Morality As Self Police, Commodity And Identity
I’m sick. I don’t think I was born sick. I don’t remember when I acquired this metallic taste on my tongue. It fucking makes me angry and it gives me nausea. I taste it in the self sacrificing aim and urgency of the narratives about our lives and what we should do with them. I see it in the police car passing by, the father in the church… it’s one of the worst manifestation of self alienation induced by the otherness. It makes my bones go red like hot iron: silent but burning like a sun. It makes me aware of the repulsive hegemonic processes by the bourgeoisie and its eternal tool: the State, and on some underdeveloped forms: religion, its purest: morality, which is as well tool of the first two entities, and of those fools that only want usurp the throne instead of shredding it into pieces. Now, I don’t know if you have to reject values as something disgusting or any internal hierarchy of them as something you can’t own; but when was the last time you were sure of the origin of your own thoughts, your own goals and your own ideals?
The only way to be sure of having your own goals and your own ideals is being completely and apologetically egoist. Although, it is obvious that the egoist will find issues and attacks on their path.
The egoists must be abolished and crushed as the enemy of all morality and the worst enemy of the State, of all what is sacred and as the enemy of the good cause. It’s then, that morality must be incorporated as part of the spirit of the State and the collective, and the movement, otherwise it’d die with the light and will of the egoist.
Then what constitutes their morality? Only State interests. From this point of view, which, with very few exceptions, has been the point of view of statesmen, of strong men of all times and all countries, all that is instrumental in conserving, exalting, and consolidating the power of the State is good — sacrilegious though it might be from a religious point of view and revolting as it might appear from the point of view of human morality — and vice versa, whatever militates against the interests of the State is bad, even if it be in other respects the most holy and humanely just thing. Such is the true morality and secular practice of all States.
— Mikhail Bakunin, The Immorality of the State
The morality must be then worshiped and understood as the official religion of the State and our shared lives, its practicality and spontaneity is obliterated because its aim is not to serve the individual or the self enjoyment and the enjoyment of others’ company.
There is no room for a multiplicity of voices, and those who pretend it to exist, on a free state of things — such multiplicity — ,aren’t nothing but fools, which spirit, if there is any, is the one of the hegemonized one by the narratives of capital, the State itself, its religion that have as its God, and of the requirements of ideology and its fetishized morality — the one of Humanity as a monolithic entity higher to any contingency or singularity that inhabits in us, rather than just a label, as label are the names of colors and body parts.
Then it follows that identity is the biggest instrument of the State and of common sense, it’s the embodiment of the hegemony of morality, since, when do any civilian of a country thinks their costumes and moral values are more similar to other individuals from other countries instead of appreciating the differences they think they have with their supposed to be — moral peers, their national peers? Do they actually aim to construct a framework and a world where this doesn’t happen or is it the opposite?
It’s a fool the individual that thinks of the morality shared by the collective as nothing but spontaneous to the human nature. It’s a fool because they cannot picture or imagine nothing truer than this. Nothing is truer than the human nature that conveniently matches the narrative of the bourgeoisie and the dominant classes, regardless of if the last one is the True Proletariat Government or any not invested firstly as an elite, maybe just after seizing power.
Regardless of the origin — always external in the case I’m talking about— the modern man of good, the woman of good, the proper and good person is fooled and not only is alienated by the material conditions but by ideas of morality and formation of an identity that reflects the content of such morality, in the end, it can be said, morality functions as the aesthetics and essence of an identity. They’re naively quick to be possessed by an idea of good and evil, there is no room for second thoughts, you’ll always have to be a good citizen and self sacrifice to a greater good than the unique— always sacrifice to the commune, the collective, the State, nevermind the individual, to the cold, to hell with the egoist.
The individual is only left then with some of the biggest manifestation of sacred love: patriotism and idealism. “I won’t give a fuck about the people around me unless the State, my religion, or my moral compass (which rarely can be fully understood as a proper and freely accepted moral world view) dictates the opposite or, the elite or the ideas themselves of my ideology so demand it. I’ll never get any satisfaction from the enjoyment of spontaneity of my love or my needs of doing what I think is right or serves me.”
