On
Viciousness.
Are
advanced societies (and most societies are headed this way) becoming ‘grudge’
societies? Is the support the modern ‘individual’ seems to need for his or her
sense of well-being, his or her spiritual sustenance, based upon nurturing a
culture of the grudge? Object of the grudge? Take your pick: anti-women,
anti-men, the ‘grasping’ old, the ‘undeserving’ young, the State, all and every
form of government (as such, in other words, everyone must be ‘a rebel’ of some
description). And of course ‘against’ any and all kinds of ‘them’; all the
usual Others of modern societies (based on any and
every difference from the point of origin, from the original identity,
measuring, defining, the distance from ones own community of identification).
All the better now to be used as a means of self-empowerment and as an excuse
for various forms of abuse - of violence, imaginary and real, symbolic and
actual. All stemming from the most convenient form of self-definition:
self-definition as one of the denied, one of those who have
been denied (what ought to be theirs by right), and so are excused… all and
everything. Ironically, the modern version of this trope of exclusion works by
self-definition as a kind of Other. ‘We are all
victims now’. The latest move on the chessboard of
entitlement. The latest turn in the politics of
identity. So moving from a restricted to a general
rhetoric of victimhood; a general economy of victimhood. So, of course,
leaving no debt of hospitality or charity for others…
Have advanced societies in fact not
done away with the traditional material of ‘face’ and ‘honour
codes’, but merely driven them into a corner where they have become … vicious?
A
very (Post)Modern morality. From
hiding the sicknesses (of the self) to parading them - as the best and blatant
excuse for conscious wrong-doing (not least when the original wrong-doing is
questioned). ‘I know… but…’, or ‘How dare you… who do you think you are
(who are you to think you are better!’). From ‘innocent’
wrongdoing (due to unawareness or forgetfulness – or wishful thinking…) to the
awareness of doing wrong (as requiring the putting away or extinction of the
good if it dares stand witness as accuser in the public sphere). The
double consciousness that appears here functions as actively hiding the
knowledge of the good… or brushing it out of sight (again, politics has long
operated this kind of policy; co-opt or remove the contrasting pole, demonise or, even better, appropriate the offending ideal).
Perhaps nothing new as regards the
double-consciousness of wrong-doing, generally called guilt; but now with the
addition of the response of viciousness… as a ‘gut’ response (as the response
which says ‘you are no different’ -‘why spoil my fun’- added to the manners of
the habitual bully).
The
double-consciousness actualized in the relation of self to an actual other is
what promotes viciousness; that I know (the fact and extent of my wrongdoing)
may be bad enough (or perhaps stands as a badge of self-assertion over others,
over all that is felt Other to the desires of the self): but for others to know
(the others or Other over which one is asserting one’s self); this is not
acceptable. For if one’s self-assertion is lost, countermanded, then all that
one is, is lost; one is made to look a fool… or worse…
Whence the mindless lashing out of the bully (well, if we are to be precise,
never completely mindless… the bully always somehow has enough presence of
mind, somehow just finding enough self-control, never to loose his temper with
someone bigger, someone stronger…).
The guilty eye sheltered behind the
aggressive pout, swaggering attitude and snarling mouth…
Doing wrong, justification;
personal exceptionalism.
Being wrong, without guilt.
Committing offense; going on the
offensive.
*
Yet
double-consciousness may be necessary for self-protection in a variety of (inhospitable)
contexts, not least for those working with ideas who may find themselves
particularly exposed (Leo Strauss suggests that to some measure all
aware-individuals must, more especially if they are involved in the practice of
writing, of making culture, be prepared to either write ‘in code’ or keep a
kind of ‘double-entry bookkeeping’; the 17th century philosopher,
Leibnitz, is probably the best known exemplar of this strategy). Survival in
totalitarian societies, religious or secular, usually requires some degree of compartmentalisation and self-division; as also do issues
arising from private versus business or political ethics… Even the act of
smoking requires denial or the admission of a self-damaging contradiction. So
any reminder of this diremption or self-division, a
self-inconsistency felt as a wound (for those acts that involve hypocrisy or
implied guilt) can also cause a vicious response…. collective or individual. On
the other hand, double consciousness remains useful to support values if one
finds oneself ‘beyond belief’ (beyond the props of religion, metaphysics or
universal reason) or to help survive conflicting loyalties (source of most
narratives and much lyric poetry, sustainer of the popular song). Ironic
tension or antiphrasis is the interior structure (mirror image self-division)
that accompanies exterior tensions, divisions, pressures or requirements.
