A different story on the origin of establishment

A DIFFERENT STORY ON THE ORIGIN OF ESTABLISHMENT

                    ( or, the fundamental reason behind  all the present-day social maladies )

Freud’s story on the origin of the establishment is famous. The first primeval father was so authoritarian that the sons had to conspire against him and finally kill him. The anarchy that followed the death of the father had made the sons to realize the value of  living under authority .They repented their act and vowed  to eliminate such blood-shed ever after over authority in future . The first establishment, (with a control center at the middle) the first orderly society was the result of that vow, the story goes…

The sons hated authority but had to maintain it to avoid anarchy. It was the triumph of human Reason, the claim goes. This was how Freud explained men’s aversion towards authority but their compulsion to maintain it for the sake of social order. Modern society has taken Freud’s and other classic thinkers’ story in full acceptance and continuing its belief in the authoritarian establishment as a symbol of the victory for man’s supreme reason. Any voice raised against such social order is generally treated as blasphemy. Mankind has witnessed many high handedness against the individual from the establishment throughout the history but nothing could so far alter the above dogma of the modern civil society about the value of the establishment as a means to ensure social order.

The questionable aspect of Freud’s story that compels one to disbelief it is that, more than the human reason, it was the clandestine tricks of the establishment that had succeeded in keeping social order intact all through the ages. All over the globe, the establishments put-in a good degree of intentional effort to keep the human reason suppressed so that the social order is maintained. Throughout the history, the establishment was always against the full blossoming of free human spirit, his creativity and the independence of mind . Systematic elimination of the intellectually elite among the people was always there even in modern times.  Was the guilt over the blood of the authoritarian father so intense that the Reason of the sons- - the actual fathers of the modern establishment- - had resigned to the ANARCHY within THE ESTABLISHMENT ever after? This proposition certainly defies reason and even common sense.

The truth might have been different. The proverbial aversion of the establishment towards the ones who question it, and then its most stringent laws against subversive activities in all countries at all ages hint at a different story that might have marked the beginning of the ESTABLISHMENT in human society.

  

The new story-line

In the antiquity of the patriarchal system of family, the world was merely an extension of the ego of the father. The world around him was his undisputed domain. This world got badly divided when the first ‘other’ reached the scene, in the form of his eldest son. Growing up to the full involves gaining of independence. That is the law natural. The fully-grown -up son caused a spiritual-divide in the life of his savage father, by the formers seeking share of everything the latter had enjoyed as monopoly before. The central cause of the worry was the suddenly found sexual maturity of the new entrant. His sexual advances towards the womenfolk in the family  had shook the very  foundation of  the savage father’s world. A rival in this area is something no living organism can bear willfully, not only in those primitive days but also in these days of modernity.

 

Suddenly , own son had become an outsider  for the primeval father, the first rival in human saga. What followed after the numerous encounters between the father and the son  had laid down the first foundations of the institution of the` establishment’ in history . His aged ,worn-out  physique was no match for the fully grown up young son. So, defeating the son in physical encounters was out of question. The old man had conspired with his younger sons to expel the rival from the scene. .It was the ‘grouping’ of many, to single out and oust the one who had dared to stand against the leader that laid the foundation of the first ever establishment in human history. It is painful to believe , but sadly, even the minutest aspect of present day establishment and human society explains and supports the above narrated  story.

                                                                             

 The guiding spirit behind the formation of the establishment was this basic aversion towards the ‘other’ and his freedom and rights. It was primeval man’s reluctance and failure to give the ‘other’ his rightful space in an atmosphere of collective living!

The wise old man lured his younger sons to his fold chiefly by threat. He cited the misery  of their elder brother who was ousted. The safety of home, the strength of numbers, the warmth of relations was all lost to him. The agony of the ousted one was  indeed pathetic. In the cold, in the darkness ,outside the home, alone …..

                                                                        

It was not that the younger sons were happy at home with the authoritarian ways of the old man. They had to pretend alliance, fearing befall of the fate of their ousted brother upon them .The great legacy of the modern day’s ‘sycophancy’ was born here. The inside energy, the binding glue of today’s predominantly rightist society, no doubt, is this primitive chemical.

