The Empowering Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself

The Empowering Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself


by Mit Etagniw based upon the collected works of various anonymous authors

“The world can only be repaired by the conscious cooperative activity of those who construct a working theory of why it broke down. Spontaneous rebellion alone is not sufficient. Without adequate advance preparation, the old world will simply reappear after any revolution, since it is embedded in the psyches of those who contrive to come to power. An authentic revolution can only occur if there is a coherent and practical mass movement of self-conscious individuals in which all of the myths and mystifications of the past have been and are being consciously swept away as they fearlessly confront the realities of the use of force with or without physical violence in a defensive and/or retributive reaction to undo the assaultive authoritarian constructs of the few over the many.”

Those who assume (often unconsciously) that it is impossible to achieve their life's desires-and, thus, that it is futile to fight for them--usually end up fighting for an ideal or cause instead. They may appear to engage in self-directed activity, but in reality they have accepted alienation from their desires as a way of life. All subjugations of personal desires to the dictates of a cause or ideology are reactionary no matter how "revolutionary" the actions arising from such subjugations may appear.

Yet, one of the great secrets of our miserable, yet potentially marvelous time, is that thinking can be a pleasure. Despite the suffocating effect of the dominant religious and political ideologies, many individuals do learn to think for themselves; and by doing so--by actively, critically thinking for themselves, rather than by passively accepting pre-digested opinions--they reclaim their minds as their own.

This is a discussion for those who wish to think for themselves, a discussion for creation of a personally (rather than ideologically) constructed body of critical thought for your own use, a body of thought which will help you to understand why your life is the way it is and why the world is the way it is. More importantly, as you construct your own theory, you will also develop a practice: a method to get what you want for your own life. Theory, then, must be either practical--a guide to action--or it will be nothing, nothing but an aquarium of ideas, a contemplative interpretation of the world. The realm of ideas divorced from actions is the eternal waiting room of unrealized desires. Forming your own practical theory, what could be called "self-theory," is intimately connected to achieving the realization of your desires.
Therefore, constructing your self-theory is an empowering pleasure. It is both a destructive and constructive pleasure, because you are creating a practical theory--one tied to action--for the destruction and reconstruction of this society. It is a theory of adventure, because it is based on what you want from life and on devising the means necessary to achieve it. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.

Any system of ideas with an abstraction at its center--an abstraction which assigns you a role or duties--is an ideology. An ideology provides those who accept it with a false consciousness, a necessary component of which is other-directedness. This leads those who accept the ideology to behave as "objects" rather than "subjects," to allow themselves to be used rather than to act to attain their own desires. The various ideologies are all structured around different abstractions, yet all serve the interests of a dominant (or aspiring dominant) class by giving individuals (though the term hardly seems appropriate--"members of the herd" is perhaps more accurate) a sense of purpose in sacrifice, suffering, and submission.

Religious ideology is the oldest example: the fantastic projection called "God" is the Supreme Subject of the cosmos, acting on every human being as "His" object.
In the "scientific" and "democratic" ideologies of "free enterprise," capital investment is the "productive" subject directing world history--the "invisible hand" guiding human development. In order to prosper, the early capitalists had to attack and weaken the power that religious ideology once held. They exposed the mystification of the religious world and replaced it with the mystification of technology and commodity capitalism, wherein Profit becomes the Supreme Subject of the cosmos.

The many other varieties of dominant ideologies can be seen daily. The new forms of religious mysticism help to preserve the status quo in a round about way. They provide a cheap and tidy way to obscure the vacuousness of daily life and, like drugs, make it easier to live, or rather exist, with this emptiness--and so prevent us from recognizing our real roles in the functioning of the socio-economic system.

All of these ideologies differ in the specific sacrifices they demand of you, the object, but all are structured in the same way. All demand an inversion of subject and object; things, abstractions, take on the human attributes of power and will, while human beings become things, tools to be used in the service of these abstractions (God, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the fatherland, etc., etc.). Ideology is upside down self-theory. It fosters acceptance of the separation of our narrow, daily lives from a world that appears totally beyond our control. Ideology offers us only a voyeur's relationship with the life of the world.

