Could “not knowing any different” equal the “unifying vision that once controlled the impersonal structures of institutions” that was lost in “modern” social fragmentation?

Consider, social fragmentation draws the individual into a type of social bondage, where one is held within a particular “language’ community, say, the community of Plumbers, that is further reinforced by the existence of other “language” communities that one does not belong to, such as the community of Electricians.

The fragmentation induces anxiety to the extent that the Plumber imagines that she could have been an Electrician.  Anxiety promotes neurotic behaviors, which block actions, close options, and increase one’s own bondage.  Anxiety also inspires one to pretend to be what (one could be but) is not.  For example, an anxious Plumber (who imagines that she could have been an Electrician) may mess up a project by telling the Electrician how to do her job; that is, by pretending to be the Electrician as well as the Plumber.

The Plumber has a choice.  She may try to impose her own meanings on the Electrician or she may step back and imagine that “she does not know any different”.

But “letting go” does not make “more choices and freedom available to me”, which is what Becker wanted.  Well, Becker wanted more than that.  He wanted to re-generate his mythical unifying vision that once controlled the impersonal structures of institutions.

According to Becker, with this unifying vision, the Plumber could pretend.  She could have been an Electrician if she had wanted to be.  Pretending would give her self-esteem.  Self-esteem is the only way to escape the bondage of psychological determinism that comes from fragmentation.  Self-esteem is the surest basis for selflessness and social harmony, especially when it comes from Becker’s mythical unifying vision that controls the impersonal structures of institutions.

In this way, Ernest Becker, like so many of his day, defined himself as a Great Progressive Thinker.

He could have stepped back, and imagined that “he did not know any different” in order to “let go” and free himself of the anxiety of all the lives that he could have lived but never did.  He could have been a painter, a chauffer, a paramour to an old lady with henna red hair, a connoisseur of cigars, a Nazi collaborator, or a member of the Resistance.  He could have been what his mother wanted him to be … he could have been anything except … a person without anxiety, a person who “did not know any different”, living in the ultimate wonderland of constrained complexity, where every word was grounded in the Real.

Ernest Becker’s view of the “modern” parallels the impression that any long-lived alien would have had after watching the transformation of the Ubaid village culture after the adoption of speech-alone talk.  An apparently holistic society became supercharged through fragmentation.

For the Ubaids, the fragmentation was practical.  Potters separated from House-makers.  Reed collectors separated from Reed boat makers.  Wool spinners separated from Weavers.  Priests separated from Shamans.  Each separation created a new job title.

7600 years later, for the moderns, the fragmentation was abstract.  Money fragmented from value.  Fact separated from theory.  Science fragmented from Philosophy.  Social Science separated from whatever-was-left-of-Philosophy.  Electricity fragmented from Matter.  Nuclear force separated from Electro-Magnetism.   Television separated from Radio.  Hair-stylists separated from Barbers.  Each fragment yielded a new profession.

Becker asked: How to analyze this issue of fragmentation in terms of science and reason?

He started by considering individual and society.  In fragmentation, each fragment has its own set of shared values (which I would call a “language”) that exists independently of the individual.  The individual may belong to one fragment and not to another.  One fragment “speaks her language” and the other does not.  The latter is experienced as “alienation” by “impersonal social institutions”.

Within one’s own fragment, the individual is faced with pressures to conform.  The person faces a reduction in choices and freedom.  So the person suffers a second alienation in “conforming”.

Becker’s conclusion:  We have lost the unifying vision that once controlled the impersonal structures of institutions.

A shorter version:  We have lost perspective.

But what we have really lost is the security – really, the joy – of “belonging to who we belonged to” and “not knowing any different”.   This was the way of life among our hand-speech talking Paleolithic and Early Neolithic ancestors.

Becker’s book The Structure of Evil (1968) envisioned a “premodern” world where everything – and everyone – knew their place.  This “premodern” world possessed a unified view of humanity.  This was a world based on power, tyranny, coercion, and benevolent paternalism.  This world precluded personal freedom.

