Utopia?

 
(For Gayatri Spivak)

 
Imagine, wrote(and sang) John Lennon.
Beautiful, evocative, words.
But , regrettably, illustrative of what I have termed EM (European Modernism) delusions.
Ever refining utopias – in the mind.

Flights of fancy have their place.
Dreaming has a function.
Undoubtedly.
It helps many us survive the iniquities of the present.
In hope.

Hope has a place, too (as indicated above).
Though as Ben Franklin said, they who live on hope die of starvation.
And as Walter Benjamin said: hope is (oft) given as a sop to the hopeless.

 
*

 
Yet the real cannot be talked, or hoped, away.
It needs be recognised, understood, in its ontic depth.
So we know limits, boundaries, of what is possible.

Quantum Physics suggests that sub-atomic reality is flush with possibilities.
But , at our level of existence, we need to scale in probabilities, as a check to that ontic largesse.

Question arises: is nothing impossible?

I know very little physics, though I’ve read heaps.
So I cannot say.
I do know human anthropology.
Better than any EM ideologue.

I will sum that up.

Our species has essential, instinctual, properties which EM ideology has buried, elided, and/or hid from sight, in its facile constructions.
We are, familial, communal, co-operative , convivial , and affective beings.
That is our inner species-being.

 
*

 
But human devolution, continuous since the eclipse of simple, early, tribal forms (which are like extended families bound by affections) deforms that essence, in manifold ways, via the vagaries of history/societal processes.

EM sanctions and sacralises that deformation in the form of extant EM ideology and social theory.

And , in so doing, has us live and function (mentally, and eventually, actually) in a bleak, banal, avaricious, competitive, adversarial, uncaring, world in stark alienation of our own essential needs and capabilities.

The consequences of this error are grave: it becomes a self-fulfilling lie.

It has turned a band of convivials into a company of strangers.
It has morphed mammals into reptiles.
It has us viewing society as but a means to achieve sordid, asocial, adversarial, acquisitive, individualist, ends, pitted against one another, in incessant, if dubious, struggle.

It is what must be Undone.

 
*

 
But that is not to invent, au contraire, some fantasy utopia(s) ( where all traffic lights stay green? ) in its place (anthropic life is fragile and tenuous, and in variable natural environs, has multiple vicissitudes).

Simple tribal forms are caring, cooperative, and convivial, within: but suspicious and dubious of other such forms without.

This us and them distinction is basic, and cannot be wished , ‘imagined’ away.

We share that with many fellow animals.

 
*

 
So, to be reasonably content , and at ease, we need to recognise, and cater to, our real needs.

We are best suited to live in small , face to face (Gemeinschaft), communal forms.

So, e.g., the EM ‘nation-state’, an artificial, imposed , entity, now the universal norm, is wholly inimical to its bent.

Ties to family , kindred, and close community are ‘natural’: ‘citizenship’ is but an ‘assumed’ (enforced) identity.

Our highest anthropic need may also simply be to huddle, not to ‘climb every mountain’, or to seek out Higgs-Boson particles, or to circumnavigate the universe.

So, the effect(s) of the ill-conceived idylls of ‘Progress’ in EM societies is sheer, tragic, cumulation of wholly gratuitous angst, alienation, anomie, and loneliness.

Liberte, egalite, and the entire slew of EM sloganeering, are mere chimera that have us expend precious living time/resources chasing after will-o’-the-wisps that can rarely be attained- as generation after generation can bear witness to – mumbling ‘yes we can’, all the way to perdition.

They are but the labors of Sysiphus.
 
*
 
It is also EM that gave us 2 Global Conflagrations and is insouciantly heading now for another , perhaps final, cataclysm.

Note that.

Just that alone should give us pause, and have us reflect on the dubious gifts of (E)Modernism, instead of still trying to locate intelligent space within it.

And soon, before we are all swept away.

The ‘opportunity cost’ of EM ‘Progress’ may well turn out to be universal destruction.

 
*

 
So, don’t go about ‘imagining’ surreal worlds ( if the object is to really escape the toxic world -natural and social – we have created).

Instead, recognise our real, anthropic, roots and (re)organise day-to-day living within their achievable, and sustainable, perimeters.

That is no paradise, mind: it simply means we live in conformity with our given social natures.

Before early tribal forms are destroyed ( usually owing to male adventurism) such societies reveal the closest we have come to a palpable modus of contentment.

