This is the German word for “alienation”, and the one Marx used to describe the social effects of industrialization. I am going to “riff” a bit, thinking out loud. This will be choppy, perhaps incoherent at times, but hopefully in the end thought provoking. [I just posted this, and will simply comment that I did deal with the stated topic, but so indirectly very few will follow me. So be it]
I’ve been feeling a bit of languor and listlessness lately, which is an odd combination, like when you simultaneously want to nap and fidget. What I do in my mind’s eye, is try to vision a path forward, using the entirety of my perceptual apparatus, my mind, my emotions, my intuition, and even my kinesthetic sense (I feel a sense of being a battering ram, going again and again against the gate of my own stupidity).
Our world is in constant flux. Everything is always moving, but it moves according to approximate patterns, in the social realm, and what seem to be relatively precise patterns in the physical realm, albeit unpredictable ones in the case of formally complex systems, like the weather.
In the social realm I had a vision this morning, just laying in bed before getting up, of our entire society as if in a corporate cubicle farm. Everyone is talking, talking talking. But there are barriers, like 8′ high cubicle walls, throughout the space. At times they get so dense that you can’t move if you are trapped in them. But still people are talking talking talking. Just imagine the proverbial conversation around the water cooler/coffee pot. Did you hear what so and so said? What do you think about x,y,z?
Everywhere islands, cut off from one another perceptually. They can’t see one another. They can’t hear one another. And they don’t notice or care. In my mind, I removed all the barriers, and you could just suddenly feel the air move again, and realize that everyone had been holding their collective breaths. You can ignore things consciously, but our animal nature is never fooled into thinking an unnatural situation is comfortable. As an emotion, an instinct, it just doesn’t have the capacity to plan. That is what our reason is for.
We are decadent. The Chinese are decadent. The Japanese are decadent. The United States is decadent. I say this not because we are lazy, or dishonest, or any of the other traits the reader may associate with that word (although plainly corruption is endemic in China, whether it is nominally legal or not).
What I mean is this: we have lost the Big Picture, our shared meaning systems. Now, self evidently the meaning system of the Chinese has never been quite like our own. They had Confucianism, some Buddhism, some Christianity, some Taoism, some Islam, and some “other”. They have, now, Communism, which is a dream that faded, that was never really more than a fuzzy image anyway. Their new religion, likely, is wealth, as has been America’s for some period of time.
Now, meaning systems layer on meaning systems. One can pursue wealth through the virtues of hard work and thrift. One can value family. One can value religion. One can value personal integrity and honor. All of these sorts of things are in constant flux. Our specific reasons for living and doing vary in importance day to day and hour to hour. I coined the term “Henomoralism” to describe a philosophical position in which different values can be weighted differently depending on circumstance. Pragmatically, I think we do this of necessity daily. I could be at work, trying to make money, but I decided it was better overall if I stayed home to get my feelings and thoughts out. This does not mean I don’t value work.
In using the word decadent, what I would like to point to is the fact that as far as I know ALL human societies have fallen far, far short of the optimal use of their physical and cultural resources. There will have been exceptions to this–perhaps a forgotten African or American Indian tribe–but in general this has been true.
No large human civilization has valued Goodness in an authentic way. They have not sought to maximize happiness tempered by a tragic sense of life as short, and necessariliy filled with struggle, for optimal personal growth.
I look at nations like Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and they are comfortable. By self report, they are happy. A Dane once told me some high percentage of Danes are literally paid to “test” beds. They lie in them for three hours. They get a year off when they have kids. Students don’t have to pay their way through college. All of these things are attractive, and I’m not sure at some point in our future that we Americans might evolve sufficiently morally to consider some of them. Right now, our Democratic Party is absolutely not to be trusted with anything approaching that sort of power. They will not use it wisely or with justice, since they are corrupt. Theirs is the politics of hatred, not integration.
At the same time, I think many Americans would gladly give up the prospect of “making a million” in exchange for the elimination of the petty worries of life, such as unemployment, deep poverty, and paying for their education. What would be the harm in this, if the people running the government were actually benign, thoughtful, and honest?
The traditional conservative argument is that economic growth cannot happen if risk is not rewarded. Risk is not rewarded if the incentive of wealth is eliminated through taxation. Creation happens in Capitalism because it pays well.
Moving past this, though, it seems to me that you only need so much to be happy. Does life really change when you transition from being worth $1 billion to $2 billion. You have twice as much money, are you twice as happy? I do believe that greed, when directed along the channel of honest competition through effort and innovation, is economically beneficial. This is quite clear. This is the root of America’s success. Yet, how much is enough?