Since there were no options, according to Becker, there would have been no “anxiety”.

Although his visionary “premodern” world could have been compared to Utopia Past (Fascism), Utopia Present (Communism, which lingers on) or Utopia Yet To Come (Progressivism), Becker compared it to the Medieval World.  I mean, he compared it to his bogus stereotype of the Medieval World.  As I mentioned earlier, he should have located his “premodern” world in a more Rousseau-ian vision of the “precivilized” world of polymorphous ownership.  Without “private property”, not even your life is your own, so why worry about what you could have had?

Before Civilization, humans lived without anxiety because they had real challenges to worry about.  Even to the Medieval Europeans, the Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples would have seemed desperately poor.  At the same time, they did not know any better.  They were pathetically happy in that regard.  Even the Neolithic woman who got painfully arthritic toes from her posture while grinding meal did not know any better.

Surely, their own mythologies and wisdom counseled joy in suffering.  The world before Civilization would have been the ultimate vacation spot, a place that Disney could never hope to imitate, because these people never pretended to be what they were not.  They were truly free in that regard.  They belonged.   They loved one another without reservation.  They barbequed.  They ate the (now repopularized) Paleolithic diet.  They fought, drank, and pissed wherever they wanted.  You helped your own because you knew that they would return the favor.  On the other hand, if even one tourist had shown up, it would have been over.

The society of hand-speech talk was a world where there was evil, but no anxiety, because they could not formula an idea of “what they could have had”.  They did not know any different.

And perhaps, this was what Becker would have imagined, if he had lived the life that he could have had.

When we think of the “premoderns”, we can imagine people in a feudal structure where noone feared losing the life that she could have had.  That is because people could never have that life.  A peasant could never imagine herself to be the lady of a house.  A lady of a house could never imagine herself to be a queen.  The world was knitted together with the threads of a holistic worldview, where all things came together according to one overarching design.  Everything fit together.

A quick survey of medieval history should put that fantasy to rest.  Every feudal realm had these traders, millers, blacksmiths, who were neither royalty nor peasants.  They, inevitably, made money.  The wife of a miller could fancy herself a lady, if she could afford that sable dress.  The man who made clever trades could become a knight or lord.  The threads of that holistic worldview were forever being plucked out and replaced, even though everyone thought that the tapestry remained the same.

One has to go back further, before “premodern” to get to the world where no-one feared losing the life that she could have had.  One would have to go back, as in An Archaeology of the Fall, to before Civilization to get to the point were xiety referred to what people had.

Only then did people not kill others in order to relieve their own fear of being killed.

Why do I say this?  Peters’ reviewed the ideas of Ernest Becker, who located anxiety in the “modern” denial of death.

The first step to radical evil is anxiety.  When I see an an- words, like anhydrous, which means “without water”, I conjure that the word means “without ‘something’”.  Anxiety, then, would be “without xiety”, where “xiety” means “anything that you can lose”.

Xiety is space, time, existence, life, your mind, your lover, your parents, your children, your future, your job, your money, your reputation … anything that you might say, after its loss, “give that back to me.”

Anxiety can drive anyone crazy.  How can one get a reputation back?  What about “one’s sense of security”?

It’s “us versus them”, when it comes to anyone who can mess with your xiety.  Employees bitch about their boss behind her back because, well, just because she can mess with their xiety.  When the boss asks if anything is the matter, everyone says, “Everything is fine”.  This is how the bittersweet elixir of “calumny” soothes employees’ anxiety.

The American “children of the sixties” secretly despised their parents because they had defeated evil.  They were heroes.  They had saved Western Civilization.  Even though no one bragged about it, the lesson was clear.  Dad’s “reputation” meant that “I was not important”.  Hell, Western Civilization was just a piece of crap anyway.  Pass the joint.

