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2/20/96, sjcarll@slip.net
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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 ______?
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