The task, it seems to me, is how to build a global human civilization that will endure happily indefinitely. Socialists have in mind the imposition of global tyranny, and economic rationing directed by, well, them. It is the task of Liberals to imagine an alternative. A true Liberal, in my view, is someone who believes that no final, general, unchanging answer to the meaning of life is possible, or desirable.
In my own view, pain is a necessary component of life. The task is not to eradicate it–as the Danes have tried to do–but transcend it. I picture them lying in comfortable beds, having time for a regular “nooner”, sitting around drinking coffee discussing sports and the weather, and yes doing good work when they make it in the office. This is an attractive image, and the question as to whether or not it is economically sustainable is an empirical one. With a reform of our financial system, such as I have proposed, I think it could be implemented globally eventually.
Perhaps this is the next step. I am so used to struggle it is hard from me to imagine another way.
At the same time, something is missing: a spiritual component. Perhaps the best analogy of this I can think of is from Doris Lessing’s book “The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five”. In that book, there are three different dimensions, as I recall, although they may have been formatted as different lands. Zone Three is the Zone of the women. It is the zone of peace and comfort, and beauty. It is the land of the Danes. Zone Four is the Zone of war, of men. It is an ugly world, whose only real beauty is the magnificent discipline and martial valor of the men. We might perhaps there think of the Prussians. A race of enlightened beings called the Canopeans rules both realms, and they give the order for the Queen of Zone Three to move to Zone Four and marry the King there, the General.
Once there, in their first meeting, if memory serves, he rapes her. Over time, they accomodate to one another, and even feel affection for one another (if that sounds implausible, consider the case of Napoleon and Marie Walewska; we forget the sheer difficulty and horror with which our history is filled, and how tough people used to be, and still are in some places). Then one day the word comes that the Queen is to return, and the King instead married to a warrior princess of Zone Five, a wild place I believe modeled on Afghanistan, which Lessing had visited.
There, they were wild. Unlike in Zone Four, where everything was patterned and regimented, and replicated exactly with precision, the inhabitants of Zone 5 were a bit insane. They would make up songs. They would ride places for no reason. They had a song which went in part: “Teach me to love my hunger/Send me hard winds off the sands.”
The Queen, in the meantime, had tried to visit Zone Two, a much more advanced region, and been unable to breath the air. She lacked what Zone Five provided, which was a certain austerity, harshness, wildness, and yet freedom. She had lived in the order of beauty her entire life.
To live a stable, comfortable, ordered life is to stagnate. The realization of this fundamental truth is in my view one of the reasons for the prodigious success of the Harry Potter novels. They have the freedom there to fail. Their social order incorporates the regular risk of death. It expects its members to think, and does not molly-coddle them, which is the opposite of the nanny culture of contemporary Britain.
There is no straight path forward. There is no simple answer. For many Leftists, the thought of revolution meets for them this need for voluntary sacrifice. It gives them a reason to live. That is the point of Leftism: it is not a political system at all, but a very poorly thought out answer to the meaning of life. This is why I label the malignant, Communistic portion of it “Cultural Sadeism”. Note Cultural includes the word cult. It is a way of life oriented around assuming power over other human beings, such that those people lose their freedom and with it the possibility of making their own way to their own version of happiness. They intend, quite literally, to inflict suffering on others, as a way of avoiding in their own lives the reality that pain cannot be eliminated in this world, finally.
Let us posit that man and machine can be welded together, in what I think futurists call the “Singularity”. Does this solve the problem of what to do? If you can do anything you want, does that make your life better or worse? Does it necessarily mean we all get along? Does it eliminate the possibility of ennui and restlessness? Does it, in short, eliminate pain? I don’t think so.
Again: the task is not to eliminate pain, but transcend it, and that is the point and purpose of what we might term spiritual “technology”. Yoga. Meditation. Ascetic practices. Fasting. Serving others.
To build a non-decadent future we need both comfortable beds, and the risk of sudden death, failure, and emotional, physical, and mental pain. This appears contradictory, but I see no way around it.
Musings for this morning. I feel better. I would recommend to anyone who might be reading this that they pick up Lessings “Canopus in Argos” series. I read them over a Christmas break in college, with some rum. They made a lasting impression. The only quality I value which Lessing seems to lack is a sense of humor. I readily forgive her that fault though. George Bernard Shaw had an excellent sense of humor, and yet he wanted to plunge the Earth into a global tyranny. To seek perfection is to not seek sincerely at all.