Little wonder they impressed a host European Modernists, including Marx (who saw in them a microcosm of his model of ‘communism’)

They form , therefore, the living laboratory proof of what our ‘human nature'(mind the oxymoron) really is.

Compare that to the perpetual ‘war of each against all’ we face in E-Modernist societies, esp. in their so-called , if self-styled, ‘advanced’ formations – and you can appreciate the Argument.

Here’s hoping…

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

A Transvaluation of Values?

 
In a prior post , I called EM (EuroModernism) a Death Machine

The Death Machine

 
 
If so, what might be the salve?
 
*
 
Let’s address this in two simple, but initial, steps.

1.EM dehumanises us, by refusing to credit us our essential human nature (affective, co-operative, mutualist, familial), and instead assumes we are rationalist, competitive, self-seeking, and individualist.

Salve: Rehumanise ourselves.

We need to recognise our human essence , de-emphasize the latter attributions, and reorient life and living in conformity with that essence.

Whence we have to affirm the primacy of affective relations , whilst displacing other relations onto a secondary plane.

2. EM depersonalises life and living.

Salve: Personalise all relations, infusing/affirming them with affective content.

The sullen bleakness/ennui of everyday, adversarial, life in the public sphere then evaporates and it starts to become ‘meaningful’ again.

It’s akin to a black & white film slowly taking on color.

Just following these 2 simple, instantly available, protocols will help , slowly, to first expose, and then transmogrify the Modernist Wasteland into a somewhat more bountiful domain of existence.
 
Other, follow through, steps will then spontaneously evolve.
 
*
 
What did I just describe above ?
 
In effect, the social ontology of simple tribal society where all relations are affective: whence meaningful, non-alienating, and mutually affirming.
 
The salve is a gradual process of disengagement with EM diktats that impose artificial boundaries/borders and infect all relations with the toxins of doubt , disquiet, distrust.
 
*
 
Anthropic life is utterly simple, not complex.
 
E-Modernism, in its manipulative thrusts, diverts our energies from where they serve our human needs to serving the interests of the system.
 
It infuses a faux intensity and gratuitous complexity into the social ethos booning us an utterly phony sense of chic sophistication and superiority to pre-Modern social mores.
 
We are, thereby, misled into squandering the many, simple, bounties of life in favor of building castles in the air, jousting windmills like Don Quixote, seeking the unattainable, dreaming of impossible utopias, chasing ephemeral chimeras of imagined Erewhons, and thereby living ever dispiritedly, and bogged down, in states of palpable discontent .
 
Tropes like the tortured artist, or the angst-ridden existentialist, born in EM salons of wilful anomie, are emblematic of the self-induced, delusional, nature of EM states of being.
 
It’s a dreadful treadmill: and, like All Modernist Paths, leads nowhere, except to certain disenchantment.
 
Precious lives are all too often wasted: into fruitless escapades , and unrequiting retreats, that take us further and further away from the sources of our real contentments.
 
Contra the protestations of the system, life is not about exalted attainments or ineffable achievements.
 
These are transparently false snares that lure us straight into the maelstrom of endless struggle, strife, and gratuitous , incessant, conflict : with others , and our own inner psyches.
 
At needless, fruitless, war with each other, and ourselves.
 
An expense of spirit, in a waste of guilt – and disaffection – to slightly amend the Bard of Avon.
 

*
 
The staggering richness of life, brief as it is, drains away unnoticed, as we live trapped within robotised routines, walking the walk, running the course, jumping through hoops, ever diverted from all the manifold provenances of our essential well-being.
 
To repeat: we are communal, familial, mutualist , beings forced to
be privatised, individualised, and , also, set up adversarially against others , similarly located.
 
Which makes war the normal, inevitable, even permanent, EM condition.

But we are not warriors, at heart: but, in essence, lovers.
 
Whence we suffer, mired in varied miseries, at home and abroad.
 
In unremitting, and ever dubious, struggle(s).
 
Is it worth it?
 
Think.
 
*
 
A transvaluation of values helps break the epistemic chains, as an initial, necessary, first step.
 
Ontic (de)constructions will, ipso facto, follow.
 
<em>For we humans build real communities, naturally, and instinctively, like ants and bees, if left alone.
 
No manifestos , nor loud declamations, are needed.
 
We are organic beings, compelled by force and fraud of EM diktats to live empty, mechanical, mechanistic, lives.
 