This flagrant negation of humanity, which constitutes the very essence of the State, is from the point of view of the latter the supreme duty and the greatest virtue: it is called patriotism and it constitutes the transcendent morality of the State.[…]
In public life, on the contrary, from the point of view of patriotism, when it is done for the greater glory of the State in order to conserve or to enlarge its power, all that becomes a duty and a virtue. And this duty, this virtue, are obligatory upon every patriotic citizen.
I differ, nonetheless, from the point of view of Bakunin, because he thinks there is still a human essence — Humanity — that compels the individual to a higher realm or higher moral ground, being the trap on his argument. There is still this naivety present on multiple anarchisms or mainstream anarchist though, that of that the human is this intrinsically morally superior being and that will be finally true to its nature when they get rid of the State, and almost any other adept of any ideology with its object the liberation of the masses and Humanity.
A particularly insidious form of ideology is the pervasive moralism which has always plagued the libertarian revolutionary movement. It destroys possibilities for transparent communication and coherent collective activity. To limit one’s behavior according to the proscriptions of a morality (to seek the ‘good’ or the ‘right’) is to repress one’s own will to satisfaction in favor of some ideal. Since we cannot possibly do anything else but seek our own satisfaction, alienation results, with one part of ourselves subduing the rest — one more instance of character. (Jay Amrod and Lev Chernyi, 1996)
Even now that the State is a mere thing existing on the background in the minds of the mass, or as Deleuze and Guattari would said, the concrete assemblage which realises the machine of overcoding of a society, absorbed by the bright lights of capitalism, it colonizes even the tiny changes on the moral landscape and all perceptions of what is right and integrates it into itself: “This morality is only the development of the fundamental principle of the State, the inevitable expression of its inherent necessity.” (Bakunin). That’s why some people of color, feminist women and the LGBTQ community looks for their self assimilation, and alienation, into the moralistic narrative of the State. This is violence, of course, the ultimate consequence of any compulsive morality. This violence is not a different kind of violence that the State already exercises over its civilians and servants, it’s just that those people are now benefited from it as they weren’t before, or more precisely — they profit from their new owned power over others, even if it comes that others above them are actually just getting hugely more powerful than them.
The career for the moral status quo is a never ending race against everyone. The movements that try to receive acceptance or integration needs to insert its collective, coercive morality and the individuals it says to represent, and emancipate, into the State itself because there is no other way for the moral individual or the moral collective. They would also needed to be abstracted and incorporated, even if it is only as speech with no factual positive impact on such individuals’ lives.
Most of the groups or some subset of those groups search for a piece of pie of power and control of the narrative, making the State to insert that narrative into a bigger narrative that contains the previous two.
And who has time for metanarratives? Who has time to support external alienation, even if it firstly was theorized or defended from inside? All on a society that it is confined by its structures that must fall in order to bring others to game, and if not, it will turn itself into one where such narratives will ask for a place on the compulsory morality of the State to share space in the uncertainty and instability with other structures to ultimately be superseded one for another on a non dialectical and linear progress on time, almost rhizomatically if not completely into the nothingness of all possibilities.
This characterization of morality isn’t pertained with the context of the individuals and isn’t result of all the cycles, permutations and iterations of the daily experience that is to be alive. This is the moral faith, the faith on morality, or morality as being imputed to have some form of fetishized, transcendental — often absolute, ahistorical or objective — existence over and above human individuals and communities (MacQuinn, 2004).
None of the takers, worshipers of power, and morality, will admit that they most of the time hold them as dear sacred secrets and dogmas, fixed on their mind and time; but this is the same thing dressed as a better or preferred moral, like the teetotaler ex alcoholic yelling sometimes happy others not that much that alcohol has no more power over them.
