The Confluence

 

Have you ever been referred to as a consumer? If you have, then you have been insulted. And worse than insulted, you have also been targeted by powerful men for moulding; socially-engineered into something less than you are. You have been belittled and dehumanized, reduced from a Whole being into a single part. You have been made into a statistic to be scientifically examined, reduced to an ever-hungry mouth for the producer to feed. As the producer is a parasite seeking to profit from you, being referred to as a consumer is not so different to being referred to as prey. Greedy prey, stupid prey - the fly who saw the spider's web but crashed into it all the same.

We must not be satisfied with being a feeder, a mere sucking mouth against the teet of hedonism. Ignorance is never bliss, it is uncertainty and frustration, the inability to see beyond the next fix. Ignorance means being unable to make and understand choices; it is the enemy of freedom. We need truth and enlightenment. There is more to us, which we must dare discover; a balanced being, a whole being, a free being.

It was only when reading the work of the world's first self-proclaimed anarchist that I came to realize all of this. And it starts somewhere extremely simple. How we are addressed shapes how we become, in the same way that being praised or insulted might raise or lower our esteem. Proudhon referred to his audience as 'citizen-reader', and it sent me into an upward spiral of thought and discovery.

The confluence -

A confluence is the point where two or more streams form into a single river. How many confluences make up the whole of us is perhaps beyond categorisation. In fact, even categorising things into neat little sections is suspect, as life and being is never so simple. Nonetheless, I will endeavour to present three large and definite tributaries which make up our totality. Ideally, we would all have an understanding and appreciation of these aspects, rather than being trammelled into any individual one. Understandably, we specialize in various places, and are not equally spread across all aspects of our being.

Economic - There are invariably those who value money above all other things, like Dragons upon their golden hoards. For these sorry people the term consumer might fit extremely well, for the concept of a consumer is a creature which exists wholly in the realm of economic transaction (Homo Economicus). They are the ones who want to get things with absolute certainty and familiarity, moving as the crow flies without appreciating the journey. They are easily malleable, and can be satisfied with any conditions provided they get their reward at the end of it.

They obtain their monetary rewards by doing what they would not like to do because they have the promise of spending it on something they want at the end of it. Monetary gain is the consolation for what is often dreary and unimaginative labour. Perhaps we all need to be cajoled into action sometimes and led along by the carrot on the stick a short distance. But to live exclusively for the weekend is to sacrifice five-sevenths of ones life to the machine.

Money is glorified beyond the sum of its parts and becomes a thing of value of itself, rather than a piece of paper used to promise the bearer such and such a sum. It also becomes the main unit of comparison and competition, such that one can never be satisfied with how much one has, for there is always someone with a little more. Thus the value of money is symbolic, rather than useful, and one's attachment to it is not the attachment to one's tools or actual needs, but a symbolic attachment. It is to build oneself on an imaginary foundation (and we call such people 'realists'!) To be disdainful of such a one-dimensional money-clutching character is not elitism - it is simply being something more than an unimaginative creature!

I should like to think that the hypothetical hoarding Dragon I have described above does not really exist. I should like to think that the bulk of our species is somewhat more subtle, and that economic realities are not the be all and end all of existing on this Earth. To the enlightened, economics is but one tributary leading into the river of totality. Economic calculations are a necessary head-ache but one which we would all rather was done away with it. Spending power might illicit the occasional burst of joy, but this would not be an addiction, but an occasional vanity.

Political - Everyone should be political. Not because there is much gain in it, but rather to prevent suffering losses for it. At least in our present epoch of representative democracy (demagoguery), politics is very much a case of damage control. It is equivalent to self-defence.

What is the value of a voice? What is the value of a vote and a movement? I should answer that these things are as valuable as the 'economic' category above. Just as obtaining things by exchanging currency can cause good feelings, so too can discussing things. The difference of course is that discussing important things is free.

The power is there, waiting to be taken, and it costs nothing but effort and time. We should long to have a share of power in government and public affairs, as it is in our interests to do so. The disillusionment with a crooked system (see any currently existing system) only feeds into that system. One of virtuous and balanced character should strive to create something new if the existing surroundings threaten the virtuous. This also is a political action.