As Orwell well understood, we qua humans. are the normal, natural, antipode to any and all of the fabrications of the EN Machine.
 
All it takes, as a first step, is, simply, true self-awareness
 
*
 
A Transvaluation of Values: that’s just the beginning – of a long, and winding , Unravelment.
 
Ready?
 

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

The Death Machine

 
Orwell knew.
As did Illich, and Gandhi.
And a few other farsighted in the century prior.
But the rest of us?
The hoi polloi.
Do we know?
 
*
 
That the system we live in.
And celebrate.
This veritable ‘best of all possible worlds’.
Progress, Development, and all the rest of the
self-validating cataract of cliches that sensurround
our senses making us near insensible.
Is a Death Machine.
 
*
 
Just 400 years of it.
And everything around us is dying.
Flora, fauna, all of it.
Habitats dissolving, ecologies dissipating.
The Planet itself, or that part which sustains life, in mortal stress.
 
*
 
And we?
How about us?
Exalted King Vampires astride the top of the food chain.
Masters of the Universe.
How are we doing?
 
*
 
What is left of culture, society, civility , in the
heartlands of where the Great Game originated ?
Sociopaths and psychopaths rule the roost, with societal empathy
derided, disdained, and debauched.
War criminals govern us.
Billionaires buy and sell our fragmenting Republics with brazen impunity.
An Amoral Society (mark the oxymoron) is the latest contribution in the long-drawn saga of EuroModernism (European Modernism).
We live in, and by, dread alone.
And all around us Human Devolution spreads its dissolute wings.
 
*
 
The civilisation-mongers that claim(ed) to be paragpns of reason and liberty are racing, joyously, even tumultously,to raze the world (the same way it began?) with a Big Bang.
Cannon and chicanery had them seize the world, once upon a time.
The very same twin tools now stand put to end it.
Bravo!
 
*
 
What price now the hoary liturgy of liberte?
Freedom?
What a concept!
Yes, we are become ‘free’.
From the prospects of even mere continuity.
In a fact-free , conscience=free ,value-free, world.
We are free: free-wheeling , free-dealing, Zombies run amok.
 
*
 
Unabashedly, Post-Truth, Post-Morals, and Post-Human.
That is the Collective West today.
The First World, no less.
First in a world they have securely ensured will not last.
 
*
 
Yes, they are inveterate, intrepid, fighters for freedom.
Yours and mine, that is: except we are trying to preserve it – from their very onslaughts.
I refer to the real autonomies of life: far more concrete than the sloganised memes of ‘freedom’.
 
*
 
Of course, they can claim no monopoly of barbarism.
They have (had) plenty of competition.
But no Others , in human history, have brought us, insouciantly, to the very edge of Exterminism, all the while preaching a meretricious Litany of Rights.
 
*
What is it about EM (European Modernism) that has wrought this?
Its ideology and praxis has deracinated the very roots of our humanity, silting the eternal founts of human affections – viz., family, kindred, and community that keep us sane – with the venal sludge of competitive cupidity, avarice, and accumulation, reducing us to atomised, anomie and angst ridden , solitary, adversarial, asocial individuals ever swirling to higher and higher spirals of mortal alienation from our inherent species-being of Conviviality, Cooperation, and Caring.
In so doing, they morphed a band of convivials into a company of strangers.
Forever lost , lonely, lorn, and disconsolate.
Worse, in metaphor , they almost turned us mammals into reptiles.
The perennial Qualities of Life have been buried, entombed, in the varied avalanches of this misanthropic Age of Quantity.
Madness is the inevitable societal condition of humans when stripped of their baseline affective supports.
We are, and have long gone, mad.
 
*
 
Orwell , Illich, and Gandhi.
Time to read them again, as institutions crumble about us?
And as the Dystopian EM Juggernaut slashes and burns its way onwards , hurtling us all toward a mutually assured extinction.

 
[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

History 101

 
(For Dr Kalyan Banerjee)
 

Let’s review European colonialism, as it evolved just a few centuries ago.
 
Who can make sense of it?
I can’t.
And I have studied it all my life.
It defies reason.
 
*
 
Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, France, England, the early ‘Pioneers’.
And many lesser ones we won’t mention.
Cutting loose across the Non-European world.

Genocide
Slavery.
Expropriation.
Ecocide.

Standard fare: on a multi-continental scale.
 
