[P2P-F] Fwd: From Rajani: Envisioning Redemption

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: r kanth <involutegandhian at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 8:09 PM
Subject: Fwd: From Rajani: Envisioning Redemption
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>






*                                                    The  Human Condition
and Spontaneous Order*

                                                  *Continuing Arguments
Against EuroModernism*





For  some three decades, now,  I have written/spoken against the ruling
ethos  of the  *EM* –* EuroModernist* - Paradigm ( I have detailed this
phenomenon in several Works, the most recent of which is my *Farewell to
Modernism,* 2017. Suffice it to say here that ‘*EM’ is the  highly
specific  form of Modernism that Europe first invented, imposed on itself,
and then ‘gifted’ it, under duress, to the  rest of  the world*) that
dominates the Modernist spectrum,  Left or Right, East or West, today.

Other than Immanuel Wallerstein – *from whom nothing is* *hid* !– I doubt
any of my readers have really understood its  meaning or import.

That is just one measure of the insularity of academe,  which is a
self-serving
enterprise well-funded by the powers that *shouldn’t *be,  and charged with
‘managing’  acceptable discourse.

Whilst this *malaise *is near universal in the modern world , the US
academy possibly takes the cake, in this regard, since it operates also
within a  broader societal  milieu of *near*-barbarism in intellectual
matters ( a *critical * intelligentsia, other than academe-based ,being
virtually non-existent).

One might say, where there is opulence there is its inevitable concomitant
- *corruption.*

I am not the only one who has noticed this:  a long time ago, Oscar Wilde
noted it with the comment that the US had gone straight from barbarism to
decadence,  bypassing the stage of civilization.

He was not joking.

A century later,  Henry Miller devoted passionate pages to  the exposition
of what he called *‘the air-conditioned nightmare’ *(also the title of the
book).



*



The underlying* motif*  of EM is the notion of *societal engineering.*

*Via* its prophets and seers,  it virtually rewrote the human condition –
to suit its corrupt ends.

The ‘Hobbesian world’,  which Hobbes understood to be exemplifying the
state of nature, it visualised as the normal social condition.

It projected society as atomized, individualized, fragmented, and driven by
distrust, competition, and one-upmanship: and most of all by *greed unbound*
.

*Not merely ‘projected’, ideologically, but institutionalized, concretely.*

As the centuries unfolded ,  from the  marker of the so-called ‘
*enlightenment*’ , it turned into a composite, inchoate, mix of  often
contradictory ideas: from  a relatively benign *laissez-faire*  stance
(Smith) to  virulent Social Darwinism (Malthus, Spencer).

Gone was the  antic, mutualist,  *social compact:* in its stead,  it
posited a bare, cold, social *‘contract’*,  with all institutions taking on
an acquisitive,  calculating,  bargaining *modus* as with today’s Neo-Cons,
Neo-Libs, and the Nash *genre* of Game Theorists (tending , eventually,
toward  the *Transhumanist* , misanthropic terminus that looms ahead, in
these  misguided visions).

Modern ‘Economics’, the *crown jewel of this mutant ideology*,
carries/exhibits  all  of its scars -  *to a t.*

In sum,  it produced a mind-set well captured in J.P. Sartre’s  ‘Hell is
other people’  epigram.

 Under its auspices, we are required to envision and enter a ‘society’ that
is a minefield of misanthropy , in dubious struggle against each other :
for the reward of  a mess of pottage for some, and  for  virtually nothing
at all for the many.

This view of human nature, as I have written elsewhere,  is little short of
a  noxious libel upon the human race.



*

This was no ‘enlightenment’.

It was a descent into  a hellish abyss of  a fondly carved *dystopia *-  of
which western society , *especially *its Anglo-Norman hegemons, is  now ,
fatefully, emblematic.

Little wonder the UK has , apparently,  just created a Minister for
‘loneliness’, echoing both Orwell and Huxley in that one  tragic trope

Life is short - and EM votaries have rendered  the life of the planet  itself
even shorter: serious scientists,  like, Guy McPherson ,  now give us but *ten
years* to the beginning of human extinction.

So, I will spare us the details, and get to the nub – before doom do us
part.



*

*Contra* the concoctions of EM pronouncements,  we  humans of the  primate
family ( I will drop the self-glorifying ‘homo sapiens’ apothegm) have some
rather  striking features.

*We are primarily convivial, co-operative, and communal creatures bound to
each other  by what I have termed a ‘balance of affections’* (not the
negatively
charged, jaded,   ‘*balance of interests’* idea  of the Contract Theorists).

*In that  one line, above,   we bury all the axioms of  the putative
discipline of ‘economics’,* as it arose , historically, within the ‘*brutish
isles’*  (no exaggeration to this designation:  since  the history of the
elite *policy makers, not the people,* of that society lives up to that
characterization amply).

