The Capitalist Self

Autonomy and the social construction of reality. From Freud I learned about fantasies of omnipotence and primary narcissism - the world and others as extensions of self with no independent value and reality. Autonomy. What Trump does in politics – socially constructs reality to suit his egoism – has been the cultural norm for his class for centuries now. 

    The prototype was Milton’s Satan – “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”  Acknowledging value in others, in the world – which is to say, acknowledging that something outside the ego is real – limits the ego, which both defines our humanity and must be rejected at all costs by modernity. To violate a forest for profit the self first demeans it: sees it as "raw material" or "natural resources." If the Ukrainians are in Putin's way, his propaganda demeans them as "Nazis." If that vulgar traitor Trump needs to get people hating poor immigrants, he demeans them as "vermin." If a man needs to betray his wife, she gets turned in a means for his happiness that no longer performs her function. I could continue this for the rest of my life without coming to an end.

     Freud might not have described human nature as such, but it certainly seems he captured the nature of men and women in capitalist society. It is curious how philosophers labor to build ego-centered, capitalist man / woman into a metaphysical system – I don’t think that is just an accident. 

    I will end with a thought of Goethe that my students translated today. Here is the German with my translation:

Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrtum nicht, und zwar aus einem einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen sollen, der Irrtum schmeichelt uns, wir seien auf ein oder die andere Weise unbegrenzt.

 

Truth is unnatural for us; falsity is not – and this is for a simple reason: truth forces us to recognize our limits whereas falsity flatters us into believing that we are in some way without limits.