morality – Becoming Human

Zwarte Piet

As always around this time of year, some people are getting upset about the Dutch Saint Nicholas tradition of “Zwarte Piet” (Black Pete). Although it is pretty clear that the origins of this character have nothing to do with racism (some say it goes back to two black ravens who accompanied Wotan in Germanic mythology), and it is even more obvious that it also has nothing to do with racism today, it seems that some people nevertheless take offense at it, thereby playing into the hands of the Dutch political far right and their hate-filled discourse of an immigrant threat to Dutch culture.

Not, I think, very smart, particularly as Black Pete lost his role of tormentor of bad children a while ago, at least in “official” traditions. This hardly seems like the worst social ill one could imagine to protest against, and its elimination would do nothing to promote non-racist attitudes on the part of those stupid enough to have such attitudes in the first place. I venture to suggest that the only reason the Zwarte Piet tradition attracts criticism is because it is an easy but irrelevant target for a complex problem. In other words, this is the availability heuristic at work. During the decades it might take to shame the tradition into submission, actual important issues around say education, policing and discrimination will receive less attention than they could and should. It is easier to blame Zwarte Piet. In fact, the word in everyday Dutch has become a byword for a symbolic figure made to carry the weight of society’s ills: a scapegoat.

The myth does bear deconstruction, however. Although it is said that the contemporary figure no longer has this association, older Zwarte Piet songs make clear that his role, at a certain moment in history in any case, was to punish children who misbehaved and therefore did not merit the rewards that Saint Nicholas was set to bring. It seems that this role separated out from an earlier ambiguity in the person of St Nicholas himself, who, as a saint, was felt to be too good to inflict punishment, a role that therefore needed to be delegated to another character, even if one whose scope of operations was closely linked to that of St Nicholas himself and bore no signs of autonomy. That such a menacing figure is portrayed as being black might constitute or at least contribute to racial stereotyping, but I venture to suggest this is not really the point. The point is that he exists at all. In other words, that we fail to criticize the way in which we fabricate myths in order to control the behavior of children, and then don’t even take responsibility for it by delegating the dirty jobs to someone else.

Zwarte Piet is just one incarnation of this universal bogeyman who happens, unlike the German “Schwarzer Mann“, to be literally, and entirely incidentally, black. His scarcely critized social purpose is to allow adults to manipulate children through the threat of unspoken evil consequences vectored by the agency of omnipotent spirits which inexplicably have not, however, vented their disapproval on the adults in questions rather than their kids.

The Bogeyman has a lot in common with the devil or the demiurge, figures who crystallized out of the ambiguity of traditional representations of God as both loving and savage. He also lives on in adult imaginations, infusing the sinister powers of any public institution that is there to enforce supposedly moral order, and frequently also other more nebulous spirits.

That can lead to real psychic damage, and it’s a game we should stop playing, whatever the color of the skin of the personality we delegate it to. If a compliance-figure has any role, he or she should take moral responsibility for all of his or her decisions, favorable and unfavorable. Better yet, we should not delegate the enforcement of necessary social norms to any fantasy personality at all, whose actions are beyond reasoning and debate. I am as guilty of it as anyone, but God and Father Christmas have crystallized out of the same dissociation that subsequently produced the devil and Zwarte Piet as mere second-order emanations of our inability to reconcile what we think we need to do with how we want to feel about it and how we want our children to view us. We would do better simply to reunite moral authority and enforcement in the same flesh and blood person, quite able to reconcile these diverse roles, ourselves.

The Will to Power

I have recently been thinking about what Nietzsche referred to as the Will to Power.

Nietzsche’s concept expresses, glossed in modern terms, the intuition that there is, in our biological constitution, a source of self-becoming which is identifiably and subjectively moral and yet individual and innate.