However, the above  sketch  is complicated by our *instinctual* endowments.

*Put succinctly: Men are endowed with the instinct of violence,  Women with
the instinct of nurturance.*

Being *instincts,*  they may not be wholly  erased, but culture can either
accentuate them or abate them,  in its dictates,  to an extent (nurture can
and does ‘control’ behavior, if  within limits: as learnt by Skinner and
Pavlov).

I term the first  'cluster of traits' the POM : *paradigm of masculinity.*

The second set,  I call the POF: *paradigm of femininity.*

*In the first instance, therefore, civilization is no more than a ‘taming’
of the predatory urges of men.*

If Civilisation is understood as the *pacification of  human existence* ,
both social and natural,  then we can understand where/how  that first step
fits in.

*In effect, women are the very first peacemakers: since* they need to build
and secure  a  functioning  ‘*cordon sanitaire’*, in order to  raise the
infant child, safe from the unpredictable  predations of men.

*Mother and child , together, constitute the very first social unit: and
their relationship, is also the structural provenance of human morality*.

Thus, humans have  always had* two* permanent  sources of dread: the
violence of nature and the violence of men (both,  of course , belonging to
‘nature’).

It is to antic tribal society’s credit that it shackled the* second*  threat,
localizing it,  and limiting it,  within the tribal family, by means of the
binding restraints of ties of kinship (‘affections’).

 *This is still the only workable model we know.*

EM society was far better at taming *external* nature: but found *male
violence*  highly serviceable to its predatory ends, using it to suppress
revolt, keeping  the classes divided, and keeping workers and women under
effective domination.

One could call this strategy  ‘*management by fear’*: *who says  (wo)man
does not live by dread alone?*

Contemporary US,  the most violent society in earth, may well be  the
text-book model of this EM  configuration..



*

EM organised  us to accept  a state of *permanent war*, economic and
political, as the rulers accumulated wealth ,  by dint of various
extortions : ( leastways, today) one billionaire at a time.

Most of us take  this imposed reality as ‘life’: and  concoct  rationalising
philosophies to endure  it,  as  may be inevitable.

*Is there no way out of this matrix?*

Yes, there is: and has always been.

This is where this idea of ‘spontaneous order’ fits in.

*We are communal beings, led in the first instance, to create sustainable
kindred with one other.*

Far from being  ‘light seeking’,  we are, as* mammals*, ‘heat seeking’: and
our greatest ‘need’ is simply : *to huddle.*

*This is how original human societies were formed, universally.*

*Instinctually.*

That is how they can be re-formed,  again, any time, any where.

So,  we needn’t agonise over the ‘how’ of it, *via  *pedantic  debate and
discussion: it takes care of itself.

*Norms arise spontaneously in the crucible of shared human affections, and
then ‘evolve’.*

This ‘evolution’ is nothing other than an *extension of the kinship
paradigm*,  but within G*emeinschaft *limits.

*Gemeinschaft* societies are the original,  ‘natural’ societies.

*Gessellschaft * entities, most common in – but not unique to - EM
formations,  are  , always*, contrived, artificial, imposed entities*,  wherein
our  real, anthropic endowments are permanently  crippled and thwarted.

‘*Paradise Lost’* (with a degree of obvious  hyperbole)  is where the
former give way to the latter, generally under the impulse of  the drives*
inherent* in the POM (paradigm of masculinity), no longer containable
within the ‘balance of affections’ of domesticity.

It is how tribal societies, often, break up into empires.

So, it is as simple as that.

There is no way of ‘reforming’ the*  adversarial society* as invented by
EM: it is, inherently,  *irreconcilable.*

Which is why all well-meaning efforts to manufacture  a ‘socialist’ society
( as invented in radical EM theorising) fail -  and will fail.

*In fact, such   structures  can only be built on affections: not charters,
rules, and regulations.*

Goodwill, charity, care, and compassion may not be *legislated*, to form
the bonding cement of society,  in some ‘rational-legal’ sense.

 It would be akin to King Canute ordering the ocean waves to halt.

*Instead, It is love that binds: not self-interest , nor even a
disinterested  fealty to an  abstract altruism.*

*The human family , embodying the values I am referencing, is both a
natural and social entity simultaneously*: and stands in all societies and
cultures, and at all times, ,  a reminder of our  real*, instinctual* roots
(which, owing to operative EM norms we have all but forgotten: in fact,
instincts,  were not permitted to rule ‘humans’, under the strictures of
Judeo-Christian ideas, where humans were presumed  carved in the ‘image of
god’.* So, despite Darwin, we   deploy  instincts in  the study of animal
behavior,  but not in analysing human , social , behavior.* Even more
importantly, *nurture* had to be assumed  as trumping *nature*:  since the
entire  thrust of  the EM Project is societal engineering,  *which would
be   quite impossible otherwise).*

Impressively, and instructively, it obeys not one single EM Diktat from the
Holy Catechism that we have all internalised: equality, democracy,
individualism, ‘freedom’, *et. al.*

*It is a moral, not a political, nor economic, entity.*

Bears thinking.



