He who does not enjoy solitude will not love
freedom.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Solitary Purdah
The politics of the individual
Politics, while essential to human interaction, is seldom properly
understood. Those who practice the art of the craft, often claim the title politician. As they slant their rhetoric to appeal
and tap into the fears or dreams of citizens, substance in purpose and solutions rarely brings relief. The outcry for the
good of society is heard with each utterance that offers a seductive optimism, while corrupts mankind with the distortions
of a failed structure, based upon a false maxim. Solitary Purdah is the individual in a state of social isolation.
It is a way of thinking that breaks the restraints of current convention and restores the wisdom of the ages to the proper
balance.
Philosophy of politics is ignored or avoided by the officeholder.
The office seekers deal in emotions and make promises of help. They want you to accept them as public servants, and to forget
who they serve. The society they fashion is one that depicts a condition known as - PURDAH - a state of social isolation.
Each resident is told they are a citizen of an ideal conception, known as the State. Politicos tell inhabitants they are part
of a nation and have a noble mission in life, demystified into the function of a taxpayer. Every person is trained that they
are empowered with a vote, so that they can select leaders that will work for them. Then, these same balloters are instructed
that they are constituents of the elected and that their voice counts.
E Pluribus Unum - Out of Many One - became
the Great Seal of the United States. This national emblem sounds sweet, inspires faith and invokes fidelity. But is it a valid
idea that deserves acceptance? The - SOLITARY - of each individual, simply means that we are all alone. This axiom of existence
eludes most people for they desperately want to believe their pedagogues that we are all social creatures. We are supposed
to accept that community is natural and that society is inescapable. Thus, the need for government and that pinnacle of all
human achievement - the supremacy of the STATE.
So each person is presented with a conundrum. Since every human
is an individual, how can they become one with an abstract entity that emerges and behaves as their master? Solitary Purdah
will explore this age old relationship. These tracts will put forth the case for a culture that envisions the ultimate purpose
for a society; namely, Liberty of the individual. The vast distinction between unbridled personal freedom and definitive moral
responsibility is central to an awareness of how one acts and what functions a government employs.
While ideology matters, discernment between and among varied
forms of political organization, requires answering the proper inquiries. Subsequently, most confusion stems from never addressing
the correct questions. The social isolation that is systemic in the technocratic postmodern age, is not an accident.
The solitude that befalls the citizen transforms them into a denizen transplant, in an environment that becomes nearly unrecognizable.
This kind of “Purdah” separation does not solely conform to screen the genders or keep out strangers.
No, it produces an alienation and disaffection within the fabric of society that expects conformity and demands compliance
as the decisive tests of national loyalty. Estrangement summons governments to respond with more odious requirements.
So how can a society that celebrates diversity as a religious
dogma, coexist with so many conflicting factions? Most of the social problems of the last half century stem from an impaired
aspiration to force a square peg through a round hole. Consequently, turmoil increases while contentment diminishes. If this
misfortune was simply a byproduct of a complex commonwealth, ingenuity would offer prospects for solutions. However, the reality
of realizing meaningful result and pragmatic answers, eludes discovery. The lauded homogenous mixture of dissimilar elements
produces a combustible solvent. But there is no remedy to extinguish a fire that threatens to spread and become an inferno.
Can more of the same from government perfect the individual?
Or must each human being give up more of their uniqueness to satisfy the requirements of social order? As long as people deny
their own dignity and subordinate their genuine self interest for a substitute and flawed fraternal altruism, society will
continue to deteriorate. The ‘pols’ of policy will preach a message of inclusion, while their approach produces
an outcome of malaise that ends in despair.
The theme of Solitary Purdah has a focus that examines
the fundamental conflict between the individual and the State. Our advocacy defends the person and condemns the coercion that
all governments exalt. The political game has not changed over time. Grabbing power to impose obedience upon citizens,
under the threat of force, is the business of government. It is a sinister practice of people control. Tragically, the public
has a bad habit of denial and immediate gratification. They reject their unique worth and refuse to accept that
the State is the enemy. Social isolation is inevitable, when society is predominant over the individual. If you crave to know
yourself and your specific role in society, learn the lesson of Solitary Purdah.
SARTRE - July 4, 2003
We are all alone dangling and dancing
Individuals on a string controlled and isolated
Oh to have a lodge in some vast
wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore.
William Cowper
Innovators and creators are persons who can to
a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when
it takes them far from the mainland of the human community.
Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not,
at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call "genius"
has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve.
Nathaniel Branden
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall
find compensation in every disappointment.
The theme of the solitary individual was dealt with
at length in Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Briefly, in relation to "the numeric masses", the individual
person is of infinite importance. God deals with, saves and judges individuals. The masses have no real essence. In The Single
Individual he repeatedly asserts that the "crowd is untruth". He begins with the subject of politics. This is especially significant
because politics emphasizes the whole, while Christianity, as proffered by Kierkegaard, emphasizes the individual before God.
The Single Individual begins thusly.
In these times politics is everything. Between this and the
religious view the difference is heaven-wide (toto caelo), as also the point of departure and the ultimate aim differ from
it toto caelo, since politics begins on earth and remains on earth, whereas religion, deriving its beginning from above, seeks
to explain and transfigure and thereby exalt the earthly to heaven (p. 107).
In ways, Kierkegaard thought that his view was prophetical
because of the sufferings that would come soon on the political scene. The effects of the French Revolution would be realized
in 1848, when domestic and foreign upheavals led to an armed conflict with Germany, in which the latter annexed some of Denmark.
Kierkegaard felt that only the power of the masses could have propelled the country into such a calamity. As we noted above,
Kierkegaard revised this work in 1849 and inserted notes that underscored his viewpoint in light of recent events. It is perhaps
no accident that Karl Mark would proffer his political theories at this time—in fact, though they did not meet, they
each attended Schelling's Berlin Lectures in 1841.
Perhaps there is no other work where Kierkegaard so
clearly and emphatically spells out the value of the individual versus the masses.
There is a view of life which conceives that where the crowd
is, there is also the truth, and that in truth itself there is need of having the crowd on its side. There is another view
of life which conceives that wherever there is a crowd there is untruth, so that (to consider for a moment the extreme case),
even if every individual, each for himself in private, were to be in possession of the truth, yet in case they were all to
get together in a crowd—a crowd to which any decisive significance is attributed, a voting, noisy, audible crowd—untruth
would at once be in evidence (p. 110).
Lest he be misunderstood, Kierkegaard appends two footnotes
to this passage, which we quote in part.
[1.] [I concede] that in relation to all temporal, earthly,
worldly matters the crowd may have competency, and even decisive competency as a court of last resort.... I am speaking about
the ethical, about the ethical-religious, about 'the truth', and I am affirming the untruth of the crowd, ethical-religiously
regarded, when it is treated as a criterion for what 'truth' is. [2.] ...if there were an assemblage even of only ten—and
if they should put the truth to the ballot, that is to say, if the assemblage should be regarded as the authority, if it is
the crowd which turns the scale—then there is untruth.
This is to say that not only does a thing not
become true simply because many or all hold it to be true—which should be obvious to any person even a little inclined
to a scientific bent—but as soon as any idea, even a true one, is asserted by a crowd, it becomes untruth, because the
truth cannot be expressed thereby. The God-relationship is worked out in the inner man. Kierkegaard has often been criticized
for being anti-clerical and anti-ecclesiastical. But in fact, he was only against clerics who falsified the truth of the Gospel,
and he was against the chatter of the mindless congregation. To find an example of a more sympathetic view toward ecclesiastical
gatherings, see Two Ages. There he says,
When individuals (each
one individually) are essentially and passionately related to an idea and together are essentially related to the same idea,
the relation is optimal and normative (p. 62).
When the truth is
found to reside in the crowd, the individual becomes a 'specimen'.
In a worldly and temporal sense, it will be said by the man
of bustle, sociability, and amicableness, "how unreasonable that only one attains the goal; for it is far more likely that
many, by the strength of united effort, should attain the goal and when we are many success is more certain and it is easier
for each man severally." True enough, it is far more likely; and it is true also with respect to all earthly and material
goods. If it is allowed to have its way, this becomes the only true point of view, for it does away with God and eternity
and with man's kinship with deity. It does away with it or transforms it into a fable, and puts in its place the modern (or,
we might rather say, the old pagan) notion that to be a man is to belong to a race endowed with reason, to belong to it as
a specimen, so that the race or species is higher than the individual, which is to say that there are no more individuals
but only specimens. But eternity...and God in heaven...knows each solitary individual by name—He, the great Examiner,
says that only one attains the goal. That means, everyone can and every one should be this one—but only one attains
the goal (p. 111f.).
The strongest man upon Earth is he who stands
most alone.
