© Unknown
In the case of psychopathic Machiavellians, fixated on money, power and competition, it is their low emotional intelligence and lack of empathy and conscience that prevents them from having concerns for the victims of their wars or the poor. Amoral realists, on the other hand, view events on the international arena solely in terms of power - morality has no place, only national interests count. As for the Uncommitted Souls - they are just gullible dupes, whose beliefs and values are spoon-fed to them by media and advertising, the choices they focus on are those of a consumer, not of a human being.
To become a Committed Soul, one needs to make a moral choice, and, according to existentialists, to make a moral choice is to become authentic. Authenticity is opposite to 'going with the flow', it is about being open to one's Being, being committed to one's freedom, it is about becoming an individual and not just a cog in a machine. However, as Heidegger wrote in Being and Time, alienated western societies, where exploitation and oppression are rampant, foster self-deception about structural injustices that their practices sustain. In short, societies run by psychopaths and sociopaths will inevitably be unjust, but will have internal mechanisms of keeping people in bad faith about these injustices - the propagandist media's role.
For existentialists, it is coming face to face with one's own mortality which can jolt a person out of their inauthentic existence - once we realise one day we will no longer be, we gain some insight into what it means to exist. However, in western societies, which worship youth and beauty, old age and death are taboo. Real Death is sanitised out of our lives altogether or presented as a something casual, cute and ironic, as in the case of the fashion trend of putting skulls on clothing. While our entertainment industry desensitises us to blood and violence, the news industry tries to hide from us as much as possible the real deaths of the innocent victims of wars our western societies start and support, e.g. the BBC's shameful coverage of Gaza and Ukraine.
Psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection argues that the abject horrors of war, however stomach-churning they are, have the capacity to bring us to what Lacan called - The Real, i.e. that which is authentic and true, especially in relation to our own self/being and the infinite. Facing a bloodied, mutilated corpse can produce a spasm within the deep core of one's being, accompanied by the breakdown of everyday meaning, which leaves one literally beside oneself. This primal physical and emotional response catapults one into a primordial realm of existence, where there's an acute awareness of human smallness, insignificance, fragility, yet uniqueness, mystery, beauty. Kristeva also argues that oppressive and inhumane institutions, which wield power in the modern world, are built upon the notion that man must be protected from the abject (hence sanitisation of Death). By facing the abject face-to face one tears away the support of these institutions and embarks on the first movement that can truly undermine them.
It is not surprising then, that western media tries so hard to hide from us images of victims of supported-by-the-West wars - it may just jolt people out of their 'going with the flow' mode and to revolt against injustices and atrocities. Given how widely images of Gaza victims were circulated on social media, it was to be expected that it awakened such lively debate and protests around the world. Even though outrage against the war in Ukraine did not gather such a worldwide momentum, there's a still a growing global network of people, who are committed to truth at whatever cost. For example, Mark Bartalmai wrote that speaking out against western support for war crimes in Ukraine led him to lose him job, but he is now a war photographer in Donbass, sending out images of victims to the world - an important work that can move other people out of their somnambulism.
In the face of the abject horrors of war, humans may decide to not want to be Uncommitted Souls anymore, but why should they become committed to good rather then evil? Why not become an authentic villain, like Maldoror, misanthropic nihilistic anti-hero of Comte de Lautreamont's poetic novel? If existentialists are right and one should pursue one's own freedom, then why not exercise one's freedom to become an authentic Nazi?
Freedom is the ultimate value for existentialists, just as authenticity is their primary virtue. Simone de Beauvoir argued that the real requirement of an individual's freedom is that it pursues 'an open future' by seeking to extend itself by means of the freedom of others. In other words, one's real concrete freedom requires that, in choosing, one chooses the freedom of others, i.e. 'open future of others'. If one is committed to maximisation of other people's possibilities as well as one's own, then it becomes 'inauthentic' to leave others to slavery, in a state of oppression or even worse, to subject them to death.
My first blog entry was written in a state of shock after watching a video of the first Lugansk Bombings on the 2nd June. I cried uncontrollably for hours that night when I saw the death of Inna Kukuruza, as she lay there bleeding, with her legs amputated by the bomb and her body and face covered in blood. I couldn't get out of bed the following morning, as I literally felt 'beside myself' - there was a total breakdown of meaning. However, I felt propelled to write in order to express my doubts about my professional direction, pain and grief that I was feeling and to make a commitment to truth. In retrospect, I now can see that, unconsciously, I have gone through the process that Kristeva talks about in her essay - an existential re-awakening in fourth gear. However, given that witnessing the horrors that Kiev's government is subjecting their citizens to has provoked a psychological need for change, the direction in which I was to take it could have gone in many different ways.
