The Crux

 
The crux of my critique is simplicity itself.
 
The ontological/epistemic basis of ALL EM theorising is patently false.
 
As such, ALL of EM social theory is wrong.
 
They read nature, mostly (subject to correction by latter-day quantum ideas) right, but ‘human nature’ (noting the oxymoron) wrong.
 
Why?
 
Because they ‘deduced’ so called ‘human nature’ by simply examining themselves (and extrapolating) , in context, of the adversarial, avaricious, dog-eat-dog, world they lived in (similar to Hobbes assuming a ‘state of nature’ that actually reflected English societal life, and Smith , looking into his heart, and seeing a Glasgovian ‘propensity to truck and barter’ sealed within it: ditto with Freud taking the traits of his effete, Viennese, clientele , to be universal, etc.).
 
Their economics, politics, and social theory was, thereby, at once, particularistic and perverse; not even vaguely general, and far, far , from being universal.
 
In just the same way that an adequate physics is a sine qua non of getting chemistry and biology right, a true anthropology is needed to theorise economy and society, accurately
 
Whence the Himalayan blunders of EM ‘economics’, Freudian ‘psychology’, and so forth.
 
*
 
So what is the truth?
 
We are , instinctually, affective, heat-seeking, convivial, communal, co-operative, mammals, content with home , hearth , family, and kinship , before rogue ‘animal spirits’ of men – yes, men– extend and expend themselves in corralling power and wealth, leading to the subversion of our primal, tribal, gemeinschaft, social forms into the familiar class-ridden, exploitative, gesellschaft formations of empire-state-and nation (or, ESN, roughly in that historical order).
 
The simple, tribal form is eminently the domain where the ‘paradigm of femininity’ POF (nurturance) thrives, whereas ESN formations are where the ‘paradigm of masculinity’, or POM (domination, exploitation, expropriation) reigns.
 
Slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, in European history, are all in the latter mold: in the non-European world they had mirror counterparts in various tributary, imperial, formations.
 
So EM , or European Modernism, within which the non-tribal world lives today , is in the latter POM cast, ever restless, ever chafing, ever crusading for more, recklessly expansionist, and predatory; and , ultimately, destructive of ALL forms of life.
 
Those of us trapped within its nihilist ideology suffer the EM languishments of angst, anomie, and alienation, doomed to struggle, suffer, and perish , unrequited.
 
What a waste of (the abundant potential of )human life!
 
*
 

If you think I exaggerate, consider who, or rather what, gave us WW1 and WW2 , and now are, in giddy madness, rushing us all into WW3.
 
Neither Non-European (non EM) societies, nor their ideologies, are capable of even thinking in such exterminist terms.
 
The (so-called) barbarians, of yore, Mongols, Huns, et al. were structurally incapable of such dire, rank , overweening , misanthropy.
 
For all their stupendous ravages, they still left the world – ecological and societal – mostly intact.
 
That is more than the EM Hegemons of today would care to guarantee, in lapidary insouciance, even to their very own posterity.
 
Evil Incarnate, and yet for being Amoral, unaware/uncaring of it all.
 
*
 

If such are the fruits of ‘enlightenment’, perhaps the world might have been safer if Europe had remained unenlightened, rapt in ignorant slumbers?
 
If this is what, in the net, ‘progress’ produces, one can hardly abstain from relentless interrogation of the meretricious idyll.
 
So called ‘growth’ and ‘development’, the key watchwords of this litany, are but the cover for a simpler, more primal, EM urge: imperial expansion.
 
In sum, I am far from unaware of the benefits of EM, such as they are: I just happen to think that they are simply not , in human and evolutionary terms, anywhere near being even remotely cost -effective.
 
Human life and human needs are altogether simple, even banal: it is EM ideologues who, steeped in masochistic discontent, and cumulationist drives, concocted its entirely suppositional, vainglorious, overbearing, ‘complexity’ and pseudo-sophistication.
 
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).