Spiritual - The concept of spirituality is one stained by misunderstanding, misuse, and mistrust. Understandably so! Our first introduction to spirituality often comes through dogmatic religion, which drives the dissatisfied toward atheism. Conventional religion is so flagrantly repulsive that it encourages us to denounce spirituality as dangerously stupid, for the most dogmatic of priests oppose all other aspects of human being (such as scientific endeavour) which they consider threatening to their little bubble of perverse power. This might also lead to rational and open-minded religious people being 'tarred with the same brush'.

The necessity of a specific God, or belief in a certain set of scriptures, is also a problem for spirituality. There is nothing worse than competitive religions. Only tolerant religious groups should be tolerated! For that reason I believe spirituality requires total openness and should be proclaimed as an universal individualism. It is a deeply personal experience where, paradoxically, the personal vanishes - for self and all often become interwined during such experiences. But the personal does not vanish forever, and the individual is still left to interpret and ponder their experience, and that is what makes such a spiritual moment special.

I wish here to purify the idea of the spiritual, including within it things we can immediately identify with: to aimlessly observe a white horse grazing in a gladden field; to be lost in a piece of music and to forget time; to see the logic in the absurd; to be part of the unexplainable life of the city; to use language in a nonsensical way; to create art in luminous splendour; to touch the nose of a cat with your own; to imagine one is a sorcerer of a lost race saving a dying realm; watching smoke rise from an incense stick recognising that it doesn't really go anywhere; these are all spiritual experiences.

The spiritual does not align with what is arrogantly called 'the real world', and it is not just a consolation used to maintain a regimented life. The spiritual must be purposeless when all around us demands 'as the crow flies rationality', and accumulation, and severity, and pretension.

Real poverty lies with those who are incapable of fully appreciating this side of themselves. The spiritual does not need to be mutually exclusive with other more 'practical' aspects of our being; they can all co-exist.

Close -

Like any Virtue Ethicist I stand at the foot of the mountain I have raised, dwarfed by its splendour, cast into its shadow. Is it an impossible task to be a balanced and virtuous creature?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Escaping the Dance of the End of History

The political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously claimed after the fall of the Communist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that human history had, in essence, come to an end. He did not mean, of course, that time had, in fact, frozen solid and that historians would not be able to write about anything after 1991. Rather, his argument was based on Hegel's idea that the history of humanity is a progressive movement with a beginning, a middle and an end. The end of history, Hegel said, is the point at which humanity reaches its apex of consciousness and hence has in it's grasp the ideal form of organising society.

For Fukuyama, the defeat of Soviet-style socialism and the triumph of Western liberal democracy inaugurated, essentially, a New Earth where freedom would reign for eternity through representative democracy and free-market capitalism. The flip-side of this assertion was, of course, that Karl Marx was wrong: the stateless society of communism where class conflict would be no more was a pipe dream, and we had no option but to embrace this joyous new world of liberty – a world of marking an 'X' on a piece of paper every four or five years and endless shopping at Wal-Mart.

Many have criticised Fukuyama's arguments, and this is not the place to attempt a point-by-point rebuttal. But I think it is clear that we haven't been living in a state of paradise since the end of the Cold War more than two decades ago. People are still going hungry, and in some cases die of starvation, even as others wine and dine at the Ritz. People are still paid poorly and housed precariously, and in some cases reduced to poverty and homelessness, even as others throw cash around and sleep soundly in mansions. People are still unhappy with their lives, and in some cases become depressed and despondent, even as others seem to be living it up and partying like its 1999.

For some, this sorry state of affairs is proof that liberal democracy is a sham, and that free-market capitalism is a scam. Yet one immediately hears shrill voices which say, “But what are we to do? Haven't we tried doing things differently, through the state, and failed?” “No,” others cry in response, “We're not talking about Soviet 'communism', but the welfare state and the 'public good'. Privatisation has led to inequality by allowing untrammeled greed to flourish! Yes, state-centric solutions can be bureaucratic and impersonal, but we don't have any other options.”

Most debates today about how society should be structured revolve around these two viewpoints. In one corner, wearing a pin-stripe suit, is liberal capitalism. In the other corner, wearing a duffel coat, is social democracy. Cheering and jeering from the crowd are more extreme versions of these two fighters, including neo-conservatives and fascists, as well as state socialists and communists. Should anything drastic happen, these observers are ready (and waiting) to join in the fray.

