Prev || Next || Index [Image] 2/20/96, sjcarll@slip.net --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Humanity and Politics by Steve Carll (the bulk of this essay was originally published in _Antenym_ 6, April 1995; currently archived at Electronic Poetry Center http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/antenym) Humanity reduces its presence, both universally and very specifically, to the extent it attempts to announce itself with the voice of politics. This statement requires some deflation, since the terms "humanity" and "politics" are weighty words, and the game of slinging around sound-bites already constitutes a deference to politics. What does it mean to be human? The obvious biological definition will ordinarily suffice: a human being is one which can be classified as a member of the species *Homo sapiens*, et cetera, et cetera. In this sense, one need not strive to be human; a living being is either born human or else is some other type of animal (and in a strictly biological definition *Homo sapiens* is just one of many members of what is tellingly called the Animal kingdom, that hierarchy of beings who possess anima: spirit, breath, life.) But to stop with the merely biological attributes does not tell the whole story of human being; although it is (however barely) an adequate description of humanness, we are inquiring into the nature of humanity. And humanity has something more to it. Humanity is, to be sure, roughly synonymous with "humankind." But, to use a negative example, when we lament "man's inhumanity to man," we are, presumably, lamenting a lack not of *humanness* but of *humaneness*. Humanity, then, is both the quality or state of being *human* and the quality or state of being *humane*. We can draw fine or even coarse distinctions between the two -- obviously being human is no guarantee that one will always be humane -- but in that one word "humanity" they are inextricably linked. True, they fight for foregrounding within the polysemic structure of the sign, but one never triumphs permanently over the other; both are always present in the word "humanity." The point of all this etymological digging is to reveal what I hope to be a very simple truth: it is easy to merely exist as human, but one cannot properly be said to possess humanity unless one is simultaneously *humane* as well as walking erect and having opposable thumbs. And (to work our way back down out of the etymological tree), unless one possesses humanity, one's humanness is only partial, provisional. The fullness of the human only comes to light for the first time in the word "humanity," when it also reflects and shares the semiotic space of the humane. Let us shift our focus now, and try to determine what it means to be humane. Humanity separated from the notion of humanness is humaneness, just as the converse is true. What is humaneness? A common synonym would be "compassion." Compassion comes from the Latin and, at its roots, means to bear or suffer with. Note: not just to feel suffering, but to feel *with*. This notion of withness, the com- in compassion, is what points to what is most humane about humanity: the ability to *relate*, and relate through *feelings*. This can be seen with a bit more clarity when we remember the similarity between the Latin "pati" (passion) and the Greek "pathos" (feeling, as in "sympathy"). And when we say feelings, we are not referring in an offhand way to feelings as opposed to thoughts, or any other such formalist reduction. We are referring to consciousness itself, and to experiences; to feel is to experience by means of consciousness; more, to experience consciousness. To relate to another person is to share in this experience, to experience a shared consciousness of experience, if you follow. True sociality grows only out of this shared experience, out of relating in this grounded space, out of compassion. Where does "politics" enter into this social space? In our place and time, politics represents a kind of counter-sociality. Taken in its broad sense, it is the governing of people, which may seem to be a *way* of relating to them, but in a very important sense is a *substitute* for relating to them. Laws arise to proscribe relations between and among humans, and to punish relations which occur outside of their boundaries. Customs and other conceptual constructs for behavior intervene in all interactions between people, and become more important than that interaction itself. No longer merely mediating, politics determines how people will stand with regard to each other. Today, politics governs more and more the relations between people, as more and more people become afraid to commit themselves to the attempt at genuine communication, concern, and compassion, which all involve *listening*. To listen is to stand within another's speaking, to move one's viewpoint into the perspective of another, to share experiences. Instead politics provides an easy interpretive grid that allows us to get a handle on people, to identify "where someone is coming from" without having to actually deal with the reality s/he experiences, without having to listen to and engage that person's speaking, without having to "expend" or "invest" one's energy actually communicating without the incentive of gain. As politics (which involves the communication only of power relationships between people) holds more sway, humanity is more and more buried by reductive modes of relating, and with it buried, politics becomes more and more mean-spirited, if indeed spirit of any kind can be said to be involved. Thus the politically dominant forces cease to concern themselves with "humanity" in its meaning-fullness at all; while the "politically correct", though rightly appalled by this turn of events, find themselves unable to launch an authenticating, enduring alternative to such destructive behavior because, embattled by the political climate, they insist on fighting it on its "home field" and become obsessed with relating to all phenomena through a political frame. In this field, "correct" may still be *wrong* with regard to human *being* because that being transcends politics, still needs compassion and to be listened to at a level untouched by the political. Likewise with the being of the earth and of the world which it grounds: if there are solutions to human and environmental problems, they lie in paying attention to, in listening to our world at a very deep level, with concern and compassion. This is not a quietist manifesto (which would be a bit oxymoronic anyway.) As *beings* we must inevitably confront the politics existing within the structure of a global hegemonic materialism (such as the current one) as it closes in on its goal, which is, as Steve Evans puts it so powerfully in his introduction to *Writing From The New Coast: Technique*, to achieve "its dream of self-identity in the purge of its final, potentially fatal impurity -- people." However, we must keep in mind that it is not only the politics of the dominant forces which get determined by this (or any universal) structure, but the politics of the oppressed and the oppositional as well. So while it is neither desirable (nor possible, I would argue, since all presence involves some structure) to be *apolitical*, we must make certain that our goals are not fixed merely within this politics, but that our politics as expressed arise from and hover always near our attempt at compassionate relationship with Being (and its manifestation, beings; this includes our own being and that of others, and, by extention, that of our whole environment.) Or, to put it another way: Of Welfare The perfect form establishes an ordered state. This constitutes: defensive people promoting the general to and for ourselves. Domestic, and ordained united, we provide the tranquillity of the common; for security insures our united posterity more. Does America's blessing establish justice and liberty to ______? ----------------------------------------------------------------- webdancers [Image] index