It’s the resurgence of bigotry. It is an eddy in the cosmic tides, the universal back-and-forth between entropic chaos and structured order. How many genesis texts proclaim this very observation? What is troubling, on the side of the order that chaos opposed, is mostly that our order is what defines us, and defines our values. Of course, for individuals who attack the ordered group, order seems to devalue the strong self-interest that defines that individual. Everyone tries to do the “right thing.” Generally we accept Right and Good to reside on the side of Order, while Wrong and Bad imbue Chaos. That is a socially accepted evaluation: society being an ordered collective. The chaotic have values too, derived from a world view that tends toward: what is good for me and mine is Good, and what is bad for me and mine is Bad. The good and bad can be valued as right and wrong.
The undeniable truth of chaos and order has no value component. So acting out in impulsive, seemingly random directions has roots in the cosmic impulse to chaos, but it’s only wrong to the tidal swell of order. Acts of bigotry then are simply acts of chaos attempting to assert itself against order, while the societal response will be to suppress and even extinguish those chaotic elements. Extinguishing chaos will not happen of course, because in the dispassionate, nonjudgmental scope of the cosmos, we must have both forces. As Ravana said to Rama: each of us defines the other.
In the here-and-now of earthly existence, this cosmic interplay both condemns and forgives our actions in these days or terror and terrorism: condemned because we cannot escape these rending forces, which actually help to pull people closer together as victims and allies, and yet forgiven because we are all victims of ultimately primal forces, which cannot ever pull us all together. As chaos perpetrators, we lash out energetically to fend off what we perceive to be the domination of an adversarial order. As communities, we huddle together, cloaked in self-righteousness against the irrationality of bigotry. Yet, who we are is not as a result of the fact of their birth, but is a result of when and where we were born. All individuals are products of their conditioning, and all are acting out their own conditioned perception of what the world is.
I offer two cautions here. One is that chaos is ultimately ungoverned and unconstrained, seeing wrong and right uniquely, but seeing it. It would be easy to fit this to the term “freedom.” Freedom however must be freedom from something negative, not freedom from order or freedom from everything. The other is that order is governance which defines right and wrong and shapes us to it. It would be easy to try to define order as right or wrong, but it become an impossible circular rationale. Order is a state, like liquids or solids. Within that state things are ordered, but different things can be ordered differently. While things in an ordered state are indeed ordered, they are right. Therefore, there are no right or wrong orders. Understanding this leads us to examine acts of bigotry and hostility in better light.
Acts of hostility are in fact increasing. It’s not about white people, or Americans or Christians; it’s about individuals. The rise in individual rights and the sense of greater individual freedom has created the tinder. Astute individuals have recognized this development and now tap its potential. Tinder in place, a spark from the supremacist leadership has ignited the conflagration of hatred and violence against that which is identifiable as different, that difference being a contrivances of the same leadership. The messages have been about religious groups, color groups, language groups, national origin groups and even gender, as if the world’s reality descends from the commonality of these groups. That’s simply wrong. These commonalities bring individuals together to be sure, but the individuals define the group; the group does not define the individual. What the attacks achieve is often ironic, as it welds the attacked group into a tighter order and helps shape group members to the conditions the group defines. Meanwhile, individuals without the ordered conditions of such groups, who labor under ignorance, fear and hatred will also come together with their commonality, newly revealed by the manipulative leadership. These individuals bring unique perspectives to the group; they do not get them from the group. They do not bond in order to generate their stability; they are left with only negative definitions, anti-order. Seeing impunity under the masters of the new regime, this group of bullies can and will turn their bigotry against anyone who is ‘different’ and probably vulnerable. They have been told they are right; so, all difference is wrong. Remember we all define right and wrong either individually or by consensus.
Chaotic individuals derive validity for their values of self-interest from compatible, powerful and often simplistic ideologies. Ordered individuals derive validity through shared values and shared interests – one for all, etc. Hence, chaotic soldiers fight for god and country, while the ordered soldier fights for the good of comrades and citizens’ safety and well-being.
So the ordered groups, the ordered societies can define right and wrong to maintain the smooth operation of their group, and this is done by consensus; we are shaped by one another. On the other hand, disconnected individuals – social free radicals, as it were – are aimed at targets, generally defined by their apparent difference for the mainstream, real or imagined, by manipulation from without. As individuals, we are all subject to the defining influence of others.
Because it is part of the universal dynamic, this situation has always existed. It has always been used by malignant rulers first to mobilize destructive forces against relatively defenseless victims, as a common enemy, thus creating a new, seemingly powerful if deluded cadre which can be used as a weapon of power and terror. The rulers then redefine the bigotry group as a racial or national champion that can be moved against other, new, stronger targets on the way to domination.
Perhaps the good news in this chaos versus order view is that ordered forces cannot be turned around in short order. Only after the free radicals are sufficiently well established as a group to at least appear to be the mainstream will the existing organizations begin to realign, and thoughtful individuals, who value genuine order, will continue to exist, first as dissidents and later as the new free radicals. The universal tides will not be stopped.
So remember: “When good people do nothing, bad things happen.” The question will always be, “Who are the good people?”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Here’s a picture representing the Orient Express. Speaking to it or clicking on it does not open any doors, allow one any access or (sigh) take one on an iconic journey. Yet the journey is “iconic” because it represents another opportunity for marketeers to misuse the ‘new word’ in Madison Avenue’s vocabulary. How very per-adolescent.
Never a Truer Word
28 January 2018 Leave a comment
Things are not going well with the world. I have recently pondered the overwhelming, perhaps overshadowing, general sense of dysfunction, this decay of civility we now endure. It blares out of politics, economies, technologies and even organized religions. It erodes our quality of life, our access to necessities, our feelings of safety, our sense of humanity. As is natural, we strike out at the things that threaten us, usually people whom we are predisposed not to like. And we declare our injuries, real and anticipated, demanding justice, yet accepting revenge which is more tangible.
Even when justice and/or revenge is achieved, the sense of impending doom remains and seems to envelope us in a vague fog of unknowing. A place of victimization and powerlessness becomes the abode of tens of millions, even hundreds of millions. Much of what we hear when we listen are the screams of rage and fear. Reality is cracking.
There is a churning cloud of words and images hovering behind, around and over people, a cloud so unstable and so filled with threat, yet so impervious to any efforts to quell it or fend it off, that it can only be called the Darkness. It is as if the Void and the Chaos that were banished in Creation have truly crept back in, not from the starry heavens, offended by arrogant space venturers, but from the inner depths of the very people whom it afflicts.
It is as if malignant insecurity, buried under the nurturing soil of civilization is reaching up from its grave to fuel the chaos of misinformation, accusation, incrimination and virulent conflict that surrounds us. Nothing is as it seems; everything is confuted with evil forces reckoning to destroy each of us, isolated and confused. Yet, it is from within ourselves that this malignancy originates; it is our own internal dysfunctions, made manifest and fed on by parasites of power, that have created the Darkness that threatens us. We feed the turmoil we dread.
Walt Kelly’s words have never been more true, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” (Pogo, 1971)
jcritterson@gmail.com
Like this:
Filed under Philosophy, Politics, Social Commentary Tagged with Chaos, Civility