19 Feb 2008 @ 09:48, by John Grieve
Freedom and Identity
As we have seen, the most free part of us is our spirit, then out psyche. Then our economic behaviour. As we move up the levels of society, through groups to politics and finally military force, we become less and less free.
And of course, the thing about us that is free, our spirit, is characterised by individuality. And what comprises our essential unique individuality is the million and one different aspects and identities that make us what we are: the colour of our eyes or skin; our race or ethnicity or religion; our age or physical and mental (dis)abilities; our gender or sexual orientation and literally thousands more characteristics.
If our society is to attain to freedom or enlightenment and we with it, then our spirit has to be realised. And that means in the form of the celebration of great diversity in human individuality and the uniqueness of each identity. In the unfolding of this freedom and celebration it is obvious that minority groups have a huge part to play.
Conclusion: SpiritMind over Matter----- Matter Undermined
This summing-up and conclusion pertains to the whole project I undertook just before the millennium to update the views I held on the subject of alienation and civilization. Theories of civilization are not rare, even radical and deep theories. Yet to get a theory that combines depth, plus wide-ranging knowledge and erudition, plus a mystical and artistic display worthy of a master or mistress, one has to look at someone as remarkable as Edward Carpenter.
Karl Marx produced a radical if somewhat fragmentary and partial account of civilization, and even wrote poetry as a young man. Yet he was no mystic; indeed a materialist. One prejudice he shared with the vast majority of his contemporaries, will help eventually to render his theories obsolete, just as much as faulty notions of surplus-value or the State (dictatorship of the proletariat).This flaw in his theory is the lack of understanding of the importance of identity and particularly sexual identity.
Edward Carpenter, though born only 25 years after Marx, was a visionary and mystic and was indeed 100 years ahead of his time and in advance of what Marx saw. Edward Carpenter was homosexual, at a time when it was considered a heinous offence and social deviancy. Yet he realised the importance, as no other, to the freedom project of the issue of identity and particularly the centrality of sexual and gender identities. He was one of the first to write about what we would today term the minorities question.
Identity is important because it links spirituality with individuality. Yet our sexuality links our spirituality with our physical body. Spirit with Nature. It is part of our innermost, intimate identity. If spirit itself is alienated, as it always has been, in the form of our Egos thinking we are separate, lonely and cut-off “individuals”, then it was only when this alienation, or Ego, affected our relationship with surrounding Nature and our own gender and sexual identities, that society left the tribal, community path it had been on for countless millennia, and undertook the ”Great Separation”, as the Taoists call it.
This is the path of alienation and ultimately civilization on a global scale. The whole of modern history is not just the evolution of the spirit of freedom, as Hegel claims, but the reclaiming of our whole identities in all its richness and variety: our religious, racial, ethnic, gender, sexual and particularly our identities as part of Nature.
Matter is being supplanted gradually by Spirit. Matter is being interpenetrated and gradually suffused by spirit. This may be what Teilhard de Chardin termed the “Omega Point” Nobody who has witnessed the bizarre events of the last few years, such as the flooding of New Orleans, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the earthquake in Kashmir, can doubt that matter’s reign over the world is coming to an end. Nature, while a form of matter, is also a form of spirit.
Mindspirit over matter----matter undermined.
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