It was the beginning of a great divide in the human society … the establishment,  and the ones outside it. The generations of the ousted ‘other’ at one side and the ones who spoke in first person about the ‘society’ at the other end.( one can say,broadly speaking,the RIGHT and LEFT in modern society) The above two groups got groomed in human-society, with two sets of morals, ethics and the resultant behavioral patterns -- one for those who knew the way out to become successful, and the other who had to be mere instruments for the former to remain successful. While the former has been taught values of adventure, courage and pride, the other found values of submission, humility, virtue and blind obedience to law more beneficial for their kind of existence.

 Even when a group from the downtrodden class gets an opportunity to become part of the establishment, they always internalized the values associated with it and kept the great divide un-disturbed. The best example is the communist regimes in the world - - -the weapon of authority  had merely changed hands here, from the elite to the hands of the so called workers.

The old man saw to it that the rebel and his future generations stand  punished eternally for the outrage caused.  He made it impossible for him or for his generations to realize their own selves ever. It was a spiritual scar that was inflicted in the enemy, to make him and his generations a doomed species.  This was the beginning of inequalities of all sorts, between the ruler and the ruled, the high-caste and the lower caste, the feudal Lord and the serf, the master and slave, the colonizer and the native,  the elite and the common man and lastly between the employer and the employee in the corporate world. It has become the language of the psyche of people to think and infer their worlds. Every aspect of our modern society can be explained and understood in detail if analyzed  in terms of  the above narrated  great socio- economic  divide of  primeval origin, including the modern day global terrorism.

Rousseau's theory on the origin of modern civil society is also on similar lines !

Rousseau's theory is also on similar lines.  When the struggle to protect own property and assets had become too much a task, thanks to the perpetual armed conflicts , losses and deaths in mutual fights, ' the rich man, thus urged by necessity,conceived at length the profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man: this was to employ in his favour the forces of those who attacked him,to make allies of his adversaries, to inspire them with different maxims, and to give them other institutions as favourable to himself, as the law of nature was unfavourable'. ( in his work 'on the origin of inequality ) 

The rich men, with a great far-sighted cunning-ness, appealed to the ones who owned far less than him or nothing, to come under the rudimentary form of a present day civil society,  to end the ceaseless conflicts once for for all, wherein their interests were in maximum risk. 

"Let us join", said he, " to guard the weak from oppression,to restrain the ambitious, and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to him: let us institute rules of justice and peace, to which all without exception may be obliged to conform; " 

In short, 'such was, or may well have been,  the origin of society and law,which bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich, which irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, eternally fixed the law of property and inequality, converted clever usurpation into unalterable right, and for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour,slavery and wretchedness'. 

One can easily see in principle similarity of the forces that work behind the curtains of modern day establishment.   

The chemistry of terrorism

Today’s world is a papa’s world  in letter and spirit. It is owned, planned, and run by some or other form of institutionalized authority. The vast majority  lives on the other side of the wall, passively bearing with the world of someone else’ creation. They fail to internalize the world which is almost alien to them. This majority lot is suppressed, side-lined, marginalized and neglected. Barring a few developed countries, basic human dignity stands recognized only in book. 

The one who is not able to express his dignified self in his day to day life remains a potential terrorist. Cosmically such persons have to explode one day or other, as need  to ascertain one’s self is an inescapable  law of nature. Behind every act of crime, there would definitely be a hidden story of  some kind of suppression. Many times the ones who marginally ‘feel’ side-lined from the main stream, plan and execute large scale acts of terrorism. This is about violence from the part of the oppressed block.

We invite readers to our latest study on Islamic terror, at:http://metaphysicsofthehumansoul.blogspot.in/2014/12/terror-for-religious-causes-time-for.html

Terrorism and violence is often unleashed from Papa’s end also. It is exclusively driven by the emotion of despise. ‘Self’ of the one in authority is always made up of certain expected behavioral pattern from the ones under his authority. Whenever  such pattern is breached by any reason, his self breaks. His emotional stage becomes exactly similar to that of a suppressed one, or the side-lined one. He un-leash violence out of the feeling of DESPISE, whereas in the first case, the motivation was to make the oppressor also   taste  pain, destruction and emptiness.    

