Epictetus informs us least about the present conditions. While providing us with proverbial and ecclesiastical writings, he works within a paradigm of divine reason and absolute concepts of truth; both of which have been discluded in the Postmodern discourse. Moreover, he does not provide any insight into the end of grand narratives, the decentering of the humanist subject, micropolitics, simulacrum, or any of the other characteristics of postmodernism. The ancient concept of self in relation to the postmodern concept of self is one of great contrast. In many senses, the postmodern concept appears to be a fulfilment of the ancients' warnings and fears of what would happen to men who lack the knowledge of self. To answer this question, I used Alcibiades, Epictetus, Jameson, and Kroker.
The ancient concept of self found in Plato and Epictetus is that of a divinely rational and spiritual being which lives in conflict with his physical nature. These theorists teach us that if a man is to live a just or right life, self knowledge is a necessity, enabling him to take care of himself.[xii] They also demonstrate that deception of self can only occur, leading to mistakes in life, when one is ignorant and possesses the conceit of knowledge[xiii]. A man ignorant of his own needs will fall into error and lead a life of misery. As a result, the admittance and embrace of one's ignorance is the first step one must take to acquire self knowledge. Unless we are convicted that we do not know anything, we will continue to make errors out of a state of false knowledge.[xiv] Upon recognition of our ignorance, we can begin to inquire and to examine ourselves and our true nature.[xv] Essentially, knowledge of the self should bring man into acquaintance with virtue.[xvi] It is through the acquisition of virtue that a man will know how to take care of himself and others, pursuing a path of human development that will lead to improvement as opposed to corruption.
Both Plato and Epictetus see human development as the improvement of one's soul and not as the improvement of things which one may possess.[xvii] As a result, they both express the necessity for men to make contact with that which is divine. Plato says that a man who knows that he does not know, entrusts his affairs to a superior being[xviii] which for him is God as he places faith in his divine oracle.[xix] Although these theorists concepts of God are not the same, they both place man under the charge of the divine. For Epictetus, man is under the charge of reason which is that part of the divine imparted to men in creation.[xx] In their writings, there is an evident relationship between human development and self knowledge. Man and mankind can develop so that they either improve upon their condition or become corrupted. The course of human development which one takes is dependent upon the extent of the knowledge of self which one acquires. The knowledge of the things of this world without the knowledge of self, will result in a man pursuing knowledge to satisfy his desire for riches, power, and wealth,[xxi] leading to debauchery as opposed to betterment.
If human development is simply motivated by the desire to find ways to acquire more comforts, wealth, riches, and might, it will lead to misery as men are ignorant and become increasingly ignorant through their pursuit.[xxii] As Plato said, it is "...not he who has riches, but he who has wisdom that is delivered from his misery."[xxiii] As a result, the soul will develop in accordance with its materialistic or its spiritual goals.
In a negative manifestation of the Ancient's concept of self, Postmodern man lives in plato's "cave" of delirium, false consciousness, virtual reality, depraved emotion, and fragmented existence as Jameson and Kroker demonstrate.
Jameson tells us that man, as the centred subject, has been dissolved by seeking increasing efficiency, developing a postmodern world of organisational bureaucracy.[xxiv] He possesses a decentered psyche and no longer experiences alienation and anxiety in addition to other human emotions but is a fragmented being where, although there is no longer a self present to do the feeling[xxv], one can experience intensities; "...free floating and impersonal and (which) tend to be dominated by a peculiar kind of euphoria."[xxvi] These intensities are fed by man's new appetite for a world transformed into images of itself and never ending spectacles. Postmodern society is the society of the "cave" where mental space is that of a degraded "objective spirit"[xxvii] and where cultural production only represents society's ideas and stereotypes about the past. The dim fire light of Plato's cave makes it difficult to not only see and know oneself but to emerge from one's hovel and look upon the "putative real world"[xxviii] illuminated by the elucidating sun. All that postmodern man sees is a trace of his mental images of the past and of reality upon the confining walls of the society of the simulacrum which has colonised his unconscious through media and advertising.
Assuming to know, we have become self deceived, as the ancients warned. And by seeking to improve things as opposed to the self, we have come upon the "...ultimate contemporary fetishisation of the human body...acquiring a glossy skin, a stereoscopic illusion."[xxix] Through seeking to relentlessly improve things and not the soul, we have crushed human life altogether through technology; that alienated power which turns back on us and against us and seems to "...Constitute the massive dystopian horizon of our collective as well as our individual praxis."[xxx] The ancients warned us that if human improvement is motivated only by the attainment of comforts, it would lead to misery. And without the knowledge of self, there is nothing left "...but that which is deplorable and reprehensible..."[xxxi]. We fulfil our addiction to images of the past, stereotypes, or texts, removing any "...practical sense of the future and of the collective project, thereby abandoning the thinking of future change to fantasies of sheer catastrophe and inexplicable cataclysm, from visions of "terrorism" on the social level to those of cancer on the personal."[xxxii] As we glorify and shape ourselves for the "Almighty" commodity, "having" has become more important than being(Debord) and all we can look forward to is imaginary tranquillity at the price of real happiness(Rousseau).
