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 17 Dec 2007 @ 09:55
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it is the stage of world development when the limited consciousness common to animals and simpler societies is superseded by the glorious advent of self-consciousness with all its attendant pitfalls and perils as well as triumphs.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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5 Dec 2007 @ 15:52
Albin's Counter Gambit is a sharp variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined.
1.P-Q4 , P-Q4
2.P-QB4 , P-K4
Accepting the Counter Gambit entails
3 Px K5
Black pushes his Queen Pawn forward
P-Q5
At this point if White plays
4. P-K3
it is considered a losing move, falling into Lasker's Trap
KB-KT5 CH
5. B-Q2 PXP !
6. BXB PXP CH
7 K-K2 PXKT = KT CH Wins for Black
However, we do not have to fall into Lasker's Trap.
This following move is not in "Modern Chess Openings" and a friend who is at Master level says he has never come across it before:
6. Q-R4 ch!
If this is a new move then I'm surprised. It quickly liquidates Black's attack which evaporates and he is a pawn behind, with the position looking better for White.
If anyone can clarify this position I would appreciate it. More >
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4 Nov 2007 @ 13:38
Heather Mills is telling the Truth
What Heather Mills is saying about the English media is absolutely correct and raises issues of great importance. In a previous item I have put forward the view that the media is a new class and that its behaviour is connected with the phenomenon of alienation that I have written about so often. The media are accusing her of being deranged and narcissistic when in fact it is they who are deranged and in the process of creating a culture-wide atmosphere of self-absorption , self-indulgence and narcissism. One only has to listen to the output of BBC Radio 2 of a morning to realise that an incredible process of cliquey-ness, self-reference and narcissism of a very unhealthy kind is going on. Apart from self-absorption other aspects of narcissism include a dehumanisation which is attested by the callous treatment we have seen over recent years of Princess Diana, Joanne Lees, The McCanns and Heather Mills herself. On a technical level this is a form of alienation, but it is not my intention to elucidate that further at the moment. Hegel, the great mystical German philosopher, in his book “ The Phenomenology of Mind” wrote about “a Spiritual Reign of Terror”. Some people thought this applied to the French Revolution, but my interpretation is that this reign of terror is under way at this very moment. How else can one describe the treatment meted out to the people mentioned above as anything but terrorisation. Even Tony Blair shortly before he resigned described the British media as “feral”. This process seems to be happening in Anglo-Saxon countries, where there are no privacy laws. To ask the media to exercise responsible journalism is like asking Genghis Khan to exercise restraint and refrain from conquering the world. Another very alarming aspect of this process of growing narcissism is the withdrawal from reality and the truth, into a world of double-talking, self-deception, deceit, manipulation. It is not Heather Mills who is hysterical but the concerted media reaction to the true things that she has said. This story will run and run. More >
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5 Aug 2007 @ 08:22
Dedicated to Sophie Germain
Sophie Germain primes and primes terminating in recurring 9’s
Sophie Germain primes are primes p where 2p + 1 is also a prime. It is noticeable that it is possible to have a sequence of such primes. The primes of such a form and the sequence that seem most interesting to me are the ones where the Sophie Germain prime terminates in a 9.
It is of great interest that we can get sequences of Sophie Germain primes that end in this way:
89 , 179 , 359 , 719 , 1439 , 2879 (D.Wells 1986 pg 115)
What I would like to assert is that numbers ending in 9s and recurring 9s such as 599 , 1199 , 2399 etc., while not all themselves prime, exhibit an underlying pattern from which the exceptions (those that are not prime) can be explained , and which in fact furnishes one of the few ascertainable forms for prime numbers.
Now, when we double a number and add 1 we are in fact, usually, changing its remainder modulus its divisors (if it has any). But not always. It so happens that the numbers 3 , 5 and 7 when you start with a certain remainder and double it and add 1, you go into a loop which continues indefinitely. Now with the number 5, the remainder that has this remarkable property is 4. Now all odd numbers with 4mod5 in fact terminate in a 9. This explains why we can get 6 Sophie Germain primes in sequence without any of them being divisible by 5.
If we link this remarkable property of the number 5, with similar properties of other divisors, such as 3 and 7, which both exhibit loops on using certain remainders, then we get sequences of numbers which will never be divisible by 3 , 5 or 7. These three divisors account for about two-thirds of composites. Therefore numbers such as 599, 2399 and those ending in recurring 9s of any length, are quite likely to be prime and where they are not it can be explained in the way indicated. There is an obvious link with Cunningham chains , not all of which , however, terminate in 9s. More >
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29 Jul 2007 @ 09:04
Get out of the Eternal Recurrence
Stuck in a Groove
If you’ve ever had vinyl records you’ll know when you get a scratch on the surface of one, the needle will keep going back and forth repeatedly. And everyone knows what the phrase “stuck in a groove” means.
The philosopher Nietzsche had his theory of the “ Eternal Recurrence” which states that the same events occur again and again in our lives and history generally. This is just another version of the Buddhist idea of rebirth and reincarnation. There’s even been a Hollywood film about it called “Groundhog Day” where a misanthropic weatherman played by Bill Murray has to continually relive the same day over and over again. Even killing himself does not liberate himself from this situation. He wakes up everyday to the same reality and in the end he is only redeemed from this time-prison by learning to love and serve others.
