And  so it
allows, under the right impetus, for a return to sanity.
The ‘Post-Human’ , amoral , cast – made up of the prior mentioned traits –
is  what  really prevents societies like the US to ‘correct’  pathological
, suicidal, ways of living/functioning , even when there is a gathering
‘awareness’ that all is not well.
They know, but they cannot move: why?
Because no personal , material loss is  acceptable, in such psyches, for
any cause.
And  such ‘correction’ as is needed today will involve a diminution of
personal, material , monetary  wealth – or power at the level of the rulers
- (albeit at a substantive reduction of societal costs and   enhancement of
societal benefits).

I am not talking of the very thin fringe – that still exists -  that is,
possibly,   readily sacrificial of present (material) benefit for future
(non-material)  gains.
I am speaking of the vast populace.
Whence every effort at improvement has to be ‘sold” ,materially, on the
lines of, e.g., “ a  green economy will provide more jobs and generate more
wealth, etc” : which is rather like  implying that  honesty is  good policy
-  because you could get richer that way.

In effect a society based on ‘universal egoism’(self-interest) is not a
human society at all but a marvel of social (EM)  engineering: it is a
pathological, abnormal,  entity .
This ‘model’ is quintessentially EM : hailing from the notion of society as
a ‘contract’ (that is celebrated , instead of execrated, in EM literature).
It is not.
Anthropic society is a balance of affections, not interests (consider its
ontic  base, the family, for a few second to fathom this).
So EM societies rest on epistemic  error, embodying a self-destructive
‘ethic’ (egoism).
This is not true even of otherwise ‘bourgeois’ formations such as Denmark,
or India , which yet retain, if very thinly, their original anthropic cast
( in the case of the former,  a very  palpable ‘tribal’ self-awareness also
helps retain that mother lode).
The mnemonics of anthropic societies are still extant, in their case, if
only in some ‘sub’  stratum  of consciousness.
But it is enough.
It will suffice.
Regeneration is possible in such instances (and they are numerous), and so
there is an ontic base for ‘hope’ (or rather, positive expectations).

But where, for the most part, even the memory of  ‘non-selfish’ attitudes
and motivations (other than in institutions such as the Army or  a  Church
where they are a sine qua non)  has been systematically extinguished,  as
in Anglo-Norman societies, the  task is  harder.
The ‘Hobbesian’ cast is sunk too deep.
Ordinary ‘rationalist’ means, thereby, will not suffice.
Kennedy’s famous ‘Ask not what the country can do for you…” trope was  a
great rhetorical  soundbyte  and  idyll:  if, also,  regrettably, pure
banana oil.
Try selling that on Main Street.
That is why I have suggested that  only Charisma can break the spell, or a
cataclysm that, suddenly and powerfully, reveals our desperate
co-dependence masked by EM ideology.
You know which alternative would be the preferred one.
But, if I am right, which option is ‘preferred’ will also depend upon
whether we are of a moral  - or an amoral cast.
[© R.Kanth 2016]



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