*
 
btw an estimated 56 million perished, owing to their exploits, i.e. roughly 10% of the extant global population, as early as 1600 C.E.

The Pre-Columbian native peoples are estimated to have suffered about a 90% mortality rate.

This Extinction Event (and there is no other way to describe it) is even said to have triggered a perceptible global cooling.
 
*
 
Wasn’t merely mass murder.

‘TWas also the unique gifts – that go on giving? – they brought with them to the New World: measles, smallpox, influenza and the bubonic plague.
 
*
 
Regrettably, it still goes on, if under more euphemistic nomenclature..

Today, in due decorum, we call it Development, Globalisation, International Trade, et. al..

The First World, they call themselves.

Why not?

It fits.

They got there first, they looted first, they colonised first.

Now you know how/why the West ‘pulled ahead’.
 
*
 
So, when Trump trashes African nations, he needs to reflect.

Africa may or may not have ever been ‘poor’ (poverty is relative, deprivation is not) : but the West got rich by seizing its resources, wholesale.

The Berlin Conference of 1884 sealed its fate.

90 percent Of Africa was, by 1914, under Western occupation, with only Liberia and Abyssinia outside of it.

And they are still at it, in that unfortunate continent.
 
*
 
The looting of India, also, was classic, even epic in scale and scope.

Its fabled wealth was what drove adventurers like Columbus to go expeditioning.

Yet, until recently ,it was treated as no more than a beggar nation, by precisely those that beggared it.

And yet, as late as 1750, China’s share of global GDP was 33 percent, India’s 24.5 percent, whilst the combined share of Britain and the US was 2 percent.

Read that last bit over again: the UK & the US , together, amounted to but 2 %.

In effect, their Seven League Boots were donned much later.

So , what happened?

The Brits happened, to India (and elsewhere) , as did many of its European clones.
 
*
 
Fast forward.

Since WW2, just the US alone – never mind other European nations- is estimated responsible for over 20 million deaths in the Non-European world.

Over 1 million Iraqis slain not so long ago, on specious charges

1 million dead.

When the late Secy of State Madeleine Albright was queried whether 250,000 Iraqis babies dead was worth the removal of Mr Hussein, she said, without batting an eyelid , it was.

That one single statement sums up the hoary, emblematic, morality of the West like no other.

And the major victim countries?: Vietnam, Iraq, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan, et. al.

And regime change operations, since WW2?

Let me count the ways.

China 1949 to early 1960s Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s Iran 1953 * Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s Syria 1956-7 Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8 British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 * North Vietnam 1945-73 Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 * Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 * France 1965 Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 * Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *Indonesia 1965 * Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 * Greece 1967 * Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 * Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s Zaire 1975 Portugal 1974-76 * Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81 Chad 1981-82 *Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84 Suriname 1982-84 Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s Nicaragua 1981-90 * Panama 1989 *Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 * Iraq 1991 Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993 Yugoslavia 1999-2000 * Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 * Venezuela 2002 * Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 * Somalia 2007 to present Honduras 2009
Libya 2011 * Syria 2012 Ukraine 2014 *

Did anyone blink?
 
*
 
Now, to make sense of the East-West shenanigans today,

Tsarist Russia, a late-feudal empire in its own right, was a neo-colony of Western Europe until 1917, when the Socialist Revolution altered parameters.

Tne West has been at war with it since then: here tepid, there cold, and now almost hot.

Russophobia , a racist denigration of Slavs (related to the word ‘slave’) by Western nations, has an even older history.
 
*
 
China is/was the traditional ‘Other’: the Brits had imposed unequal treaties on them, since 1840, grabbing Hong Kong.

But,after the lion had fed, came the scavengers: Germany, Italy, Denmark, The Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Austria-Hungary, all getting privileged (unequal) access in trade with China.

The Socialist Revolution of 1949, putting an end to Western domination, made them yet another permanent target.

Le’s call it Sinophobia?

Target of propaganda, vilification, demonisation, fake news, etc. : in short, the usual dumping.
 
*
 
So, there is nothing novel about the systematic, incessant, denigration of both these nations, today.

Give a dog a bad name before you…

They are the permanent adversaries of the Old Hegemons.

And the West will do all it can to take them down.

Even if it implies universal chaos.

That’s what defines the current global situation .

You see: a little history goes a long way?

 
*
 
A key point worthy of note.