Nietzsche was dissatisfied with Schopenhauer’s concept of the will to live and with the Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest. For all that he challenged in German moral philosophy, he remained convinced that man had an innate, if often latent, moral drive and that this was biological in nature. Had Nietzsche lived later, he would surely have found Freud’s “pleasure principle” just as reductionist. The Will to Power itself is amoral in nature and its biological foundations are not really explored: morality is a second order effect that Nietzsche expects to emerge from affirming this basic drive rather than repressing it. What a world would look like in which people lived in accordance with the will to power is not Nietzsche’s concern, and at first sight the notion seems as compatible with altruism and benevolence as it does with despotism and misanthropy. On closer reflection though, the charge of misanthropy must be a misunderstanding, because the superman derives no benefit or pleasure from subjugation of others; he speaks “badly of man but not ill of him”. As for subjugation of nature, Nietzsche views it as an intrinsic folly.

So the question is, what is the biological basis of the will to power? It seems to me that Nietzsche misunderstood Darwin in imputing to him a necessary dependence on utilitarian notions. From at least a modern perspective, this seems not really to underlie Darwin’s discoveries. All that really would seem to matter is that I pass my genes on, and not that I am happy with my life.

Nietzsche posits that vitality is the root of man’s creativity and the best of which he is capable. As such, the will to power seems to rest, biologically speaking, upon the drive to procreate. It is this, seemingly so basic, drive, and which can undeniably also be experienced as entirely trivial, that at the same time is so inextricably linked to our most compelling experiences of dissolution and ecstasy. Whereas Freud thought that moral effort was needed to channel sexual energy into the achievements of civilization, Nietzsche is much more trusting in the natural propensity of this creative energy to overflow into the entirety of man’s social and inner experience: it does not need to be directed, it only needs to be unleashed.

The will to power and the drive to procreate or to experience dissolution are not, however, precisely the same thing. If this were so, the will to power would be everywhere; it is hard to imagine how societal forces would keep it in check. Descriptively however, few people seem to embark on the journey to which their vitality invites. For those people, and I count myself among them, allowing societal forces to prevail over ones inner sense is simply an impossibility; it is inherently immoral, however noble might be that to which one is exhorted. The only moral being one possibly can be is the one that one is. Of course one exercises judgment, discernment, in practical action but this is really not very difficult because one is not at war with the outer order of things, one is simply awake to the opportunities to change it that may arise. All else is tension, and counter-reactions to it are assured. If morality arises from the natural state of man, moral crusades can never lead anywhere. All I need to do and all I can do is to take you, if you are ready, by the hand and lead you to places which can trigger your own awakening. Force is available to me, but it is useless. As I have written before, meditation is my only moral imperative.

But, you may protest, if I see injustices of which I am not the author, do I not have to act?

No. But at least I may. If I embrace the will to power, I am no longer powerless, no longer trapped in knee-jerk reactions to external events, reactions which are almost entirely determined by my own inner struggles. I am serene. I can act. My power is available to me and I have clarity as to the potential rewards of my action. And as such, I am finally a moral subject. Certainly, good deeds may contribute to mankind’s well-being, but they do so proportionately to the inner serenity of their authors.

Ultimately, it remains a mystery why most of mankind, like the animals from which we are descended, is in a state of more or less deep sleep. The will to power, in conscious form, seems to characterize only the few and at this stage of our social and perhaps biological evolution it is a pure leap of faith to imagine it as potentially characterizing the many. We are left with the mystery of consciousness, this quality which suffuses nature and yet is distinct from it, seemingly, in an evasive sense, superordinate to it; which erupts into human minds and human history more as a messenger from another realm than as an expected basis for our being. It is alien to us, yet our deepest nature; we long for it, but have mostly no idea where to look. Humanity as animal plus consciousness is an aspirational equation, even a self-delusion at times. Grounded in our biological nature, the will to power necessarily impels us not simply to recreate the conditions of a more natural life, although this is a precondition, but to be something which, so far and with rare exceptions, humanity has not been.

Property, debt and the money supply

I have just finished reading David Graeber’s book “Debt: The First 5000 Years“. It is somewhat relevant to our topic here, and in any case it is interesting, so let me summarize it and give a brief review.