Why do these stories and theories resonate with us? It is, I believe, because they are telling the same truth. That we are, in fact, stuck in a labyrinth of grooves.
In an earlier work I wrote about what I termed the “Law of Analogy” whereby because all reality comes from the same source, and is split into distinct levels, such as social, economic, political etc. it is possible to discern the same phenomenon at each different level and make analogous statements about them. I will now attempt to demonstrate what I have described above as “being stuck in a groove” by reference to these different levels.
Psychological Level
Jung invented the term “complex” for a knot of associated ideas, feelings, attitudes which he saw as the kernel of a neurosis. He invented also the word-association test to verify this idea and to uncover the complexes involved. He noticed that whatever word he gave as input to the client the latter would invariably respond with a word associated with the repressed material connected with his/her neurosis. Freud took up both the idea of a complex and also the word-association test and they termed this and similar aspects of neuroses and dreams as “repetition-compulsion” which is evidently connected with being in a groove; repeating the same thing over and over again.
Spiritual Level
The Buddhists and Hindus generally believe in rebirth, which if we take it literally, means that someone who does not achieve liberation (enlightenment) in one lifetime will be reborn into another lifetime after their death. Some Buddhists have a less literal interpretation of this belief and state that we all are reborn into every succeeding moment until we achieve liberation. Clearly, both of these are referring to repetition and being stuck in a certain state or experience.
Social Level
Eric Berne, in his book “ Games People Play” shows that many of us are stuck in the continual performance of what he terms “games”. These are alienated psycho-social activities based on what he calls their “life-scripts” but which we can clearly see are connected with their respective individual complexes and neuroses, referred to earlier. Volumes have been written on Berne’s concept of “games” but it is worth drawing attention to two points which he makes. The first is that “games” are an avoidance of intimacy. Also that they are repeated over and over again throughout a person’s life, until that person gains some self-awareness or even some sort of liberation and acceptance of intimacy.
It is possible to repeat this analysis at the economic and political levels and show that the economy produces and reproduces itself (with very little change) on a daily basis. As does the political situation despite the appearances to the contrary of parties gaining and losing power, revolutions and coups etc. These areas of human life are also “stuck in a groove” and there is very little new under the sun of this civilization.
What is to be done
To every stuck situation there is something that unsticks it. The antithesis to “games” is intimacy. The antithesis to rebirth is union or intimacy with the Source (God). The antithesis of economics is the abolition of money and the instituting of free supply based on the maxim “from each according to her talents, to each according to her needs” which is based on universal love. The antithesis of politics is the withering away or abolition of the State and the return of society to a situation based on networks instead of hierarchies, and mutual love and respect based on kinship (both of blood and spirit) and family.
Just as the problem is analogous at the different levels, so is the solution. Sexual reproduction is, or should be, based on love. Intimacy, which is another form of love, is the answer to games. Union with God, mystical love, is the answer to our spiritual problems. Wherever we look and see that we are stuck the answer to it is the same; Love.
I do not know whether all or any of this be possible, but I do know that “womanity” and “humanity” ever since we left that paradise garden which is our collective memory of the pre-civilised state, have dreamt of such things. The desperate situation the world is in now, with destruction following from our alienation from nature, women, men and God getting ever closer, brings with it the hope that love will prevail over egotism and selfishness and manage to save us all.
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28 Feb 2007 @ 13:07
“Nil Humanum alienum est mihi”
Nothing human is alien to me. This ancient Latin verse, written by the poet Terence was the great call of the Humanists, and the personal motto of no less a thinker than Karl Marx. But if it resonates with humanists and atheists, how much more does it mean to the psychologist, the believer and the mystic! I first began to probe the mysteries of this motto when I was thinking about the Hegelian and Marxist topic of alienation some years ago. For the “alien” in the poem is very close to the “alienation” of those theories. More >
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19 Feb 2007 @ 12:54
Hegel was partly right, as was Marx, as was Edward Carpenter, and also Gandhi and indeed any exponent of ideas that belong to that body of common wisdom and knowledge known as the Perennial Philosophy. These more intellectualised, formalized teachings of these thinkers are just individual facets of a universal, shared wisdom that belongs to all people and all times.
It is more useful to focus on where Hegel, Marx, Carpenter and Gandhi and indeed all the other individual thinkers got it right and were sometimes in agreement, rather than where they were clearly wrong and contradicted one another. It is easy to point out glaring mistakes in all their efforts, but if we concentrate on their positive contributions it is possible to pick’n’mix our own personal theory, ideology, call it what you will, which will be unique to each one of us. We are all entitled to believe what we like and have our own world-view; no one can force their beliefs on us. This does not mean however, that all theories reflect reality to the same extent or account for all the facts equally satisfactorily. More >
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17 Feb 2007 @ 11:10
Identity is at the heart of the Post-modern reality. Heavy industry and manufacturing are fast becoming marginal to our daily lives, which are taken up with computers, mobile phones, internet, personal trainers, services and interdependencies.
These are certainly commodities but they are different from 19th century Pig Iron, Railways, steamboats and all the paraphernalia of the Industrial Age. Our present society is variously called post modernist, Post Industrial, The Information Age but few seem to have realised its essential nature. All these things mentioned above such as MP3 players, Gamestations etc. are not ends in themselves or even primarily commodities any more, but are really auxillaries to the production , transmission, manipulation and control of identities, which in my view is the central preoccupation of post-modern society. More >
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