One example lies in the relation of
knowledge to social division, in the relation of knowing and not-knowing,
regarding role play and other social masks, as when we pretend to ourselves
that something is the case, when we know (in private) that it is in fact not
the case – one of the arts of living. This complex is at the root of Durkheim’s
‘homo duplex’ (the self as divided between private and public knowledge), or reconceptualised as Taussig’s
‘Public Secret’, as describing the means of covering-over the realities of
social antagonisms and power imbalances… again, of public, professed or ritual
identity as against private being or personal understanding.
So
double-consciousness can be source of wisdom (or anyway patience, the
appearance of wisdom) as well as viciousness. Ironic modern consciousness, or
‘ironic self-awareness’ is key to any affirmation of values (after religion); a
new basis for civil life, indeed if not for the continuance of civility itself…
what we rather vaguely refer to as ‘civilised values’
(although perhaps ‘ideals’, ‘the ideals of a civilized life’, might be more
accurate). We affirm what needs to be affirmed for the living of a civilized
life even though we realize that these values lack any metaphysical foundation
– nevertheless we must behave ‘as if’… This is the governing antiphrasis or
irony of a world ‘beyond belief’, where we can no longer believe, but must
assert values. A world without belief still requires values (often asserted in
the form of a ‘performative’, it is so if we say it
is so, a situation made possible by the very human gift of the bestowal of
value – things and relations, a tree, or a friendship, are precious if we say
they are so, sacred, even, if we decide they are so…).
Conversely
the kind of double consciousness which produces viciousness is one that must
hide its knowledge, from others, certainly – even (though only partially,
incompletely) from the self… (but incompletely, as
the memory, the nagging and inconvenient trace of the actual past must remain).
Must conceal its self-knowledge at all costs; and respond to any threat of
recognition or reminder (real or imaginary) of its inner truth (the concealed
admission of wrong-doing) with viciousness. A denial (or perverted kind of
self-defense) supported in the worst of cases (but eagerly) by violence.
And
what of the attempt to be beyond irony, beyond an ironic understanding of self? Like other forms of
knowledge, and exactly as in the case of the cultural trope of ‘the Fall’, once awareness has been attained it is difficult to
forget (the past can be rewritten but it can not be rewound). Active-forgetting
(Nietzsche) can only go so far (and anyway is more of a strategy), however
economic self-interest (always close to our theme) will manifest a vestigial
sense of guilt if based upon the forgetting of an inconvenient fact (pollution
and injury to others); vestigial but sufficient to require extirpation through
hatred of the persons who would remind - not least those who are the victims of
our action. Externally applied terror, indeed, appears to be the most efficient
way at guaranteeing ‘active forgetting’ or protecting self-interested absent
mindedness. In general, and on the grounds of bitter experience, we may assume
the price of the unified or undivided self is too high.
(…unless unified by the
knowledge of its inconsistency).
Perhaps
good and bad self-division, the relation of irony to the self as awareness, is
best exemplified in hypocrisy. Hypocrisy (for better or for worse; as manners
or as self-interest) is a type of knowing double-awareness (we often use the
word, ‘cynical’ here, for negative actions of this type). But viciousness seems
to attempt even the denial of such a conscious sense of doubling, desiring a
fundamentalist monism of thought; an attempt at (the maintenance, or appearance
of) an undivided self by means of the elimination of the other (perhaps
beginning with the other in the self, the other point of view that we once
held, the source of the ironic ‘knowing’ relation). The logic of the scapegoat
and destructive sacrificial rituals (from racism and prejudice to ethnic
cleansing and the pogrom) begins here. (In this sense regimes too can be
vicious, in the silencing of opponents, as of inconvenient truths… and in the
extermination of their designated scapegoats if they believe that the
continuation of their constituency depends upon it – ironically such groups are
often more in receipt of persecution than the actual opponents of a given
regime…).
(Yet the vague and troubling presence of
a remainder, the persistence of a reminder, would explain the perpetual
repetition of justification, of viciousness, as a ritual, becoming ritual, as a
perpetually applied medicine, to an un-healing wound…)
Economics
& Class.
