THE NOT-UNTHINKABLE
86 Gridlocked in Latvia (5)
This blog removed on 2013-01-27.
Showing posts with label Bataille. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bataille. Show all posts
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, October 1, 2009
NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
33 Not-Violent Populism (V)
In 1938, Georges Bataille, wrote a famous essay called “Obelisk” in which he discusses Nietzsche’s and his own ideas about the death of God in our time. http://tinyurl.com/yevy24b The librarian-philosopher ends his essay with these words:
“For it is the foundation of things that has fallen into a bottomless void. And what was fearlessly conquered… is not an isolated creature [like the dragon by St. George]; it is the very void and the vertiginous fall, it is TIME. The movement of all life now places the human being before the alternatives of either this conquest [of TIME] or a disastrous retreat. The human being arrives at the threshold: there he must throw himself headlong into that which has no foundation and no head.” While the observation by Bataille is meant for the entire world to hear, this writer would like to apply the threshold challenge to the Latvians specifically.
When in 1939 the Soviets occupied Latvia, the Latvians faced the void—“the foundation of things… fallen into a bottomless void”—in real terms. The Latvian dictator-president Karlis Ulmanis, one of the founders of the nation (1918) who seized the reigns of government from the Latvian Saeima in 1933, surrendered the country and himself to the Soviet ultimatum of surrender or die. Latvians surrendered, but died in war and gulags all the same. Ulmanis failed the challenge, because his surrender was equal to Bataille’s “disastrous retreat”.
What would have been victory? Both Nietzsche and Bataille, while of the same mind about the nature of the challenge, offer no specific solution of how one is to meet “…that which has no foundation and no head.” It is this writer’s opinion that the challenge of a world whose God is dead can be met with self-sacrifice. Hence the name of this series of blogs, re: Not-violent Terror. Self-sacrifice, the sovereign right of every individual, and the overcoming of the terror (and dread, and fear) of death in its contemplation, reestablishes sovereign power lost—when human beings killed God—through the charisma of a deed not because it is driven by conviction (though it may be), but the needs of God who is a yet unknown Entirety. Meeting the challenge does not necessarily offer victory in conventional terms, i.e., the stock market will go up and the economy will bloom ad infinitum, but offers believability crowned with charisma. In fact, the step provides a continuum (either new or to the old) whether one wins or loses any specific battle.
In the context of this blog, the argument is that if K. Ulmanis would have killed himself in self-sacrificial death*, he would have conquered time by creating upon it a memory that would have stayed with the Latvian people for a very long time. As the Latvians were being sovietized, that is, as their community was ever more exposed to demoralization and was thrust into the void by their conquerors, they would have had a memory that proved their will to be.
Unfortunately, the Latvians have no such memory. By failing to act as a true sovereign on the behalf of his people, K. Ulmanis betrayed the people that he presumed to lead. The betrayal (the failure of memory before the stream of time) continues to our day, to the very president of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers. This is not to say that either this author or the public expect this president, a former surgeon, to become an anchor of faith in a time of possible dissolution of Latvians as a sovereign community. It is to say that V. Zatlers has not put his sovereign imprint as a leader of Latvians. His is a symbolic presence. He is an apple in a dish on the table where apples should be, but he has done nothing more than look apply presidential. In effect, the healer is proving himself to be no healer to the Latvian community, but a career surgeon, who (failing a sovereign diagnosis that fits the situation) retains all the marks of a two-dimensional figurehead. Such passivity is a sign that Latvians cannot expect their government leaders to do more than imitate the failed democracies (see previous blogs for argumentation) of the West. In effect, unless they take up the challenge that Bataille speaks of, they are doomed for another failure http://tinyurl.com/y8uaotq , this time a possible extinction.
It is in the nature of sovereign self-sacrifice that the act is an individual one, even if such individual acts, were they to become a reality, could become part of a populist movement against government maintaining itself in power through the threat or use of police and military violence. The Latvian government did in fact send a special police unit, Alfa, to remove demonstrators who had gathered and blocked traffic over several bridges in Bauska, a city in Latvia close to the Lithuanian border. The demonstrators were protesting closure of the hospital of their city. The demonstrators were peaceful if determined. Alfa, this time restrained in its actions, merely proved that the current government’s only recourse to the discord it itself has sown is violence.