In the first part of the book, Graeber, who is an anthropologist, takes to task the traditional notion of economics whereby cash was invented to reduce the transaction costs inherent in a system of barter. I am not sure how original his thesis is, but it is persuasive. In a nutshell, Graeber says that we know very well this is not true. In fact, the ability of cash to serve as a general means of engaging in daily economic transactions is no earlier than the 19th century and even postdates Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Apparently he knew this very well. Graeber says that Smith’s notion of the relationship between salaried worker and capitalist employer is not descriptive at all, but prescriptive, indeed utopian. In traditional societies, and Graeber quotes many examples, cash, when it exists, serves ceremonial, not transactional purposes. Rather, everyday transactions are carried out on credit.

Credit may mean a number of things. It may simply be a general expectation of reciprocity over time, which indeed may not even presuppose a predisposition to think in terms of personal or kin benefit at all (as per E.O.Wilson’s theory of multilevel selection). I have argued elsewhere that the role of emotions and empathy, and more particularly of shame, is to be understood against this background. On the other hand, in more complex societies, especially against the backdrop of taxation, as well as the standardization of weights and measures, credit becomes a matter of accounting records and ultimately transferable bearer instruments. Credit in this case can be standardized in terms of a commodity unit of account, even if the commodity itself is not exchanged. Official tables of correspondance between one commodity and another can also be promulgated by state authorities. Graeber argues that this antedates coinage, and a fortiori the general use of coinage, by a considerable margin. Thus the story of money is the story of debt.

This account occupies the first four chapters. As of chapter five, the book for me starts to come apart. In that chapter, Graeber attempts a moral philosophy of debt, but is clearly out of his depth in doing so. There are interesting elements in relation to slavery in chapters six and seven, but the point Graeber is trying to make is never clear. The rest of the book attempts a world history of money, and is disappointing. There is an omnipresent ideological underpinning to what Graeber says, and a disappointing lack of critical distance vis-a-vis the international financial economy. Regardless of its origins, one would have wanted an account which assessed its strengths and weaknesses in terms of serving the well-being of the human race today. Possibly even some thought-through proposals for change. Graeber is a long way from rising to this challenge; so much so that one is left wondering what the point in fact was of the analysis of slavery and of the moral nature of debt which he belabors.

That the book was going to fail in any such enterprise was for me obvious already from the title. Why 5000 years? Graeber argues that everything started, or at least starting going wrong, with the first agrarian empires. It is not at all clear why the fact of empire (however it is defined) is relevant. Humankind has been organizing itself into agriculturally based communities for at least twice this period. Such communities enabled community size to exceed the tribal unit for which our brain seems preprogrammed (known as Dunbar’s number). Once this happened, hierarchy and specialization became possible, property become a key issue, and it was no longer possible to keep track of a network of implied reciprocal obligations. There is every reason to date the development of formal credit systems, guaranteed by a central authority, to this date, rather than arbitrarily to begin at the dawn of written records.

Why does Graeber make what seems such an obvious mistake? In one sense, it is not of particular importance to his thesis. But there is, I think, a deeper reason. Graeber seeks to promulgate a romantic notion of the “human economy” in primitive societies (although he protests he does not). A “human economy” is an “economic system primarily concerned not with the accumulation of wealth, but with the creation, destruction and rearranging of human beings”. Logically, one supposes that “human economies” evolved, under the force of state formation (“empires”), into credit economies. Ignoring the fact that the purpose of the latter is hardly, per se, “the accumulation of wealth”, what type of society would be expected to be characterized by a “human economy”?

Graeber does not answer this question, but the examples he gives concern both hunter-gatherer and sedentary populations. And therein lies the rub, for these are organized on fundamentally different principles, and their economic systems reflect this.

