The general way of things is that ‘the collective’ (or ‘the group’) decides ‘what is what’ and then enforces this decision on everyone else whether they like it or not. In a very superficial way therefore, this might be said to be a ‘democratic’ process. It isn’t really, though. We can’t say that it in any way participates in the spirit of democracy since what we’re referring to as ‘the collective of us’ has no actual humanity in it. The Collective is basically a machine which we abdicate responsibility to (since it runs entirely on rules). It’s a ‘system’ and systems have nothing to do with humanity. Systems – although we see it not – are the enemy of humanity.
Instead of ‘the Collective’ we could also speak in terms of ‘the Group’, or ‘the Group Mind’ – groups are formed via the act of agreement, which is to say, a group is formed when we all agree (whether we realise it or not) to abide by certain conventions or rules, which – once accepted – become thoroughly invisible to us. The conventions upon which we base our lives are invisible to us, inaccessible to us. They’re inaccessible to us because we take them so much for granted (which is to say, because we use them as our basis for understanding everything else, and ‘the basis for understanding everything else’ cannot examine itself. The assumptions we make (when we subscribe to the Generic Mind) are completely arbitrary, and this ‘arbitrariness’ or ‘unfoundedness’ immediately becomes the furthest thing from our awareness. It becomes ‘the very last thing we’ll ever know about’. What is ‘completely unfounded’ gets somehow transformed to being completely unquestionable. It gets transformed into ‘holy writ’, so to speak.
We all know about this kind of thing of course. It’s hardly news – the idea of the government functionary or bureaucrat who shucks off responsibility by coming out with the time-honoured words “It’s not me, Guv’ – it’s the rules” is a deeply familiar one, almost a cliché. It’s not a cliché though – it’s not a cliché because no matter how many times we hear it repeated it’s still relevant, it’s still as ‘close to the bone’ as ever. This is how systems work – this is the only way they can work. They work by everyone involved washing their hands, by all of us ‘handing over responsibility to the rules that have been agreed upon’. That’s how systems come into being and it’s also why systems are the antithesis of all that is human. Systems degrade what is good and wholesome in human beings, transforming humanity thereby into some kind of vile parody of itself. Nothing is left but power play, lies, exploitation and abuse.
Notwithstanding this however, we are all the same obliged to accommodate ourselves to this crass modality of being if we are ourselves not to be ‘eaten alive’, so to speak. It’s only natural that we should try as best we can to survive and to find a place for ourselves in this world, but we if we are to do this then we have to embrace what Thomas Traherne calls ‘the dirty devices of this world’. This is the so-called Law of the Jungle, which is traditionally phrased in terms of ‘eat or be eaten’ (and which the renowned anti-psychiatrist Thomas Satsz rephrases as ‘define or be defined’). This is ‘the Paradigm of Control’ in which those who have control get to exploit and abuse those who don’t. This is the Power Game – the game in which we all try to advance our interests by climbing on the heads of everyone around us (who are at the same time trying to do exactly the same thing to us). This is the ‘Dog-Eat-Dog World’ that we see all around us (if we could be bothered to take an interest). To be kind-hearted rather than narcissistically self-serving (i.e., to be a Giver rather than a Taker) in such a setup is to present oneself as fodder, pure and simple.
A quick and easy way to obtain security for ourselves (which is to say, the ‘short-cut’ as regards gaining immunity from being picked off by predators) is to join up with everyone else to form a collective, a power block. We ‘put on a uniform’, so to speak – we give up being an individual. This is how we become strong, this is how we become a force to be reckoned with. The downside to this handy manoeuvre however is that we have to lose our essential humanity (as we have just said). This isn’t something we’re particularly keen to see in ourselves, naturally enough, and for the most part we are very well able to cover it up with some sort of camouflage or other. We put on ‘the garments of virtue’. When push comes to shove however we can’t help showing our true colours – I can have the veneer of being a person of integrity, but this veneer cannot of course be expected to function like the genuine article when under significant pressure. Camouflage doesn’t come with actual genuine ‘load-bearing capacity’ and so when there is a load to be born (as there generally is in life) then we’re going to have a ‘meltdown’, we’re going to crack up big time. Under pressure, we’re going to go to pieces faster than you can snap your fingers.
Once we put it this way, it can easily be seen why having ‘the Collective’ (which is to say, ‘the Power Block that is made up of all socially-adapted persons’) decide ‘what’s important and what’s not’ being in a position to enforce this viewpoint (or this ‘agreement’) on the rest of us cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called ‘democracy’. Democracy has to involve actual people. This isn’t ‘The rule of the people by the people for the people’ (as Abraham Lincoln was fond of saying) but rather it’s ‘The rule of the system by the system for the system’ (where ‘the people’ function merely as fodder, where ‘the people’ count for nothing whatsoever). The ‘system’ that we’re talking about here can be defined as ‘a set of inviolate rules that we are compelled to adapt ourselves to, so that there is nothing left of us other than what those rules permit’. When we ‘adapt to the system’ we become that system, in other words. Psychologically speaking, when we ‘obey the rule’ then we cannot ever be any more than what that rule allows us to be. Allegorically speaking, we’re in the position of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice who has unwisely summoned a demon that he is then unable to banish. What happens then is that the demon – supernaturally powerful as it is – turns the tables on us before we even know what’s happening. We become the demon’s victim before we even get a chance to draw a breath and when this happens life gets transformed from something that is quintessentially wholesome into a malignant control system where the only chance we have is to be ‘better at controlling than everyone else’. If we can manage to do this then we become ‘the eater’ rather than ‘the eaten’ but the advantage here is hollow since the price of success in this game is the loss of our actual humanity.
Image credit – streetartcities.com
