I have read
your last article on psychopathology and demonology in mainstream liberal-conservative
discourse about Plebian movements, and in the ways how is written the history
of the “totalitarian” political tendencies ever since the French revolution —
with particular intensity since the Soviet revolution, turning the “small 20th
century” into the “totalitarian century” par excellence.
There are of
course many aspects worth mentioning in the article, but I was particularly
stroke by your reference of Nietzsche, with his usual “Ultraist” inclinations
within this context, hence suggesting the conclusion not just for 2
totalitarian-leaning centuries of enragés,
but instead 2 totalitarian-leaning enraged millennia. Obviously, Nietzsche
having himself the psychopathological, medical conditions that are known, the
whole case becomes immediately so much juicier, with a “who’s really the crazy
one”, or indeed “who’s the millenarist one” question inevitably emerging. Moshe
Zuckermann, by the way, as you know wrote very interesting comments on
precisely this kind of problems, with all the aporias and paradoxes it may well
suggest: almost a classical case of “all-Cretans-are-liars-said-the-Cretan”
kind of story, with its acknowledged philosophical implications (see here: http://domenicolosurdo.blogspot.pt/2009/11/apologeta-del-dominio-la-traduzione.html).
The “Ultraist”
Nietzsche, however, with toutes ses
audaces et finesses (or what under other perspective could well be deemed
his highly weird tendencies) was recognizably also the “intellectually honest”,
and therefore the intransigent Nietzsche, the one that had learnt to be so unspeakably
light via being so impenetrably deep, so joker and buffonesque thanks to being
so implacably serious, so dovish by means of being so hawkish, etc. And
therefore, the basic problem seems to be: what is it that, in the configuration
of our societies (culturally, yes, but not only culturally), induces this kind
of general mental dispositions that the “epileptics of ideas” — as Nietzsche
himself likely was, and above all — tend to capture or attract like a lightning-rod?
Were other societies,
epochs different from ours, “mad”, “demented” ones? Are social groups that a
researcher identifies as not his/hers — as being “them”, instead of “us” —
“crazy” groups? Obviously, I will not lose much more time or space saying the
obvious, i. e., recommending prudence, detachment and globally a “Montaignean”
inclination whenever possible. But a spicy element is no doubt brought into the
cuisine of ideas when the society, the epoch, the class, the country that are objectively
“ours” are simultaneously recognized as being “they”, as “alien”, and indeed to
many aspects as “ill”, and so as deserving a psychopathological (or even a demonological)
approach.
That may
well occur to an isolated individual: who therefore will presumably tend to
perceive him/herself as intimately exiled, “untimely”, psychologically
dissociated, “unempathetic”, etc. But this fact, as one immediately senses, may
well be a kind of “poetical”, spontaneous psychological device allowing the
reconstitution of the “we-group” to which he/she explicitly or implicitly refers:
Machiavelli, keeping “conversations” with illustrious dead people (Ancient Romans)
instead of living ones (Renaissance Florentines) is a classical example; and
each one of us may feel, and indeed have occasionally felt, inclined to refer
to Machiavelli in turn… The very shifting of the “we-group” (from the living “ethnic
Germans” to the imaginary “European aristocracy”, returning to the case of Nietzsche)
is therefore, at least potentially, an excellent tool both for the enlargement
of that “we-group” and for a more detached relationship with it.
Norbert
Elias has, to my knowledge, written very interesting pages on this very subject
of the dialectics of identification and detachment in socio-historical studies.
And so has Moses Finley, by the way, underlining the fact that it is precisely
the conscience of the sometimes “desperately foreign” condition of the searcher
that, on occasions, allows the overcoming (would it be fair to speak of “Überwindung”, or “Aufhebung”?) of these foreign, alien aspects of the relation of the
historian with the artifacts of times past, and so the full assumption of
history, and historiography, as what these most deeply are: aspects of
(universal) human reason and its self-awareness (see here, please: http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5266E.pdf). If the challenge is often to
shorten distances, on other occasions, however, it seems to be the opposite: to
artificially create a distance, or at least a sense of it, in order to gain
“perspective”, and likely more accuracy. On a more light note, I would as to
this dare mention Léo Ferré’s words on the voluntary — and indeed only partial,
also partly fake — estrangement between a lover and a loved one, with his
justly famous verses of “Quand
tu t'y mets dedans ou quand je t'y exile/ Pour t'aimer de plus loin comme ça en
passant”; but also vis-à-vis society at large: “Je suis d’un autre pays que le
vôtre, d’un autre quartier, d’une autre solitude”, etc.