Providing the dire financial and economic situation in Latvia, what action should the current Latvian president take? The question is not easy to answer. However, in the context of government by corruption ever since a post-Soviet government took charge, this writer’s answer is to suggest a call for a popular referendum.
I.e.: the president of Latvia should call for a referendum that would increase the executive power of the president and—because of the current exceptional and extraordinary situation—increase the presidential term (on a one-time basis) to eight years. The increased presidential powers and length in office would permit, among other things, the president to dismiss and replace the Cabinet of Ministers and reduce the status of the Saeima to advisory status. It would also authorize the president to call for a Constitutional Council, which over a period of years would provide Latvia with a new constitution, possibly a replacement of parliamentary democracy with a participatory democracy, and a declarative reinstatement of the rights of the individual to sovereign death. The latter may prove to be the key to the revolution of revolutions.
*There are two famous suicides or self-sacrifices within living memory, which approach the challenge of sovereign decision.
One is that of Jan Masaryk, the foreign minister of post-World War II democratic Czechoslovakia, who died in Prague in 1948, in a fall out of the window of his Foreign Ministry residence. Many people, including Masaryk’s relatives, believe that he committed suicide (self-sacrifice). There are also those who believe that he was tortured and killed by the NKVD. In any event, the Czech people think of Jan Masaryk as a hero.
The other possible sovereign decision, derisively dismissed by international officialdom, but one that has held up in spite of the dismissal, was the suicide of Adolph Hitler, the Fuehrer of Germany. Hitler came to power in 1932. He and his wife Eva Braun are believed to have died in early 1945 by poison or self-inflicted gunshot wound in a bunker in Berlin on the eve of Soviet victory over Germany. A recent laboratory examination (2009) of what allegedly was a fragment of Hitler’s skull with a bullet hole in it was proved the skull of a woman. The doubt the lab tests cause among those who believe that Hitler’s suicide was a sovereign decision, may prove those who dismiss him as a coward to be correct. Nevertheless, at this time—until it is proven that Hitler fled to a country unknown--we must hold open the possibility that Hitler did indeed die as a self-sacrifice in atonement over the holocausts his sovereign decisions had caused.
In passing, we may recall that when death came to Stalin, he tried to take as many of his John-Jew healers with him as a religiously demoralized terrorist today. Ultimately, Stalin proved that as a political party Communism is no more persuasive than any other political party in our time, because it opposes sovereignty and enforces its will by way of violence.
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Sunday, September 20, 2009
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Copyright Eso Benjamins aka Jaņdžs
NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
28 The Rise of Hands-tied Democracy
The experience of the 20th century and no doubt earlier times is that a democratic political system works among economic equals, but becomes dysfunctional the moment economic equality is no longer enforced as an absolute or near absolute requirement. The moment democracy meets up with a situation of economic inequality, it becomes a practice only among those who are economically more equal than others. In short, democracy is not a workable political system for all, certainly not in our time, because our time does not practice economic equality.
What is absolute economic equality and how does democracy work in such a society?
Anthropologist Michael Taussig in his book “Mimesis and Alterity” (Routledge, 1993) discusses the remarkable economic democracy among the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego and their fate following their discovery by the West. Toussig quotes Charles Darwin, who because of his travels on the famous research ship HMS Beagle is almost the first among outsiders to meet the Fuegians. Darwin writes in his Journal: “The perfect equality of all the inhabitants will for many years prevent their civilization, even a shirt or other article of clothing is immediately torn to pieces.”
Rather shocking “equality”, is it not? But it is certainly democratic. According to Toussig, who is studying the extraordinary mimetic abilities of aboriginal peoples, such economic equality and democracy is the result of the profound ability of the mimetic faculty to empathize.
On the other hand (to quote Taussig): “Unlike the mimeticized world, this disenchanted one is home to a self-enclosed and somewhat paranoid, possessive, individualized sense of self severed from and dominant over a dead and nonspiritualized nature, a self built antimimetically on the notion of work as an instrumental relation to the world within a system wherein that self ideally incorporates into itself wealth, property, citizenship, and of course ‘sense data’, all necessarily quantifiable so as to pass muster at the gates of new definitions of Truth and Accountability.”