It was a socialist revolution that put both Russia and China en route to ridding themselves wholly of European domination, unlike say, Brazil and India. whose autonomy is still compromised by dependency.
 
*
 
Today, the tables are turning.

European Hegemony is attenuating.

Russia and China are getting strong and intractable.

The Great Wheel of History is Turning.

The Old and the New are now in , near-mortal, struggle.

 
*
 

It’s a critically dangerous time: hubris is not conducive to rational decision-making.

So, we’re all at risk: the good the bad – and the plain hideous.
 
*
 
Still, after centuries, a multi-polar world is in the rear-view mirror – again.

Can’t wait.

How about you?
 
N.B. Three important caveats: History is writ by Conquerors, so much of the above will not fit The Official Narrative; second, it’s the governors of European societies that face indictment, not their hapless , domestic, subjects; finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Colonisers could not have accomplished their imperial aims without the pro-active collaboration of native elites, their agents, who share the indictment. This last is far too often omitted in such tales, to their detriment. Human corruption is hardly a European monopoly.

 
[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

Halloween

 
(for Joss)
 
Of all the
fests
I’ve heard
or seen
 
Best of
all
is Halloween
 
*
 
So hey hey
what do you
say
what’s for
Halloween
today
 
Bombs for
Taiwan
missiles
for Ukraine
 
Coups in
Sudan
or another base
in Bahrain
 
*
 
Always
a trick
treats are
hard to find
 
Yet its always
a chiller
send shivers down
the spine
 
*
 
Halloween is here
kids run out
to play
 
But what the
morrow will bring
no one dares
to say
 

 
[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

Philosophy?

 
(for Wolfram Elsner)

‘Twixt Eros and
Thanatos
somehow
I get by
 
Unmoved by
iconic canons
that but scribe
the Mighty Lie
 
Hobbes Smith
0r Bentham
why must
we
heed today
 
Have done
with their
sordid innings
 
It’s now
our time
of day

 
*

 
We need
live
by our rules
 
History’s
a
fickle guide
 
Rules made by
rulers
gently set aside

 
*

 
I have delved the
classics
though classic were
they not
 
Dry dusty
apothegms
plim with misanthropic
thought
 
Whatever you
may be
a navel-gazer
choose you not
 
You have
no idea
the destruction
they have wrought

 
*

 
Life is meant
for relishing
all that senses
can descry
 
Being
not Becoming
nor coveting
till we die
 
Nor lisping trite
platitudes
that evoke
no passion high
 
A day’s fest
of sunshine
night woke ‘neath
the stars
 
Are worth
surely any day
all of Bacon’s
memoirs

 
*
 
No need there
be for
turgid texts
 
That make
the lifeblood
run dry
 
Walk the solid
earth
beneath
 
Hold strong
the social
tie
 
And abjure
ever the
subterfuge
 
That false
philosophers
supply

 
[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

Transcending Eurocentric Modalities

 
(For Jeff Sachs )
 

I will make this piece short and simple (so the Argument is not fully specified).

The times call for such economies of style.

We need now to have done with the genre of immanent critiques, where we rock to and fro, endlessly, w/out getting anyplace.

Besides, old recipes, old formulas , old panaceas, have no place now.

It is, as so many of us sense, a New Game.

And it is time for Change.

BIG Change.

Indeed, it is time now , I think, for Transcendence (the very antipode of immanent critiques): rising above/beyond routine, ‘authorised’ , modes of discourse.

Put differently, the Left, Right and Centre versions of EM theorising simply keep us locked in to the same otiose paradigm, from which there can be No Exit.

*

There has been a new Physics for almost a century now.

A new Biology for but a few odd years: Epigenetics.

But we still retain the old, antiquated, Social Theory.

Modeled , if understandably, after the materialism of Classical Physics (Yes, so-called ‘social science’ was engendered in the fulsome spirit of Physics-Envy).

Time to jettison that baggage.

In its Entirety.

It is not only archaic, it is wrong, categorically, judged by the canons of latter-day Physics.

*

Darwin’s idea of mutations finds relevance here.

He saw mutations as random.

And many are.

But some may not be?

Some are ‘purposive’, in the minimal sense of restoring balance.

We are, likely, going through such a shift.

We humans have radically skewed Nature’s rude and rough balances, over a very long time: but far more precipitously in recent times.

Since WWII , over 60% of animal and plant life, even a higher percentage of large mammals, has vanished.