All abstraction-based ideologies demand duty, sacrifice for the cause; and every such ideology serves to protect the dominant social order. Authorities whose power depends upon docility must deny us our subjectivity, our conscious will to act for our own desires. Such denial comes in the form of demands for sacrifices for "the common good," "the national interest," "the war effort," "the revolution," etc.

We rid ourselves of the blinders of ideology by constantly asking ourselves: Who am I? What do I mean when I say I? How's my life? What do I want? Am I getting what I want? If not, why not? This is being conscious of the commonplace, being aware of your everyday routine. That real life exists--life in which you are active, a subject acting to achieve your desires--is a public secret that becomes less secret every day, as the breakdown of daily life constructed around abstraction-based ideologies becomes more and more obvious.

The creation of self-theory is based on thinking for yourself, on being fully conscious of your existence, desires and of their validity. Authentic "consciousness raising" can only be the "raising" of people's thinking to the level of positive (non-guilty) self-consciousness, free of imposed morality in all its forms. This type of consciousness can be termed "radical subjectivity."
Conversely, what many provocateurs, therapy mongers, racism awareness trainers, and consciousness gurus term "consciousness raising" is the practice of beating people into unconsciousness with guilt-inducing, ideological billy-clubs by calling them names, insulting them, using language as an incitement of reactionary dialogue through which the abuser continues to abuse.

The path from self-negation to self-affirmation passes through point zero, the capital city of nihilism.

Nihilists reverse their perspectives on their lives and the world. Nothing is true for them but their desires, their will to be. They reject all ideology in their hatred for the miserable social relations in modern society. From this reversed perspective they clearly see the upside-down world of commodity capitalism in which subject and object are inverted, and people and abstract concepts are converted into things, commodities to be sold. They see daily life as a theatrical landscape in which "everyone has their price," God (via televangelism) and happiness become commodities, radio stations say they love you, and detergents have compassion for your hands.
Daily conversation offers sedatives such as, "You can't always get what you want," "Life has its ups and downs," and other clichés of the secular religion of survival. "Common sense" is just the non-sense of common alienation. Every day people are denied (and deny themselves) an authentic life and are sold back its representation.

Nihilists constantly feel the urge to destroy the system which destroys them. They cannot go on living as they are. Soon, most realize that they must devise a coherent set of tactics in order to transform the world. However, if a nihilist does not recognize the possibility for the transformation of the world, his or her subjective rage will ossify into a role: the suicide, the solitary murderer, the street hoodlum-vandal, the neo-dadaist, the professional mental patient, the self absorbed angry guru, the philosophical procurator in denial of his projectionism, all seeking compensation for a life of dead time. The nihilists' mistake is that they do not realize that there are other nihilists with whom they can work. Consequently, they assume that participation in a collective project of self-realization is impossible and denigrate all attempts to move them beyond their self-imposed exile.

This project of collective self-realization, the changing of life itself through the transformation of social relations, can properly be termed "politics." Politics, however, also signifies a mystified, separate category of human activity, an isolated interest with its own specialists--politicians, political consultants, etc. It is possible to be interested (or not) in this type of politics just as it is possible to be interested (or not) in football, stamp collecting, music, or fashion. What people see as "politics" today is the social falsification of the project of collective self-realization; it has become a spectacle and a parody. And that suits those in power just fine.

Authentic collective self-realization in the anarchic harmonious mode is the revolutionary politics. It is the collective transformation of social relations and the natural world according to the desires of all participants. It is the development of actual anarchic harmony.
Similarly, "therapy" at present usually refers to attempts to "help" individuals "adjust" to their restrictive social roles and to the banality of daily life. Authentic therapy involves changing one's own life (cognitive realization) first, then by changing the nature of social life, which in turn changes one's own life. Therapy must be social if it is to be of any real consequence. Social therapy (the healing of society) and individual therapy (the healing of the individual) are linked together: each requires the other; each is a necessary part of the other.

For example, in present day society we are expected to repress our real feelings and play a role. This is called "playing a part in society" (how revealing that phrase is). Individuals put on "character armor" --a steel-like suit comprised of role playing, posing, and concealing one's desires as a defense against other individuals. Transforming social relations and surpassing the role-playing game requires the conscious decision of most if not all individuals to shed these roles and truly communicate; therefore, the end of individual role playing is directly related to the end of social role playing.

