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In what ways does my journaling activity support and reinforce the (illusory) idea that I am a ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐? Although (following Nisargadattaโs lead) I have written a great deal about the dubious โrealityโ or substantiality of the person, I wonder if all that ink has had the slightest impact upon the situation I still find myself in, for I still act and speak and experience myself as a person.
The book we are currently reading in my discussion group is Hillmanโs ๐โ๐ ๐๐๐ข๐โ๐ ๐ถ๐๐๐. Does this book significantly challenge the general belief in substantial personhood shared by so many? I donโt think so. If anything, he has merely augmented and complicated the problem by pointing to and emphasizing the importance of the daimon. While the daimon is distinguished, to some extent, from the โhuman, all too humanโ host that provides a vehicle for it, Hillman does not thereby abolish individuality (or a kind of divine, individual โcallingโ and fate). Quite the contrary. The daimon is presented as an ever deeper (because necessary) element or essence of our individuality, our โone-of-a-kind-ness.โ Hillmanโs book attempts to educate or instruct the reader on how to recognize the invisible (daimon) in the visible(the outer behavior or traits of the person). Hillmanโs book is an implicit recommendation or encouragement for the reader to acknowledge his/her โacornโ and find a way to assist that seedโs growth into the oak tree it aims to become.
Nietzscheโs autobiography, ๐ธ๐๐๐ ๐ป๐๐๐, may be regarded as a distilled synopsis of all his previous books. And, as anyone who has studied Nietzsche knows, his books are as โconfessionalโ and โpersonalโ (in their form and content) as they are โobjectiveโ and unbiased โ if not more so. Nietzsche is very clear and unapologetic about this individual, subjective, personal character of his ideas and perspectives. And yet, his ideas and perspectives clearly would not โresonate withโ and fascinate so many readers if they were narrow, excessively idiosyncratic and indigestibly perverse.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there is something essentially polemical โ or divisive โ about Nietzscheโs teachings and his impact upon modern philosophy. Nietzscheโs philosophizing is nothing if it is not passionate โ and much of this passion consists of disgust, mocking contempt, worshipful admiration, arrogant disdain, proud self-assertion and self-distinction. Few philosophers have drawn as many โ or thicker โ lines between themselves and others as Nietzsche has drawn. In Nietzsche we are confronted with a kind and degree of personal individuality that practically demands a response from the reader. And yet, a matching response would either have to be on Nietzscheโs terms or it would have to somehow supersede and transcend those imposing terms, would it not?
Is the passion for distinction-drawing that seems to be a notable feature of individuation fundamentally at odds or in tension with the spirit of love (agape), which dissolves or overlooks such distinctions? Approaching this question from a different angle: Is there something essentially polemical(agonistic, discriminating, divisive, separative, warlike) at work behind the unearthing, cultivation, protection, and assertion of our individual personhood, our โone-of-a-kind-nessโ?
In what ways is this process of individuating (based on subtle, rigorous distinction-drawing) more or less synonymous with the growth of articulate, differentiated, nuanced consciousness itself? If individualized consciousness is extended and deepened by its differentiation from murky-muddy mass consciousness, this means that it is earned by overcoming an initial condition of identification (unconscious merger) with the collective or mass. To what extent may this initial (innocent, Edenic) state of unconscious identification be equated with love(familial, communal, universal)? And when this โparticipation mystiqueโ is disturbed, โseen through,โ and overcome, what then? Is the โdisenchanted,โ sobered-up ego thenceforth nudged toward a state of isolation and alienation?
We see a variety of well-articulated individualities ๐๐ข๐ก ๐กโ๐๐๐ to refer to, consult, or follow. Petrarch, Montaigne, โShakespeare-Hamlet,โ Bacon, Goethe, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, D. H. Lawrence, Freud, Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Jung, Hillman, Giegerich, are just a few noteworthy specimens of โmodernโ ๐๐๐๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ข๐๐ consciousness.
Given the scope and influence of this potent cultural movement and ideal โ of the sacrosanct, autonomous, self-reliant individual โ in modern times, it seems reasonable to view it as a compensatory or corrective measure against its polar opposite โ โmass-mindedness.โ At one level it is a healthy attempt to preserve that fragile and delicate plant, the potential individual, to protect it against those corrosive collective factors which reduce individuality to a nuisance or threat โ an attitude and policy we find even today, in collectivist, anti-individualist cultures and regimes outside the West.