*



*Order is spontaneous, both in nature  and  society.*

Why we don’t see  evidence of that in EM societies – and  more so in
this *Late
Modernist*  stage of human devolution - is because these are profoundly*
unnatural* entities, from their very inception.

They are a house of cards, in one sense: castles in the air in another,
held together by force and fraud in the main.

Even more than both of the above ,  are they* existential traps* in which
the human spirit chokes and suffocates.

In fact, the West, to the extent it ‘lives’ by  such pernicious EM norms,
is no more than a dying  cantonment  of a  decaying citizenry : *of masses
of  robotized, idiotised,   individuals  poised on the brink of  a
post-human, transhuman disfigurement*.

Indeed, the lead Anglo-Norman formation has  already crossed a red line: *they
are the world’s first Amoral Society (*an obvious oxymoron), with  -  the
usual exceptions apart- a populace desensitized *to the point of accepting
war, violence , struggle,  and conflict, as routine , incorrigible ,
aspects of social existence.*

The  astonishing passivity in the face of  the continuing  spate of mass
shootings domestically, and mass murders abroad, are a telling index of
this remarkable  *Devolution.*

But none of this is inevitable, nor necessary.

A human society can be re-created, via detachment, delinking,  opting-out ,
from the  dominant EM Project.

No charter is needed, nor manifestos, nor constitutions; no
’pre-requisites’, no ‘resources’.

Any set of humans can  found it, any where, anytime ,  in near-endless
replication.

It is limited only by our inventiveness, the cultural genius inherent in
our species-given creativity.

*Its  permanent locus will always be the  family unit - real or ersatz-
based on caring, love, warmth,  and affection*:  transcendent  human values
virtually  debased, distorted , and /or destroyed, by EM  postures and
stances.

 In its essence,  it embodies , within itself, that  very  overarching
*transvaluation
of values* that stands as eloquent , if humble,  critique and  rebuke to the
pernicious, toxic,  nostrums of EuroModernism.

*So what is/was the secret of tribal empathy?*

*The rearing of children in common*.

In essence, the tribe is merely an *extended family,* and the ‘familial’
principle relates *all  adults to all children* , really or
virtually, as *potential
or actual care-givers.*

*This unyielding bond of kinship is stronger than galvanized steel:
enabling tribal formation, like Australian Aboriginals to exist and thrive
 for millenia,  undaunted by altering environs.*

Can we recreate that bonding?

I think so.

*By focusing, ever,   on  the domain of affective ties and relationships,* *and
minimizing contact with,  and participation in,  the alien,  ‘public’,
Gessellschaft  world ,  organised from above, for their own purposes,  by
the ruling/governing elites.*

***

*Ideals, idylls, and utopias have nothing to do with  such a reconstitution
of life:* indeed,  constructs, of that nature,  are  no more than
specious  EM snares, enticing us into a permanent hallucinatory state that
, like much of religion, promise  a  shining *tomorrow * (that never comes)
as  canny bait to accept present-day  oppressions  with a degree of
equanimity.

*Life is not a matter of realization of ideals: it is about living  within
the bounteous  promise of our species-being.*

As *animals,* we have all manner of traits that are far from  congenial and
 foolhardy  to ignore: yet , even within our* mammalian* cast, lie  hidden
salves that can  yet make life on earth  more bearable.

EM ideology, on the other hand, is  unmistakably *reptilian *in its *geist,*
and leads  inexorably only to  irreparable *angst *and inconsolable
despair.

It can offer, in this late era of impending doom,   only sordid  ‘*Ministeries
of Loneliness’* to repair the mortal blow it has delivered to  the very
possibility of *human * existence.

*And this is, perforce,  the Age of Reparation.*

The invading EM adventurers,  *e.g.,* on the North American  continent,*
annihilated* *without the slightest compunction,* thousands of  native
tribes: it were  only fitting if, in late expiation,    thousands of novel
‘tribal'  entities could be commenced, to re-seed/re-generate  that
ill-fated  land, much as the world at large,   and restore antic  balances
rudely ruptured by the   accumulationist ravages of these  ‘tribes’ of
reckless ‘*civilisation-mongers’* that have brought the entire planet
crumbling, today,   to the  very brink of  a wholly gratuitous , and
entirely avoidable, extinction.

*We have strayed far from our roots, whose redemptive rediscovery is on the
cards, now,  in these tumultous times.*

It is no more than our birthright.




                                                    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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