I was struck by the following paragraph in an article by George Monbiot which, to my way of seeing things, provides a perfect illustration of the house of mirrors which make up a contemporary Western conceptual prisonhouse.
Writing about neoliberalism and its associated fragmentation of our lives, Monbiot wrote:
So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.
My own investigations into the work of Charles Darwin as a master myth-maker - and cult hero - convinced me (as it did Marx and Engels at the time of his publication) that Darwin had privileged competition between individuals (within a species) at the expense of many other factors.
In other words, Darwin had converted the ideology of his own rising European elite into the very core of life's creative processes. He had inscribed a cultural formula into a fetishised crafted image of life (as an isolated 'individual' object removed from its comprehensive generative context).
The creation of a new 'modern' ideology was part of a growing 'secularisation' of life which distanced itself from the religious basis of the previous elite who had claims to a 'divine right to rule'.
The economic-social formation which promotes, support and serves as a patron for Darwin's form of 'naturalism' has its roots in exploitative social relations of many kinds.
ONTOLOGY - THE VICTOR'S TREASURE HOUSE
To have the formula for exploitative social relations converted from an ideology to a key part of 'ontology' is a major victory in terms of social control via the workings of an unconscious-in-culture. Marx and Engels, while seeking to engage with Darwin as part of their own project, also scoffed at his finding the basis of his own class position in the smallest levels of life.
For a critical thinker like George Monbiot to uncritically accept Darwin's role in 'reshaping human life and shifting the locus of power' demonstrates just how this process works at a deep level - providing a key part of the architecture of a modern European master narrative - a new"Grand Design".
But this Grand Design, however, is a cultural creation and has to be seen as forming a form of cult-house in the same way we would be able to see a similar construction in, say, the Sepik region of New Guinea.
All manner of past successes - including political victories between competing elites - are built into an unconscious-in-culture. There they continue their work in propping up the status quo - Sartre's 'practico-inert' (if i understand him correctly). Putting the breaks on the very creative process which fashioned that status-quo becomes a key game in play.
In framing the limits of our perceptions, the unconscious-in-culture remains invisible. Denying its own existence is pat of this self-privileging process. Any claim of "a biological law" as imagined in modern times must be subject to full critical scrutiny from a post-modern perspective. Biology and ideology have common (and unavoidable) cultural foundations.
FLOATING FOUNDATIONS
It is not the actual workings of life 'objectively viewed' which support the views of Neoliberalism but, merely, another architectural important strut within the same conceptual edifice. And -while it desperately seeks to anchor itself in time and space (proclaiming the end of history etc) floats within the neurons of a shifting electric cosmos.
To say that Darwin's theory of evolution is incomplete is, i believe, to operate in exactly the same spirit as he himself did. But Darwin did not want to follow through the social consequences of his own world-view (no additional social and political revolution for him in his comfortable position at Down House, with shares in railways in other peoples living countries etc).
Our world is much warmer than that of Darwin's wind-powered voyage around the world of Beagle. The present dominating modern elites - and the whole ways of life they embody - have now become dangerously unearthed.
Life is always a creative challenge, and that challenge takes different forms as (a nod to Darwin) we cycle endlessly around our star. Some of us conceptual craftspeople must opt to accept that challenge.
There is no denying that, in order to re-earth our own Being and to find more stable Ways of Being, we now need to fashion new cosmologies - new 'ontologies' - by which the whole of life may lead full lives.
HERE WE GO AGAIN!
"Making things new again" is a process which is found in many ways of life - from rituals in stable societies through revolutions and to laying the conceptual foundations of imperial exploitation and .
There is nothing new in it! But that is no reason why we should not play out the hand life has dealt us at this time. Life makes things new on a seasonal and life-cycle basis all the time.
Personally, i find much food for thought in the Ways of First Peoples. Darwin met these people in this land known by the exonym "Australia" on his trip around the world. Their world-views and practices were of no real interest to him. Modern anthropology, made possible in part by Darwin, has made up for that.
But, by remaining largely within the same world-view as Darwin, modern anthropology never really reached the escape velocity necessary to enter into the high level of life which exists in this country. Modernity now falls away behind us like the first stage of a powerful rocket!
In my view, based on lessons garnered from First Peoples Ways, we can reach the appropriate strategic conceptual level to tackle this task when we change cognitive gear and replace a 'struggle between individuals within the same species" with:
"Life is a text generated by a cosmic context"
All manner of new possibilities for relating with our surroundings then open up.
Bruce Reyburn
October 2016
Lately, as part of the Darwin 200 celebration, i have been writing about Darwin, naturalism and related matters. See