shadow ii: the utopian (humanity)
Other humans are fucking annoying. They crowd my space, they test my patience, they disrupt my comfort, they have bad opinions. But why then do I believe in justice? Fairness? Equity? The progressive capital gains tax or Medicare For All? Why is it so easy to fight for and aspire to universal human dignity while individual humans so often piss me off?
In the dense The Brothers Karamazov, the elder Zosima recalls a doctor's confession: "The more I love humanity in general, the less I love men in particular." He dreams of serving humanity, yet cannot stand being in a room with other humans. Zosima differentiates a "love in dreams," the craving of quick and admirable deeds, from the "labor and perseverance" of "active love." Later in the book, the Grand Inquisitor loves humanity so much that he robs them of their freedom. Humanity, to him, is so depraved that it must be kept in control through the dictatorial enforcement of Christian values. In contrast, Jesus kisses him after his long and cynical lecture, an act of radical, unconditional, and irrational love. Jonathan Swift wrote in a letter that he hates "that animal called man," but heartily loves John, Peter, and Thomas. Abstract love that curdles in proximity to the love-object is not love but delusion and vanity.
Camus famously said, "I rebel, therefore we exist." Of use to unpack this phrase is Robert Pirsig. He divides the contents of the Universe into Dynamic and Static Quality. The former is the ever-changing cutting edge of reality. It is pure, undefined, spontaneous freedom that drives the universe forward. The latter is left behind when Dynamic Quality becomes habituated. Static patterns provide order and familiarity and allow life to preserve what it has learned. Think of a moment when you touched a hot stove or fell off your bike or were in a car accident. There was a moment where you had no thoughts, opinions, or ideas—you were on the pre-conceptual edge of experience. Perhaps it felt like you were in slow motion. When forced from the Static to the Dynamic mode, things become strange, foreign, and uncomfortable. We constantly use thoughts and concepts (including "I") to defend ourselves against the cruel, random, and Absurd universe around us. They are our havens. And so we fall in love with concepts. We become comfortable feeding the real and messy to the clean and abstract. To Camus, our rebellion is one against inertia, to preconceived ways of living. His criticisms of total revolution—the dogmatic fight for a future utopia running ramshod over life and dignity—cost him the Parisian left-wing. We cannot sacrifice the flesh-and-blood humanity of the present to the yet-to-materialize humanity of the future.
The Utopian is thus someone with a sanitized view of humanity and creation. Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being defines kitsch as this aesthetic. It is the "absolute denial of shit," of daily bodily functions that remind us how messy and unpleasant being a human is. Kitsch is the attempt to pretend that such flaws don't exist. He imagines a person, watching children running on the grass, shedding two tears. The first tear arises from the thought, "How nice, children running on the grass." The second, from the thought, "How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass." It is the shared, collective emotional response—pure concept—that defines kitsch. He applies this to totalitarianism, kitsch's political form, for it demands a neat and tidy view of humans and human progress. Instead, recognize the shit and blood and guts of real political oppression and historical failure. See and appreciate the messiness and mortality and disability and queerness and plurality of our species. Believe in humanity, not despite but because of how fucking annoying it can be.