The American “parents of the children of the sixties” did not know how to face the rage of their children.  They could face the utopian enemies of Fascism and Communism (both the same, really) and not wince, but they could not face their own tantrum-throwing children.  They wanted to be loved.  So they stepped aside and let the intellectuals – the one’s who taught their children – deconstruct everything they had fought and died for.  Progressivism (the next utopian enemy) stands upon the ruins.

So xiety concerns more than things that anyone has; that is, things that can be taken away.  It encompasses whatever one might have had if circumstances had been different.  In different circumstances, the children of the sixties could have had “heroism”.  In different circumstances, the parents of the sixties could have had “the ‘honor’ emblazoned on Moses’ tables”.

Anxiety is the fear of losing the life that you never had, but could have had, if only … if only …

The seven steps to radical evil are described in a sequence of seven chapters that constitute the body of Peters’ book.

I will look at each of these steps in terms of nestedness as well as in terms of ideas in An Archaeology of the Fall.

In order to do this, allow me to briefly describe the concept of nestedness.

Technically, “nestedness” is a loose application of Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of “precission”.

Roughly, “nestedness” is a way to discuss a single topic in three realms – or categories – of existence: Normal Context, Actuality and Possibility.

Each of these categories emerges from the next lower level:  Normal Context emerges from Actuality.  Actuality emerges from Possibility.

Or….

The Realm of Normal puts the Realm of Actuality into Context.

The Realm of Possibility makes the Realm of Actuality Possible.

And….

This may be written using parentheses:

Realm of Normal Context(Realm of Actuality (Realm of What Makes Actuality Possible))

How does Peter’s view of “radical evil” match the appearance of the serpent in Chapter 11B of An Archaeology of the Fall?

Eve was curious about that forbidden fruit.  She had covetousness, and maybe gluttony.  She harbored a naïve, perhaps sinful, intentionality – then – as if by magic, there was the serpent, assuring her that everything she imagined was true.  So she ate the fruit and gave it to her husband.  He ate.  Only then did they realize that what they had done was evil.  They had harmed their relation to their Creator.

From the point of view of Eve and Adam, the intentionality of the sin did not align with the objective evil that resulted from the transgression.  They did not recognize their fault until after the deed.  From the point of view of the serpent, the intentionality of the sin aligned with the evil that resulted from the transgression.  The serpent was aware of her fault before the deed.

The serpent was radically evil.  The serpent intended and performed deliberate harm by simply telling the truth to someone who was a little tempted and a little confused.  Eve was not radically evil.  She naively gave the serpent an opportunity to render harm.

Yet, from a psychoanalytic point of view, one could say that the serpent was Eve’s own unconscious projection.

Does that mean, when we innocently and senselessly sin on one level, we habituate “our capacities to sin” on other levels; levels that are less innocent and less senseless?   Also, are these less innocent and less senseless levels simply marked with an increased unconscious awareness of our own sin-filled intentionality?

To me, this sounds totally New Age.  We become “radical” (or “rooted”) when we become consciously aware of our unconscious motivations.

“Radical evil” is the commission of acts with full conscious awareness – of harm and sinful intentionality.

Peters’ definition of “radical evil” fits hand in glove with his previous work on the New Age Movement.

So, it is, perhaps, without irony that his book follows one of the many consciousness-raising New Age formulas: Dr. Peters says that one can get to radical evil in seven steps.

In his Introduction, Peters goes through classic background theology.  The words translated as “sin” in the New Testament include “to miss the mark” (in analogy to an archer shooting at a target), “to be without law”, and “lawless”.

Medieval clerics listed seven deadly “sins”.  They were not really sins, but “dispositions” or “vices” that violated natural reason and divine law: pride, envy, anger, covetousness, sadness, gluttony, and lust.

“Sin” and “evil” are not the same, even though it often seems that way.  “Sin” has the “feel” of intentionality.  “Evil” has the “feel” of form.

