Can the teaching of the Arts & Sciences contribute to the creation of a kind of human being capable of a more thorough-going correction of the system than has yet existed?
It’s one thing to offer a proposal, it’s another to watch it unfold.
So, whatever confidence we might have in our proposal, it should be balanced by an equal share of humility when put in to action.
One thing I can say with absolute certainty, however, is that
the most radical corrections yet proposed are childish in their grasp of the problem and disastrous in their solutions.
Marxism, which may be the most radical, assumes that it’s possible to so correct the human Directions-Performance Complex that it becomes a true system, entirely adequate to the demands made upon it, entirely comprehensible, because completely coherent (logically!), and entirely learnable.
Yeah, right. Meanwhile, back to reality.
I don’t see how it’s possible to take Marxism or the pseudo-alienation of privileged middle-class “radicals” of the 1960's, seriously. But that goes double for their modern day deposits, such as Political Correctness, Identity Politics, Grievance Inc. and The Woke Techno-Sports & Entertainment Industrial Complex.
Of course, this would explain the emergence of Cancel Culture.
Because it’s been the only way to get everyone’s attention and take all of the above seriously. And then only as a threat to daily living, not to mention life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But even then, it still can not be taken seriously as an intelligent alternative or proposal for how to correct the system (and by system is meant the Directions-Performance Complex). Why?
Because all of their radical proposals assume the possibility of creating a harmonious humanity (once they’ve slaughtered everyone who disagrees with them and enslaved the rest).
And what is the implied foundation of their proposal?
The implied foundation is their inability to accept the obviously irresolvable tension between maintaining the Directions-Performance Complex and correcting it, a situation compounded by the fact that only policed behavior is predictable and that therefore it is forever impossible to know whether a condition is overpoliced or overcorrected or, as is the reason for the current multigenerational cultural stagnation, both at once.
Political Correctness? What we need is Systems Correction.
But that would immediately disqualify the politically correct. The last thing they’re interested in is social management, let alone cultural transcendence. That’s why they’re no good at the former and ignorant of the latter. Because both would require self-awareness and a corresponding ability to admit when your ideas are no longer tenable. Please. What they want is political power. But they don’t even know what to do with that. Just look around.
LVI
Correction, real correction, as the artist in their studio and scientist in their laboratory have shown us, depends upon disengagement, estrangement, alienation, and dehumanization.
I propose Alienation as the unexplored possibility, the way out of our current impasse, something not to be overcome but something to be incorporated into the human condition in order to provide a stable constant for correction.
The Arts & Sciences can contribute to the introduction into human behavior of a constant and socially protected alienation (something I only know everything about), an alienation which can be entered into and departed from with the minimum of anxiety and energy loss, and which has a status that makes it available to everyone capable of it. I propose that, given the desirability of alienation, the Arts & Sciences offer not simply the best way of producing it, but the only way, at least so far.
LVII
Two points need to be made before continuing.
First, I’m not proposing alienated personalities.
There is no such thing nor can there be. Such a notion assumes that a personality is a structured entity, when it’s obviously a nonstructured, random package of directions-response patterns.
The Romantics, whose great contribution was the discovery of alienation and its establishment as a viable and valuable mode of behavior (and for this reason will be the subject of our next entry) were alienated in only a few very small segments of their total behaviors, and on the whole confined their alienation to High Culture metaphysics, science and art. It was the Romantics who suggested the possibility that the Arts & Sciences could be used as a means for actually creating alienation. Which is why PRC itself is operating out of the Romantic tradition. The history of Romantic High Culture in the 19th and 20th century proved that it’s possible to institutionalize alienation, which is exactly why the Left has tried to coopt and poison it, because it represents the single greatest threat to their insatiable lust for power. The Right meanwhile doesn't even enter into the discussion because they can't get their heads out of their asses and their asses out of their interpretation of 1776. If Romanticism was properly taught in our high schools and universities the Right and Left would collapse overnight, reconciliation would replace resentment, and cultural stagnation would give way to a much needed cultural vitality.
What I am proposing is the institutionalization and stabilization of alienation itself as a viable mode of behavior.