We have exhausted more planetary resources in that same short span of time than in all of human history.

Nature is, in a sense, now ‘intervening’ (or ‘reacting’).

But one must not read too much into that word (I am no fan of ‘new age’ fantasies).

I do not use it in any anthropic sense.

Let me illustrate.

Water ‘finds’ its own level albeit propelled by natural forces.

One might see it as ‘seeking’ a certain ‘balance’, in its spread.

However, it does not ‘choose”, but follows its inherent properties.

So is Nature , following her own Logos, morphing her varied forces (and they bid fair to check our pretensions)?

And, such forces could alter?

In an evolutionary universe why would the laws of nature remain constant?

But, be that as it may, we are different: we can, self-consciously, Choose.

*

Descartes said: I think therefore I am.

The Buddha, a more accomplished philosopher, albeit millenia prior, provided the needful.

He said: as/what you think, you are: and you become.

So, all change , when not the chance accident of history, begins, first, in the mind.

The Collective mind.

And the Choice is clear: either we change, or Nature must suffer a disruption of Evolution.

She may be unready to suspend her long-delved plans.

So, either we Change , or we Go.

Climate change (as but one mechanism) may see to the latter.

Maybe, even regardless of what we do.

There is some paradox to this.

At one remove, she is not apart from us , but works through us.

Yet, she is the macrocosm , of which we are but sub-entities; so hers is the larger mind.

And her secrets are not always shared, readily, with us.

*

We may need now to Reorient Life.

Here, but a few clues.

They will suffice: a word to the wise , they say , is sufficient.

We need to divest ourselves from this onerous fetish of incessant consumption and production.

Radically alter our methods/instruments in both domains (no mass production, no mass consumption).

Possessive, Asocial Individualism – the very (EM) scourge of our current history – needs be junked.

The Profit-motive, retired: it has served its historical use, if any.

The Adversarial Society, abandoned.

Competition, Monopoly, and Economic activity tied to, and led by, Private gain, abrogated.

The Nation-State , site and source of many conflicts, diminished in size, scope, and significance.

From Gesellschaft forms of organization we need to return, again, to Gemeinschaft forms, which is how we began.

Abjuring the spurious universalisms of globalization (ploys only for control and marketing) we have to relocate ourselves in face-to-face social relations, within a local culture – of ‘little’ traditions – of our own making, and within our own controls.

But, as I will imply, none of the above require any mass effort to topple the system.

Rather is it a matter of erosion of its principal , ideational, supports.

*

EuroModernist (EM) societies are engineered, artificial constructs, organized, historically, from above, by the various machinations/demands of commerce , capital, and empire.

They are NOT human (anthropic) societies.

They are rationalist, cold, uncaring, and mechanistic.

We are , au contraire, caring, feeling, organic, beings.

Classical Socialism failed because it did not raze that false foundation.

The USSR – for all of its many successes, which must not be forgotten – still pursued the grail of GDP, no less avidly than its Capitalist counterparts.

But a bigger bowl of Goulash simply doesn’t cut it.

It does not answer to that primal cri de couer that animates our bosoms.

We have to realign, rebond, with our community, kith, and kin (no matter how defined).

Rediscover our quashed norms of Affective Society.

Antic values: of Hearth and Home.

And re-embrace the basic joy(s) of our kind: Convivialism.

And know who we are, as a species.

Co-operative, caring, familial, and co-respective.

That is our human birth-right, rudely violated by the plans of Modernist engineers(Left or Right).

Humans spontaneously build communities much like ants and bees, instinctually.

And the foundational blocks, always, are family, kith, and kindred.

We. have no need to be ‘engineered’.

Engineered societies carry a critical, even mortal danger: they reflect the altering whims of the engineers.

Bears serious reflection.
*

This is a far cry from how EM ideology views us.

The real scarce resource may not be time, nor money : but love.

For we are lovers, in short: rather than law-givers, conquerors, colonisers, and adventurers.

Or, calculating, canny, crafty , hucksters.

Time it is to bid farewell to the aging nostrums of Hobbes and Smith.

Doing was thrust upon us by the exploitative wiles of rulers and conquerors, and turned into a social value.

Becoming is a EuroModernist mantra, the talisman of accumulationist drives.

So much so that some religions/political traditions, took ‘labor’ itself as a commandment of morality and virtue (“Arbeit Macht Frei”) rather than a temporary nuisance to be swiftly performed and relinquished.