Graeber says of this type of economy that “some are quite humane, others extraordinarily brutal”. Since, however, it is his own argument that the means of exchange relates directly to the exercise of violence, he should be more attentive to this distinction. In fact, what he misses is quite as basic as what Smith misses also. In the sedentary populations, property and intra-group violence have already arisen; and both credit and currency are used in a way which intrinsically recognizes and reinforces this, whatever their form and regardless of the keeping of written records. Graeber is blind to this because he accepts uncritically the monogamy myth, failing to see it as a primal form of violence, and this despite the rich variety in the sexual organization of the societies he mentions. He fails to see that monogamy is an outgrowth of property systems and not intrinsic to the human condition.

This matters, because human economies, according to his own definition, are about “organizing” human beings. Later, this means slaves. Before this, it means women in reproductive age. It is because property rights are already asserted by men over women that “human economies” have anything to ceremonially exchange. Absent this feature, the notion has no sense or raison d’etre.

Strangely enough, Graeber describes at length in his book rituals of exchange witnessed amongst Australian aborigines, whose social organization remained (or more probably returned to) one of hunter-gatherers. These economies therefore have a reasonable claim to incarnate principles which arose prior to “human economies”. And guess what: attitudes to sex are much more relaxed; indeed, sexual exchange plays a key part in the overall ritual of economic exchange between the tribal groups. In fact barter occurs in primitive societies only in an inter-group setting, and always within an overall context of socialization between the groups.

Rather than an inspiration for an economic theory truer to mankind’s basic nature, the “human economy” therefore seems to me to mark the beginning of where things went wrong. It would be hugely naive to appeal to such a model as a solution for the world’s economic woes.

Things certainly got for a long time worse before they started to get better. This, however, is no indictment of credit or currency as such. The behavioral assumptions of classical economics have been under attack for decades, and Graeber does contribute something. We are still lacking a better model. But the models of classical economies are perfectly good for most of the purposes to which they are put, and distinctly better than any guide to practical action which might emerge from Graeber’s views. We do not have to believe the myth of homo economicus, and we certainly do not have to accept the distribution of wealth and opportunity which history has bequeathed us. We can acknowledge the embedded violence in the economic system as it exists, and still use the science to improve the happiness of human beings – which is its foremost goal.

Some words on marriage, by Shelley

We are already two centuries later. Hard to believe.

Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature.

Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve.

How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right of private judgement should that law be considered which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the object.

The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been discarded. …

But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and disunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the votarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to many others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of delicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth than its belief?

The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner or the welfare of their mutual offspring: those of less generosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger out the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state of incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of their children takes its colour from the squabbles of the parents; they are nursed in a systematic school of ill-humour, violence, and falsehood. Had they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered their union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery: they would have connected themselves more suitably, and would have found that happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is for ever denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been separately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were miserable and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to the perverse: they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity.

Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder; and the punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape reproach is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature;— society declares war against her, pitiless and eternal war: she must be the tame slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy: the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet SHE is in fault, SHE is the criminal, SHE the froward and untamable child,— and society, forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion from her undefiled bosom! Society avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation; she is employed in anathematizing the vice to-day, which yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is formed one-tenth of the population of London: meanwhile the evil is twofold. Young men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious and miserable beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied; annihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage.

I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would be promiscuous: on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion. But this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That which will result from the abolition of marriage will be natural and right; because choice and change will be exempted from restraint.

In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image should she look in the mirror of nature!—

(Notes on Queen Mab, 5.189)

Porn as meditation

In which I blast my blog into the outer reaches of cyberspace. Well, we’ll see. There is no intention to court controversy, but, as always, there are some things I just have to say.

Google these two words – porn and meditation – together, and what you’ll get is mostly links to pseudo-oriental “treatments” for (so-called) “porn addiction”. Although many people enjoy (so-called) porn, and sex-positive activists have generally embraced its production and consumption, at least within certain limits/genres, it seems that it has yet to make its way into the mainstream, or even any sidestream, of new spirituality. Continue reading “Porn as meditation”

Humanity’s one sole moral imperative

I am not someone who uses the word “morality” with any degree of comfort. Nietzsche is my hero, and Nietzsche believed that all that was good proceeded from vitality, not moralistic prescriptions.

