| Individuality,Identity and Narcissism in Civilization | 0 comments |
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17 Dec 2007 @ 09:55, by John Grieve
Individuality, Identity and Narcissism in Civilization: A memoir
To express yourself is a sign of being an individual and an artist, and one of the great signs of civilization is Art so it figures that Individuality is intimately linked to our current state of society. There are many theories of Art but as a mystic i put forward a spiritual view that it expresses our dual nature of being unique individuals and at the same time our common identity of being part of the divine godhead.
To our modern eyes the tribal/clan person seems to lack the sort of individuality which is so common in our cities and towns and indeed the denizens of the Kikiyu or Tutsi seem more similar to each other in dress and hairstyle, say, than do our variegated and diverse citizens. They may see each other as separate individuals but to us their individuality seems less marked. They seem less competitive, ambitious, selfish etc., than we are. And this is indeed the reason why 100,000 years of undifferentiated tribal society gave way to what we happily call civilization. The Chinese Taoists call this “The Great Separation” and see it negatively as a descent from a Golden Age of a paradise garden abandoned on account of a developing Ego and Egoism, which leads humanity on the path of trials and tribulations, which includes wars and prisons, taxes and all the other things we’re so familiar with. Less judgmentally, it is the stage of world development when the limited consciousness common to animals and simpler societies is superseded by the glorious advent of self-consciousness with all its attendant pitfalls and perils as well as triumphs.
If i may add a personal note here. I am a twin and come from a large family. To me “blood is thicker than water”, which means that kinship and family are much more important to me than money (the equivalent of “water”) or civil society. Indeed i feel different from other people. I feel in some ways less individuated and also less narcissistic than the people i see around me. It is sometimes said that twins feel like half a person or sometimes two people. Certainly i believe that being a twin has given me an insight into these questions of shared identity, individuality and even narcissism.
But history is not without direction. It is my belief that this advent of the Ego and Individuality, which marked the end of a whole long period of pre-history, also marked the beginning not only of civilization, but made possible the progress towards universal enlightenment and self-realisation which are only now becoming possible. Those who have decried this journey look back to a golden age with regret, but i accept this journey and look forward to this coming golden age of global unity and enlightenment. I believe that this universal enlightenment is only possible from the civilised state and indeed a civilization which is global and interconnected. This journey is impossible under the tribal/clan state of society, simply because a developed individuality and self-consciousness are essential to it and that is something which native society lacks.
Many radical writers have commented on civilization, but I prefer Marx and Engels because their theories , despite being one-sidedly materialistic, were couched in the language of the theory of contradictions, which is an important part of the perennial philosophy and the culture of tribal/clan society which is still very relevant today. Marx and Engels say that civilization is “acutely contradictory” and consists of “two steps forward followed by one step backwards”. When I first read these words they seemed very abstract because it was not clear to me what they referred to. But now i will give my understanding of these comments by illustrating them with examples as i understand them.
It seems to me, interpreting these comments, that each advent of freedom of any sort, in whatever guise, has been resisted by civilised society and eventually neutralised, and to put it technically, turned into a form of alienation. So two steps forward in freedom has been followed by one step backwards as a reaction. Here’s a few examples of what i mean. It’s generally accepted that in the field of sexuality and the history of society that originally a form of group marriage existed in earliest times whereby a group of men were married to a whole group of women. This was replaced, in the course of centuries and millennia, by the pairing marriage which is he same as what we have in some places today as a couple of partners. That was progress because it was a step in the direction of a couple of individuals expressing their choice of a partner and love for one another and was a form of choice and self-expression. Also, an intense and intimate relationship, such as we get in a pairing situation, leads to personal development and growth. After this progress came the reaction., the step backwards. The next development was the well-known institution of monogamous marriage, which is a form of marriage based on property-relations rather than love and choice and which in many cases is rightly considered to be oppression of the woman. Now, after thousands of years of monogamy, the institution is rapidly falling into disrepair and many people are going back to a pairing partnership sometimes involving same-sex couples. It has often been pointed out that monogamy has always had attendant evils in the form of prostitution and adultery and others. Indeed it is noticeable that in prostitution women’s bodies are turned into commodities, which is a form of alienation.
A key example that i can quote regarding action and reaction is the very advent of individualism itself, which was a great advance originally on the undifferentiated nature of tribal society. Its advent was originally progressive but society resisted it and neutralized it and in the process created forms which have persisted to the present day. The State is such a form, as are commodities and money and indeed many of the things we take for granted in civilised society, which we can recognise as forms of alienation. It would not be too strong to assert that the essential nature of civilization, in its social, economic and political forms are the reaction of society to the immensely powerful effects of the force of individuality, which destroyed tribal society. It was this which actually caused the transformation of tribal society, and not money or other forms of wealth, which are usually credited with it but which are themselves merely manifestations and symptoms of a powerful individuality. To neutralize individuality itself society transformed it on the psychological level of civilised people into narcissism which is an acute, alienated form of individuality and is recognised by modern psychologists to be a form of mental illness.
Another example of action and reaction, the way civilised society resists and neutralizes any progressive, freedom-creating development is what happened to the enslaved at the end of the Roman Empire. Many became free but were then re-enslaved as serfs and worked for feudal masters. This happened again when feudalism was passing away. The serfs became free but were forced to become wage-slaves serving the new capitalist society. As someone commented on the fate of the Negro slaves emancipated after the American Civil War, they became “free to starve”, indeed many had been better off under the old system. Serfs or slaves becoming free and then having to sell their labour as a commodity is a good example of society resisting progress and alienating it. Indeed turning human labour into a commodity was a historic form of alienation that made all the progress of the bourgeois era possible.
Which brings us to the present time. I have written elsewhere that I believe the essential nature of the post-modern era to be intimately connected with identity and related issues. I can add here that a reformed individuality, shorn of its narcissism, is part of that picture. Individuality and Identity are like twin threads of DNA, intertwined mirror images of each other, which form a continuous thread from the closing days of tribal society, through the advent and period of civilization, to this end-game which we are all playing upon a global chess-board. I have also commented elsewhere on the sinister fact that identity itself seems to be going through the process of being resisted by civilized society and turned by this process of neutralisation into alienated forms of information like ID cards, bank details, biometric data etc..
Identity and a new individuality have the potential to transform civilised society in the same way that individuality transformed tribal society. Nothing is inevitable. If this process is halted and our very identities, individualities and souls become commodities, heaven knows what the outcome will be. This must be resisted on the non-material level. In a later piece i will write about the role of Art in combating these developments.
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Category: Articles
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