No, Labor is not the choice avenue to Social Virtue nor divine grace(as in some variants of Protestant thinking).

It is drudgery, and worse: when performed involuntarily, and by force.

Arbeit Macht Frei?

Tell that to the Bushmen(and women).

*

All that Utopian thinking that followed the EM revolutions was, objectively, a waste of social energy.

And also caused a lot of irreparable harm.

But it was , possibly, unavoidable: at any rate, it showed its manifold shortcomings, quite early on, so we recoil, now, in hindsight, from its many dehumanization(s).

Society had been turned upside down by these forces , as these idealists hoped to ‘re-engineer’ it : toward a better state of being.

Wishful thinking, at best: but who can blame them?

They meant well: but had not a clue about the ineluctable realities of human anthropology.

Lacking that, they borrowed their ideas, in that domain, of from either religion (Judeo-Christian ideology) , or political theory (e.g., so-called ‘social contract’ ideas).

Which was to err grievously.

The Enlightenment had NO valid anthropology of our species: yet went about concocting social theory to suit the needs of the ruling interests, to our everlasting detriment.

For we don’t need Utopia( although there is no such idyllic state) as a species of Invention: we simply need to Rediscover its potential in how we live our lives.

Nor can we simply , willy nilly, invent slogans, coin lofty declarations, and codify master plans for a New World: and expect human nature to conform to it.

That was the fatal conceit.

*

We are programmed to live, tribally (parse that as kindred/community based) , in a joyful state (in Being, not Becoming, or Doing).

We are Mammals, Heat-seeking rather than Light-seeking.

Our greatest Human Need may simply be: to Huddle.

That is our species-being, our social DNA.

It can still be found , albeit now in remote parts of a world thoroughly ravished by EM ideology and praxis.

But it is also deep within us, and easy to locate: IF we can shuffle off the coils of religious and political shibboleths that hold us in thrall.

*

Our eternal ‘home’ is the humblest of societal units: the human family, at once natural and social.

Note that it meets not one single, vaunted, E-Modernist criterion.

It is not free, individualist, equal, nor democratic.

Wrap your head around that last sentence.

Not once, but twice.

Yet, it gives to us what we crave the most: a haven, refuge, and sanctuary.

What extra-terrestrial ‘heaven’ , conjured up by the tendentious fantasies of religious bigotry, could hope, even remotely, to compare with that?

Bears thinking.

*

You get the point (I hope).

We are natural, instinctual beings: an idea anathema to EM postulates, which prefers to see us as automatons who can take on any shape and form as per requirements of the ruling ethos , ideology. and political agenda.

Instincts are granted in the study of animals, but not permitted to intrude into the study of the ‘sovereign of creation’, i.e. , MAN (gender intended, in the original EM docket).

That came straight from Judeo-Christian ideas, where we are cast in the image of the Creator, until Darwin interrupted that chain of argument.

So we need to remind ourselves, again, lest we forget, in our hubris.

For all our pretensions, We are Apes.

Chimps and Bonobos, our closest cousins, have definable traits: so have we.

*

So, think.

And disburden yourself of repressive, ideological, chains that diminish you , and erode your energies.

For, as/what you think, you become.

And discover the rich troves of the Affective Life -lavish, abundant – you have ignored, or suppressed, for being stuck on the Wheel , ever since you can recall.

That is our real, imperishable, wealth.

The Virus has just given some of us the time/opportunity for some reflection on such matters.

Employ it well.

And get off the treadmill – of endless, unrequiting, toil – soon as you can.

After all, you are not , if you are reading this, a hamster.

We have been hoodwinked, forced, duped, and systematically misled, into thinking of ourselves in dystopian, sub-human, and asocial terms.

We have, in short, been forced to live a lie (including the founding orders of this travesty).

Contrast , in your thinking, how you live ,and function, in EM society to who we/you are, on the inside.

The rest will follow, as day follows night.

Let me repeat that.

Seek simply to Know Yourself : (all) necessary changes will, then, ensue.

*

We have been , alas, deceived by fine words.

One of the many unstated functions of language (which may well be a primary one) is concealment of motives.

Language is an indispensable aid to dissembling.

W/out that guileful artefact, our feelings, as humans, are all too easy to comprehend , requiring no interpreters.

Complexity of language is often associated with high density of oppression and exploitation.