[…]if one calls truth itself into question, he immediately has both, as believers, for opponents. So with moralities: strict believers are severe, clearer heads are more tolerant. But anyone who attacks morality itself gets to deal with both. “Truth, morality, right, light, etc.” are supposed to be and remain “sacred.” (Stirner, 1845)
Anyone of the current two players: the status quo, mostly represented by the State, and the “socialist”, use the same tools or framework making all grievances or conservation of the old as a struggle of power, or demonstrations of such powers. This is not only seen in the struggle between old and new narratives that think of themselves as irreconcilably different; they really can’t see that the structure, the story and spirit under the surface of their speeches is no different indeed: “The formal structure of compulsory religious morality is thus: sacred values from an unseen source to be followed by a relatively worthless human being whatever the context. (MacQuinn, 2004)”. This is not saying that all kind of moralities are equally fetishized and in that regard any critic of morality will have to be aware, as I have said previously.
The socialist sins by trying to state its ideology as scientific, just another fetishization of science and of the ideology itself, that confuses the nature of the methods of science, it sins of scientificism at its best case scenario. Most of time implying a translation or devirtualization of the theory into a moral project.
[…]Instead of creating a subversively radical social theory in concert with other rebels and putting it into practice with them with the aim of directly eliminating as many aspects of domination and social alienation as possible (MacQuinn, 2004).
This is way more painfully obvious in the progressive strains of leftism, or even the centre, or some right-wing projects, that aim for the separation of the religion of the mystical — and mythical from the earthly, meaning the State, but can’t conceive a rewriting of morality, it then becomes just an overthrowing of the king. It’s imperative to not fall to the trap of considering an objective truth, or based on reality, that can be used to justify by begging to the idea of common sense or reason.
Nonetheless I’d point out that the State will always use a fetishized form of morality to sustain and legitimize its own existence and power, if it is allowed to me to be harsher with the State. It has no escape from this, and because of this I could separate it from any political project that is not the one of those in power.
The state, as a ruler, behaves the same way the church did. The latter is based on devoutness, the former on morality.[..]
[…]The state’s lauded tolerance is simply a tolerance of the “inoffensive;’ the “innocuous”; it is only an elevation above small-mindedness, only a more respectable, more magnificent, prouder — despotism.[…]
This is not denying that the morality of such political projects is a morality that will always be based on power and force, or the potential of its execution, while reducing all their dialogue and speech to a mere business of isolated wrong or well doings, because there is nothing left than just assuring the position on the hierarchical position inside of the movement, of the organization, leaving behind the possibility to have any amount of understanding of the social and historical contexts in which such deeds are considered or become to be considered wrong or good.
The State doesn’t need this analysis, because it doesn’t base its actions on the good cause rather than on the presumed eternity of its own existence and the power the owner and the controllers of it might extract from it.
I have argued before that a lot of things seem to be turned into commodities from where I construct the self and an identity. The morality seems to not escape from this fetishization of the memes that make up what is understood as morality or the specific variation of this, it’s then that when I consume, and I drink from the fountain of what constitutes my morality as religion, that I only become possessed by it. The consumption of these memes is reflected in a kind of consumption that is just lifestyle moralism, instead of an actual attack or critic of the systems of alienation, segregation and of their institutions of domination through morality.
Being either of the two kind of entities that use a forced form or fixed form of morality, compulsory morality only serve for the higher essence that is trying to dominate the individuals. These are just pretended as ways to alienate the individual and strip it away from all its purposes and Property; never as an honest way to construct any kind of camaraderie between the individuals, regardless of the kind of camaraderie it is agreed upon such movements or institutions of representation, leaving only dominance and a pyramidal power.
People whose compulsory moralities are organized around these abstract ideas attempt to force themselves to follow their demands because they have displaced (projected or alienated) their own subjectivity onto them, usually through the influence of years and years of alienating and demoralizing socialization and indoctrination. Rather than understanding and acting for themselves the victims of morality attempt to make themselves the puppets of the abstract ideas they fetishize. (Jason MacQuinn, 2004)
And stripped away the individual from their Property, it can only accept peace, which is only attainable through a morality. Hence peace is the manifestation of the homeostasis and success of morality, the hegemonic process has reached its final form, its final consequence.
