In this superb essay, P.T. Carlos talks about how Americans have no deep roots or tradition, the author mentions a theorist, Dugin, who says there are 3 ways to remedy it, go back to a European identity, grow a new individualist religious American identity, or ....
“Dugin's [third] primary suggestion is to embrace the essence of Americanism: the extreme atomized and lonely individual and take it to its logical conclusion and drinking the poisoned chalice down to its dregs....
This is the existentialist path which constitutes the complete negation of all forms of rooted identity through fully embracing the absurd. It is only in embracing the absurdity of his own being as the Spengalarian "insufferably lonely ego lost in space."
Form without content, the infinite loneliness of the unhinged will manifesting itself in arbitrary impulses which flash in and out of time and then recede back into the abyss from which they sprang.
The abused orphan, the homeless addict, the victim of unspeakable crimes. Those who have faced the possibility of their own extinction. It is only these few who truly know what it is to be "Amerikwan," those who have been tossed or have tossed themselves, into the abyss. Only these few, the despised, know its secrets. And it is only these few for whom a transfiguration and a salvation are possible. As the great Emilie Cioran, in his seminal The Heights of Despair explained:
The passion for the absurd can grow only in a man who has exhausted everything, yet is still capable of undergoing awesome transfigurations. For one who has lost everything, there is nothing left in life except the passion for the absurd. What else in life could move such a person? What seductions? Some say self-sacrifice for humanity, the public good, the cult of the beautiful, and so forth. I like only those people who have done away with all that--even for a short time. Only they have the right to speak about life. You can recover love or serenity. But you recover it through heroism, not ignorance...Only when you have tasted all the poisoning sweetness of the absurd are you fully purified, because only then will you have pushed negation to its final expression.
It is only these holy fools of American society that are able to transcend its limitations and articulate its bitter truths. Just as, in King Lear it is only Lear's fool who is ever able to speak the truth. As Simone Weil (a holy fool herself) noted:
There is a class of people in this world who have fallen into the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, and who are deprived not only of all social consideration but also, in everybody's opinion, of the specific human dignity, reason itself--and these are the only people who, in fact, are able to tell the truth. All others lie.
And it is only these fools who, in our Amerikwa, are ever able to articulate the truth. Since their social station, which is less than zero and thus relegates them to an essentially sub-human status, provides them with a unique freedom. A freedom which is completely alien to the rest of those residing in the so-called "land of the free."
They can articulate it because their very being is now a testament to it. As they have tasted their own finitude and understand the reality of death. A reality which is everywhere denied in Amerikwa. A place where death is relegated to the dark recesses of the nursing home, the abortion clinic, or the inner city ghetto. Where youth is sold as an eternal reality, which, for the right price, can be had by all. Where, thanks to the proliferation of an ever increasing assortment of banal amusements and fetishes, a man can go through an entire life without once asking the essential questions (Who am I? Why am I here? for what end?) that separate a human consciousness from the animal one.
To be more accurate the Amerikwan consciousness has not become so much animal or sub-human as it has become Post-Human, a Gnostic ghost in the Liberal machine. This is the destiny, the telos, of every Amerikwan.
Thus, in Amerikwa it is only the fool who can retain any sense of authentic humanity, for this authenticity can only be achieved through confrontation with one's own finitude.
No comments:
Post a Comment