The โlevelingโ and homogenizing power of collective mass-mindedness has grown (exponentially) with the staggering human population explosion and with the spread of democratic-egalitarian values and habits of mind and heart. The threat of having oneโs individual voice, identity, and judgment drowned out by the blaring Muzak of mass values, mass politics, mass media, mass entertainment, and mass (mis-)education is so real and so enormous that the seed of individuality in most humans is already crushed before adolescence โ by which point most of us are inescapably conscripted into some form of servitude to the tyrannical collective โ or hive. It should come as little surprise, then, that most of the aforementioned champions of the individual are either skeptical or frankly critical towards mass democracy, mass values, and mass entertainment. These โ for them โ were, in a sense, the enemy. Like a Goliath, these mass factors were gigantic and, like many fabled giants, a little stupid and thuggish. Only a clever, cool-headed, and well-aiming David stood a chance against such a Goliath or Leviathan. Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles all appear to have recognized, before the โwilled martyrdomโ of Socrates and 399 BC, the fragility โ and therefore the rarity or unlikelihood โ of what we might call individual conscience or consciousness. Plato, observing Socratesโ fate, was keenly aware of the general hostility the many (demos) bear towards โphilosophyโ โ or the unaided, individual quest for wisdom. Like Socrates himself, philosophical inquiry is notoriously irritating, disturbing, caustic, troublemaking, exposing, and demanding of much disciplined effort. Hence, the continuing un-popularity of genuine, as opposed to spurious, philosophy. In-authentic, knock-off philosophizing goes by the names of ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ฆ, ๐ฃ๐๐๐ข๐๐ , ๐๐๐๐๐๐ . Christianity, in its early beginnings, attempted to spread the idea of the individual (moral) conscience and the notion of the individual soul in relation to an all-seeing God, but a mind-policing ecclesia and orthodox moral-theological rules โfixedโ that โ until the Reformation, but by then it was too late. Modern empirical science emerged side-by-side with the Reformation and, before long, the very idea of the โsoulโ โ let alone, an individuated one โ became untenable. Matter mattered, and materialism reduced and equalized the individual into atoms, molecules, genes, and species.
One is entitled at this point to ask, โWhy even pursue this Apollonian โprincipium individuationisโ when all it is likely to result in is the alienation and isolation of unique alone-ness? Why not, instead, opt for the Dionysian, Woodstocky, boundary-erasing state of intoxicated-euphoric ๐ก๐๐๐๐กโ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ?โ Even that peerless, pugilistic distinction-drawer โ Friedrich Nietzsche โ seems, eventually, to have chosen Dionysus as his guru-guide. And, regardless of whether it was Bacchus or brain sickness that reduced him to the helpless state of babbling oblivion he was confined to for the last ten years of his earthly existence, it is a darkly ironic finale for perhaps the most thoroughly and consciously differentiated individual in recorded human history.
Perhaps individual self-consciousness at its fullest development may be likened to the narrow passageway in the hourglass. Life, like sand grains, passes through the restricted aperture of the self-conscious individual. It is precisely because of the limit imposed (by the ๐ ๐โ๐๐๐๐ก๐๐ of individual consciousness) on the flow of the life material that it is able to be registered and responded to in a more or less coherent way. If that aperture was too wide, the flood of material would be overwhelming and the consciousness would lose its focus and quality. You would wind up with the โdiarrheaโ and โflatulenceโ of mass consciousness. On the other hand, if it were any smaller, it would be susceptible to constipated blockage, arresting the flow of life that is crucial to transfer from one side to the other.
And what is this โcarrying overโ (through the conscious, independent individual) from one side to the other, if it is not the artful translation of โlifeโ into โsoulโ โ accomplished by reflection, speculation, imagination, and ideation? Sticking with this analogy, the โmassโ or โcollectiveโ mind serves as a huge warehouse or storage facility where the raw materials for this alchemical process are housed and kept intact. Thus, the mass mind, like the prima materia of the alchemists, provides the first stage of preparing the ground for the work of refinement, purification, articulation, and gradual transformation (into soul stuff) that is performed by qualified individuals. There is a rough parallel here with the hecatombs sacrificed by ancient Greek kings โ the โtranslation,โ by fire, of solid flesh into insubstantial, aromatic smoke that pleased the Gods above. Similarly, the individual combusts the fuel of his gray matter in the service of the gods, a service made possible by his having achieved ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ก๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ก๐ข๐๐. This adds a new spin to Plutarchโs famous maxim, โThe mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled.โ Thus, the fundamental difference, it seems, between the individualized mind and the un-individualized consciousness is a difference in degree (in temperature), but not in kind. The individual stays โin the kitchenโ until everything on hand is cooked up โ including himself.