TNA-GOLD 1/TNA-GOLD - Volume 1.iso/24hours/carll.txt

Text File | 1996-03-11 | 9KB | 164 lines

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2/20/96, [e-mail]
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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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