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Ideology of Hired Obedience
In today's world, nobody wants, and very likely nobody can be an individual. Why is this so?
Because the network of flattery, bribery and interest or necessity motivated prostitution
of conscience has become so largely prevalent that it has become a must of survival for
any individual. And a socially prevalent practice of flattery inevitably mutates into a socially
necessary practice, into an imperative of flattery which conditions professional development
of the individual upon her willing self-subservience. What our presently popular and extremely widespread
ideaology of professionalism shows, is that there need not be any violent or directly
coercive imposition of slavery upon the citizens by their government or their ruling powers,
in order for this society to become a society of self-enslaving sycophants and bootlickers,
whose moral backbone is eaten up by gratitude they owe to those from whom they receive their
living. If you look at the professionals more closely,
you will see that their devotion to the powerful far extends their daily eight, ten or twelve
hour service; professionals are the army of paid watchdogs of ideology of professionalism,
ideology of obedience for hire. What is the inherent danger, the inherent evil of ideology
of professionalism, i.e. of the ideology of obedience for hire?
Ideology of obedience for hire is dangerous to the extent that it deeply perverts the
notion of rationality in the society in which it takes root. There are two basic drifts,
two basic aspects of rationality that have been present in Western civilization ever
since the first beginnings of its speculative thinking. Those are rationality of pragmatism,
interest-based rationality characterized by circumspection, calculation, self-control
and long-term planning, and rationality of freedom, rationality that posits the imperative
of immediate assertion of singular dignity and autonomy of conscience without any calculation,
regardless of how many perils a person or a people run in acting thusly.
Note that a self-sufficient variation of rationality of autonomy does not exclude rationality of
pragmatism; it only makes it fundamentally subordinate to its own inherent end of freedom.
A self-sufficient variation of pragmatic and interest-based freedom, by contrast, necessarily
excludes rationality of freedom. Why? Because rationality of autonomy cherishes
freedom as an end in itself, as the absolute start and end point of all our willing. Freedom
isn't made to serve any goals other than its own end of self-motivated, publicly externalized
self-determination. Freedom is thus, as Kant rightly argues, a categorical imperative,
an explicit, self-prescribed commandment which cuts through the multitude of interest-based
goals, by articulating what must be done in the given situation, regardless of dangers
and consequences. And this "must" contained in the categorical imperative of freedom,
in that it arises out of deepest fragility of self-determining, externally unsupported
autonomy, contains this inherently ennobling feature of making the individual vulnerable,
fundamentally open and irrevocably addressed at other individuals.
For a decided, externally posited freedom is necessarily a self-jeopardizing feat; it
puts its author in a radically unstable, abysmal position of defenseless public solitude, which
cannot fulfill its lawgiving destiny unless it's widely and non-negotiably supported by
equal acts of self-motivated sovereignty coming from other individuals. Without such acts
of unconditional support from fellow humans, without such constitutively lawgiving acts
on their part as well, a solitary undertaking of freedom is merely a socially suicidal practice.
For such is the nature of freedom that it necessarily undermines all ties of power,
flattery and pathological sentimentality with its environment. It can still count only on
your undertaking of lawgiving authority, your harkening to the impulse of integrity coming
from within. Thus, the self-positing of freedom simultaneously posits a necessary togetherness
of lawgiving wills of everybody whose willing is able to draw its strength from the kingly
potential of their inviolable self-determination. It is the assuming of kingship by this singular
will, which simultaneously recognizes and calls upon an equal assuming of kingship by
all other singular wills. In a word, freedom's inherent goal of autonomy necessarily strives
towards universal interaction. Rationality of pragmatism is of an altogether
different nature. It is fundamentally persuaded that its solitude and self-dependence are
a priori constitutional and irremovable; it sees human communality not as interdependence
of lawgiving sovereignties of its constitutive members, but as a conglomerate of self-interested,
mutually unconcerned wills who pledge their allegiance not to the concreteness of interaction
of singular freedoms, but to the abstraction of alien totality—be this totality called
a state, general good or legality—which hovers above all individuals, making them
thus intrinsically unimportant, dispensable and universally impotent. The goal of pragmatic
rationality is general good which requires no lawgiving constitutional acts from any
individual, but allows them to remain in the risk-less, self-enclosed area of private inanity,
of private vacuity of universally irrelevant behavior.
