“Why should not the historical childhood of humanity...exert an eternal charm as a stage that shall never recur? -Karl Marx
In the last part of the essay we observed that Plato gave humanity a new paradigm of its place in the cosmos. A paradigm that both caused humans to have greater alienation and greater abstraction. As we shall see, abstraction and alienation are much like the “scratch, itch, scratch” syndrome. As humans we try to reconcile our alienation with more abstraction , which then causes greater alienation. Now we must observe how this alienation from the mythological paradigm occurred, and how literacy was one of the main forces that caused the collapse of the mythological paradigm. Then, how literacy led to the conception of Plato's new paradigm of a divinized mental realm.
Protagoras split subject and object, but what does this mean? We think in scenarios. As we have seen from the main body of the “Prologue to Metaphysics”, the scenarios we think in do not come cut up or separated. The emotions and all the other qualities are a whole. In the mythological paradigm the scenario was believed to be the same with the world. There was no distinction, the qualities and emotions that the subject felt were believed to be in the world. There was not cutting up of which emotions or qualities were in the subject, and those that were in the object. In other words, there was no difference between the external and the internal. Emotions were believed to be in the world; one was not afraid of a crocodile, instead the crocodile was scary. The closest moderns can come to this type of thinking is to remember back to our childhood. Things were viewed in terms of scary or good and the world around us seemed illuminated. When Protagoras split subject and object there became a rupture between the individuals and the world they lived in. There now existed two scenarios instead of one: The internal and the external. Thus there was a scenario in the subject and another in the external world, which may or may not correspond.
This is the cause of alienation; the severing of the internal scenario from the external world. The most devastating aspect of this severing was that emotions were taken out of the external world. The material world was no longer numinous, instead matter became cold and dead.
How did literacy lead to this rupture of subject and object? Int he mythological paradigm humans were as much a part of the world as rocks, trees, and animals. We know most primal peoples feel themselves in partnership with the gods and nature; it is not the modern view of human against the world Story telling is the preferred method of transmitting knowledge in the mythological paradigm. Story telling is an external experience and a performance. Thus it is rooted in the time and place where it occurs. When the story is put into written form it can be accessed at any time or place. One can read a book wherever and whenever one wants. Thus the written word seemed to create another layer of consciousness or realm where the scenarios exist beyond time and space. We know humans are able to sublate scenarios and change elements in the scenario. We do this when we are trying to find either a better way or a way to accomplish some task. It should be obvious why this mechanism of imagination has survival value, in that it allows us to imagine a series of events happening differently, and provides a mechanism to bring about the desired changes. In other words, one can imagine a task being done a different way and one can try out the new scenario to find out if it works or not. It also seems to be an evolutionary mechanism to want our imagined scenarios to be actualized in the external world. The trouble with this mechanism is when the desired scenario becomes a political ideology and the group with the scenario tries to impose its desired scenario on other people.
Plato gave a metaphysical basis for this seeming layer of consciousness or realm triggered by the written word. When words are written they become eternal and beyond space and time. We have observed that the gods of the mythological paradigm can change; they are born, they die, they can even change the domains they are in charge of. When words are written in a book, the words gain a set definition. We have already observed words are triggers for imagined or actual experiences. When words are written they become set in the context in which they are used. We have also observed that Aristotle regarded the setting of definition to be of paramount importance. Through this process we have come up with a seeming layer of consciousness or realm with set definitions. These set definitions become standards or eternal Forms. Plato gave this layer of consciousness an independent existence. These eternal Forms exist independently of people and the material world. The reason Plato's theory was not dismissed as absurd is because literate people of the world were spending time in this layer of consciousness. If Plato's theory had not resonated with people it would have found no acceptance. This newly independent divinized mental realm became more real than the material world we all live in. To help us understand how alienating this was for people at the time- remember that homo sapiens have existed between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years; in all that time besides the last few thousand years, humans had been using some form of the mythological paradigm. Civilization is only five thousand years old. The entire history of civilization is the history of a paradigm crisis; how humans are going to deal with new technologies. With Plato's new paradigm, we observe a shift from the mythological paradigm to the top-down paradigm. Plato told us that the real world can only be accessed through the use of reason, and that the everyday sensible realm is less real than the divinized mental realm which Plato calls the intelligible. The intelligible realm is eternal. This new paradigm slowly filters down to the common people. This combined with the expansion of the Roman Empire, which had embraced the new paradigm brings about the first great wave of alienation. The response is religion.
There is no religion in the mythological paradigm, myth is simply how people relate to the world. The first religion to try to deal with alienation is Gnosticism. When we think of Gnosticism, we usually think of its bizarre imagery, but the core of the gnostic vision is alienation from the physical cosmos. Even the planetary intelligences have become evil Archons. The Archons are another impediment for the soul seeking to return to the hidden God. The hidden and immaterial God of Gnosticism had no connection with the material cosmos. The material cosmos is the creation of an evil or fallen deity; often associated with Plato's demiurge or the God of the Old Testament. The Gnostics took Plato's new paradigm seriously, making the real world immaterial and beyond time and space. Matter is regarded as not only being dead, but evil. How far have we come from the mythological paradigm where gods, humans and animals are all partners in creation. The core of the rejection of matter is the split between subject and object; humans can no longer project their emotions and hopes on the material realm. Instead they project their emotions and hopes on the intelligible realm. The goal of the Gnostics is to escape the material realm and rise to the immaterial and eternal realm. The material cosmos is now regarded as a prison from which to escape from. The message of Gnosticism is similar to Neoplatonism and Hinduism, to rise or go up to God. With the Jesus movement we get another vision of how to escape or heal human alienation from the material cosmos. To bring God down to Earth and re-divinize matter- this is the meaning of the second coming and the rule of the Christian millennium. This becomes the first large apocalyptic movement. The reason the believers of this vision become apocalyptic is that as they identify more and more with the scenario of God coming back to Earth, they become more and more excited about the prospect, and project their excitement upon the world. Thus they mistake their growing excitement with signs of a coming apocalypse. This projecting one's excitement on to the world is the basis of all apocalyptic movements. Christians waited for the return of Jesus for several centuries. Then St. Augustine shifted the rule of Christ and the new Jerusalem to after death. Thus the first Utopia becomes the the afterlife in heaven.
