We Slaves

Imagine when one looks upon the familiar and sees in that observation an unfavorable difference. To make a point from the simplest example, take the moment when one looks down upon the poor. We can easily transcribe the inner voice of Reason within the mind of the compassionate. Undoubtedly, it goes something like this, “Let me help them in hope that they may have a better future.” And these words are the very beginning of that atomic tremble which has resonated in the soul of generations. Now, perhaps we allow ourselves permission to expand this inner monologue. Our recording probably goes something like this:

“I would not enjoy a life like theirs. Looking upon them is discomforting. A bad feeling overcomes me at the thought of not having what I have. I know that if they could choose, they would not choose their circumstance. They have only been less fortunate than I have. Now, either they should be given what I have or they should be allowed the resources to help themselves, so that they may have what I have—so that they may live like I do.”

Finally, the voice concludes, “I pity them.” But the voice of reason omits, “Their sight offends me.” Now, in practice our good conscience is not so transparent. Nonetheless, pity is one answer which successfully reconciles the relative-similar. Very plainly, the compassionate want to make the relative-similar all the more similar, or else it must be forced into an object of absolute-difference. Or perhaps we could say with more correctness, pity is only that which surges to baptize imperialism and christen it as altruism.

I have read the words of a psychologist spoken to a weakened culture: "Pity for all—would be hardness and tyranny toward you, my dear neighbor!—” But the subject and condition which has been diagnosed here is much different. And by this I mean to say that the words spoken to a weak individual begin with, “Pity for some—” And now, with little doubt, I have displayed two caricatures on a single stage: one is called the compassionate and the other is the despondent. And with your eyes fix on them I ask again, who could believe the universe fiddles a congruent song that they themselves have been granted permission to hear? Who could be so audacious as to assume that their foresight and united front is the united front of all the universe, and that they are not one of the thousand thousands which stand outside? Who could believe that the fiddles of a thousand thousands fiddle for them? Who could suffer from so much vanity?

Now, Let us consider the assertion of those famous words of progress: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Let us consider the great error we face in reducing that which is property to that which is point—that is to say, reducing that which happens necessarily to purpose—and further, reducing a purpose exclusively to that which is self-conscious, intentional, and which possess the faculty to deduce a meaning of existence.

We must not be hasty. We cannot condemn one man—and surely not for a mere note-to-self which had not been prepped for publication and may, just as well, never have been intended for publication. Instead of attacking the reasoning of this claim, we should investigate its appeal. Consider those in which this pathos has stomped out all mystery and doubt, and has given those thousand thousands a morality in which all inquiries into their books must cross-reference.

I find little difficulty in diagnosing the psychological state which finds pleasure in this claim; one does not even need to refer to clinical research since evidence has been recorded in the greatest books of the world. To dissect this aesthetic experience we must first know that our consciousness is a composition of relationships which relate our environment to us. Next, we must acknowledge the degree of similarity or the degree of difference that one establishes in a relationship. Imagine when one observes the silhouette of an apple, then immediately following, observes someone eating that apple. The observer will establish one of these two figures as more similar than the other.

While the absolute-different is not an altogether separate discussion from the relative-similar, investigation of that side of the spectrum will provide us with little depth here. Instead, we must concern ourselves with the experience of the familiar, and also the difference which keeps the familiar from being something which is identical.

With the preceding in mind, consider that deep misunderstanding which overcame Arthur Schopenhauer when he interpreted that which was most intimate as being more complex, more entangled, higher, and more evolved:

While every human being is then to be regarded as a particularly determined and characterized phenomenon of will, even to a certain extent as an Idea of its own, but in animals this individual character is entirely lacking, with only species having a characteristic significance—and its trace ever more vanishes with every greater distance from human beings, with plants finally possessing no other particularly individual characteristic than those that allow of a complete explanation in terms of external favorable or unfavorable circumstances of soil and climate and other contingencies—all individuality finally vanishes in the inorganic realm of nature.

And later he continues:

That which makes its appearance in clouds, stream, and crystal is the weakest resonance of the will that comes more completely to the fore in plants, still more completely in animals, most completely in human beings.