No wonder elites monopolise language (Latin, in Rome, Sanskrit in ancient Vedic society)

And both religion and politics utilize language, to repressive effect.

*

Note that I am not outlining a nouvelle manifesto, in the classic EM mode of ‘we can be anything we wish to be’.

No.

Instead , I am suggesting that our contentment lies in effortless conformity to our anthropic species being.

So it requires no force, no mass movements, no marches, no revolutions.

Nor even consulting learned tomes of deep philosophy.

Simply an internal, personal recognition of the obvious, based on reflection alone.

And it will be, I believe, found to be obvious.

I will not engage in any debate over the foregoing simply because: if I am wrong , I should not, and if I am right, I need not.

Besides, life is far too short.

Contra the EM modus in such matters, truth is arrived at NOT via contention, but by serious, even deep, cogitation.
 

*(A desperately encapsulated Critique of Euro-Modernism (EM) and a barebones Outline of The Alternative)
 

N.B. EM, or EuroModernism , the specific template of Modernism that Europe invented and imposed on the world, consisted of , in my rendition: a very selective faith in a self-defined, triumphalist , reductionist, Science; a tendentious, self- serving belief in ‘progress’ ; a rampant philosophy of materialism; and an abiding conviction that no cost was too high, societal, military, or ecological, to impose this world-view, by force, on Others. It imposed the Restless Society on us all, ever discontented, ever transformational, sacrificing Being to Becoming. Understood, with care, it covers both the Tweedledum and Tweedledee Idylls of EM vintage: Capitalism and Socialism.

R E F E R E N C E S

Kanth, R . Farewell to Modernism: On Human Devolution in the Twenty-First Century, NY: Peter Lang, 2017

[© R.Kanth 2022]

In Essence?

 
(for John McMurtry*)

We are Undone
each to each
one to one
 
*
 
at crux
the male ego
 
will not give
in
will not let go
 
the eternal
casus belli
cross the heart
and hope to die
 
fast it is
and furious
intractably
injurious
 
whether Russia
or
Ukraine
the very same
alien grain
 
*
 
all wars
originate
it is the
common human
fate
from this will
to retaliate
 
so maybe
women
hold the key
to redress
masculinity
the bane
of human history
to break the
spell
and set us
free
 
*
 
whence do I
repeated
plead
let women
lead
and men take
heed

 
let women
act
let women
speak
they shall
find
what men but
seek
 
women know
no borders
women brook
no orders
let alone
disorders
 
peace has
been
their legacy
in all of
human herstory
 
*
 
one cannot be
too sure
it is but
intuition
pure
or mild
epiphany

 
could be
our only
hope you see
to forestall
catastrophe
 
as we lurch
from war to
war
in corybantic
anarchy
 
*
 
Else are
we All
Undone
each to each
and one to one
 
* Late Canadian philosopher, noble spirit, and my dear friend
 

[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

Quest

 
(for clm)
 
I wandered
but a little
yonder

the heart
felt a little
fonder

and so I let
the spirit
squander
 
*
 
had I friends
they might
have said

surely you
are
much misled

these roads
all but lead to
Rome

you need to
find
you way home
 
*
 
the world
looks a little
older

the blood runs
a
little colder
 
*
 
but you know
well the human
breast

it is where
all hope
must rest

waiting ever
the
final test
 
*
 
so there
will be
wandering

and a lot
more of
squandering

before
the fulsome
journey’s done

and the race
is lost
or won
 
*
 
matters not
whether won
or lost

if prepared
to bear
the cost

and so I
must go
on and on

dreaming
Shangri-La
and Erewhon

 
[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)
 

Thinking Diwali*

( for BJ )
 

Light the lights
yet will we fight the fights?
on Diwali
the night of nights
 
Come celebrate
still shall we nurture hate?
on Diwali
the light of lights
 
Let the feast begin
yet feed the beast within?
on Diwali
the right of rights
 
Come swigging milk and mead
cling yet to caste and creed?
on Diwali
the rite of rites
 
Now the lamps peaceful reign
at dawn back to war again?
on Diwali
the sight of sights
 
Joy for just a little bit
how very brief that lamp is lit?
on Diwali
have done with blight?
 
Make a vow to disavow
such paradox here and now?
this Diwali
Let there be light!
 
* Diwali, festival of lights, falls on October 24 in 2022

 
[© R.Kanth 2022]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)