This sets the heresies of the Middle Ages.
Both the Cathars and the Waldodsensians are apocalyptic movements. The Catholic Church brutally puts down both heresies. Latin Christianity had struck a balance between the top-down paradigm and people's need to heal their rupture and alienation from the material cosmos. The re-divinzied cosmos is put off till the afterlife, creating hope for a better world. This narrative held more or less till the Reformation. Two events happen during the Reformation that give life to Utopian hopes.
The discovery of America with a native population still living in the mythological paradigm, and John Calvin's Geneva. Before entering into a discussion of how native American culture and Calvin's Geneva influenced modern Utopianism, we must first examine the theosophy of Jacob Bohme. While Calvin and American Indian culture influenced now to bring about Utopia, Bohme gave modern Utopianism its master scenario of what it is to live in Utopia. Bohme is not well known among the general public, but he is and was well known in occult circles. Bohme taught that the afterlife in heaven will be like the play of children. The return to childhood fantasy is the accepted scenario of what Utopia will be like. As was said before the closest a modern can come to imagining the mythological paradigm is to think back to childhood memories. Childhood is a time before the emotions have been taken out of the object and confined to the subject.
With the discovery of the Americas the people of Europe encountered a people still living in the mythological paradigm. Then the Europeans romanticized the American Indian: the noble savage. J.J. Rousseau is the best example of this romanticizing tendency in Europe. It is romanticized because the life of primal people is harsh, brutal and ended abruptly. This encounter with a primal people left the people of Europe longing for a simpler life. In Geneva, Calvin laid out the template for all the authoritarian regimes to come. Geneva had an articulated spy network that made sure everyone remained pure in ideology and actions. No dissent in theory or in practice was tolerated. Geneva was much like the communist states of the twentieth century. Th theological state became sole sovereign and parent to the people. The state prescribed what can be done and how it is to be done. When Johann Valentine Andreae visited Geneva, it inspired him to write “Christianopolis”, Andreae's Utopian fantasy of a perfect Christian state. Andreae is also pointed to by modern scholarship as the author of the Rosicrucian manifestos, where a brotherhood of physician magi arise and heal the world. Rosicrucianism became the main Utopian movement of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. To be called a Rosicrucian in England was the same as Bill O' Rielly calling someone a left wing loon today. It meant Utopian as does the title left wing loon. Utopianism became a current in European occultism, where it was expressed as the rule of the Paraclete. The “Paraclete” is the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Notice the tri-partied division of history. The Paraclete's rule of Christ on Earth is the final age of humanity. This was a staple of nineteenth century occultism. Saint Simon and others began to bring back Utopianism into mainstream thought, but before it could be brought back to respectability it had to be shorn of its supernatural aspects.
With the Industrial Revolution came a new wave of alienation. Money became the measure of all things. Humans and their most cherished desires became an abstract unit of money. There was no use for emotions, even the abstract qualities had been replaced by quantities. Someone needed to separate Utopianism from its occult associations and make it a religion without God. Here we see Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.
Marxism is a combination of the thinking of Marx and Engels. Perhaps Engels' name should be mentioned first. Jenny Marx often referred to Engels as Marx's evil genius. Most of what we first think of as Marxism comes from Engels. The preordination of communism's triumph and its apocalyptic tone are right from Engels' Calvinist upbringing. It is ironic most of communism admirers call Marxism scientific; how many would call Calvinism scientific? Marx never believed in the labor theory of value, he was even fond of making fun of it- even though it is the main premise of “The Capitol.” Many of Marx's admirers even claim he is the originator of the labor theory of value. Of course the real originator is David Ricardo. Marx's contribution to Marxism was the primitivism, that the division of labor leads to different social classes, so no one should be an expert in only one job. Everyone should be an amateur. Marx was an admirer of Rousseau and the idea of a return to a simpler age. He wanted to deindustrialize Europe back to a pastoral society. It was Engels and not Marx that wanted to abolish all private property.
Marx was not opposed to the small artisan owning land as long as he had no employees. Between Marx and Engels we have the birth of modern Utopianism sheared of its supernatural aspects. The people can return to a childlike state while the civil state becomes the parent. Of course this is still the master scenario of the world wide left- in the perfect state no one will have any responsibilities, and so live like children at play. This return to childhood fantasy is the main theme of the modern leftist George Lakoff.
Utopianism, Marxism, and Gnosticism are all ways people have tried to heal their growing alienation from the growing abstraction of progress. The more abstraction we reach, the more alienation, we then try to reconcile the greater alienation with greater abstraction and so on.
The choice is ours to try to fight the process of greater abstraction and alienation by trying to escape into a return to childhood fantasy, or embrace the process and find out where it leads.