However, I have recently discovered that I have, and believe in, one true moral imperative, one thing that is forever, irreducibly, beyond esthetics.

That thing is, simply put, meditation.

Up until now, I guess I had been working with the assumption that the spiritual path, the path of healing and self-discovery, was a sort of optional extra for people thus inclined. Not really indispensable. Nothing I could really exhort others to follow, however much I believe in and value it myself.

I now see that this is not so.

Indeed, evil and suffering have, it seems to me, only one source: our eternal propensity to flee our inner conflicts by projecting them on other people. And thus self-examination is the sole moral imperative to which the human race is called, the sole choice which is not purely esthetic.

This has, I guess, a worthy pedigree in moral philosophy, from Socrates’ exhortation to “know thyself” through Kierkegaard’s fevered piety to the esthetics of the post-structuralists. This notwithstanding, meditation has somehow, for me at least, stayed off the map. Perhaps it is the immobilism of the hierarchical cultures – India, Japan, China – which give most place to meditation in their spiritual practices which explains this unhelpful connotation. And yet, meditation responds most holistically to the Socratic call – not through the sole medium of the mind which the Greeks elevated out of all proportion, but through the media of the body, spirit and soul, the instincts, longings and pleasures which inhabit them, and the quintessential encounter with the other. Indeed, it is not only a question of knowing oneself, in some abstract and theoretical way, but of truly becoming oneself.

It has an equally worthy pedigree in sociology and social theory, with its roots in Marx, Durkheim, Freud and Reich, developed in the psychology of Erich Fromm, and is discussed in extenso in the present day discipline of psychohistory – the study of how childhood trauma relates to war and social upheaval. And indeed it has long been clear to me that I had no choice than to pursue my spiritual path because I owed it to my children. Still, I was reluctant to prescribe it to others.

No longer, then.

If you are reading this, know: your sole moral imperative on this earth is self-examination and meditation.

A spiritual manifesto

When I married my partner, almost to the day five years ago, we, like many couples who are dissatisfied with traditional concepts of marriage, were faced with the challenge of how to formulate our marriage vows and our marriage contract to reflect what it was we at that time really believed was the meaning and content of the commitments we were entering into. We didn’t find a lot of resources out there to help us do that, because every alternative we found – be it polyamorous, Wiccan, or other new age notions – seemed to be envisaged, by its adherents, as a new orthodoxy. That is, it was characterized by a bunch of behavioral prescriptions and once-for-all negotiated space but it did not go to the heart of the sacredness of human relation and of the human person, nor did it reflect truly, for us, the deep spiritual urges underlying the wish to enter into a relationship and to bring up children. So we did our best to find words.

Five years later, and I see the problem in a different light and from a number of new angles. I want therefore to try to propose a solution to it, and I hope I can count on the support of some of the very wise people I have met over the intervening years who have a similar clarity of vision as to what it is that is actually going on in the space of human relationships and its meaning within the context of humankind’s spiritual evolution.

I believe it should be possible to distill, out of the various experiences and movements that have brought us an immense new global consciousness of our human potential, some principles which are perfectly universal and to which any person who has seen beyond her or his conditioning and glimpsed their true nature will find it natural to adhere. Indeed there is no effort of adherence required, merely an effort of formulation. This article is trying only to introduce the concept and some basic ideas; on the basis hereof I hope together with others to arrive at a text which can really find a natural consensus, because it seems to me that on all essential points of it all authentic persons and teachers would agree.

What are the key elements of such a declaration?

Firstly, it seems to me that it must be in the first person. The ancient Hebrews (basing themselves on the even more ancient Sumerians) formulated their code of laws in the second person and credited it with divine sanction. We have been living with it and all its inadequacies for over three thousand years. Its manipulative and paternalistic character as well as its primitive nature are plain to see.