Anything that dares to question morality is someone that attempts against security, because security is comfort at the end, it is the presence of peace. And so, morality is not the only requirement for fascism, it is not enough condition for the birth of a police but it’s a necessary condition.
The new fascism is not politics and the economy of war. It is global agreement on security, on the maintenance of a “peace” just as terrifying as war. All our petty fears will be organized in concert, all our petty anxieties will be harnessed to make micro-fascists of us; we will be called upon to stifle every little thing, every suspicious face, every dissonant voice, in our streets, in our neighborhoods, in our theaters. Gilles Deleuze, The Rich Jew
We made ourselves, thanks to our morality and our fears, especially of the unknown or unpredictable, our own police living in our brains.
If we assume as the understanding of our struggle: our rejection of the State or rejection of any higher power, we can’t imitate its ways, because then we would be only giving to such higher powers new faces that will laugh at us. Especially we shouldn’t turn morality memes into commodities that are only forced into the individual and has no regard on the context that such individual lives. Then, we must to build our not fetishized nor compulsory morality as means of our everydayness and enjoyment of life. We could construct our self-theory, loving the people we — as individuals — love and to build up a social-theory that exposes our complexities and diversity of selves, needs and experiences. Never we should relapse with new form of compulsory ways of understanding good and evil, my love for uniqueness and my Property, otherwise I’ll bring you hell, all the metallic taste on my tongue on yours, with fire and self determination, you’d be considered my otherness, the thing I can’t put my hands on, the source itself of my alienation I should rid of, emanating from a different part, but the same bullshit nonetheless. Fuck the State and its bourgeois values, indeed, but fuck all kind of fetishized and compulsory form of morality, love or hate.
The only really transparent, and thus revolutionary, communication is that which takes place when our selves and our desires are out in the open, when no morals, ideals, or constraints cloud the air. We will be amoralists, or we will be manipulators and manipulated. The only coherent organization is that in which we unite as individuals who are conscious of our desires, unwilling to give an inch to mystification and constraint, and unafraid to act freely in our own interests. (Jay Amrod and Lev Chernyi, 1996)
Postscript
I couldn’t nail how morality could indeed be part of what constitutes the origin, shaper and source of a identity, meaning: a generality, a law that makes the objects of its power indistinguishable from each other, being all of them substitutes of each other, generality, and identity, as we understand them, are nothing more than a law of exchange as criterion.
Then I had to talk of aspects that I wasn’t that sure of their relevance to the formation of such identities from morality but the only ones that I could talk of being mildly sure of its congruency and pertinacity to the text.
This kind of relation between the objects of such laws are born from such hegemony that is presented as a priori to any evaluation of the object, because that’s morality: a narration of what is right to be and what is wrong to claim for yourself, it dictates as well our everyday and in return we’re possessed in such way that even a questioning to such construction or identity, once finished and stabilized (state that is just like differentials in mathematics exist as a concept and abstraction), feels like a questioning to the existence itself of the individual, the individual then redden against such affront, given the non conformity with given a set of moral rules. The laws of generality then are rules of habit and an ambiguity is born in conscience:
Conscience, however, suffers from the following ambiguity: it can be conceived only by supposing the moral law to be external, superior and indifferent to the natural law; but the application of the moral law can be conceived only by restoring to conscience itself the image and the model of the law of nature. As a result, the moral law, far from giving us true repetition, still leaves us in generality. This time, the generality is not that of nature but that of habit as a second nature. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition.
And then it follows that for being able to reject morality, being a generality, is what I argue to do in this essay, or as Deleuze suggests:
The other way, by contrast, is to overturn the law by descending towards the consequences, to which one submits with a too-perfect attention to detail.
The weapon is yours to choose.