 

As a result, a large majority of people today feel they have to choose a side. It's either greater freedom or greater equality, either a larger role for private initiatives or a larger role for the state, either a system built on self-interest or a system built on solidarity.

What if this were a false choice? What if I told you that picking either side would not change the underlying structure of our present-day society?

Before you start thinking that I'm about to go off on some sort of conspiracy theory, let us slow things down a little. I'm not about to say these two sides are like the Galactic Republic and the Separatists in the Star Wars prequel trilogy – that is, appearing to be diametrically opposed to each other but in reality both being pawns in a game controlled by Darth Sidious. I don't believe that there's some secretive cabal running the world and playing us off each other like puppets on strings.

What I would like to suggest, however, is the different political systems that we see today in the world – together with many of those that some would like to see realised today in the world – are not as radically different as they seem. To help us dig into this proposition, the political thought of the contemporary theorist Kojin Karatani is quite instructive.

According to Karatani, the society we live in today is made up primarily of three types of human interactions. Firstly, we engage in acts of reciprocity with those whom we feel we have something in common. This could be because we have the same parents or because we have a shared interest in real ale. The essence of reciprocity is that we are willing to help each other because we consider ourselves part of a particular 'group'. Conversely, we're far less willing to help another who is not part of this group. This dynamic is the basis of the nation, which is an imagined community of people who identify with each other because they have a similar culture, history and so on.

Secondly, one segment of our society is engaged in acts of plunder and redistribution. On behalf of 'wider society', this segment collects resources – especially from those who have most – and redistributes them to those who have less. This is, of course, embodied in the state, which is an institution that claims to uphold the interests of the public in its operations.

Thirdly, almost all of us take part on a daily basis in forms of commodity exchange. This includes obvious things like shopping for groceries, but also things such as paid work, because what is being exchanged is the labour of one party for the money of the other. Such is the lifeblood of capital, which is the form of commodity exchange that, although based on the exploitation of most ordinary folk by those who own and run the businesses, claims to be founded on free exchange between equal actors.

When we take all these three forms of human interaction together, we get what Karatani calls the unholy trinity of Capital-Nation-State. All three are mutually supportive, and so when one of them is called into question – for example, by a social movement – the other two can move in to re-balance the system. Although there are moments where the respective forces of capital, nation and state clearly clash, at the end of the day the continued existence of each one is bound up with the others.

Hence, returning to the scene of the prize-fight between the Right and Left of mainstream politics, we can see how the triumph of either one only reconfigures the interconnected relationships between capital, nation and state, but does not actually challenge the basic structure of the trinity. Under the welfare state, the influence of capital is diminished, yet it continues to play an important role in the functioning of the system even as the power of the state increases. A turn towards a liberal free-market has exactly the opposite effect in that it weakens the state but strengthens capital. And when resources are scarce and the economy looks grim, the inward-looking and often violent rhetoric of the nation comes to the forefront of politics (think of Golden Dawn in Greece).

Faced with this vertigo of the three elements of the trinity dancing around us, it can seem difficult to imagine what can be done to bring about a different world. Karatani, drawing loosely from the 19th century anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, suggests that the way out is indeed to exit and transcend this system by means of a fourth type of human interaction, which he calls association.

Association involves elements of the other three forms, but goes beyond them. It incorporates the mutual aid of reciprocity, but without demanding conformity. It aims for egalitarianism, but does not coerce like the state. And it sees some good in the idea of freedom of exchange under capital, but it refuses exploitation through wage labour and usury.

What is it, then? Well, it is not a blueprint meticulously designed, nor an utopia erected in the mind, but rather the labourious and non-violent task of building alternatives to Capital-Nation-State through anti-capitalist, anti-nationalist and anti-statist forms of exchange, living together and co-operation. It is not found in sexy, youthful politics that builds barricades nor in idealistic reformers who run for public office. Rather, it takes shape in projects such as worker-owned co-operatives, Local Exchange Trading Systems, time banks, local demurrage currencies, social centres and free universities. In other words, it is – to steal some words from Marx – “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”

If the ongoing climate and economic crises continue to worsen, we may find the need for alternatives to Capital-Nation-State more urgent and crucial than ever. Nevertheless, regardless of what exactly comes to be, it will certainly not herald the end of history, at least not in the Hegelian sense.

Soo Tian Lee