Gone are the days when Emersonan facts thrown out of the window were found sitting snugged near the fireplace, greeting the one who denied their veracity or existence. Today, they are swept under the carpet, meticulously shelved only to appear decades later as declassified documents.
With the advent of modern technology, the human being has become more informed, widely connected and readily accessible, yet all-the-more stupid, indoctrinated and embarrassingly thoughtless, if not altogether nescient. And for good reason: the extension of repressive needs to which the consumer is libidinally attached forces him to expand his labour much beyond the socially necessary time. The life devoted to a base purpose of earning a living turns him into an appendage of a big machine where the forces of economy rule all relations and the commodities control the totality of life. Whatever respite one manages to squeeze out of the clutches of the sick civilisation is lost to the much-hyped yet prearranged pleasures controlled by business.
Contrary to one’s assumption, the free time offered by capitalism is not the leisure time, since one’s freedom is limited to choose between black and white, but not to abjure this farce.
The discontent of civilisation, and its rational irrationality creates an unhappy conscience. Below the thin veneer of satisfaction, the human being finds himself sitting on the pile of dissatisfaction, which is volcanic in nature. The civilisation reassures its absolute control over this dismay and frustration through sublimated discharge of instinctual desires, excessive buying and wasteful consumption. Society does not intervene in religious affairs since they do not alter the status quo of domination unless recession forces the hegemonic structure to invade this otherwise ‘sacrosanct’ space only to divert the attention of the masses.
The lunchtime glides into the prayer time. The collective activity of worship is allowed to blossom into a festivity lacking spirituality. Business hotbeds are converted, albeit temporarily, into religious hubs. The Orwellian language is allowed to overtake the normal course. A wishful jargoned metaphysical greeting based upon a shimmering hope is permitted to replace the plane (plain) words. Every spoken word is pregnant with uncertainty surrounding the individual. The destructiveness, an inherent part of the system, becomes a matter of one’s ominous fate, of unfortunate destiny written somewhere far in the heaven.
This is the alienation at its acme, an ideal ground for harbouring doubts in one’s own potentials and capabilities. Work under these circumstances becomes a neurotic necessity. It fetches wealth, keeps one occupied without bringing inner peace. A mere temporary psychological relief without concrete catharsis. What next? When human consciousness is restricted, when the class structure of society is presumed to be a natural phenomenon, when exploitation is considered divinely ordained, a bleeding wound in the heart remains agape. A big void is created which, contrary to Nietzsche’s belief, does not give birth to a dancing star; instead it refuses to be filled by company, or even by a sly Eros that provides a momentary relief. This inescapable loneliness, an absolute alienation, spreads as spiritual gangrene. The fear of amputation seeks an immediate remedy.
Under such arduous circumstances “one needs either a lot of strength or a lot of stupidity not to lose heart,” writes Adorno. There comes the role of spirituality that under these awful conditions does not lend itself to aesthetics but falls into the abyss of further repression. The subjugation of human spirit becomes an inevitable consequence. Religion or Freud’s ‘infantile neurosis’ emerges as a convenient replacement to the prevalent paranoia that in reality is nothing beyond the inherent anarchy of this exploitative system. Massive conversion into different faiths and its antithesis, the reactionary atheism, both fall in the same category. However, one must remain mindful that this phenomenon largely restricts itself to the various layers of middle classes. The proletariat remains immune to it.
The genesis of the malady is likely to turn into a conflagration. It tends to proliferate unless the root cause is addressed. In a repressive society, this internal liberty itself becomes the tool for domination. The sense of emancipation and internal satisfaction leaves the human being at the mercy of ‘established reality’, which remains false yet the need to change it with the new one is replaced by the sense of trivial, temporal and brief nature of this worldly life.
Glorification of the hereafter and attaining one’s reward posthumously saps one’s capacity to confront this world head on. Resignation to one’s fate is considered one’s destiny. This is an ominous sign for a society already ebbing into decadence, which has begun its fight against its own liberation.
The anarchist spirit of religious ideals, which once necessitated its historical existence, after losing their original spirit based on rebellion now merely act as opiates that help to quell any trace of a rebellion. The external domination is faithfully internalised. The duty of the individual is not to strive and transform society into a just and equitable one but to seek personal redemption. The self-preservation numbs the nerves to the extent that a holocaust happening around is considered an impersonal cruelty, a commandment scripted for the victim at the moment of his birth. In the absence of gravediggers of the system, the ideology, which always represents the economic coercion, turns society into a gigantic graveyard. Love, life and utopia are replaced by necrophilia, thanatos and death wish.
Descartes floated the idea of Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Had he been alive in this technological age, he would have revoked his proposition. The laws of market are too blatant; one’s survival depends on complete conformism to these laws. Such obedience swallows both, the thinking and the rationality behind the thought process.
Independence of thought, the real consciousness, presupposes the knowledge of servitude. When technological ‘rationality’ manipulates the human thought process only to become a tool for invisible forces, the slogan related to right of free thinking becomes a mockery. Changing one’s faith to find refuge/redemption in another may reflect some thinking capacity of the individual but not the expansion of his mind, and nor proves that the nature of that thinking
is critical or independent. The change of religion does not hurt the domination of hegemonic process — since no religion in its present form defies the property structure of society — though it may provide the individual with an opportunity to find internal space to exercise their already indoctrinated ‘free will’. However, the capital has invaded this space of internal freedom as well.
The ever-mounting pressure of survival makes any such refuge meaningless. Liberation of the individual presupposes liberation of society, not through a change in faith but through a change in the relations and conditions of production, a change that ensures freedom from the alienated and objectified labour. The established societies that have rationalised their domination are incapable of building a world of human freedom since such freedom will be the negation of this domination. Hence, a new world has to be created where “human existence is play rather than toil, and man will live in display rather than need” (Marcuse).
The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at [email protected]