[P2P-F] Fwd: From Rajani: On Alienation: : A Non-Eurocentric View

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: r kanth <involutegandhian at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 3:54 AM
Subject: Fwd: From Rajani: On Alienation: : A Non-Eurocentric View
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>




*                                                         Further Notes on
Euro-Modernism**

*
                                                                  On
Alienation*



*Alienation* is a major theme in European discourse, both theological and
philosophical, in its EM  (EuroModernist) phase.

Marx , one of the great canonicals in that  august lineage*, e.g.,*  noted
several  aspects of alienation:  of workers -  from their product, from the
production process(run by owners/agents) , from each other(via
‘competition’) ,   and from their own *species essence* *(Gattungswesen*).

I wish to identify the last as specially important, if in a marginally
different sense,  as far as our ‘species-essence’ goes– perhaps – from Marx.

I also wish to add another species of alienation,   a  little less
relevant, perhaps,  to a  child of the enlightenment,  and  an heir to
industrial society,  like Marx: *i.e*. *alienation from nature.*

***

*Gattungswesen.*

I have argued that , *contra *all the norms of EM,  we as a species
are *affective
*beings, led to seek the felicity of warm kindred relations,
*instinctually:* familial,  co-operative,  and communal.

EM,  by setting up its *alternate * template of competition,
acquisitivenessness, individualist,  self-seeking behavior  (as in the
pseudo-science of “Economics”), offers a paradigm strikingly opposed to
this human essence.

This sets up not   so-called ‘cognitive dissonance’ –  a  buzz-word if ever
there was one -  but , even deeper, an *existential nightmare* for
humans *compelled
to act against their very own  natures.*

*This is the  ontic basis of angst and despair, noted by existentialist
writers,  for generations.*

This is why   the so-called  ‘happiness index’ is so low in all societies *most
‘advanced’ in EM norms*, such as the US; and why the UK, uabashedly,
recently set up , no less, a ministry for ‘loneliness’.

*

*Nature.*

We are , *contra *the shibboleths of Biblical ideology, part of nature,*
i.e* ., we are *animals*

Even  the radical Marx, echoing his own  Judeo-Christian  heritage,  spoke
of “Man’  proudly as the ‘sovereign of creation”.

He hadn’t  studied  Darwin (Darwin’s classic work  was published, late:  the
same year as  one of Marx’s classic works: 1859).

*At any rate, we are part of nature*: and when we are kept away from it*,
 as we are, more or less,  in all EM societies,* in arid cityscapes of
cement and steel, our ‘spirits sag’  (all but unconsciously) and we
experience  an ineffable  distress (poetically depicted  in Keats’ To One
Who Has Been Long in City Pent’ verse) .

Presumably parks exist , here and there, in cities, to alleviate that
disorder.

*It is a unique form of alienation* – *i.e.* *suffering* -  lifted  by that
trope of    ‘*One Touch of Nature”, as Shakespeare had it,  that “ Makes
the Whole World Kin" * .

It is  a misery quite  akin to that caused by the rupture with
*Gattungswesen.*

*

To sum up.

In my view, we are, as a species,  alienated when separated from *family,
community,  and nature.*

Marx, subscribing – as did most  all his peers in political economy -  - to
EM’s (philosophical) *materialism* ,  prioritised  *human engagement in
production* as critical (‘work’  is an important concept  in Protestant
-Calvinist - theology as well),  whence his ‘alienations’ , leastways,  begin
in that domain.

*I theorise, au contraire,  the priority of  family, culture,  and society,
within  the geist of our species.*

Native American children, cruelly and brutishly separated  from their
families/culture/ and society by their  oppressors, as part of an
‘experiment’ to ‘civilise the savage’ ,   apparently died ‘mysteriously’ in
large numbers, or so it is reported.

*No: no mystery.*

It is explained by what I argue, above: *no EM philosophy can ‘explain’ it.*

*This alienation is critical*: at its extreme, *we suffer a loss of being,
of sanity,  of wholeness, and incur a debilitating  anomie when so
separated.*

*I will repeat: when separated  from family, community, and nature,  we
experience a  critical breach of what we could term the wholeness of being.*

For humans, involuntary  isolation could well be  the ultimate  terror
(which is why being put away’ in solitary ‘ is such a barbaric mode of
‘correction’).

Such  ‘isolation’ is now, sadly,  near-chronic  in EM societies (*vide
*Ministries
of Loneliness)

It may well account for the  unmistakable madness of our (EM) age, in the
final stages of what I have termed, in my recent book (2017)  ‘Human
Devolution’.

I will  conclude by repeating my  principal thesis : *in virtually
Everything it claims , represents,  or commends, Euromodernism is
categorically mistaken :   and , worse,  more often  than not, positively
injurious  to human existence. *

The sooner we see through, and reject, its many charades,  the sooner we
might have a chance to save what  still remains of our social, natural ,
and emotive/personal, world.

**EuroModernism *, *or EM, for short, is my term for the  specific form of
Modernism that Europe first invented, and imposed on itself, and its
benighted populace, and then exported  - perforce, to its everlasting
detriment -   to the world at large.*



                                                          R  E  F  E  R  E
N  C  E  S



Kanth, R.  *Breaking with the Enlightenment*, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997

_______   *Farewell to Modernism,* NY: Peter Lang, 2017

*[©R.Kanth 2018]  *











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