When I hear my colleagues, well meaning people the lot of them, chant the liberal mantra of ‘community’ I secretly cringe. I cringe inside and try to keep my face from blanching at such a ridiculous statement, and such a dangerous one. Community, as we know it, has become the Objectification (in the definition of Subject/Object or Internal/External) of Man. It is just one more example but a blatant one of the slow and degrading smooshing of the Individual into the confines of the ‘average’: the statistical Man if you will. We have become such consumers of the Literal and its language e.g. statistics-of its Deity: Science. We no longer question the absurdities of the quest to ‘know’ and have forgotten that Humanity is forged in the confrontation with the ineffable.
It is a shame that I must put this explanation here, but, in order for those who would read it to understand my argument from a vantage of what it is saying, and not saying-I must. I am not saying that Science does not exist, nor am I saying that it is not useful, however, my skepticism and critique of science does, in no way, detract from my admiration of this material inquiry into [n]ature. This is not an argument against the proper administration of the scientific method but, in fact, is a pillory against the degrading of the Human spirit that has, in large part, come at the hands of the elevation of Science (and its subsets) to a methodology of Meaning; rather than that of description (which is by its very nature secondary to that of Meaning for a description is ipso facto a form of agreed upon symbolism). That being said let us begin.
When we as a community have elevated community to a larger scale supra-title we have made a grievous mistake. We have bought into the statistical error that the individual within this mass is a product of the Mass and not the other way around. For example, in science, we measure large quantities of a particular and find its average e.g. a sack full of rocks has an average weight of 145.666789 grams/rock. This is an average; it is quite possible if not wholly probable that there is not a single rock within that entire sack that weighs this exact measurement. This example is pointing out of the flaw even in a material definition of the myth of averages. Let us look at the Individual Human being and another aspect of their individuality: their experiences. When we take our experiences and see them as effects of previous causes, we understand that they themselves become causes of other effects. We see through steps that they continue and that the positing of a ‘Self” in the sense of a static entity is faulty. It is the arbitrary parceling off of a set of experiences and labeling them ‘self’ even though they move ‘outward’ indefinitely. This Universality would seem to be evidence of the lack of Individuality, however, when we look at the processes that are within this infinity they are unique to the individual. Thus the infinities are, strangely, unique and universal at the same time. This ‘understanding’ is the confrontation with the Ineffable. It is ineffable because it breaks down the structure in which we identify material reality e.g. the Subject/Object/Verb triumvirate. We no longer have the ability to engage this without direct experience, however, the triumvirate can bring us to this confrontation where this engagement with a Higher environment can occur.
Without this ineffable, immeasurable ‘base’ that points out a simultaneous unique infinity Man becomes detached from his reality. When reality is outside of the Individual then he becomes passive in his existence and it becomes a slow degradation to becoming Unmeaningful. Man, in this state, sees himself through the statistical lens as a massive number of replaceable cogs instead of a Unique Universe unto himself; the latter of these is the root to dignity the former the root to the loss of it. Dignity arises when one understands their own power and meaning both to change the universal environment as well as their universal meaning e.g. without that individual the universe would not exist. This understanding is also conveyed upon Others that becomes the guidance for our understanding of Self Worth (dignity) not to allow it to fall into the error of Objectifying our credo (tyranny)-this Other Dignity is known within the actor as Humility.
Without Dignity, Humility, all of our Material Supra-Titles drive us toward Tyranny, the yoking of the individual to a Materialized credo, and those outside of this particular ‘reality’ are seen as the Objective other: that is a direct threat to the materialized credo and has been, historically, the root of tyrannies both large and small.
It may not seem that this is true as we move within a particular material system that is not overtly tyrannical. However, this is a testament to the ‘growth’ period of tyranny and when a static ‘moment’ is withdrawn from its flux of growth it is falsely seen as benign. If we, however, view it from a meta-level vantage and in its proper continuum we can see that it is within the process of becoming this tyranny-the evolution of the particular seed into its full fruition.
The beginning causes that become apparent is the loosening of the individual from the community e.g. Webers observation of the detachment of work ethic and material accumulation from the Puritan manifestation of their confrontation with the divine. The community then resolves into a material Object that is apart from the individual and becomes the source of a material Supra-Title of behavior. The Individual slides into a secondary position that eventually moves into an inconsequential position. He can only see himself, in this light, in relation to the Material Object, and in relation to that, if solely, he becomes meaningless. His responsibility, as an individual, is to this Mechanized efficiency and this place is easily replaced with another ‘pair of hands’ and thus his responsibility slides into, at best, an animal’s material existence: to feed, house, clothe their immediate family. However, even this is only a partial meaning for any sort of person/bureaucracy can replace these demands.
In this state, in this form of ‘reality’, in one that is inundated in this mind set we find the latter stages of its development is where even the ‘counter’ argument to the status quo is steeped in the Objective language. When the Environmental Movement is in terms of Sustainability and highest levels of extraction without destroying the population of the ‘material’ stock, when our education focuses on employment as the highest outcome for ‘training’ the mind, when we have relegated even our very lives into commodified structures e.g. how much we should value something being analogous to how much money it can produce i.e. stay at home mother’s value being relegated to a study into how much paid work they would garner in a ‘market’. Our existence loses the viability of the statement of ‘ineffable worth’ for, in such an environment everything is effable-The Meaningless Man is easily broken down into constituent parts and each ones is understandably even to He who is being diced, sold off to the highest bidder.
It is responsibility that is the necessitate for freedom because in this state Man becomes the arbiter of his life. In this Objectified world he no longer is able to have responsibility because he has relinquished his power to that of the ‘machine’ or the Community. Thus the rules, which grow meaner and cruder the further it is removed from the individual and becomes only tenable by brute force and heroic ignorance, become the seeds and means for the tyranny of the Object e.g. you are not me, you are wrong, and the only recourse for this is for it to either destroy or be destroyed for, objective realities, necessitate static observance e.g. zero sum mentality.
The individual is, themselves, the community, each individual their community unto themselves, each one afforded the dignity of an ineffable universe. They are the movers and makers of reality, each one, each thought, each moment. It is the great irony, that the Dignity of Man has been removed from him by that which he created. The fall of His grace perpetrated by his powerful mind that allows him to be ignorant to such a level as to mask the inalienable realization of his unique place as creator and master of his universe.