While I was prepared to express my outrage about the loss of lives in Donbass (The Wrong Side of the Barricades or Why East Ukrainian victims are ignored), to speak out against western media bias (The Cunning Demons of Russian Propaganda, or what the BBC forgot to warn us about) and, most importantly, against 'the anti-terrorist operation', which is effectively a genocide (Ukrainian Genocide and it's Cheerleaders), I wasn't ready to start writing about the nitty-gritty of the war itself. Firstly, because there are people who are already doing it quite well and secondly, because I'm really against wars.
As a pacifist, I find great inspiration in Ghandi, who opposed British Imperial rule in India with "satyagraha", i.e 'truth force.' His strategy of non-violent conflict was to convert the opponent; to win over his mind and his heart. In the West Erich Fromm came to the same conclusions in his 1970's lecture Resolving Conflicts Without War, in which he said that conflicts can never be resolved by war, but only by either one of these two approaches. First, which relates to Ghandi's winning over the mind, is a political-realistic approach which requires that a) one know facts and b) one interprets facts correctly, while avoiding selective inattention. Second is a human, philosophical, spiritual, religious or psychological approach, which relies on the human potential that transcends the realm of calculation, and which, I believe, relates to winning over the heart, as Ghandi professed.
A recent article explained how the "cosy club" of people educated at private schools and Oxbridge still dominates politics, the judiciary and media". This relates to George Monbiot's article called "Unsentimental Education", which is about the psychological effects that public/private and especially boarding schools have on children. In it he mentions psychotherapist Nick Duffell's book "The Making of Them", which describes how boarding children, 'artificial orphans', survive the loss of their families when they are sent to board at the age of 8 by dissociating themselves from their feelings of love: "Survival involves "an extreme hardening of normal human softness, a severe cutting off from emotions and sensitivity." Unable to attach themselves to people, they are encouraged instead to invest their natural loyalties in the institution." This system, Monbiot argues, creates "extremely effective colonial servants: if their commander ordered it, they could organise a massacre without a moment's hesitation."
While Britain is ruled by an elite detached from its own feelings, the US (and the rest of the world) is run by people, who can only be described as sociopaths and psychopaths (see:The Establishment Plagued with Sociopaths, Psychopaths and Useful Idiots; Masters of Manipulation: Psychopaths rule the World). It is no surprise at all then, that the world is plagued with wars and the planet itself is being ruined on an unprecedented scale. There is a distinct lack of heart in all of this and this is why, it is so important during these times to hold on to whatever 'heart' we have left.
Comment: To understand how these deviants operate is important since they have an enormous influence on our lives and our world.
Political Ponerology (A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes)
To conclude, I'd like to return to Erich Fromm and his poignant warning about the dangers of privileging institutions over people:
"Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult... Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship."
For Fromm 'Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence', but we must not forget about getting our facts right about this insane world and then learn to interpret those facts correctly, even if it means going against what our institutions and their media want us to believe instead. This can be a lonely and frustrating undertaking and Fromm encourages people in such situations to not give up, but to grow even more independent in their thinking:
"A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves."
At the time of writing this, the world wide web had not been invented yet. Now that we are able to connect to many like-minded people around the globe at the tap of a finger, there is no excuse for being Uncommitted Souls anymore - during these inhumane times we have to become human - we have to develop our authentic thoughts and feelings, independently from mainstream media, to connect to people with similar values and beliefs, expand our hearts and learn how to solve conflicts peacefully by changing minds and hearts and not fighting wars.
Always act on behalf of 'everything'.
How is this possible?
It is impossible!
A-yep, it sure is. It cannot be done, it defies logic, it is beyond human power and comprehension.
And this is why true lovers (the rare mystics) say: 'Thy will (God's Will) not mine, be done.'
And they mean it.
Those whose love is true.
For God is Love.
ned
p.s. btw: 'Infinite' (word often thought of in connection with God, as also is the word, 'eternal') means infinite, not more and more and more. You cannot count 'infinite' even with a computer or super-computer or quantum computer and you sure as hell can't keep in your bank account....duh.