<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">r kanth</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:involutegandhian@gmail.com">involutegandhian@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 3:54 AM<br>Subject: Fwd: From Rajani: On Alienation: : A Non-Eurocentric View<br>To: Michel Bauwens <<a href="mailto:michelsub2004@gmail.com">michelsub2004@gmail.com</a>><br><br><br><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><br><br><div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b> Further Notes on Euro-Modernism*<span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span> </span><span> <wbr> <wbr> </span><span> </span>On Alienation<span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>Alienation</i> is a
major theme in European discourse, both theological and philosophical, in its
EM <span> </span>(EuroModernist) phase.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Marx , one of the great canonicals in that <span> </span>august lineage<i>, e.g.,</i><span> </span>noted several <span> </span>aspects of alienation: <span> </span>of workers - <span> </span>from their product, from the production
process(run by owners/agents) , from each other(via ‘competition’) , <span> </span>and from their own <i>species essence</i> <i>(<a name="m_-6961411603529116355_m_8984962414658614183__Hlk519007880">Gattungswesen</a></i><span>).</span><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I wish to identify the last as specially important, if in a
marginally different sense, <span> </span>as far as
our ‘species-essence’ goes– perhaps – from Marx.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I also wish to add another species of alienation, <span> </span><span> </span>a <span> </span>little less relevant, perhaps, <span> </span>to a <span> </span>child
of the enlightenment, <span> </span>and <span> </span>an heir to industrial society, <span> </span>like Marx: <i>i.e</i>.
<i>alienation from nature.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>*</i> <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>Gattungswesen.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I have argued that , <i>contra
</i>all the norms of EM, <span> </span>we as a species
are <i>affective </i>beings, led to seek the
felicity of warm kindred relations, <i>instinctually:</i>
familial, <span> </span>co-operative, <span> </span>and communal.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">EM, <span> </span>by setting up its
<i>alternate </i><span> </span>template of competition, acquisitivenessness,
individualist, <span> </span>self-seeking behavior <span> </span>(as in the pseudo-science of “Economics”), offers
a paradigm strikingly opposed to this human essence.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">This sets up not <span> </span><span> </span>so-called ‘cognitive dissonance’ – <span> </span>a <span> </span>buzz-word
if ever there was one - <span> </span>but , even deeper,
an <i>existential nightmare</i> for humans <i>compelled to act against their very own <span> </span>natures.</i><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>This is the <span> </span>ontic basis of angst and despair, noted by existentialist
writers, <span> </span>for generations.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">This is why <span> </span><span> </span>the so-called <span> </span>‘happiness index’ is so low in all societies <i>most ‘advanced’ in EM norms</i>, such as the
US; and why the UK, uabashedly, recently set up , no less, a ministry for ‘loneliness’.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">*<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>Nature.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">We are , <i>contra </i>the
shibboleths of Biblical ideology, part of nature,<i> i.e</i> ., we are <i>animals</i><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Even <span> </span>the radical Marx,
echoing his own <span> </span>Judeo-Christian <span> </span>heritage, <span> </span>spoke of “Man’ <span> </span>proudly as the ‘sovereign of creation”.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">He hadn’t <span> </span>studied <span> </span>Darwin (Darwin’s classic work <span> </span>was published, late: <span> </span>the same year as <span> </span>one of Marx’s classic works: 1859).<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>At any rate, we are
part of nature</i>: and when we are kept away from it<i>, <span> </span>as we are, more or less, <span> </span>in all EM societies,</i> in arid cityscapes of
cement and steel, our ‘spirits sag’ <span> </span>(all
but unconsciously) and we experience<span> </span>an
ineffable <span> </span>distress (poetically depicted <span> </span>in Keats’ To One Who Has Been Long in City
Pent’ verse) .<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Presumably parks exist , here and there, in cities, to alleviate
that disorder.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>It is a unique form of
alienation</i> – <i>i.e.</i> <i>suffering</i> - <span> </span>lifted <span> </span>by that trope of <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>‘<i>One
Touch of Nature”, as Shakespeare had it, <span> </span>that “ Makes the Whole World Kin" </i><span> </span>.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">It is <span> </span>a misery quite <span> </span>akin to that caused by the rupture with <i>Gattungswesen.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">*<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">To sum up.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">In my view, we are, as a species, <span> </span>alienated when separated from <i>family, community, <span> </span>and nature.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Marx, subscribing – as did most <span> </span>all his peers in political economy - <span> </span>- to EM’s (philosophical) <i>materialism</i> , <span> </span>prioritised <span> </span><i>human
engagement in production</i> as critical (‘work’ <span> </span>is an important concept <span> </span>in Protestant -Calvinist - theology as well), <span> </span>whence his ‘alienations’ , leastways, <span> </span>begin in that domain.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>I theorise, au
contraire, <span> </span>the priority of <span> </span>family, culture, <span> </span>and society, within <span> </span>the geist of our species.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Native American children, cruelly and brutishly separated <span> </span>from their families/culture/ and society by
their <span> </span>oppressors, as part of an ‘experiment’
to ‘civilise the savage’ , <span> </span><span> </span>apparently died ‘mysteriously’ in large numbers,
or so it is reported.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>No: no mystery.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">It is explained by what I argue, above: <i>no EM philosophy can ‘explain’ it.</i><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>This alienation is
critical</i>: at its extreme, <i>we suffer a
loss of being, of sanity, <span> </span>of wholeness, and
incur a debilitating <span> </span>anomie when so separated.<span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><i>I will repeat: when
separated <span> </span>from family, community, and
nature, <span> </span>we experience a <span> </span>critical breach of what we could term the wholeness
of being.</i><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">For humans, involuntary <span> </span>isolation could well be <span> </span>the ultimate <span> </span>terror (which is why being put away’ in
solitary ‘ is such a barbaric mode of ‘correction’).<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Such <span> </span>‘isolation’ is
now, sadly, <span> </span>near-chronic <span> </span>in EM societies (<i>vide </i>Ministries of Loneliness)<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">It may well account for the <span> </span>unmistakable madness of our (EM) age, in the
final stages of what I have termed, in my recent book (2017) <span> </span>‘Human<span> </span>Devolution’.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I will <span> </span>conclude by
repeating my <span> </span>principal thesis : <i>in virtually Everything it claims , represents,
<span> </span>or commends, Euromodernism is categorically
mistaken : <span> </span><span> </span>and , worse, <span> </span>more often <span> </span>than not, positively injurious <span> </span>to human existence. <span></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">The sooner we see through, and reject, its many charades, <span> </span>the sooner we might have a chance to save what
<span> </span>still remains of our social, natural , and emotive/personal, world.<span></span></p>
<p class="m_-6961411603529116355m_8984962414658614183gmail-MsoListParagraph" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt 0.5in;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><i>*EuroModernism </i></b>, <i>or EM, for short, is my term for the <span> </span>specific form of Modernism that Europe first
invented, and imposed on itself, and its benighted populace, and then exported <span> </span>- perforce, to its everlasting detriment - <span> </span><span> </span>to the
world at large.</i><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span><span> </span><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> <wbr>
</span>R<span> </span>E <span> </span>F<span>
</span>E<span> </span>R<span> </span>E<span>
</span>N<span> </span>C<span> </span>E<span> </span>S<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Kanth, R.<span> </span><i>Breaking with the Enlightenment</i>, NJ:
Humanities Press, 1997<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">_______<span> </span><i>Farewell to Modernism,</i> NY: Peter Lang,
2017<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b><span style="font-size:9pt;line-height:107%">[©R.Kanth
2018]<span> </span><span></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span> </span></p>
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