If anyone has ever held these words in their thoughts, and considered them true with the most serious mind, then surely they have mistaken locality for hierarchy. However, all of this precedes the unexpected. And, to his credit, Schopenhauer seems to have acknowledged his own error.* So, while it is hardly imaginable that he would have had the courage to destroy a work of over six-hundred pages with one single sentence, Schopenhauer’s precedence must be followed. We must be cautious in mistaking that which is present in location for that which is absolute in the world.

*“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet. This explains many things, and among them the fact that everyone measures us with his own standard—generally about as long as a tailor’s tape, and we have to put up with it: as also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself—a supposition which is once for all taken for granted.”—from Thomas Bailey Saunders’ translation of Schopenhauer’s Parerga und Paralipomena.

There are two questions which have been bound so tightly for all of history that it is hard to consider one without the other quickly populating our thoughts. In regard to our mental evolution, we cannot say with any certainty whether our faculty to deduce purpose of action developed before or following the faculty to deduce meaning of existence. Today, we are hard pressed to imagine consciousness without the faculty to deduce even simple events to the laws of causality. It is possible that in our pre-history the recognition of cause-and-effect was the foundation on which consciousness itself was built; that is to say, purpose of action cultivated a mental environment for interpreting meaning of existence. We can imagine that we first ate with our hands, walked on our feet and saw with our eyes, and only after naming the facilitators of these actions, deduced that our hands existed to eat, our feet to walk, and our eyes to see.

What we should expect is that our understanding of purpose of action and meaning of existence developed relative to each other. We can even imagine a primitive cultural landscape which hosted a subtle war in which these reductions battled for primacy over one another. However, what we can say with the greatest confidence is that once our narrative crystallized into our present understanding of history, we find only one dominate reduction: throughout history, purpose of action was subordinated to meaning of existence. Thus, it was will that became the expression of purpose of action in regard to a substance.

The respect of oneself necessarily implies the respect for that which is one’s environment. This follows, naturally, from the assertion that we constitute ourselves through our environment. To admit this relationship is difficult—it takes the greatest respect for life and the most devote subordination to environment. Today I have found no deeper example of this than in the spirit behind the slogan which stands in the face of a question and answers with, “keep Detroit beautiful.” The word keep is directed at the pragmatists as a provocation, while beautiful describes that which is in doubt. The statement proclaims, “I think this is beautiful.” The spirit behind these words has been making itself heard for generations within inner city populations—those who find respect for themselves only in respect of their environment. And in doing so, they have flipped valuation on its head.

There is only one who stands in opposition to this affirmation of intimacy and locality—but my ears are closed to their dramatics. I will employ some artistic liberties so that I can appropriately proclaim their name, the abolitionist. But who is the abolitionist to we who are slaves?—no one, but an absurd imperialist or a propagandist who proposes that we hate being so. To demand liberation from the impressions of one’s environment is a sign of confusion. This supposes that the will, after having been given independence, can remain alongside environment. This can only find favor in those who have mistaken Reason as the faculty in which one becomes master of one’s environment.

And now my neighbors,* I ask you to imagine a building which has long lost its intended utility. Now, if by chance an exception came to your mind and the exotic remains of Persepolis materialized before you then surely you thought, “A great civilization once stood here and behold this monument of their success!” And if by chance the remains of the Michigan Central Station came to your mind then surely you thought, “A monument of failure! An eyesore!” And with the imagery of a decaying Detroit in your mind, immediately you fell into the valley of the uncanny.

At the moment of irregularity lability manifests within consciousness. If neither absolute familiarity nor Otherness can be established at the moment of observation, then there can be no doubt in the rise of dissonance for the duration of the experience. This dissonance can only resolve within an observer who establishes a relationship with the observation; the observer must become the master and the observation the mastered.**

If one pities Michigan Central Station—its meaning of existence or any who are involved in that meaning—then one has mastered the observed. Concerning the feeling of the uncanny, one cannot discern between an aesthetic judgment and a moral one.

*Written while living in the United States.

**Here I should mention that Sigmund Freud did himself no favors when he attempted to untangle the mystery of the uncanny by means of ego psychology. Of course, he was concerned with building a system, but nonetheless his authority degrades in his effort to filter all explanations through his topography of the mind. And to be honest, I can hardly bring myself from laughter when I read a diagnosis of the uncanny which emphasizes a dialog between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind—as though the dialog between the conscious mind and our environment meant nothing!