Pragmatic rationality, in a word, is rationality of selflessness. But this selflessness is
not selflessness of generosity, risk-taking and self-sacrificing, but selflessness of
not having a self at all. Having a self necessarily implies baring oneself naked, cutting the
aid of sentimental gratitude and pathological obeisance coming from others, and thus having
to rely only on an equal and equally risky self-baring on their part. Thus acts of freedom
coming from selfhood are necessarily acts of surrender to selfhood of another. And precisely
the extreme precariousness of the self-surrendering position—position which implies stripping
oneself naked in front of another without knowing if this other will take up the challenge,
act indifferently or even pour scorn at you—is what pragmatic rationality tries to evade.
Thus, in final analysis, pragmatic rationality is not stupid at all, for it knows that the
likelihood of mutual embracing of freedoms is extremely slim. And this leaves us with
the mystery of what exactly drives singularity to self-exposure if popular wisdom advises
that such acts are usually unsuccessful and extremely unwelcome. The answer is: nothing
but uncompromising drive towards self-confidence which comes down to unquenchable thirst for
interaction. Freedom is the property of individuals whose
thirst for interaction impinges upon them so badly that they are not able to put up
with masturbatory self-enclosure of popular wisdom and have to wager, against all odds,
upon the possibility of having their freedom welcomed and espoused by other freedom-loving
individuals. This brings us to key distinction between the two rationalities: pragmatism
is a safety-adhering liberty of private self-sufficiency, whose understanding of sociality, given that
it never blunders by venturing into a self-baring surrender, is best described as masturbatory.
Rationality of freedom, by contrast, in situations of suffocating decency of and mutual distancing
among individuals, will inevitably transgress, often in clumsy, awkward ways, by the sheer
impulse of desire for interaction which it cannot get rid of. And this is why champions
of autonomous rationality are always characterized by a more or less noticeable edginess and
indomitableness of temperament; because precisely this brashness of nerve and temerity, if developed
to its fully rational, self-surrendering potential, enables them to remain perceptive to the lie
of routine and mechanical communication, typical of non-surrendering, merely masturbatory communicative
agenda inscribed in pragmatism. Thus, preserving a certain amount of brashness
and boldness, of healthy temerity of communication is key to preserving autonomous freedom. And
here we can perceive how two rationalities, rationality of freedom, versus rationality
of pragmatism differ not just in their underlying premises but in their very communicative intentions
as well. Autonomous rationality is keen to sniff out and articulate the core of the forbidden
of the given communicative act, the very hidden essence of the conversation that the whitewash
of civility, friendliness and superficial nicety tries to obliterate. Autonomous rationality
is keen on testing the limits of communicative openness within itself and its interlocutor;
it is not interested in commonplace reasonableness, tame joviality and docile insipidity of everyday
communication. Its irresistible drive to seek the interesting in a conversation is inextricably
tied with seeking to wrestle with greatest difficulties therein; because it knows that
openness and interestingness are nothing but difficulty of self-exposure without which
no true togetherness, no full surrender of interlocutors to one another, is able to occur.
By contrast, pragmatic rationality, as already pointed, takes its solitude and incapacity
for surrender as a priori irremovable facts; it never tries and tests its interlocutor
by venturing upon a hazardous self-exposure, because it knows that it would then no longer
be able to carry on usual business or love affairs with her, but would have to rely upon
her equally hazardous self-exposure only. Because an act of self-exposure is such that
it already surrenders you to the whim of arrogance or scorn on the part of those before whom
you expose yourself; only an equal self-surrendering on their part can save you from utter failure
and embarrassment. And this is why pragmatic rationality prefers to sacrifice joy and genuineness
of communication for security and privacy of masturbatory safety.
But it thereby sacrifices not just joy and beauty of communication; masturbatory communicative
agenda, in that it fundamentally sacrifices spontaneity of conversation, equally sacrifices
rationality of an autonomously-questioning attitude. Autonomously-questioning attitude
is characterized by questioning the validity and inherent justness of goals it serves.