Our new set of principles will not be imposed on us from outside, it will simply emanate from our soul; and it will not serve a purpose of organizing society around a set of ethical precepts, which is a worthy but separate purpose. It will rather serve to communicate and reach out, and its effects will be only in the private sphere.

The new set of principles must be based on a complete renunciation of any claim on the life of another person. We have recognized the evil of slavery and of many social injustices; with the same passion we must recognize the evil of traditional prescriptive family institutions, chief among them marriage. It is a Faustian bargain which 21st century man can no longer tolerate. It predates on mankind’s desperate desire to achieve some measure of spiritual advancement and consolation, and should in its traditional form be simply outlawed: the law should recognize, at it does in so many other areas, that a contract written under such oppressive conditions cannot be binding. This is the principle which has underpinned humanity’s progressive emancipation ever since liberal thinkers began challenging the moral precepts of the church and the inherited social order.

Marriage is not a divine institution, but a contract between two individuals subject to a high degree of social incentive and coercion; marriage as a contract is, however, in almost all cases based on a collective misrepresentation, a social psychosis; even if such misrepresentation is innocent, it seems to me that (whilst I recognize that children enter into the institution without contracting or being able to contract to do so, which is the only remaining justification for a legal marriage regime I can see) all marriage contracts should be voidable by the automatic application of contract law. There is doubtless a need to reformulate the institution of marriage in order to protect the interests of children, rather than abolish it entirely; with this I do not take issue. However, such an altruistic concern is hardly the foundation of marriage law today.

Whilst marriage law is the easiest target because of the institutionalized nature of marriage, an adherent to the declaration will undertake, of course, to recognize patterns of manipulation in all of her or his human relations and both to admit them and to seek to go beyond them, vis a vis children, colleagues, friends and lovers.

The declaration must also be objectively multilateral and subjectively unilateral. There are no parties to the agreement, not even those others who happen to subscribe to the same text. The benefits I accord to you are the same benefits I accord to every human being, not only to those other human beings who are as “enlightened” as myself and still less to one single human being. (Philosophically speaking they may, indeed, not stop at the species boundary either; but for our purposes I think there is no need to develop this).

The text will need to take a form in order to underpin community but it cannot be rigidly formulated or breed hermeneutical bureaucracies. No one need ever tell another what it means or does not mean. No one will certify whether or not my behavior conforms to it in practice.

It should be and can be, I believe, perfectly ecumenical and even scientific. The basis for it is our understanding of how the self is formed, developed in psychoanalysis, and how it acts, developed in psychology more generally. To complete the picture, a simple extrapolation of liberal and humanistic principles on which there is wide agreement is enough.

And what are the advantages?

My hope is that the manifesto will constitute common ground on which spiritual people can build their relationships and communities. Communication can take place around it. Some may consciously decide to derogate from it, and they may have their own reasons for doing so. However, relations between spiritual people may hereby come to take place on a basis which is explicit, not in the shadows of hoped-for shared values and unelucidated conflicts of interest. Simply put, if you adhere joyfully and willingly to the principles set out, a lot is possible between us; if you do not, I am forewarned of the difficulties ahead.

The manifesto will be only a basis, a kind of framework law or constitution. Much will come on top, much that is specific to individuals, couples and groups. However, as a basis for communication and a source of shared understanding from the outset of human interactions, it is an invaluable shortcut which will slash the opportunity costs of building community. I envisage its use across the web as an invitation to authenticity and real dialogue: in social media whether, like Facebook, general in scope or devoted specifically to meeting new people.

I would also like to add that I am not “against” manipulation and even its past institutionalization, I perfectly well understand the circumstances under which it has arisen and the role that it has played and continues to play in human society. It can be argued that the institutions in question, although I qualify them as evil, are in fact a bulwark against greater evil and as such a least-bad social choice. This is not a debate I am entering into. I speak here to persons wishing to leave behind the childhood of the human race and become autonomous, empowered, enlightened individuals. For such people, these legacy institutions are inimical to spiritual growth, and this is the real point. Compromises with civil authorities doubtless need to be found. However, at the heart of what our human relationships are really about, we can all choose. I invite to this choice.

