1-On False Consciousness; Marx and Buddhism
Link to the relevant article https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/review-of-immanuel-nesss-migration-as-economic-imperialism-by-carlos-l-garrido
When a physical defect or injury causes someone to realign their normal movements to accommodate the injury, over time the consciousness of the body, can become what is called “mal-adapted’. The injury produces a warp in ordinary consciousness that can in turn lead to the development of quite profound distortions in perception. This is something I know about only too well. It is not that the distorted consciousness has no basis; it has the physical injury underlying it, and is an adaptation for continuing operation with the injury. But it is a self-perpetuating false consciousness and is a problem in itself while also covering over the underlying condition. Just as in the person, so too in society. For Marx, the capitalist mode of production forces a distorted social consciousness, one in which the natural interests of the vast body of the people are inverted to align with those interests of the ruling class.
The following is a paragraph from a recent and excellent essay by prof Carlos Garrido on the nature and function of this phenomenon.
‘This structurally necessary ideological inversion will later be labelled by Engels false consciousness, a condition where the people are unaware of the “real driving forces which move [them], [instead] imagin[ing] false or apparent driving forces.” This prevents bourgeois ideologues from properly understanding the world – it subdues their ability to obtain truth in their work. However, this is far from being only a question of errors in thinking, that is, the problem of ideological false consciousness, contrary to popular belief and those of the post-modernized Western “Marxist” specialists, is far from being merely one of consciousness. The inverted character of ideologue’s ideas is a reflection of an objective social order that requires its inhabitants to think of it in deliberately inverted ways. In short: the ‘error in thinking’ is an objective necessity for our social order, a social order that requires the generalization of mistaken views of itself for its own reproduction.’
In Buddhist terms, this painful warp is the concatenation of the three poisons. These distortions are not rooted in either ‘ordinary mind’ alone, nor in ‘material form’ alone, but in a field prior to the separation (discrimination/ abstraction of) of mind and matter, subject and object etc; ignorance (that there is no substantial enduring entity called the ‘self’ in experience), desire (based on this ignorance, grasping for a permanence for this imaginary self), anger/aversion ( protecting this eternalised and imagined form of the ordinary self).
The way to liberation in Buddhist terms begins necessarily within a person’s ordinary mind, with the recognition that the view of a substantial self is false and deluding, so in that sense it is necessarily an ‘individual’s’ effort. However, both Marx’s (and Engels’) and the Buddhist ways emphasize the negative character of the ordinary sense of self. As Marx has it, false consciousness is necessarily promoted by the capitalist character of the society’s mode of production, serving to maintain and enhance the wealth and power of the ruling capitalist class. In the Buddhist way, the delusion is deeper and the solution is more thorough and even extreme. However, I think this once again reveals a compatibility between these philosophies.
Of course, it shouldn’t be thought that I am promoting a religious synthesis, or evangelising in the name of Buddhism here. All great religions have, especially in their more esoteric and mystical traditions, a way to deemphasize the ordinary self and open a vista within that encompasses a far vaster and yet paradoxically, far more intimate, view of existence.
2- On Characteristics and tradition; ‘East and West (and north, south- everywhere!)
‘the identity that is named is not the living identity’ ,
‘what is articulated about the self, either as ‘a people’ or a ‘person’ is an objectification, a contrivance and not the real’
‘Principles remain, details change. That is the Great Way’
One of the things I envy about China as a westerner is that their tradition, of 4,000 years, pivots on a fundamental realisation of the nature of life. Confucianism and Daoism, the Five Classics and Four Books, all the great sages and holy teachers of their past and present understand what tradition really means: the underlying general principles from which the ever changing experience of life emerges and finds anchor. They do not, as has been done in the west, treat the details as the permanent fixtures. That is to say, they don’t make a category error.
What a Confucian philosopher of a thousand years ago might have regarded as a law or social custom, another from a hundred years later, or from today would without undue stress consign to the redundancy bin. That is a true, properly functioning tradition. And these philosophers and scholars sometimes disagreed on very big details: the nature of the Divine, the roles of men and women, the state set-up. Big variances. But the Way was and is always the Way. It ‘moves' and changes, and so everything should be open to at least the possibility of change in our ideas and attitudes, yet it is always just the Way and the change is according to an underlying Principle (li).
I’m reminded here of similar notions and potentialities in what has been considered western tradition, which have often not been properly held in focus. The Judaeo-Christian God ‘moves in mysterious ways” “ways that are not the ways of man”. And yet, scholars of our ossified religious tradition still exhaust themselves on fixed details which may have made sense once, but which now obviously lie behind attitudes contrary to the fundamental principles of justice, love and fellowship of humanity.
In Islam, God is the Real Supreme creative will, beholden to none, ultimate of Goodness, Who is not even to be fixed according to human names, but is addressed by the very best terms which human language can fashion. Therefore, why would we assume that God has ceased for one second to be creatively engaged in the world or in human experience?
I’m a follower of an explicitly dharmic religion. This means that the concept of eternal principle and constant change is foremost. It means that daily, hourly I’m reminded that I should self-examine to see if I have in fact been acting, speaking and thinking with a mind open to the complexities of life, open to the myriad changes, open to really appreciating the different stances and actions, attitudes of others while at the same time cleaving to basic values of promoting compassion, well-being, happiness and peace and avoiding or mitigating harm and suffering. For this the hinge is happily one which manifests the universal and ecumenical nature of human ethical and spiritual value. It is a combination of maxims from both Confucianism and Christianity : “do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself” “do unto others as you would wish done to you”.
Tradition, living and true, is necessarily a combination of acceptance of change and the activity of understanding according to principle. Where then is our place in tradition to be found?
Right here! Look all around, it's ‘all this’. Whatever names this grand integration and dynamism of generating causes, conditions and creative forces may be known by - here is where we are. Our point of departure is here. All ‘this’ is what we have to work with.
The unity of forces, dynamics, patterns and laws, known, unknown and unknowable and the infinite past of the cosmos- this great dialectic flux of experience- has put us here now on the crest of that great wave and movement of existence.
The implication?- Our common identity as human is the ground for all subsequent divisions. These divisions shouldn't get in the way of acknowledging and acting in accordance with that basic, shared identity. Everyone wants a happy and fulfilled life. No-one wants real suffering, especially when needlessly added on the personal whims of others from a lacking in restraint. We are all human.
The self-consciousness of the human is really the reflective consciousness of nature. Consciousness cannot be something merely subjective to an individual. Consciousness is a condition that is prior to all the subsequent splitting into dualities which is the activity of the discursive intellect. (subjective and objective only arise in consciousness). My consciousness and your consciousness are both instances of the consciousness of greater nature. Since nature is dynamic, there is no problem in reconciling our apparent distinctions- just as one active neuron and another in a single brain can be regarded as distinct.
Before intellectual abstraction, there are those forms of perception often bundled together under the designation ‘intuition’. These include sensual consciousness and ‘affectivity’ (to use a Confucian concept – the Heart-mind) as well as the less controversial ‘sensory activity’ (which is a type of consciousness). Animals have this. Plants surely have a type too. And widening the scope, all of the Earth may be seen to be involved in a dynamic of sensuous activity. Wider still, the universe is involved in the dynamics of interrelation and co-dependence. The whole world is in a sense alive. The truth of the entire world is here, within and without, before, during and after all intellectual activities of every apparent individual. To put it in the terms of that perennial philosophical paradigm;
‘The one nature is immanent as the many,
the many are immanent in the one nature’