Taussig’s long, but well thought out sentence can be reduced to a few horror filled facts. Let us begin by noting the words of The Daily News, London 1882: “It is thought that the country of Tierra del Fuego would prove suitable for cattle breeding, but the only drawback to this plan is that to all appearances it would be necessary to exterminate the Fuegians.” Anthropologist Toussig continues: “The serious exterminating [had already—auth.] began with the discovery of gold in 1878, and acquired a thoroughgoing character with the setting-up of sheep ranches by whites shortly thereafter…. Paid hunters were encouraged to wipe out the Indians*…. they (Toussig here cites Gusinde, another anthropologist) were offered the same price for a pair of Indian ears as the going rate for a puma—one pound sterling. A pregnant woman’s ears together with those of the fetus extracted from her womb paid more….”
This is how “democracy” arrived to Tierra del Fuego. A not dissimilar “democratic” politics—though certainly better disguised—continues to be practiced in “democratic” Europe, the European Union to be specific. At the time this is being written, the “democratic” powers, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at their head, have saddled the “dumb Latvians” (according to Latvia’s own sociologists, politicians, and ‘politologues’) with a debt the service of which will kill thousands of elderly, cause untold suicides, and virtually destroy the birth rate among the young in a country in the throes of a demographic catastrophe. There will be nary an empathetic (mimetic) tear shed by the “democratic” people of the more equal than others people of such “great” European countries as England, France, Germany, Russia et al.
How is democracy to come about among people living in our times, where Truth and Accountability are clearly dysfunctional from the likes of IMF down to the ruling and academic class of Latvia itself? Whatever praises are being sung to democracy in our day, the same are faith based, self-induced political religious gobbledygook of which its “God” (democracy) is as far removed from Earth as Jesus Christ is frozen stiff in man-made Heaven. Must we return to the early years of the 19th century in Tierra del Fuego?
The answer to that proposition is plain: the nation and its military and police forces will prevent this—as they have already so many times in the past done so. Moreover (and here to quote Georges Bataille), “National and military life are present in the world to try to deny death by reducing it to a component of a glory without dread.” In other words, make death cheap or just about irrelevant not only in its current wars, but from the very foundation of its dysfunctional faith in a God removed from Earth. This is why the answer with regard to a renewal of democracy demands a return to the reality of death.
The Latvians, currently in the early phase of a die-out, are certainly gripped by the fear of collective disappearance—death. And, alas, the Latvians have no military force worth speaking of to start a desperate war. If such a war to be fought for the sake of increased self-awareness, the death of Latvians as a community is as surely guaranteed as just letting things go their present course. So, is resistance to death (without seeking immortality) possible in any way?
The answer is yes and no. No—if self-sacrificial public death is shied away from for reasons of mind-paralysis, which is the result of faith in the God of nations and militaries removed from Earth. Yes—if Latvians begin to practice self-sacrificial public death at the doorstep of the European Union and the IMF. Though the Latvians may not survive their daring and dread, they may begin a long overdue revolution and reconstitution of society across our entire planet Earth.
*Indians—a word borrowed by the Europeans via India. The origin of the name of “India” is to be sought in John (Yan-Ian-gens-gans, etc.), which is why these Tierra del Fuego “Indians” are in fact, in the language meme of archaic Europe, the Children of Johns, a theme discussed in earlier blogs.
If you copy this blog for your own files, or to be forwarded, or its content is otherwise mentioned, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/
NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
28 The Rise of Hands-tied Democracy
The experience of the 20th century and no doubt earlier times is that a democratic political system works among economic equals, but becomes dysfunctional the moment economic equality is no longer enforced as an absolute or near absolute requirement. The moment democracy meets up with a situation of economic inequality, it becomes a practice only among those who are economically more equal than others. In short, democracy is not a workable political system for all, certainly not in our time, because our time does not practice economic equality.
What is absolute economic equality and how does democracy work in such a society?
Anthropologist Michael Taussig in his book “Mimesis and Alterity” (Routledge, 1993) discusses the remarkable economic democracy among the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego and their fate following their discovery by the West. Toussig quotes Charles Darwin, who because of his travels on the famous research ship HMS Beagle is almost the first among outsiders to meet the Fuegians. Darwin writes in his Journal: “The perfect equality of all the inhabitants will for many years prevent their civilization, even a shirt or other article of clothing is immediately torn to pieces.”