To think actively, critically, is to make your life--as it is now, and as you want it to be--the center of your thinking. This positive self-centering is accomplished by a continuous assault on externals, on the false issues ("support our troops"), false conflicts (e.g., those arising from notions of racial "superiority"), false identities ("American," "patriot," "Catholic," "white Christian"), and false dichotomies ("economic survival" versus "a clean environment") which permeate social life.

People are kept from analyzing the basic nature, the totality, of everyday life by the media focus--including "consumer" surveys and public opinion polls--on mere details: the spectacular trifles, the phony controversies, and ridiculous scandals. Are you for or against trade unions, cruise missiles, identity cards? What's your opinion of drug legalization, global warming, UFOs, progressive taxation, Congresses latest peccadilloes, the royal family's sexual relations, presidential politics?

These are diversions, false issues. The only issue for us is how we live. There's an old saying, "If you have only two alternatives, then choose the third." It impels people to search for new perspectives. We can see the artificiality of false dichotomies by searching for that "third choice."
Being conscious that there is a third choice allows us to refuse to choose between two supposedly opposite, but equally repulsive, possibilities which are presented to us as the only possible choices. In its simplest form, this "third choice" consciousness is expressed by the person brought to trial for armed robbery and asked, "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?" "I'm hungry and unemployed," she replies. A more theoretical, but equally classic, illustration of this consciousness is the refusal to choose between the corporate-capitalist ruling classes of the West and the state-capitalist ruling classes of what's left of “Communism.” All we need to do is to look at the basic social relations of production in the USA and Europe on the one hand, and China, North Korea, and Cuba on the other, to see that they are essentially the same: over there, as here, the vast majority work for a wage or salary in exchange for giving up control over their life's work, control over both what they produce and how they produce it. And, of course, what they produce in both is then sold back to them as commodities.

In the West, the surplus value, or the value produced over and above the value of the workers' wages, is the property of the corporate management and stockholders, who keep up a show of domestic competition. In the others, the surplus value is the property of the state bureaucracy, which does not permit domestic competition. Big difference.

Like the false issues and false conflicts cited above, false questions are used to distract us from living in the present, from seeing the totality of existence. One example is the stupid conversational question, "What's your philosophy of life?" It poses an abstract concept of "life" that has nothing to do with real life because it ignores the fact that "living" is exactly what we are doing at the present moment, and our "philosophy of life" is clearly revealed by our actions.
False identities are perhaps an even more potent form of mystification. In the absence of real community, people cling to all kinds of phony social identities--they contemplate and attempt to emulate a huge variety of roles presented to them in school, church, and, especially, the "entertainment" media. These social identities can be ethnic ("Italian- American"), residential ("New Yorker"), nationalistic ("patriot"), sexual ("gay"), cultural ("Giants fan"), and so on; but all are rooted in a common desire for affiliation, for belonging.

Obviously being "black" is a much more real identification than being a "Giants fan," but beyond a certain point, such an identification only serves to mask one's real position in society; and in order to recognize that real position, you have to reject the false identities, false conflicts, and false dichotomies, and begin with yourself as the center. From there you can examine the material basis of your life, stripped of mystification.

An example: Suppose that you want a cup of coffee from the vending machine at work. First, there is the cup of coffee itself: that involves the workers on the coffee plantation, the ones on the sugar plantation and in the refineries, the ones in the paper mill, and so on. Then you have the workers who made the different parts of the vending machine and the ones who assembled it. Then the ones who extracted the iron ore and bauxite, smelted the steel, and work for the electric utility which supplies power to the machine. Then all the workers who transported the coffee, cups, and machine. Then the clerks, typists, and communication workers who coordinated the production and transportation. Finally, you have all the workers who produced all the other things necessary for the other ones to survive. That gives you a direct material relationship to several million people, in fact, to the immense majority of the world's population. They produce your life, and you help to produce theirs.

In this light, all artificial group identities and special group interests fade into insignificance. Imagine the potential enrichment of your life that at present is locked up in the frustrated creativity of these millions of workers, held back by obsolete and exhausting methods of production, strangled by lack of control over their own productivity, warped by the insane rationale of capital-accumulation which pits one against all and makes life a mad scramble for economic survival. Here we begin to discover a real social identity--in people all over the world who are fighting to win control over their own lives we find ourselves.

"We must be the change we wish to see in others to see ourselves in them."