{"id":93232,"date":"2019-01-21T13:30:19","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T18:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/?p=93232"},"modified":"2019-01-21T13:30:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T18:30:19","slug":"alienated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/alienated\/","title":{"rendered":"Alienated"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Alienation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is perhaps most often discussed these\ndays with reference to loners and other social outsiders, people who can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit\nin and suffer psychologically for it. But there are several other aspects of\nalienation that are equally important and deserve analysis (even if, as here,\nsuperficially and cursorily). Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s consider a few of them one by one, then see\nwhat, if anything, they have to do with each other. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not guaranteeing they\nwill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rene Girard (Violence\nand the Sacred<\/em>), sociologist and literary critic, theorized that social\norder has emerged (and re-emerged) time after time from the chaos of class,\nfaction, and caste conflict. To make a long story short, Girard envisioned a\nrecurrent situation in which warring groups, jealous for each other\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\nprerogatives, reach a bloody stalemate in which neither side can honestly\naccept responsibility since each has become equally guilty of atrocity. There\nare only villains. Each side\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bitterness is justified (both have become\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153monstrous doubles\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of each other). How are they to move past this impasse?\nAttention comes to rest on some outcast randomly chosen and accused of evil\nmagic. It is he who is at fault! If he is eliminated, the fighting, the\nmassacres, will cease. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cast out the scorner, and dissension will go out\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\n(Proverbs 22:10). Once he is done to death, the scapegoat is seen in a new\nlight: as a supernatural savior! After all, by the simple fact of his execution\nhe has brought peace where once was war. Both factions now reproach themselves\nfor having put the savior to death, ignorant of his holy nature. To avoid a\nrelapse into the War of All Against All, the reconciled society commemorates\nthe \u00e2\u20ac\u0153originary violence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by regularly repeated sacrifice (usually animal\nsacrifice) which, paradoxically, both recalls yet disguises the saving event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The syst3em, which Girard posits as the origin of every religion, may break down. This happens if and when a sacrificial crisis occurs. The participants somehow or other become alienated from the sacrifice. It comes to mean nothing to them and thus no longer functions as a social pressure valve. A prime case of the sacrificial crisis leading to social collapse would be the cessation of the Jerusalem Temple sacrifices that led directly to the Jewish-Roman War in 70 CE. Jewish revolutionaries put the priests to the sword, seeing them as lap dogs of the Roman occupiers. This spelled the end of the sacrifices that had been daily offered on behalf of Caesar. And this cranked up the Roman war machine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For some decades Jewish worshippers had been growing\nalienated from the sacrifices they offered. Remember the gospel scene in which\nJesus enters the Temple and overturns the tables of the moneychangers and drives\nthe animals from their stalls? Why were animals and currency exchange booths\nlocated in the Temple to begin with? Well, you had to sacrifice your sheep, and\nit had to be in perfect health. Suppose you brought Lambchop all the way from\nGalilee and he\/she broke a leg somewhere along the way, not an uncommon occurrence.\nOr suppose the sheep had some flaw you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t notice?  You were screwed! So, for your convenience,\nthere were Temple personnel who would sell you a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153government-inspected\u00e2\u20ac\u009d animal\non site. But what if you had only Roman denarii? Uh-oh. No good to use for\nsacred purchases! Those heathen coins bore \u00e2\u20ac\u0153idolatrous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d profiles of Caesar. You\ncould use them to pay Roman taxes, but God wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t touch \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcem with a ten foot\nshepherd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crook! (Hence \u00e2\u20ac\u0153render unto Caesar that which is Caesar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and unto\nGod that which is God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mark 12:17.) So the average worshipper was doubly\ndistanced (alienated) from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153his\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sacrifice: it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really his sheep. It\nwasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t from his flock. And he hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even been able to buy it with his own\nmoney! The sacrifice had become a charade. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I will not offer to Jehovah that\nwhich costs me nothing!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (2 Samuel 24:24; 1 Chronicles 21:24). It reminds me of\nTibetan prayer wheels: you just set them spinning as you walk by. Are you\npraying by remote control?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also a sense in which alienation is\nfundamental to social order. This one is explained by Peter L. Berger and\nThomas Luckmann in The Social\nConstruction of Reality<\/em>. Here alienation is a phase of a process by which\nthe ingenious inventions of human beings like ourselves are subsequently\nelevated to the stature of divine creations with unimpeachable authority and\nmajesty. In the beginning of a civilization the wise elders see the need for\nrules and laws in order to maximize peaceful coexistence. You have to eliminate\nas much theft, murder, rape, etc., as possible if you want to make any\nprogress. Those who frame these laws and customs know good and well the ad<\/em> hoc<\/em>\nnature of their creations, but the next generation inherits these rules as a\nreality external<\/em> to and prior<\/em> to themselves. Thus the social\narrangements appear with a new gravity they had not originally possessed. Perhaps\nthey will even come to be deemed God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s commandments fresh from Mount Sinai. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has happened here? Human beings become alienated\nfrom their inventions so that they become objectified, then reified<\/em>. Reification means that\narrangements designed by<\/em> humans for<\/em> humans are transformed into\nself-perpetuating realities served<\/em> by\nhumans. Someone who saw what was going on once said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sabbath was made for\nman, not man for the Sabbath\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Mark 2:27). Once people do<\/em> start to realize this, perhaps by reading Berger and Luckmann,\nrespect for the traditional norms declines. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What? You mean the Constitution\nwas written by rich white guys to feather their own nests?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The eventual result\nis called anomie<\/em>, normlessness, and,\nagain, the War of All Against All. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what Socrates was fighting against. The\nSophists had traveled outside Athens and discovered that all the city-states\nhad different codes, all of them ascribed to the gods. For them, the jig was\nup. They taught relativism. And Socrates was attempting to reestablish some\nobjective standards of truth and meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why do people who live off government largesse often\ntake it for granted? Because they have no investment in it. They did not earn\nit by their own labor (even if their disability made labor impossible), so they\ncannot value it. Given free housing, the poor may not take care of their homes\nbecause they have nothing invested in them, either. It is alienation. Similarly,\nstudents value their education if they have to pay for it. If they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, they\nmay not think it worthwhile to put any work into it. I have certainly observed\nthat in the classroom. Again, it is alienation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More alienation: Karl Marx wrote about the alienation\nof industrial laborers from the product of their labors. Where once artisans\ncould take great satisfaction in what they produced, pointing to a plow, a\npainting, a garment, and saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I made that!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the assembly line wage-slaves\nof Capitalism had but a nominal connection to what they collectively produced. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m\njust a cog in a wheel, Jody. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 In one bomb there are perhaps a thousand pieces.\nEvery piece requires a team of fifty, sixty, seventy people.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Richard Matheson\nand Rod Serling, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Third from the Sun,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The\nTwilight Zone, <\/em>January 8, 1960). The alienation here is quite similar to\nthat at stake in the crisis of sacrifice. In both, what the individual\noffers\/produces is no longer really his own. A hidden, vital link has been\nsevered. And because of it, the individual\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s efforts are empty. But is\nSocialism any better? In the Socialist Iron Curtain countries, the work ethic\nwas vitiated by the realization that one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, done well or badly, would not\nincrease one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wealth but would only vanish down the bottomless toilet of the\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153collective good.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Is this alienation really any different from or better than\nthat produced by industrial Capitalism? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to\nchange the world but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what to do, so I leave it up to you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In the\nmeantime, is there anything that can be said about the individual looking out\non this dreary landscape? I think of one more type of alienation that might\ncome in handy, and I find it in the Bhagavad\nGita<\/em>. There we read of something called karma\nyoga<\/em>. It is a type of religious devotion in which one offers one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s everyday\nwork as a sacrifice to one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chosen god. One obeys the dictates of one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dharma<\/em>, the set of occupational duties\ndictated by one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inherited caste. But one does not perform them with ordinary\nmotives, legitimate though they are, e.g., putting food on the table. Instead\none \u00e2\u20ac\u0153acts apart from the fruits of action,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d transforming the mundane into the\nsacred by consciously directing it to Krishna (or whomever) as if daily actions\nwere ritual sacrifices performed by Brahmin priests. This can be seen, I say,\nas a type of voluntary alienation from the product of one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s labor, via sublimating\nit into something else, something spiritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe there is also a less overtly religious\nversion of this karma yoga, and this version is well represented in the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance<\/em>, which is a\ndemythologized version of the Bhagavad Gita<\/em>,\nas the name itself reveals: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bagger Vance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d = \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bhaga Vad.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Anyway, Bagger\nappears out of nowhere to help retired golfer R. Junnah (the Arjuna of the Gita<\/em>) regain his rusty skills in\npreparation for a big tournament. Yes, he does want to win, but the essential\nthing Junnah needs to learn is that he must play the game for the sake<\/em> of the game, regardless of the\noutcome. That is to act without the fruits of action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this demythologized understanding of karma yoga, we\nleave behind the ironclad caste system of inflexible social stratification and\nrecognize instead what I believe to be the underlying and genuine meaning of\ndharma. Your dharma is the law of your own being as dictated by your inborn\ntalents, interests, and loves, wherever they came from. It is another name for\nwhat Aristotle called your entelechy<\/em>,\nthe \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that makes the acorn develop into an oak rather than a stalk of\ncelery. That which makes you, but not the guy next to you, want to become an\nartist or a trumpet player. You will not be happy doing anything else, and this\ninclination probably attests a natural talent, or you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be inclined to do\nsomething else. And as you pursue the direction set by your own nature you will\nnot be doing it as a mere means to an end but rather as an end in itself. That\nis voluntary alienation from the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cash value\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of your work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But suppose circumstances prevent you from the free\npursuit of your nature. It happens. Plenty. Here I think of Camus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s brilliant\nessay \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Myth of Sisyphus.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sisyphus was sentenced by the Olympian gods to\nwhile away eternity in Hades by pushing a huge boulder up to a hilltop, whence\nit must forever roll-bounce back down, whereupon the doomed man must retrieve\nit and struggle it up the hill again\u00e2\u20ac\u201dall to no purpose. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I call\nalienation from one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s labor! But Camus saw that even in, and especially<\/em> in, such circumstances (i.e.,\nthe real-world conditions thus symbolized) there is possible a higher\nalienation: the determined resistance of the human spirit, the attainment of an\ninner freedom transcending circumstances by a sheer attitude of heroic\ndefiance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So says Zarathustra. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Alienation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is perhaps most often discussed these days with reference to loners and other social outsiders, people who can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit in and suffer psychologically for it. But there are several other aspects of alienation that are equally important and deserve … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}