The most fundamental characteristic of the modern day is the glorification of the collective. Individual’s belief and experience is ‘fiction’ and the collective thought is ‘reality’ and truth. Individuality  has been termed an unrealistic ideal ,a mere glorified theme. The establishment at all ages had used  this idea  cunningly to bring the individual into submission. Formation of the collective against the individual was the nerve-point of the father to extinct the entity of the one whom had questioned him .

The central role of sycophancy and its beginning in the establishment has already been seen. Establishment has always been `leader’ centered ,hence sycophancy was  the law and substance within it in every society. Reason has been ousted forever as guiding spirit in decision making.. Practicability has replaced it in every society. Self-survival has become the central theme of practicability and what could please the seat of power has become the key to ensure one’s survival.

When commerce had become the backbone of every establishment and advertisement its chief weapon, the idea of the impersonal world has been nurtured into perfection in the slow course of history. The theme of the ‘world’ was the smart creation of Papa, for the soul-less ones to dwell. It was a prison with invisible walls. It was a no-ones place, but  the men were lured into owning it to the fill of their heart. Slogans and myths were pumped into the society by innovative rulers  non-stop. 

We invite the reader to our latest study onto this rare field, 'WORLD,'at link:: http://selfandworldblogs.blogspot.in/2015/03/is-world-absolute-object-or-relative.html

                                                                                             

Today the distinction between the myth-makers and the myth consumers has become too narrow as the theme of world has engulfed one and all.( please see our dedicated blog-post on the notion of world at link: http://selfandworldblogs.blogspot.in/2015/03/is-world-absolute-object-or-relative.html)Or the identity of the myth-maker is so smartly hidden that the majority in the world is unaware of their existence.

In  modern democracies the class distinction is lucid, but the values associated with the old class division is sharply alive, and the race is between one and all to reach on the other side of the wall by all available means a naked reality. World is a ‘hell’ today because this old primitive papa has not yet been identified  by any section of people in society ---neither  the media, nor the government , the religions, the intelligentsia , nor our highly proclaimed seats of learning, the universities.

                                                                                       

As we have seen in the beginning, sexuality was the core energy that compelled papa to part ways with the  son. He protected his women-folk as the most precious possession. This primeval emotion and its manifold manifestations are at the root of the inferior status of women in human society. Spreading insight into such still alive primitive energies in our psychic system is the only way to eliminate our prevailing negative  notions in this field .

The lesson of giving the other his space:  Is it the ultimate law of nature?

It seems what is wrong with our present day violent society is the still prevailing jungle notions about the ‘other’, his fellow being. The whole theme of competition and ‘survival of the fittest’ is rooted in our antique fear of the other still alive in the depths of our psyche. Without attempting sincere probing at these primitive value levels, we have been merely changing  hands that controlled the seats of power - -to attain peace.

We may have to conclude that mankind will embrace true civilization only when our collective wisdom grows into the maturity of giving the ‘other’ his due space and rights. The entire responsibility in this direction lies with our value making agencies, the print and the electronic media, and our universities and schools. Unfortunately these agencies act like  papa’s own machinery in the present day world. The great social divide is, hence, perpetually nourished back into perfection by their acts.

The hidden negative energy within every civil society is its core group’s fear of losing the grip over the establishment. This fear is man’s primitive fear of sharing his world with any outside ‘other’. The fight of civilization is the fight between man’s above seen primitive nature and that of nature’s inbuilt direction towards more and more inclusiveness and civility. This fight is between the more ‘evolved’ and the less ‘evolved’ men. History of man so far is the self evident proof that nature’s directive has always won. The hidden thread of man’s civilizational growth was always more and more inclusiveness, and more and more accommodation of the ‘other’. Hence we have our various bills of rights of man, anti-slavery laws, and the reign of democracy in the world. Our Media and the seats of learning could embrace and strongly hold on to this hidden thread of civilization as their master premise to infer their opinion and conclusions, and guide the minds of men accordingly, instead of losing themselves in the flood of uninformed opinions.  

By: Conscience of the society-An NGO standing for Reason, Justice and Fraternity

New Delhi, India, www.conscienceofthesociety.com

Twitter : Voice of philosophy@jopan1