Where the ‘Self’ Ends and the ‘West’ Begins
by Gilad Atzmon
Saturday, April 21st, 2012
When we were young there was hope in the air. There was good reason to look ahead. Some of us enrolled at university, but we also knew that if life did not shine on us, there were plenty of factories that offered enough jobs to those who were willing to toil. Yet it seems our children are not so lucky. Not much is awaiting them. The Western economy is on the brink of collapse.
When we were young, there were two ideologies around. In a cold manner, they bitterly chewing away at each other. One ideology maintained that equality and justice were the means towards liberation, whilst the other contended that celebrating one’s symptoms was actually the true meaning of human liberty. But it seems that these two ideologies have had very little impact on our life. In practice, we were all celebrating our symptoms – we were buying, selling, eating and drinking, but we somehow also enjoyed believing that ‘equality was a good thing’. Eventually these grand ideologies faded away and, not only do we not have ideologies anymore, we are not even capable of thinking ideologically. In the post ideological era, which we now inhabit, we kill millions in the name of ‘liberation’, we rain down depleted uranium shells on crowded cities whilst promising to export ‘liberal democracy,’ and we export Western ‘justice’ in Coca Cola cans.
When we were young, we reserved some respect for our political system. We somehow accepted that liberal democracy reflected our true values and beliefs. Fundamentally, we believed that it was a well-meaning idea and the best of all options. Hence we believed that at least theoretically, our democratically elected representatives were largely a true reflection of our desires.
We were not stupid but we were somewhat naïve. Being the sons and daughters of the Enlightenment, we were submerged in self-love. We were rich and spoiled. Yet, clearly, we failed to notice that our most elementary freedoms were being gradually diminished until the ‘freedom to consume’ was the only freedom left. We were basically free to buy and spend, to borrow and then to spend again and, without realising it, we were being reduced to a nation of shoppers with the political system existing solely to facilitate consumption, on a constantly growing grand scale.
When we were young, we read about liberation, and political struggles. We learned about heroic people who stood up against evil by fighting tyrants, Tsars, capitalists, communists, fascists and racists. Yet why is it so difficult now for us to identify precisely who is to be blame for the current global crisis, to identify who is to take responsibility for the collapse of our free markets and our own sense of values, ethics and justice? Is it a single person that we should blame? Is it Margaret Thatcher, George Bush, Tony Blair or Milton Friedman? Is it a party or rather is it an ideology? Is it the banks, Alan Greenspan or Goldman Sachs? Is it Wall Street or the City of London? Is it America? Or is it ‘just us,’ humanity as a whole, that we should blame?
It is reasonable to argue that the gigantic hole in global finance commonly known as the credit crunch is actually a gigantic amplification of the hole in each of our pockets. The greedy capitalist system known as ‘banking’ and ‘global expansionist markets’ can be understood as a vast manifestation of our own personal greed, as explored through relentless consumption. Hard capitalism is a ‘continuum state’ of greed between the personal and the entire system.
Liberal democracy is commonly realised as a natural political extension of individual liberties. It is only natural then, that some of the worse aspects of our society and political system are actually deeply rooted in each and every one of us. The relentless appetite that we find at the heart of the capitalist system is a multiplied mirror image of our own bottomless inclination towards consumption.
Any profound criticism of the liberal system at this stage then, should entail some harsh self-criticism. Each and every one of us is an autonomous and ‘self-sufficient credit crunch.’ Just like the banks, we have also been spending money we did not have. And it seems our societies and ourselves are now clearly subjected to a similar malaise. We have been celebrating our symptoms collectively and blindly for too long.
We sometime envy the Arabs and their Spring. They have grasped who their enemy is (Western puppets rulers) and what their salvation is (Islam). Tragically, we understand that we are spiraling down into an inevitable long and dark winter. We know that politics and ideologies have failed us. We accept that we are dwelling in a post-political and post-ideological era, and yet we fail to understand what this may entail. The world, as we know it, is changing rapidly. Our so-called ‘liberties’ have turned against us and we dread the meaning of it all.
And yet we do not posses a means of understanding the condition we are subject to, simply because such conditions are merely an amplification of ourselves and our most precious beliefs. We fail to admit or decide where the ‘self’ ends and the ‘West’ begins. We do not know where London’s AL Tahrir square is. We cannot decide whether we really want to be liberated and we do not seem capable of even identifying who the enemy is.
The Western subject, as well as Western society, is submerged in self-love. Somehow we cannot understand how it is that a system that was created to explore our human liberties, can fail.
I suggest that a partial remedy for our malaise might be acceptance of a certain level of uncanniness, an acceptance that reason has its limits, and that ‘being in the world’ may be slightly mysterious after all. However, it seems as if it may take a while before we are brave enough to admit to ourselves that this is indeed the case.
Posted by Gilad Atzmon
on April 21, 2012. Filed under Ideology.
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7 Responses to Where the ‘Self’ Ends and the ‘West’ Begins
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Lasse Wilhelmson
April 21, 2012 at 7:28 pm
We all have moments in our lives where we felt “happy” without thinking of ourselves and other moments when our thinking was “liberarted” och freefloting”. Rarely all in the same time. A god start might be to remember them …
searching
April 21, 2012 at 8:05 pm
“We cannot decide whether we really want to be liberated and we do not seem capable of even identifying who the enemy is.”
We’ve lost the spirit of the honorable warriors.
We’ve became a bunch of sissy boys and girls, who had been told precisely what to think, what to do, what to say/write, and what not.