Be as it
may, the fact remains that ours really seems to be an epoch of collective
generalized estrangement, a time where the acute perception of each one’s
individuality comes inextricably associated with each one’s radical separation
from the others, and indeed from society in general. An epoch that has,
arguably, gained in sophistication and richness of individual experiences, and
more broadly in what is usually called “negative freedom”; but no doubt lost
dramatically in terms of “positive freedom”, the growth of individual autonomy implying
a heavy toll being paid in lack of collective self-determination, or democracy
proper, with now a huge, disproportionate gap between what is even officially
considered “the right thing” and those that simply are the actual facts: often with
sheer Might grotesquely (but triumphantly) claiming to be “Right” out of simply
being Might, and still no Archimedean point available, or even at sight, in
order to countervail those acknowledged, blatantly barbarizing general
tendencies.
Without any
intent at exhausting the subject, I think worth considering the notion that,
out of having so much “Verwindung”,
and recognizably without any aim at “Überwindung”,
with so much “perspective” being acquired, and presumably detachment, but
without these allowing the identification of real parallaxes and the subsequent
correction of judgments, we finally came down (in cultural terms, but not just
in cultural terms) to a situation where it can be said that, after so much
daydreaming, and indeed largely thanks to it, we all became now simply
incapable of waking up of this collective living nightmare (see here: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3685157?uid=3738880&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101478179563). Maybe
true nihilism, this time? A universal incapacity to make history, and all the
more ironic given the officially oh so Nietzschean and also Anti-Hegelian
traits of the post-modern esprit du temps?
Ours may, I
guess, be considered a rather self-estranged, and in that sense necessarily a sick
time: self-estranged, maybe above everything else, as a consequence of the
excess of empty individualism and vain particularisms being culturally induced
and adopted. If Spinozian potentia agendi
does relate to virtù and the
correspondent capacity to do things collectively (and in a way also
individually), as it is persuasively argued by Jan Rehmann (http://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/situations/article/view/176/200), then ours
seems to be rightfully deemed an inverted Spinozian epoch, for its collective impotence
to make history really vindicates Spinoza, conspicuously showing, albeit a contrario, that only united, and
indeed politically united, men are able to live fully human lives.
Notice,
please, that I am not claiming any precedence of a particular order of factors
on the analysis of societies: things affect and are affected reciprocally, and
so it doesn’t seem to me to make much sense the search for the “primordial
cause”: cultural aspects are no doubt important, but they in turn express other
conditioning circumstances. Ah, but how much are these really specific
differences or defining traits of our times? Am I not making a mistake of
parallax myself? Isn’t it true that all times are “the best of times, the worst
of times”? Well, the “objective fact” is that, for instance, ours are days of
rampant consumption of psychotropic drugs: both anti-depressives and sedatives,
or at least in those varieties. That’s not a conjecture: simply a bold, crude
and stubborn fact. And this leaves aside all the illegal drugs, of course: both
“uppers” and “downers”. Simultaneously, the Portuguese government has been
raising levels of taxation, officially trying to reduce the budget deficit, and
betting especially on indirect taxation (which is itself already a rather
meaningful aspect), but the other relevant and stubborn fact is that, on
account of the contraction of GDP experienced, the global levels of fiscals
revenues have also gone down… except precisely the taxes on alcoholic beverages
and tobacco. You may laugh of that if you want, and call it a simple anecdote, but
then again, that’s another fact, and maybe also a rather revealing one.
Now, are the
Portuguese a people of drunkards and drug-addicts, or how much are they/we so?
