We have, mainly, two great axes today upon which modern explanations of social phenomena turn. One, the economic/Marxist reduction; two, the religious/secular dichotomy, the latter a distinction which has carried such a load of late that it is in danger of spilling out and spoiling everyone's complacency.
A third analysis of why we do what we do comes from German philosopher Hegel, who plucked from Ancient Greece the tripartite conception of the person (reason, desire, and thymos). It is the thymos, he said, that drives history. Thymos is roughly the desire to be recognized. It's what makes us feel shame. Or pride. It is rooted in a conception of human freedom that is, at bottom, the notion that we are not understood completely by desires or by reason (roughly, by Marx or by Enlightenment secularism). The thymotic urge is a warriors urge, in us all, and finds its basic expression in the willingness to risks one's life to prove that one is free. Animals, when thirsty, just drink. People have the ability to delay desire, and they have the ultimate capacity to demonstrate that they are not animals by risking their lives (in modern times, we can cash this out as "dying for symbols of freedom", like medals, or honors).
Unfortunately I'm travelling tomorrow and have (true to form) hardly packed or even gotten my hotel room yet, so I can't burrow into this to the depth that it deserves.
Suffice it for now to say that the modern mind, trying to fit bad things around us into either an economically disadvantaged model (Marx) or a whacky-religious model (Enlightenment), is I think inadequate. What they want, and what makes them feel so alive, and so much better than the desiring "last men" who no longer care about honor but just material comforts before they too perish from the Earth, is recognition. How to change the debate such that they can have it, is surely worth talking about.
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2 comments:
Ah, very true I think it can be summed up more simply as selfishness.
However, this feeling is a product of our evolution, and has helped our kind survive over thousands of years. It comes from our more base and primal instincts formed by the ego and the id.
As Richard Dawkins so accurately put it, "Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are each born selfish".
In my experiences if someone tells you something that seems too good to be true, it is. There is always an ulterior agenda, something self motivating behind it based on the other persons fears and a sense of pride.
eneve, I appreciate your comments. Hegel's point was that, earlier in history, there were two groups: those that were willing to be enslaved to stay alive, and those that were willing to risk their lives to rule. I think this is something worth thinking about today.
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