Running after the earthly desires and wants , being busy-bees in acquiring tons of unnecessary ,material “stuff”, we ‘ve lost the sense , the meaning of life.
Material possesions don’t bring so-called happiness, yet majority of people in the West spends so much time and energy into buying, collectiong, owning, guarding ,insuring them.
Bigger houses, bigger cars, plethora of everday clutter that “we must have” , restaurants that we must go, places that we must see, all of it is like the big monster that is NEVER satisfied.
The monster always wants more, the monster becomes very selfish, self-involved, does not like to share, and guards its posessions day and night.
Excessive consumptionism and the desire to worry free, easy lifestyle made people lazy.
Lazy intellectaully, emotionally, morally, idelogically. When one becomes lazy, obese, ignorant, deprived of any true values, with its eyes fixed mainly on the material “prize”,
then one become a very easy target to conquer by potential enemies.
Are we doomed?? As a humanity probably yes, although I would like to hope that not,( my hope is very flimsy however).
But each of us is free and welcome to save its own ,private soul.
That’s why, I guess, we were given so-called
Free Will.
searching
April 21, 2012 at 8:51 pm
Giving up their own national independence and sovereignity ,by many countries of Europe, is a classic example how easily people ,for the empty promises of fake unity and wealth , can give up their hard-won “freedom (-s)”.
Now that majority of Europeans realises the legal/financial/economical/moral consequences of their “voluntary slavery”, they are somehwat unhappy and scared.
Is it too late to change anything?? I dunno know.
If everybody is going to expect that somebody else is going to do the job for them , then yes, it is much too late.
If we don’t brake the cycle of impotency, cowardace, indiferrence and ignorance that is expected from us ,then we are a History.
One of many civilisations that was once strong and powerful, lasted for a while, and perished into the ground, like the dust after the nuclear bomb.
Simorgh
April 26, 2012 at 11:23 am
Hitler recognized how that pattern was playing out among the German people and roused Germans to unite around German cultural values rather than consumerism.
For that crime, Germany was destroyed.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is united around its cultural values and is controlled, sometimes too harshly, by a spiritual world view that does not worship the self or consumption. The first pillar of Islam is to extend hospitality. In the harsh geography of the Arabian peninsula, where Islam was born, and Iran, where it was imposed, to extend hospitality to ALL, friend and stranger alike, was/is a matter of survival.
Judaism’s laws require that Jews remain separate and apart, and not share their meals with strangers.
For the crime of seeking to remain outside the orbit of conspicuous consumption, Iran must be destroyed.
The battle for Iran is an epic battle. In the last 150 years, western capitalism — and Jerry Muller argues that Jews invented western capitalism — has achieved its goal of either overthrowing nations and peoples to its capitalist agenda, or destroying states that resist.
Edwin Black writes in ‘The Transfer Agreement’ that within a fortnight of Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship (Jan 30, 1933), Louis Brandeis told Rabbi Stephen Wise that “German Jews must leave Germany. Germany is to be deprived of our presence.” By March 5, plans were laid for massive rallies against Germany, and Sam Untermyer met with the five heads of Jewish Hollywood movie studios to organize “gruelpropoganda” — atrocity tales — to stir up hatred of the “Hun” among Americans and to frighten German Jews into migrating from Germany — to Palestine and to New York.
When Bibi says “It is 1938 and Ahmadinejad is Hitler,” he means it: Netanyahu’s zionists intend to destroy Iran just the way zionists intentionally destroyed Germany. Any culture that celebrates its own cultural values above the demand to embrace consumer culture, must be “Sampson optioned.”
Esther created the model: What we Jews cannot dominate, we destroy.
America, you are next.
searching
April 26, 2012 at 11:56 am
“Jerry Muller argues that Jews invented western capitalism — has achieved its goal of either overthrowing nations and peoples to its capitalist agenda, or destroying states that resist.”
Jews for sure used the capitalism to its own purposes, and let it to grow to a monster called corporationism.
Jews used capitalism to gain , power and influence necessarty to steer the world’s politics .
Jews INVENTED socialism/communsim /bolsehevism
and IMPLANTED it successfuly, first in Russia , then it other countries.
It was done according to Hegel’s thesis/antythesis–synthesis.
Thesis-capitalism.anti-thesis–communism. Synthesis–cold war, constant stage of inner fights and turbulence that the world is afriad of and has to watch closely , while rich Power Elite takes adventage of it, and makes steps closer to achieveing its final step, that is building NWO. Now we have a similar sitution of using Hegel’s T/a-T–S patern.
Dividng the western world with a muslim world. The synthesis should be a major war (s) with a muslim war, which winningn would bring the Power Elite into achieving their final goal—building NWO.
We are in exceptionally sh—ty situation right now.
Anthem
May 25, 2012 at 3:40 am
I suggest that a partial remedy for our malaise might be acceptance of a certain level of uncanniness, an acceptance that reason has its limits, and that ‘being in the world’ may be slightly mysterious after all. However, it seems as if it may take a while before we are brave enough to admit to ourselves that this is indeed the case.
This is essentially a Christian view. The most generous people I have encountered in my more than half century on this rock read the New Testament regularly, especially the four Gospels.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
May 25, 2012 at 4:32 am
I am afraid that the taxi driver is right, namely that the majority of the ‘witless’ are struggling hard to survive and have no time to devote to the contemplation of uncanniness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt9NXPMft7M&feature=relmfu