Is it nature? Or rather nurture… or indeed culture… or instead, simply an
endless mystery? Is it the cycle, some might add, or really the trend? In the
meantime, pharmacies, almost exclusively a private business, although strongly subsidized
by State-supported conventions, permanently threaten to cease selling reduced
prize medicaments, always complaining about the absence or abusive
procrastination of State payments that have been arranged. And so, these
non-complying public authorities seem this way to promote the “black market” of
drugs, the “going under” of the whole business, and therefore further tax
evasion and the deepening of problems…
But let’s
not get too deep inside that, or else we will be submersed by “the misery of
the world”. This was just to give you a rapid insight of the interesting
ramifications we step into, once we start discussing social questions appealing
to a “psychopathological” approach. On a slightly different toke, the fees paid
by people of all conditions in emergency services, in Portuguese public
hospitals, have in 2012 gone from 5 Euros to 20 Euros, allegedly because people
has to get used to pay “more real” prices, also because the State needs money,
of course, and finally, so it was told, because there are too many people going
to hospital emergencies, mostly during night time, at least partly because they
are lonely, feel anguished… but, sorry, emergency services of hospitals are not
the place to deal with that!
And, you
know what?, the level of frequencies in emergencies did really diminish.
Therefore, maybe it was indeed mostly a psychopathological thing. Maybe all
these elderly retired were really mostly asking for company or psychological
therapy in a misguided way. The raising of the fee did the trick. It worked, so
it must have been a good, appropriate thing. Ah, but simultaneously, truth be
said, we have witnessed a relevant raising of the mortality of elderly, retired
people; and let’s not forget there are many people in Portugal “surviving” with
pensions bellow 200 Euros a month — yes, you have read well: bellow 2 hundred
(not 2 thousand) Euros a month. So, why is it that expressions like “sick
bastards” and “wicked murderers” keep occurring to my mind when I think both of
our ruling politicians and of the trompe
l’oeil oppositions? I know all too well that I must resist the tendency to
analyze things political in psychopathological or demonological terms, I know,
I know…
As a matter
of fact, one of the ways for Portugal to get out of the maze of nowadays
economic hardships is indeed to simply “let go”, say, 1/4 or 1/2 million
elderly, on one side, and 1/4 or 1/2 million more young unemployed, on the
other extremity of the age pyramid, who besides have been publically and
straightforwardly advised to emigrate by some of our leading politicians. (In a
managerial jargon, this would be considered “losing adiposities”, and probably
praised as “creative destruction”). The very demographic symmetry may, however,
induce some “perspective” and suggest some logical difficulties, implying that
the “therapy” is intrinsically vitiated, or even that it has been produced by
the mind of a “dangerously mad” person. How is it that, on one hand, it is said
once and again that our public system of pensions must be revised and
downsized, allegedly because the average person is insisting in living too much
time, or ceasing to work too soon, or both… and then on the other hand have so
many youngsters that are simply left out of work? How to solve this mysterious
“economic contradiction” (or “demographic contradiction”) of our days? If the usual
“inverted Malthusian” argument officially so much propagated is true (too many
elderly, too few births and young people), how come the few youngsters remaining
still can’t find a decent job, so often having to leave the country and even
getting publicly advised to do so? And moreover, notice that those are
precisely the persons with higher levels of instruction, the more qualified
“human capital” that Portugal has ever had. If, as a nation, we are repealing
them: how can one not sense the accumulation of signs of collective misfortune
in the foreseeable future?
Another way
out of the maze, for Portugal, would start by simply leaving the Euro. That
would certainly not be the only move (others following like default and several
nationalizations), but definitely an indispensable, preliminary one: an
absolute must. If we have a problem of recurrent external deficits, and
therefore also external debt, we should prioritize the currency devaluation.
Impossible to say how much exactly, but since the US dollar has passed from 1.1
to 0.8 of a Euro in few more than a decade, maybe a devaluation of 30 per cent
(just keeping the pace with the USA) is not a foolish idea. That would imply a
relevant and most needed boost to exports and tourism, and alas also likely an
increased inflation of roughly 8 per cent, via “rigid” imports (above
everything, oil), therefore in the short run a generalized reduction of real
income of round 8 per cent for the totality of Portuguese population.