It is no accident that most of the great scientists of the 19th century had a youthful background of intense experience in Romantic culture and the Romantic tradition. At the present time, however, this is no longer true and hasn’t been for ages. Why?
Unfortunately, science has become professionalized into a technology and, in comparison with the 19th and first half of the 20th century, is culturally stagnant. A consequence of this stagnation is found in the Left’s need to pretentiously refer to themselves as progressive in a pathetic attempt to cover their tracks by concealing the unpleasant fact that they’re so obviously regressive. In fact, the Left today represents a full return to superstitious thinking in its most barbaric form. As I’ve said before, psychotic arrogance and self-awareness don’t go together.
This would explain why the Left is even more clueless than the Right, but far more dangerous. The Right might be weak and stupid, and they're certainly that, but the Left is insane and evil.
The privileged white Left is the real cancer of the human race.
One reason is because they’re terrified of alienation. But I'm not. I welcome and accept alienation. In fact, I live for it. Why?
Because it solves far more problems than it creates. Whereas the Left creates far more problems than they can solve. In fact, solving problems is the last thing the Left is interested in. Which is exactly why they’re as clueless as they are dangerous.
LVIII
The second point is the Arts & Sciences in and of themselves can not be depended on to produce alienated behavior. On the contrary, it can be and usually is used exactly as drugs, alcohol, sex, collecting, and tourism are used - to name only those already discussed. Like any addict the art lover or science worshiper can most certainly become an addict, because addiction is, simply put, an extreme devotion to a particular mode of limiting the range of behavior, in other words, it's a mode of self-policing.
Since self-policing is the core of individual behavior, the existence of addiction can be explained most simply and satisfactorily as a statistically unavoidable phenomenon.
Simply to support and encourage the Arts & Sciences will only create a greater number of people who use both the way sex, drugs and alcohol are used. It’ll just create more addicts. That’s the last thing we need. Especially when one considers the fact that addiction is a condition of life and the worst addiction is the addiction to words in the form of beliefs asserted to be ultimate truths, and that right now that addiction - the worst addiction in the world - is the addiction that accounts for the largest number of addicts by far. In fact, this is what my proposal is all about.
The Proposal offered here is the most radical correction yet for treating the human addiction to Salvation Systems.
That this proposal, inspired by, based on, and derived from the work of Peckham, should come from me makes perfect sense.
Because if there’s one thing I know about it’s addiction. In fact, the only thing I know more about than addiction is alienation. So I can say in all confidence that the one helps cure the other.
Nevertheless the Arts & Sciences do present real possibilities for preparing the individual to engage in an alienated mode of behavior. The probabilities for this are historically strengthened by the experience of the Romantics - the discoverers of the possibilities of alienation - most of whom were artists, while those who weren’t, such as Hegel and Darwin, were at one time in their youth intensely interested in Art and in the case of Hegel gave it a higher rank in the hierarchy of behaviors than it had been accorded before. The early Romantic notion of Art as redemptive can be best understood as an attempt to validate and institutionalize alienation itself. This is what made their Art so powerful. And not just their Art, but everything else they did.
LIX
My proposal is that the condition for correction of the Directions-Performance Complex is Alienation. So it’s essential here to present briefly the conditions for successful alienation.
* Social Protection
* Psychic Insulation
* Problem Exposure and Solution Postponement
* The Preference for and Capacity to Tolerate the Cognitive
Tension, Psychological Disorientation and Emotional Disturbance associated with High Level Problem-Solving
* A Sensitivity to Cultural Incoherence
* A Capacity for Self-Validation that the Ignorant and Unsympathetic confuse with Arrogance
* The Ability to Live without the need for Constant Approval
That all of these are dangerous to the individual cannot be doubted for a moment, simply because every one of them is capable by itself of producing behavioral dissolution. Which, it will be remembered, is the single greatest threat to our survival.
But, again, the history of Romanticism in the 19th century shows the dangers, and in the 20th century shows that the dangers can be resisted, and in the 21st century with PRC,that the dangers can be transcended. The reason is simple, and we’ll get to that reason in the 12th and final part of this entry on High Culture.
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