it cannot be doubted that our “modern” state is one of
doubt, mistrust, fear, anger and even hate… but what has
brought about this outlook?
I have laid out one possibility of this “modernity”…
the conflict between the Enlightenment and the next period, the Romantic
era…we see both of these in our modern times… conservativism is
a Romantic outlook… to hold to one’s feeling as being supreme is Romantic…
whereas the Enlightenment find its ideal in science and rationality…
the tale of the twentieth century can be told as a conflict between Romanticism and
the Enlightenment…
let us bring into the mix one more factor… Socrates and his motto’s…
to know thyself and the unexamined life isn’t worth living…
let us think about these things in light of the event that shattered the
20th century… the Holocaust…the event that has made us rethink
what we are…
we might be able to think about our times, history itself in terms of before
Auschwitz and after Auschwitz…
what was the occasion of the Holocaust? let us think about the Holocaust in
terms of Socrates maxims… to know thyself and the unexamined life isn’t worth living…
what drove the Nazi’s then and today? hate… pure and simple…they hate everyone
who isn’t what they are…the ideal Aryan/Nazi is white, male, blond hair, and the
one that is hard to cover, they are clean… but what does that mean? that the Jews
were considered to be unclean, that homosexuals were considered to be unclean…
that communists were considered to be a danger to the new world order of Nazism…
if not unclean themselves…but how does one figure out what is clean and
what is unclean? part of the breakdown for sure was racial, but I suspect that
the meaning of unclean comes from an ethical understanding…
truth and justice was clear and obvious from a Nazi standpoint…
you held these ideals… if you didn’t, you were unclean…and the
ideals were ethical ideals…hitler was driven by ethics to pursue
an utopian project of improving the human race…
who did he have tossed into prison? those whose ethics weren’t
ethics he approved of…he wanted to have clean, pure Germans…
but that understanding of clean and pure, what did that actually mean?
here we reach Socrates first maxim… to know thyself…
they made no attempt to understand what drove their hate or their anger…
German propaganda was such that if you weren’t “clean or pure” it was clearly
the fault of someone else… how can you be pure ethically if everyone around you
isn’t clean or pure? To remove those who prevented you from being clean or pure, that
was the point of the concentration camps…to remove those who weren’t clean or pure
from German life…but the fact is, an honest appraisal of oneself would have
brought an understanding that one’s ethical failure is one’s ethical failure…
there is no one else to blame… and that flies in the face of being human…
blame some else for one’s one failure is what we do as human beings…
and one of the prime directives of Nazism… why can’t I be a “good” human
being? well its clearly because of someone else…left to me own devices, I
clearly would be a “good” human being… because well, look at me…I am white,
male, “Pure”… I would be gold if it weren’t for others contaminating me…
here comes the second Socratic maxim… the unexamined life isn’t worth living…
had one engaged in an honest examination of one’s life, and then take
responsibility for that life, we would see that our failure to be a “good” human
being (whatever that means) was our responsibility… we are the result of
our work or lack of in work to who we are… who we are is the result of
our own efforts…
here come the second concept we should engage with… Autonomy…
Autonomy: 1. the quality or state of being self-governing especially:
the right of self government…
2.self-directing freedom and especially moral independence personal
autonomy…
the question of the Nazi’s is the question of Autonomy…if you accept the Nazi
viewpoint that the state is in corruption because of “others” who are unclean
and un pure…you are not engaged in being Autonomous…to hold others
guilty of your own state is not “self-directing freedom and especially
moral independence personal autonomy”
to say others are to blame for one not being clean is to admit to
avoiding being Autonomous…in other words, avoiding responsibility
for one’s own being and actions, is not being Autonomous…for freedom
must come with accepting responsibility for who one is and their actions…
so we return to the Enlightenment, one of the moral obligations of
the enlightenment was the personal attempt to become Autonomous…
it was the central feature of Kant’s writings…how to become
an Autonomous person was one of the key features of Kant…
and his answer was duty… to hold to duty is to be autonomous…
if we accept the idea that the Romantic era was oppose to the
Enlightenment, then they oppose this idea of becoming Autonomous…
and this holds true all the way to today… look at the GOP… a Romantic
organization if there ever was one… and look at what the GOP does to
anyone, anyone who opposes the standard line… look at how the GOP
cancelled Liz Chaney because she wouldn’t toe the party line that
IQ45 won the election…the most most important ideal in the GOP
is “ideological purity”…and that is as far away from being an Autonomous
person as one can be…and in this, the GOP is no different then the Nazi
party in holding to “ideological purity” or any different then the Soviet Union
party during the 30’s when it held the “great purge”…
removal of any who didn’t subscribe to the party line…with its “Show trials”
so the “modern” man must begin to engage in an understanding to
Know thyself and then to engage in an examination of one’s own life…
and to that I offer up the next maxim… to become Autonomous
one must, must take responsibility for one’s own life…for the bottom line
with Socrates is to become an Autonomous person… that was his “formula”
to become Autonomous…
we can see here, at ILP, the denial of responsibility, the attempt to avoid
any accounting of one’s life, the refusal to engaged in an examination
of one’s life… each of these is part of being a “Modern” man…
if we fail to have some engagement with our own personal responsibility,
if we fail to attempt to become “Autonomous” people…
if we fail to Know thyself, then we face more
possibilities of the Holocausts in our future…
Kropotkin