Alternatively, we may of course also try the ways of the “internal devaluation”
that is being experienced, which implies reduction of nominal wages of obviously
more than 30 per cent, since of course labor costs are not the only input in the
cost-structure of what we produce. Maybe, not unreasonably, a 50 per cent nominal
cut in all wages and pensions. We have been in that path for the last 2 years,
but to tell the truth we are not even yet nel
mezzo del cammin… (As to this, see also here: http://resistir.info/portugal/denuncia_do_memorando.html).
Evidently,
such an idea won’t be presented simply like this to the public. The elite will
out of necessity lie: to the masses, first, formal democracy oblige; and then,
up to a point, also to itself. The “austerity” measures demanded by this
program will imply/are implying gross recessive effects on the economy as a
whole, with the downwards spiral having for the moment not really an end at
sight. As a matter of fact, after a decade with very slow growth in 2001-10, of
7 per cent on the totality of the period, roughly 0.7 per cent a year, clearly
“diverging” from Euroland’s average (still, with Italy being the true laggards,
the champions of stagnation, with 0.1 GDP growth a year in that time), Portugal
has had two consecutive years of catastrophe, in which 5 of the 7 percentage
points of growth previously accumulated were already eroded. Therefore, more
than one decade of almost stagnation: Latouche should be glad.
In the
meantime, the Welfare State is being dismantled, and indeed as to many aspects
the State at large. Things taken for granted in a civilized society are simply
collapsing: hospitals, schools, trains, garbage picking… you name it. (We
haven’t, true, got yet to the point where Greece already is, with malaria
reappearing, but we are certainly on the right track in order to quickly catch up with them…). Ah, but don’t worry.
We will certainly have a “libertarian”, free-marketer paradise waiting for us
in the end of this process — or at least those of us able to endure the travel:
the “fittest” that will presumably survive. And in case this process more or
less means the collapse of the entire country as such: then again, who says
that a collective euthanasia is a totally bad thing? (See Michael Hudson’s
articles here, please: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/25/latvias-fake-economic-model/ and here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/16/latvia-anders-aslund-austerity)
And, what’s probably
even more interesting: not only the so-called “European Left” does not
recommend peripheral countries to immediately leave the Euro — which to my mind
is itself already a clear sign of a dangerously rampant collective insanity — but
it does explicitly and emphatically recommend PIIGS to stay: allegedly because
it is a sign of “nationalism” to even think of leaving (and presumably an acceptable
“internationalist” sacrifice to stay put), and also because it is still
expected that the Godot of big scale budget transfers within Euroland will one
of these days arrive, hopefully before the complete breakdown (maybe in a foggy
morning, somehow like Portuguese king D. Sebastião: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebasti%C3%A3o_de_Portugal); or that,
in absence of such processes, the European peoples will eventually rise up for
“the Revolution”, implanting I-must-confess-I-can’t-even-dream-how-and-I-strongly-suspect-neither-do-they
the “United Socialist States of Europe”, or anything more or less alike, and
certainly not less demented/delusional (see, as illustration of this kind of
mumbling, Michel Husson, here: http://www.esquerda.net/artigo/sair-do-euro-ou-n%C3%A3o, or here: http://alencontre.org/europe/euro-en-sortir-ou-pas.html).
Did it occur
to you that (what I dared call) the “European ideology” may well operate,
within this context, as a sort of tremendous “opium of intellectuals”, and by
extension of the generality of the plebs? And what do you say, concerning the
“European Left”, about the notion of “social-cretinism de profundis”? Does the appeal to that category also mean recurring
to psychopathology? And what should we think about the older metaphor of the
“ship of fools”? Briefly: does it make any sense to you the idea of returning
to the question that I formulated above, of “who’s really the crazy one?”Since I
don’t feel inspired to more, I choose to leave you with this bunch of
questions. Please be so kind as to consider them, assuming it as a complement —
or what was intended as such — to the assertions produced in your article.
My best
wishes. Saudações cordiais e muito amistosas,
Lisboa, 31 de Dezembro de 2012
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