Collectivism and Contradiction

By Emina Melonic (May 2018)

Meeting, Otar Imerlishvili, 2009

 

 

he phenomenon of collectivism is nothing new. It has always existed in some form or other, at times both harmful and harmless. Collectivism does the most damage to the order of things when it becomes a political reality, such as we have seen with National Socialism and Communism. Both ideologies not only contributed to the erosion of the society that values ethics but its proponents committed mass murder and genocide—all in the name of collectivist unity that was supposedly meant to bring people together.

 

In order to further illuminate what kind of collectivism we are faced with, it is necessary to briefly mention what constitutes a “collective” and what constitutes a “community.” Any ideology denies the existence of individualism and embraces the pretense that a collective is the same as a community. This is wrong.

 

In a collective, an individual has no capability to make his own decisions and choices because that requires targeted and precise deliberation. The only choice (again, paradoxically) such an individual can make is to cease having control over his own decisions. This is a rather dangerous metaphysical game because, in that one act, such an individual has chosen to lose the inherent humanity present in all of us. In effect, he has chosen to dehumanize himself by seeking the meaning of personal identity from a collective that does not, nor will it ever, have a human face.

 

By contrast, the creation of any community (whether it is religious, cultural, or otherwise) depends on the individuality of each person. If he chooses to be part of a community, an individual brings uniqueness into the fold, which contributes to the idea and action of human flourishment. Both the individual and the community is perpetually humanized because each person remains autonomous and free.

 

It is hardly surprising that so many contradictions and paradoxes have emerged given the public dominance of globalist ideology and identity politics. A globalist mind is determined to annihilate the sovereignty of nations (especially Western countries), creating a borderless world and, by implication, this goal extends to the interior lives of people. Sovereignty of the self is anathema to globalist ideology, which is why the oppressiveness of identity politics makes an appropriate bedfellow of globalism.

 

Relying only on selective particular identities, proponents of identity politics further fragment the individual relationship. In their worldview, one can be everything and nothing at the same time, especially if realities such as gender or culture are involved and, more importantly, if this worldview involves a distortion, fragmentation, and destruction of order and history.

 

The roots of primitive emotionalism are found in the ideologically charged repetitions that call on us to simply react without a hint of reflection on ourselves or others. Ideology is a denial of being and often masquerades as philosophy.

 

One of the fruits of primitive emotionalism is an excess of false empathy. This type of empathy is false because it uses ideology as its lens through which the world is viewed. As Hannah Arendt observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), “Ideologies are never interested in the miracle of being (469),” and neither is false empathy. Ultimately, it is self-serving, caring only for the giver of compassion. In this pseudo-metaphysical game, the recipient of compassion is irrelevant and almost accidental. What is more important is how the giver will feel after the compassion has been given.

 

The objective of primitive emotionalism is to merely create the conditions of empathy that endlessly repeat themselves, and to not actually offer any solutions or help to the injured party. The intrinsic narcissism that results from it is only capable of creating a recurrence of mindless ideological slogans and inevitably treats every human being as a political or social entity. There is no “humanity” in “human being” according to this line of “feeling” and “thinking” because the goal is not to have compassion, but rather to have the appearance of it.

 

 

We live in strange times of soft totalitarianism that solely rely on theoretical ambiguities that give rise to an infinite regression of destructive paradoxes and contradictions. The varieties of simulacra that we see on a daily basis create false impressions and as such render our relationships to each other false as well. The only way out is through real human encounters in which we stand face to face.

 

______________________________
Emina Melonic has been published in The New Criterion, Splice Today, National Review, The Imaginative Conservative, and American Greatness, among others. You may follow her on Twitter @EminaMelonic.

Articles by Emina Melonic.

Please help support New English Review here.