Rich and poor alike are ready sources of viciousness. The response of the rich
(or those otherwise comparatively advantaged) to loosing wealth and privilege:
the response of the poor to any questioning of identity or status – and, of
course, whatever little income they may possess. Any loss of comfort or
perceived advantage is taken as if an existential threat or as an insult to a morbidly over-sensitive sense of ‘honour.’ Ironic: as it is often any (often imagined)
attempt to disperse a prior moral blindness (any aspersion that some activity
ought not to be the case) that is read as a personal threat. (Any reminder of dishonour is unwelcome). The latter obtains because ‘honour’ is defined by implied social position (how one
believes one should be treated) and not by a clear sense of what constitutes
‘good’ or honourable behaviour
(what one ought to do).
There
is a concept of the poor as ‘full of honour’, or of
morality – because… ‘its all they have’ (the ‘myth of
pastoral’ functions in a similar way). However ressentiment is the ‘poor mans’
(or modern equivalent in matters of spirit) response to an implied or imagined
slight (occasioned perhaps even more by the fact of
someone’s existence than their actions towards someone…). To be poor in modern
societies increasingly implies a gradient, rather than class difference as such
(the ressentiment-laden
individual usually aspires to, when they do not belong to, the ‘higher’ class,
the rung above, if not higher; the ressentiment is a matter of caste maintenance or perceived
inequalities of the soul, or culture, of education) – of spiritual and not
objective poverty.
(And if we ever wanted to know how the
‘poor’ or those once poor would respond to any threat to their newfound
economic wealth, or indeed to their supposed status, we anyway only needed to
look to the history of the rich…)
Loosing
things: loosing ‘self’.
Personal economics feed directly into the sense of being a person (plans
denied, personhood frustrated; as ones space in the world gets smaller so does
the self; self as attached to matter lost is dented). The response, reactive in
all senses, un-thought and so un-creatively dependant on the stimulus, often
includes the search for scapegoats; a search differentiated by the
pre-requirement that any putative solution must be easy on ones pocket and
energies – whence the need for easy targets, and easy answers… not requiring
any dealings with the powers of the world (or only in the form of a posturing
fantasy) nor any risk to oneself. The politics (and mindset)
of the bully and the coward. Not surprisingly, not admitted as such.
(Such a reminder would be unwelcome and itself read
-and responded to- as a radical loss of self. A call to arms…
a call to viciousness.)
Loosing
self: personal psychology. As when ones good self-image is read as denied by other’s
perception of ones (bad, inadequate or underhand) actions. Blame the messenger;
even if the other was unaware of the moral reminder he or she represented;
nevertheless an aggressive response quickly ensues. (If the messenger poses no
physical threat, that is: if the maker of awareness does pose a threat, then a
cowardly snarl or muted growling ensues… precisely like that of a dog snarling
with a lowered head…)
Now it’s personal!
In
the opposition of the ‘power-self’ to the ‘moral-self’ (the self as defined by
capability and the self as defined by the ability to be governed by a moral
code; the self as defined by size relative to others, and the self as defined
by self-restraint relative to others); in this opposition we see the belief
that if one possesses the former then all need for the latter is thus obviated.
Here the self as a self which is self-mastering, so the self recognized as
such, as separate from passing whims, is opposed to a self as undifferentiated
from any and every desire (usually imitated from some real, or even imaginary,
peer group). We note the popular fantasy of the powerful self as getting and
achieving; but also note that the stare of the other reminds one of the moral aspect, of the lack of a moral self, therefore the
discomforting sense of division and lack are reinstituted… The other does not
confirm, recognize, so reconfirm, our ‘’successful’ self as a moral self (a
continuation of the ‘little ritual’ of daily recognition, Hegel’s contest of
Lord and Servant as unending process, or Hobbes’ struggle for possessions and
position in the ‘state of nature’ before the institution of the State). So leaving recourse only to the power-self. Viciousness results. An inversion of Hegel’s opposition in
the sense that the superior loses the contest whereas the inferior wins (the
inferior would not accept a contest where he would not win); or as in
Nietzsche’s reading where the ‘Slave’, subject to assault for the temerity of
his or her gaze, has the morality, but the ‘Master’ is the bully and coward.
Hobbes’ ‘nasty and brutish’ perhaps captures it best. Foucault and modern
linguistics remind us that the implied power gradient, the threat of violence,
alters the discourse, imposing modes of address and response, which recognize
the gradient, and deny the moral element - ‘speaking truth to power’ is
ineffective if it is not obsequious (the fantasy that it is effective stems
from the notion that the powerful can be shamed into correct behaviour… whereas shaming can only occur with peers or neighbours, those similar in social position or in
geographical proximity).
