Political Theology
Political identity is a kind of theology, an idolatry to a greedy god. Industrial society has killed real meaning in the forms of God and Community. Yet man can not live a meaningless existence, or at the very least a worthwhile existence without the illusion of meaning; for God is dead, its shadow lingers. This nihilism can be tracked with the beginning of the 20th century, for Art (the most profound and exposing of a cultures mood) not only reinvented itself but reinvented the lenses in which we view reality. It became ideological, beauty was no longer to be found in divine forms, in the smallness of one’s impression and transcendentalist feeling. But instead, beauty was found in violence, industry, the benevolent extending gift of a better life, not in any kind of fulfilment or emotionality, not in a human feeling, but a sterile and deceitful empowerment. For as Jung points out “While the development of a mass society generated benefits through the intensification of the division of labour, it also brought perilous problems. This new form of existence…produced an individual who was unstable, insecure, and suggestible.” (Carl Jung, The Fight with the Shadow)
And so this insecure, suggestible, and unstable condition is continually exploited.
Here political ideology and identity can be understood as the archetypal devouring parent, like parents who shield their child, rendering them incapable of processing or dealing with the world. The parent wishes to devour their child’s potential through this comfort. It reduces real dramas and realities to mere conceptions, cartoonish idealisations, childlike narratives of the virtuous against the sinister, for it does not hinge on any kind of real emotional reality, it speaks not to phenomena but pure abstract idealism. For this idealism is more coherent and easier than reality itself, it is easy to hold empathy for a conception or an idea, it is comfort like a parent who knows what is right and wrong. when gender-activists speak of the difficulty women and men endure, they speak of the difficulty of their own lives for they bear no authority to speak for such a vast identity. When the men’s-rights activists says not all men, or its hard being a man they don’t (intentionally) forget all collective ownership or responsibility but instead are merely saying “Not I” or “it’s hard being a man”. This personal integration should be at the root of all politics for it is human, it is the closest to the real, but it is also most difficult, for people and relationships are far more strenuous and intelligible. This is however what ideology and identification is opposed to…
“Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State. Instead of the moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside…The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit…and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses.” (Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self)
Zizek is right that ideology is not the giver or taker of values and desires, but the organisation of which. For just as paganism and the religions of old gave organisation and coherency to tackle such desires, ideology does the same, only rather than acting as a romanticising force, mythologizing the individuals struggle. It reduces it to an analytical and narrow binary. It inevitably deprives them of their moral decision making and devours their potential, which is accomplished by sanitising their desires, limiting their scope to only the perspective of the political imagination and idealism, reality itself begins to lose its dimensions; just as Saturn devours his children (the symbol of unbound potential) before they can manifest or realise their self. However, those quick to point out this apprehension for ideology, is however the action of ideology in of itself. This is correct for ideologies nature is inescapable, what I advocate however is that we should counteract this reductionism by a return to the poeticism, the endless expanse of the religious absurdity of our primordial reasoning and impulse. For this is in line with nature itself, and should be accepted and acknowledged, rather than reduced and turned monstrous.
Molech and the Minotaur
The Internet is a tool which divorces one from reality whilst emulating its emotional necessities (something I will explain in another piece), and no greater divorcement of moral decision making, and potential is found with the interplay of ideology and the internet. Internet Politics is Molech, it demands the time and potential of those seeking divorcement from their own reality in exchange for fantasies of meaning and impact.
The online communist lives no different a life to the online fascist, consider the trends of things such as the political compass to embody this, online politics and politics for the new generation has no resemblance to reality, but is the manufactory of collective identities in which the individual fulfils their lost sense of importance and significance. This can be both seen in the prevailing sense of dysphoria among these communities,
One will self-identify their religion, nationality, race, sexuality, age, pronouns, gender, political identity and even illnesses as a means of recognition, for when one lacks confidence or the competence of their own self-actualisation, they instead fashion new ones based off institution and traits non-specific to themselves. They reduce themselves to characters, they destroy their dimensions.
The invasive reductionism of ideology which before manifested in political violence, revolution and tyranny is now allowed to exist independently through the guise of the internet. One can forgo reality’s nuance and own politics, the politics of the family, our relationships, our jobs, and responsibilities in favour of a politics which exists not adjacent but independent from reality. For this is the internet’s function and appeal, it does this not just with politics but with even our own sexuality, communities, relationships, and sense of self. This brings me to the symbolism of the minotaur, for those trapped in the realm of internet politics and identity are minotaurs in a symbolic sense. For their passions and desires are wasted on the empty hatreds and fantasies that ideology has mapped for them, they are the babes devoured by Saturn before any self-realisation, they are trapped in labyrinths of their own architecture, for the internet has enabled them a demented worldview to delude themselves of their own self-importance. Like the Molech worshipers of old they sacrifice their potential and passions to enjoy this fantasy, the false promise of assuredness and truth through the guise of a false religion. Fanatics who wage no holy war and possess no martyrdom or salvation.
The engagement of politics is a worthy endeavour however, the modern world has likely never required radical change more. We are amid an ecological apocalypse, we suffer from a creeping totalitarianism due to the consequences of techno-capitalism, Zizek perhaps profoundly pointed out that China is not the wests next cold-war-like villain, but it is the wests future. Such a dystopia can only be circumvented by a return of a human and non-idealist politics, one which fosters empathy and a relationship between the lands and people around us that are in our actual reality. Christianity (the greatest paganism) was perhaps one of the harshest critics of Molech worship during antiquity, one which offered a teaching of forgiveness and compassion over dissociation and hatred. And so too this spirit we must reinvigorate if not for the sake of meaningful change and impact, but for the future of love itself.
Zizek once stated, “If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them”, and so too is the nature of all love. Molech worship was not only unreasonable, as it was unfounded off any truth, but still feigned a sense of meaning and reason regardless. So too is the state of ideology and the internet, reasons and meanings founded off no substance but the comforting denial of reality.
Reality isn’t coherent or capable of complete lucid expression. Reality is an orgy of Dionysian and Apollonian forces, imbued with striking warmth and colour, it is the intercourse of reason and unreason, not the crusade of one over the other as ideology attempts.
If the esoterica and religions of old hypothesise we are entering a new aeon , we ought to fashion our new traditions off reality’s loving chaos, and not the orderly bleak reductionism of Molech and ideology.