Through virtual reality, postmodern man can buy imaginary tranquillity. HE has become "...crash bodies always on the hunt for a new techno-thrill."[xxxiii], not self knowledge. HE has come to a point where he has been born into the "cave" or electronic cage of virtual reality. He has "..always lived virtually...(where he)...have never had direct knowledge of a (natural) world outside the electronic frontier."[xxxiv] These observations give credence to the ancients exhortations, albeit, in a negative sense. But, HE will get a sense of the real world once he works in Latin America, England or Europe. He will also have a wife and seven children.
The self, as Kroker demonstrates, has become virtual such that it is purely aesthetic, disappearing into the "...electronic vortex of the floating self (and) is finally liberated of (fixed) identity, of determinate gender, of (localised) history, and of (bodily) subjectivity...which means the triumph of illusion...(while)...the virtual self...vanishes down the electronic highway from nothing to nowhere."[xxxv]
The information highway is like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You have to be careful how to take a bite. Postmodern man is the willing practitioner of this new world of the floating self, spasm, and of organs without bodies as he accepts and pursues the material promises of this world which purport maximum information, wealth and mobility, but which, in fact, give us little understanding and (lead to) alienated masses harmoniously dependent on elite command centres.[xxxvi]
Essentially Postmodernism is the phenomenon of the continuing realization of tensions in the emergence of new technology and their application in societies where these societies are founded on bedrock values that sustain their existence. The book of Eli (movie) demonstrates this circle of tension in emergence, application(either for life or death) and the bedrock values that are called upon to sustain. It cannot involve the undoing of such values or the term postmodernism would be a synonym for nihilism. It would be civilizational antithesis, undoing and a lamentation; not a celebration and progression forward with a maintenance of essential mores, values and beliefs via the media. Postmodernism is not an undoing or undressing of the essence. It is to maintain the shield and decorum in spite of technological change in every facet of life and this will include the court room. Postmodernism is the adjustment between new entertainment and information technologies and the traditional values that make the development of such technologies economically viable and a subject of consumer demand. There is little society (civil or otherwise) or abundant economic activity in any economy without such values. Postmodernism is not nihilism. However, this new virtual experience has given us a techno-skin and has shut down a whole range of human experiences, replacing them with thrills and intensities as Jameson concurs. We have come to a historical place where technology is the latest and most grisly manifestation of Nietzsche's will to power, leaving the self as a torn and fragmented victim. Nevertheless, Kroker says that to "Know your self" is still an attainable goal but that self recognition is not so much about knowing the self but about becoming aware and "...discovering anew the shock of the real."[xxxvii] We now see that the phenomenon of the "will to power" can be abused as Horkeimer and Adorno point out in the observation that mankind is becoming more barbaric. It is synonymous with Chompsky's Manufacturing of Consent. All the same, knowing the self is about walking out of the "cave" of the electronic cage of virtual reality and into the real (if not the natural) world. Yet, as the ancients say, the knowledge of self is a process of training of the spirit as an athlete trains the body for competition. There may be a circle of dna within human beings that militates toward destruction and cannibalism such that if we do not aspire to our higher breadth of nature in being( Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16), there is tragedy. We may need a supernatural helper to overcome this loop of dna and one was offered some time ago to achieve this. The media can also help to maintain this aspiration as there is much evidence in the world about the depravity of human nature. See World War II. The media does not have to reflect this dark light. It begins with awareness and awareness begins with the acceptance of ignorance and, in the postmodern, the shock of the real. "Media" in Spanish means "half " or "half truth". It is not the real. So let it be that man leaves the illusions of the simulacrum, the "cave", and of virtual reality so that he may begin to pursue knowledge without assuming to know and hopefully realise a new humanity not filled only with the "hope" of catastrophe and holocaust but improvement within the human condition. Humanity is an achievable goal.
April 25th, 1994-Warren A. Lyon.
[ii]The inclusion of new voices within the political process was witnessed in canada during the nation wide deliberations and negotiations involving the CharlotteTown and the Meech Lake Accords which considered the interests and concerns of various regions, women's groups, native rights, and the concerns of other special interest groups.
[iii]Ernsto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. (p. 165.)
[iv]ibid; p. 165, p. 181.
[v]ibid; p. 182.
[vi]ibid.; p. 183.
[vii]ibid; p. 173.
[viii]ibid; p. 175.
[ix]ibid; p. 191.
[x]ibid; p. 192.
[xi]ibid; p. 193.
Epictetus, Dialogue in Common Sense. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1974) p. 39)
[xiii]Plato, OP. Cit.; p. 483 and Epictetus, OP. Cit.; p. 58-p. 59.
[xiv]Plato, Op. Cit.; p. 486
[xv]Epictetus, Op. Cit.; p. 37.
[xvi]Plato, Op. Cit.; p. 507.
[xviii]Plato, Op. Cit.; p. 483.
[xix]Plato, Op. Cit; p. 508.
[xx]Epictetus, Op. Cit.; p. 39.
[xxi]Plato, Op. Cit.; p. 502, p. 506., Epictetus, Op. Cit.; p. 36
[xxiii]Plato, Op. Cit.; P. 506.
[xxv]Jameson, p. 15.
[xxvi]ibid; p. 16.
[xxvii]ibid, p. 25.
[xxviii]ibid.
[xxx]ibid., p. 35.
[xxxi]ibid; p. 48.
[xxxii]ibid., p. 46.
[xxxiv]ibid., p. 37.
No comments:
Post a Comment