(Morality in the discourse of modern
societies, of modern institutions, is anyway subject to the contradiction that
its production is both mobilized or appropriated by the institution or interest
group in question, and yet must maintain its status as a ‘resisting’ form of
knowledge, an attempt at ‘doing right being good’ – so both product and
critique of a given society’s relations of power.)
Hierarchy
in society appears to be one perpetual (because inevitable) source of
viciousness (the degree of hierarchy is another matter). Maintaining or seeking
position (and all recognition implies a re-confirmation of this) means that any
loss of ‘position’ results in a shaking of the self, often calling forth an
aggressive response - if one can get away with it. As with other
forms of immoral or illegal behaviour, this is also a
case of ‘getting away with it’… of morality entirely ceding to pragmatism.
So signaling a retreat from internalized Law to exterior law, morality as
decided by a look over ones shoulder, by the ghost that may be lurking in the
eye of the other…. All sense of Law as the (moral) Law within only surviving,
in residue, in the awareness of the Other; all our
others (real or imaginary) and their power to make us feel under judgment.
Reminded of the Law we should have reminded ourselves of. A
reminder producing viciousness.
A
response to the realization that one might be the proud possessor of a lower
moral being, of lower moral standards than those watching; provoking inner
realization (or reminder of what was already known but pushed aside) but
simultaneous outward denial. Such a realization could be the cause of a path of
self-improvement (usually through education). However this course of action
would require that we recognize our insufficiency… And it is such that it would
seem we are programmed not to admit. It appears as if an awareness of
‘wrongdoing’ without internalized codes of behaviour
that make such an awareness an inner judgment on ones own wrongdoing requires
more than most of us are capable of attaining. These codes are now, in general,
perceived as existing as outside of the self; shadowy incursions onto the
self’s self-sufficiency, unwelcome guests at the feast of the self’s
self-eulogizing, unwanted witnesses to gluttony of the self’s self-heroisation, so many bearers of cold water to the festival
of the self’s unlimited self-valourisation… Vain-glorious. Boasting. Kicking against all pricks. Everyman a miles gloriouses. A bloated balloon
waiting for the pin of recognition. Awaiting the pin-prick
of conscience. Other-driven (despite the desperate
denial of dependency).
So
the formation of self as against… (even as it
continues in a state of dependency). As against all those who would make it
aware. (Refusing awareness that must already be there). Easy to understand why
if we abandon the ‘Marlboro Man’ view of the self as solid and indivisible
(itself as part of the problem, for the experience of the self as not such
leads to the search for a certainty of self as guaranteed by certain community,
which in turn requires certain others; as identity definition often works by
means of the negative, so we are back with definition against…). Alternatively
we may see the self as fragile, and so endlessly renewed, multiple, fragmented;
renegotiated by aspects of its social relations with others, complete with the
usual divided loyalties that provide the basis for the higher, more complex,
cultural forms (no tragedy without agon). The fragile self would be both descriptive of our
identity in (post)modern conditions, as well as prescriptive of a modest
attitude to ones self, and therapeutic in the best sense as offering a key to
self-awareness and non-toxic methods of self-improvement or non-exclusive
identity formation. By contrast the ‘solid’ self hypothesis (ideology might be
a better word) offers a version of ‘why should we care what they think’… the italics to include
quite literally all; from everybody (else) as a generalized paranoia or fear of
the public gaze, largely imaginary, but internalised
as antagonistic and judgmental, to the proto-pogrom, pre-lashing-out, singling
out of groups and individuals as fodder for potential sadism, the reduction and
forced abjection of others for the sake of an ego too fragile to sustain itself
without hatred, too unaware to know better.
Moreover
in assuming the role of the ‘always-already’ injured, we have ready access to
moral self-righteousness as a means or excuse for aggressive behaviour… as a means of assertion in competitive world, as
an excuse for the expression of ‘self’ in a world obsessed by individuality and
expression of self… (but left untrained in ‘the arts
of the self’). Morality, alas, also has its temptations; its
Tartuffes!
Picture a self happily sinning, transgressing
(typically thinking its getting one ‘over on the others’) until inconveniently
recognized - made aware, through the eyes of an other- that it is not a self
that is wining, but conning… or falling… the positive in its own eyes, transvalued, in the eyes of the other, by means of the eye
of the other (of the I in the Other) into a negative. So
reminded of its fallen state. An unwelcome reminder.
(Of this self as discussed above… can it be
said to constitute the majority of modern persons? Or only an aspect… albeit
one shared by most?)