And this questioning of inherent rationality of goals one serves is something rationality
of pragmatism is simply not fit to do. Because this requires an interactive communicative
agenda, the one characterized by openness of self-surrender, brashness of inquiry, and
intrusiveness of rational curiosity, which are exclusively the features of rationality
of autonomy. Autonomous rationality, by the very act of autonomous self-exposure, strives
to achieve universality of togetherness of autonomous sovereignties of all citizens.
It therefore does not, and by virtue of its communicative temerity, cannot serve any other
goal than that of freedom—not just its own freedom but freedom of each and every of its
fellow citizens. It is therefore, constitutionally unable to be put in service of any particular,
power-or-dominance-seeking goals. And it does not deliberately choose to have
the universal as its sole end destination, for it knows that this would amount to a merely
abstract and theoretical willing of universality. By acting autonomously on its very own behalf,
by surrendering itself unto the public in an act of complete and irrecoverable self-exposure,
rationality of freedom invokes the togetherness of self-surrendering wills, and this is the
only concrete deed of universality that human will is capable of. Pragmatic rationality's
primary interest, by contrast, is safety of self-sufficiency; it therefore cannot will
universality in concrete, self-surrendering terms. It can therefore, only imagine that
what it is theoretically constructing and conceiving, at a safe distance from danger
of togetherness, is in fact universality, or general good. But it never is. For universality
is fundamentally vividness and fragility of interdependence of autonomous freedoms; and
you cannot know it unless you experience it, unless you yourself throw the challenge of
self-disarming surrender to your neighbors and compatriots by exposing yourself completely.
Thus, pragmatic rationality does not know what universality is, because it has no courage
to experience it concretely by making itself defenseless and destitute through an act of
autonomous self-exposure. Its cowardice therefore compels it to serve whatever particular interests
of groups or individuals whose monetary powers are able to provide it with safety of self-sufficiency
that it so dearly cherishes. Its communicative sterility, on the other hand, prevents it
from questioning the inherent rationality and justness of goals that it's professionally
employed to serve. And this is why pragmatic rationality is nothing
but mentality of a sold-out slave, of a self-prostituting flatterer; the purpose of its rationality
is not to nurture the inventiveness of a deeply questioning curiosity but a merely theorizing,
negotiatingly-deliberative thinking whose purpose is to justify its unconditional servitude
to its private owner, by citing necessity of professionalism, necessity of hard-working
ethic, and necessity of providing leadership to otherwise destructured and dispersed working
powers of humanity. Pragmatic rationality sees humanity not as autonomously creative
responsibility of singularity, not as independently sovereign authorship arising in an individual,
but as a standing reserve, as a blind multitude that must be mechanically employed to serve
the goals of those who purport to be its masters and guardians.
This is nothing but utter indifference to humanity as such; because if you are able
to perceive humanity as a multitude, as a conglomerate of statistically registered items
overseen from above, then you are well able to treat any and every of these items as unnecessary
triviality whose freedom, autonomy and well being can be sacrificed for the achievement
of some supposedly loftier goals of general benefit. And if humanity is deprived of individuality,
of the autonomous strength of creative authorship in moral and political matters, then it becomes
so blind, so deprived of rational inquiry, that it is able to mechanically serve whatever
goal it's professionally employed to serve, including the goal of self-destruction.
For it may very well occur to humanity's guardians to conceive that the decided benefit of humanity,
considered from a sweepingly general perspective, is to reduce humanity's population on the
planet. Deciding on humanity's general good in such perversely diabolical terms is quite
in congruence with masturbatory sterility of a generalist, non-concrete and non-interactive
understanding of universality. Because communicative impotence is fully insensitive to vividness,
exuberance and spiritual beauty that only individuality as such, when flourishing on
the ground of absolute importance of any and every individual, is able to offer to the
world. And because it is fundamentally insensitive to beauty and uniqueness of individuality
as such, of any and every contingent individuality, pragmatic rationality may consider itself
entitled, in the name of some preposterous general good, to decide which individuality
is to survive, and which is to be taken out, sterilized, poisoned, removed or disabled
in other ways. If you think about it earnestly, ideology
of hired obedience, issuing out of rationality of pragmatism, in its least offensive, least
dangerous form is ugliness of flattery and impotence of masturbatory cowardice; in its
most dangerous, fully developed form, it is nothing but most favorable soil for the consequent
breeding of systemic fascism.