And so finally, what could this manifesto look like? It would be nice to have something memorable, a sort of Aquarian decalogue. It needs to start with my attitude to myself. As I imagine it may be difficult to sum up what needs to be said in ten short headlines, there may need to be a paragraph accompanying each to clarify the meaning, not perhaps for those of us to whom these spiritual principles are intuitive but certainly for those for whom they are not.

I don’t want to write it here as I first want to gather ideas. But let me try, to make it concrete, to give something of the possible flavor:

I understand the origin of my emotionality in my childhood experience
I take responsibility for my own experience of the world
I acknowledge my conditioning and do not seek to defend it
I distinguish between my inner feelings and what is going on in the outer world
I communicate my feelings without blame or criticism
I communicate my needs and wishes without making demands
In managing our common interests and those of those who depend on us, I will treat you with fairness and respect and honor the differences between us
I honor your need for touch and your sexuality
I honor your vulnerability
I speak my truth and listen to yours
I do not instrumentalize or objectivize you
It is my honor to delight you and to serve you

…..

Your thoughts and views are very welcome!

Society 2.0

There is a lot of debate (whether any of it is informed in nature, I have no idea) about how the interactive internet – aka Web 2.0 – will impact on society at the level of individuals’ behavior and the tolerance of diversity. Many people seem to fear that the knowledge that much of what one does is now in the public domain will make people more conformist and paranoid, trivialize social debate and make society grey and vulnerable to the worst kinds of populism. What is already hardly carried out in public for fear of social opprobrium will be pushed back into greater and almost total obscurity. Very few people seem to be of the opinion that self-publishing (and indeed third-party publishing of ones personal data) will have the opposite effect: make people more aware of diversity, more willing to differentiate their public persona, and more tolerant of others.

The weight of opinion around this topic is quite easy to understand, and not particularly easy to argue with. It is not obvious that, on the whole, differentiating one public persona is incentive-compatible; in a world where reasons to reject people – in professional and social fields – are much more in demand than reasons to admire them, revealing who one truly is – unless who one truly is happens to match the greyness society demands – seems to suffer from a prisoner’s dilemma. On the other hand, the drive for self-expression runs deep in human nature; one needs only to recall the bravery of anti-totalitarian movements around the world to be convinced of this: what revolution was ever, in the narrow sense we are used to thinking in, incentive-compatible for those who led it? Eppur si muove. In business school we are taught that differentiating ones product and operating in a profitable niche is a much more fruitful strategy than succombing to the “commodity magnet”: the race to cut costs and appeal purely on price is a cutthroat one indeed.

So there are at least some arguments on either side, however easy it is to be pessimistic. But my point is not this. I do not, in any case, believe that social outcomes are preordained; social conditions underlie the trajectory of history, but free will, charisma and leadership nonetheless play a role out of all keeping with what one might naively imagine. As it is said in Zen, it takes only one candle to dissipate the darkness. Social prognostics may entertain others; I am more interested in moral action and social change.

And in this regard, things are clear. I suspect, in some very approximate sense and on the important assumption of continued if imperfect democracy, that this game knows two long-term equilibria: one in which there is a large set of conformists and a small set of individualists (which shrinks much more if minority rights are undermined by the large set of conformists), and one in which tolerance of diversity becomes the norm.

The outcome will depend on you and I; on the small acts of heroism whereby often unsophisticated individuals stand up for what their heart tells them is true and right, at least somewhat regardless of personal cost. Managing one’s on-line persona is reasonable (and there’s a lot of guidance on how to do it) – first impressions matter. Yet allowing paranoia to prevent us exploiting the huge potential of the worldwide web for personal development and social change is not. Someone determined enough could uncover a lot about my identity and use it maliciously against me, I have no doubt; but I think it is morally incumbent upon me to take that risk which is the reverse side of the tremendous opportunity I have to change people’s thinking and behavior for the better. And that’s what leadership is about.