In Essence

 
We live in a self-aware, and spontaneous, universe, both social and natural.
 
The Great Error of Modernist Europe (I term it Eurocentric Modernism, or EM ) was to believe that somehow we can engineer ourselves into this or that ideal, be it left-wing or right wing in inspiration.
 
So, they compelled the rest of the world, and they still do it to this day: to follow this or that plan.
 
Of course , naturally, they preferred a plan that suited their own interests, of the time, as might be expected.
 
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But the real problem is much deeper.
 
Like all living beings , we are instinctual in nature.
 
So we simply cannot be ‘programmed’ to achieve some, or other ideal: except very briefly , either by sheer force, or by dint of propaganda.
 
Men are far easier to program, mainly because they are the programmers, – they follow leaders, owing to a varying mix of male bonding and totemic fealty – but women simply cannot be easily, or effectively, programmed.
 
Because their instinctual awareness is much deeper, and they bear heavy responsibility for new life , which is a far more vital concern than the more trivial issue of subscribing to this or that form of idealism , that comes and goes like fashions in couture.
 
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A human society is always built instinctually , and spontaneously, on family, kinship, and community (all tribal formations arise in this fashion) , NOT on democracy, equality, and/or liberty which are but concocted political ideals.
 
I do not take up the issue here of whether they are good or bad, right or wrong: though I could, and in much detail.
 
That really does not matter; they are, stated simply idylls.
 
Once this point is grasped, the sources of the crisis of the EM world become transparently obvious.
 
Of course, one has to step well outside the EM matrix to glean this, which may be difficult, if not impossible, for many ( I can sympathise with that: for few of us could be expected to endure the exile that would ensue).
 
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As I have said before, one needs an adequate physics to understand Nature, and , similarly, an accurate anthropology to understand society.
 
Unfortunately, EM constructed its social (including economics, politics, philosophy, et. al.) theory out of thin air.
 
As if all one has to so is to manufacture a fanciful manifesto, plim with meretricious ideals :and, presto!, it can be realized (if at frightful cost, one might add) , just like that!
 
Stated simply , it has no idea of who we are as human beings, and therefore, what real human needs are.
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Time to rectify that error?
 
I actually believe it’s past time.
 
All we need to do is to step out of the iron cage of EM to see what human life is all about: in its brevity, fragility, and ineffable hopelessness.
 
All hid in plain sight by the conquistadorian bravado of the EM call to perpetual, adversarial, arms, ever tilting at false goals, false hopes, and false notions of the summum bonum..
 

[© R.Kanth 2023]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).