Rather shocking “equality”, is it not? But it is certainly democratic. According to Toussig, who is studying the extraordinary mimetic abilities of aboriginal peoples, such economic equality and democracy is the result of the profound ability of the mimetic faculty to empathize.
On the other hand (to quote Taussig): “Unlike the mimeticized world, this disenchanted one is home to a self-enclosed and somewhat paranoid, possessive, individualized sense of self severed from and dominant over a dead and nonspiritualized nature, a self built antimimetically on the notion of work as an instrumental relation to the world within a system wherein that self ideally incorporates into itself wealth, property, citizenship, and of course ‘sense data’, all necessarily quantifiable so as to pass muster at the gates of new definitions of Truth and Accountability.”
Taussig’s long, but well thought out sentence can be reduced to a few horror filled facts. Let us begin by noting the words of The Daily News, London 1882: “It is thought that the country of Tierra del Fuego would prove suitable for cattle breeding, but the only drawback to this plan is that to all appearances it would be necessary to exterminate the Fuegians.” Anthropologist Toussig continues: “The serious exterminating [had already—auth.] began with the discovery of gold in 1878, and acquired a thoroughgoing character with the setting-up of sheep ranches by whites shortly thereafter…. Paid hunters were encouraged to wipe out the Indians*…. they (Toussig here cites Gusinde, another anthropologist) were offered the same price for a pair of Indian ears as the going rate for a puma—one pound sterling. A pregnant woman’s ears together with those of the fetus extracted from her womb paid more….”
This is how “democracy” arrived to Tierra del Fuego. A not dissimilar “democratic” politics—though certainly better disguised—continues to be practiced in “democratic” Europe, the European Union to be specific. At the time this is being written, the “democratic” powers, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at their head, have saddled the “dumb Latvians” (according to Latvia’s own sociologists, politicians, and ‘politologues’) with a debt the service of which will kill thousands of elderly, cause untold suicides, and virtually destroy the birth rate among the young in a country in the throes of a demographic catastrophe. There will be nary an empathetic (mimetic) tear shed by the “democratic” people of the more equal than others people of such “great” European countries as England, France, Germany, Russia et al.
How is democracy to come about among people living in our times, where Truth and Accountability are clearly dysfunctional from the likes of IMF down to the ruling and academic class of Latvia itself? Whatever praises are being sung to democracy in our day, the same are faith based, self-induced political religious gobbledygook of which its “God” (democracy) is as far removed from Earth as Jesus Christ is frozen stiff in man-made Heaven. Must we return to the early years of the 19th century in Tierra del Fuego?
The answer to that proposition is plain: the nation and its military and police forces will prevent this—as they have already so many times in the past done so. Moreover (and here to quote Georges Bataille), “National and military life are present in the world to try to deny death by reducing it to a component of a glory without dread.” In other words, make death cheap or just about irrelevant not only in its current wars, but from the very foundation of its dysfunctional faith in a God removed from Earth. This is why the answer with regard to a renewal of democracy demands a return to the reality of death.
The Latvians, currently in the early phase of a die-out, are certainly gripped by the fear of collective disappearance—death. And, alas, the Latvians have no military force worth speaking of to start a desperate war. If such a war to be fought for the sake of increased self-awareness, the death of Latvians as a community is as surely guaranteed as just letting things go their present course. So, is resistance to death (without seeking immortality) possible in any way?
The answer is yes and no. No—if self-sacrificial public death is shied away from for reasons of mind-paralysis, which is the result of faith in the God of nations and militaries removed from Earth. Yes—if Latvians begin to practice self-sacrificial public death at the doorstep of the European Union and the IMF. Though the Latvians may not survive their daring and dread, they may begin a long overdue revolution and reconstitution of society across our entire planet Earth.
*Indians—a word borrowed by the Europeans via India. The origin of the name of “India” is to be sought in John (Yan-Ian-gens-gans, etc.), which is why these Tierra del Fuego “Indians” are in fact, in the language meme of archaic Europe, the Children of Johns, a theme discussed in earlier blogs.
If you copy this blog for your own files, or to be forwarded, or its content is otherwise mentioned, please credit the author and http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/
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