A
reminder of the divided self (’one’ is no longer one, but two) - bridged by
fantasy. Or by an ‘unconscious’ constituted by an external denial and an inward
inner admission often boasted of to others of a similar kind, or the order of
the Same, where lack of moral standing is not an issue… and may be a badge of
membership, as the excuse for the breaking of the law, falling beneath the law,
as countered by the imagining of being ‘above’ the Law… (the fantasy of all in
a society of ‘individuals’ – where everybody is finally the same, finally
‘equal’ in their self-estimate as above everybody
else…).
Imaginary
self and imaginary (lauding) others as permitting; but the (appearance of) real
others (appearing to) deny… so recourse to the aggressive response.
Hatred
made worse by the presence of another, of others, their recognition of your
faults, of the lack felt as on display, a provocation taken as a personal
insult – a loosing of face, a dented self-image, a loosing of ones secret
sufficiency, insufficiency on show, self-image undermined – in public, by an
other, by others.
Hatred made worse by losing (true of
rich and poor…) and by loosing things (the things used in the aggrandizement of
the self, before the self, and so before others, imaginary others, as when the
self imagines the others as imagining ones self); a personal wound.
Loss
(economic).
Foremost among causes, economic loss: as history shows, all ruling elites
become vicious when faced with loss (the passage of elites out of history,
indicates all too often the degree of destructiveness of which they are
capable); the better-off, or even those who have arrived at a state they would
describe as comfortable, in modern society, are no exception. For the poor also,
as economic crises bear witness, the cause of economic loss, of absolute
privation even for those worst effected, will bring out the worst in terms of
human destructiveness and self delusion (the desperation which enables those
whose parents have suffered – or more rarely, those themselves who have
suffered, from the terrors of left and right populism in absolute power, to
once again place their faith in such movements…). The path is that to the
scapegoat, here as in other matters to do with the putative unity of the self,
or unity of self and others (community). And then there is modern capitalism’s
constant rubbing of the wound of desire, always indicating what more one
‘needs’, enticing one to want more, from matching the neighbours’
life-style, or at least the one alluded to in the Sunday colour
supplement or currently popular soap opera, to the moving of the goalposts that
property prices bring about, creating a new poor, and an anxious ‘new rich’
looking for ever new opportunities to stay up on their newly arrived level of
expenditure and consumption… their new rung on the social ladder of distinction
and degree. A wound that, when it cannot longer be assuaged by commodities, may
be placated by an older economy, that of human sacrifice.
From where indeed would come the
impulse for millenarian movements, for our totalitarian dreams of a total (and
so ‘final’) solution. Where else indeed… source of our 20th century
social religions and the rebirth of many a traditional religion. Religion assuaging
the wound which in its beginnings was economic, but all too quickly becoming
social, recognition-based, a wounded ‘face’ as catalyst to new beliefs (based
upon the usual re-alignment of recognition and community). Rebirth
of religion from the spirit of personal tragedy.
The wound of face (of
wounded ‘face’) to be assuaged by the face of the new Leader.
Loss
(of face).
Social loss as status centers upon loss of face, imagined loss of caste, or
recognition loss: For individuals it is not only loss of economic clout (and so
of social status) but of their projected or imaginary self… how they would want
to be seen (how they like to believe that they are seen). This morbidly
sensitive barometer of any slight, and often, sudden loss of self includes all moments
when we are caught doing something we ought not to be doing, when we imagine we
are caught, by another’s gaze in the process of doing such… with a concurrent
loss of self-esteem felt as keenly as any physical wounding. Just as some
believe themselves to be above the Law (upper case indicating, as usual that,
we are talking about what is felt to be right and just ‘in general’, and not
just ‘in law’, small case - as indeed, ‘above’ the law), so some find
themselves below it… And this precisely is their problem: that they are aware
that it is a case of ‘below’… and moreover that they are perceived as in such a
position by others (in actuality or in their own imaginations).
Response:
‘how dare you make me feel bad, just
what is wrong with you…?’
When
double consciousness is the cause we find a redoubling of aggression… as the
self consciousness of the fault is added to the bill to be paid ... by the
other.
Whatever
the source of loss, the aggressive response it elicits disfigures society,
lowering the standards of public behaviour in public
places (now showing the grossness and bullying once limited to the living room
or bedroom); disfiguring public life (the realm of private life, as many
recipients of domestic violence know, has been disfigured by such cowardice for
a long time).
All wounds assuaged by the impulse to
violence.
Only assuming that the other
is not able to hit back.
Copyright Peter Nesteruk,
2013