I must confess, my intellectual history as a student of philosophy predisposes me to a structuralist understanding of our world — from our socio-economic order, to our scientific revolutions, on down to our everyday existence as ‘political animals’. Perhaps one could say that my bent toward human cosmology precludes an even basic understanding of everyday existence — specifically that existence as a ‘political animal’. But therein lies the rub: the very category of the political — the thought that our self-consciousness is defined by politics, that the personal is political — is itself a vestige of history that our species has been striving to cast off (consciously or unconsciously) for millenia. It is a vestige of an ancient aristocratic order that undermines the very notion of self-consciousness — and subverts human reason.
The idea of human beings as ‘political animals’ stems from the Greek notion of ousia, inheritance [translated in the history of philosophy as ‘substance’]. The self, rather than being an imminent, self-creating, self-conscious being, is rather imagined as a being defined by its predicates. We are of this family. We are of this state. We are of this mettle. Our identity as a being is subject to what we are determined to be by the world we exist within. Essentially, our identity is defined by our existence — our very being within the world. ‘Politics’ is one of those categories, one of those predicates — and according to some of the greatest right wing theorists in the history of the world, the defining category — our defining category as ‘humanity’. Our identity as an individual is defined by accepting our role in the body politic, internalizing external definitions of our existence is our only route to identity as a subject — we are ‘subject’ to our predicates.
Beginning with the renaissance, this whole train of thought was turned on its head — Kant referred to it as the Copernican Turn. Human reason itself becomes the basis of identity — the ability to objectify and make sense of the world without reference to our specific political, social or economic predicates redefines the idea of identity from a passive, static being, into an imminent, self-creating and unlimited self-consciousness.
This new understanding of self and concomitant release from predetermined social, political and economic stations allowed us to recognize, for the first time, the structural relations that define our existence. In academic terms, with this new understanding, we saw the birth of ‘social sciences’. We began to analyze the world within which we lived because we could stand apart and objectify it. This is the fundamental basis of modernity, the scientific revolution and small ‘d’ democracy.
Yet, these ancient chains persist. Alas, we are still defined individually by the social, political and economic institutions that subject us to their order. In fact, we celebrate them — we kill for them, we live for them and we fear their demise. They persist because they are reified by the very order that has been at odds with the idea of human consciousness that developed 500 years ago — and we reify them every day in nationalism, capitalism, religion, even science. We continue to fight against our own freedom because we cling to externally defined identities — and it is the very system of those identities that must be overthrown — that should have been toppled hundreds of years ago.
But that structure will fall. Structurally, we know this — it is already happening. Systemic contradictions can only be maintained for so long and technological change continues to undermine the girders that support those institutions.
So my question is this: why do we, in a supposed ‘reality based community’ continue to support institutions that are themselves dying? Why are we not putting every effort into establishing a new world that finally embodies what we now know about human consciousness and identity? Why are we participating in partisan hackery that distracts from efforts to craft our imminent reality? Why are we trying to preserve the system that denies humanity its true identity and ultimate freedom?