A flood may not be a “sin” but can be “evil”.

A personal act, like eating all the sausages after hearing news of a coming famine, may be both “sin” and “evil”.   Typically, the intentionality of a “sin” is not identical to the form of the related “evil”.  After all, by eating all the sausages, I have done myself some objective good, while doing others in my household objective harm or “evil”.

When the intentionality of sin and the form of evil align, we have “radical evil”.  “Radical evil” is deliberate harm.  “Radical evil” is symbolized by Satan.

According to the book jacket, at the time of writing, Dr. Ted Peters was a Professor at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Northern California.  18 years have gone by since publication.

The complete title of his book is Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society.

This book on radical evil started as an afterthought while promoting his earlier book on New Age Movements, entitled The Cosmic Self (1989).

Peters noticed that people kept asking him about Satanism.

New Age Movements became popular from the 1970s on – especially in California – because the charisma of Christianity appeared to be inadequate.  From the point of view of Reason, Jesus and Moses were pure myth.  From the point of view of Resistance, Catholics and Baptists were full of hang-ups.

The experts had appointed themselves to solve all these problems.  And from any point of view from the Inside, no Christian leader wanted to risk addressing the symbolic and conceptual void that seemed to be filling the Churches.  Reason and Resistance were so captivating.

Little did anyone imagine that, by 1994, a new religion – really, a “cryptoreligion” – Progressivism – had already constituted itself by regulatory capture (infiltration and take-over) of all types of secular institutions, especially those of the sovereign (central state), but including the broadcast media and local education.

Both the New Age Movements (clarifying magic) and Satanic cults (occluding magic) shared this in common:  They were intensely personal.  They were cultic.  They were private religions.  They were not “public” religions in the same way that Judaism and the Christianities were.

In short, New Age Movements were the private complement to the Public cryptoReligion of Progressivism.  “Progressivism” denied that it was a religion, even as it re-defined the meanings of “life”, “liberty”, “happiness”, “fairness”, “sacrifice”, “revenues”, “budgets”, “liberal” and “conservative”.  What word has been untouched by the cryptoReligion and its minions?

Peters did not hear the question that people were undoubtedly asking: Was there not a dark, occluding monolithic side to the proliferating private clubs of “clarifying magic” that marked the New Age Movement?  Yes, it was the Leviathan.  But, that answer was ruled out by definition.  The Central State, the new American Sovereign, “Progressivism” was precisely not religious.

Thankfully, this good Lutheran did hear “something”.   He heard that people were concerned about Satan in an age when the word “sin” was no longer spoken in polite – I mean, politic – discourse.

He wrote a grant.  He got a research assistant.  And she wrote this book.  Thank you, Lisa Stenmark.

One can only imagine how absurd the process of social construction was immediately after the transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk in any particular Neolithic or Mesolithic culture.  Symbolic orders spontaneously arose as if by magic.

There was no way to stop them and there was no way to contain them.  The resulting social constructions produced mind-numbing inequity.  At some point, a sovereign arose.  The sovereign was the social construction that claimed to hold a monopoly on violence among symbolic orders.  The State was born.  The State then proved to be one site unparalleled in its production of social surd.

And the tragedies never stopped.

One can only gawk at the irony that the same unknowing exhibition of power over the unsuspecting and unprepared that marked Western colonialism must have characterized the period in southern Mesopotamia that directly followed the emergence of unconstrained complexity.

At the same time, within the social surd, authentic and miraculous events can occur.

How?

First, individuals withdraw and call upon God.  This pattern fits the story of Abraham’s lineage.  Haran may have turned his back on the ancient family tradition of Seth.  And from that stance, Abram called on the very God that inspired Seth.  Abraham was authentic.

Second, even though characters behave unauthentically, the result may be described as authentic.  This pattern fits the story of Joseph.  But even more spectacularly, the pattern may fit the construction of the Bible itself.