Introverts are constantly encourage to become extroverts.  But what exactly is an extrovert?  An extrovert is someone who is constantly performing roles for other people.  And he knows how to play those roles well, and now enjoys playing them.  The introvert, on the other hand, generally performs no roles.  He simply does whatever he does for himself.  to the extent that the introvert has freed himself, through involuntarily, from performing for an audience, his action is more authentic than the extrovert's.  But as his action does not have an external object, it is not authentic or real action.  There is no need, though, for the introvert to become like the extrovert.  All he needs do in order to achieve authenticity is to add an external dimension to his action.  He should do for others as he used to do fro himself.  Exteriorizing the authenticity of introverted action is the path to authenticity.  The person thus makes a quantum jump beyond taking.  He realizes that giving is what makes taking authentic.  He takes only in order to give.

Introvertness is a reflection of extrovertness that gains a level of authenticity over extrovertness, because it is authentic action with an authentic object.  But action can achieve full authenticity only in a Kantian universalization.  It is not, then, merely conformism in order to survive.  Rather, it is an expression of what action really is.  It may not receive the same plaudits as extrovert action.  But there are other kinds of plaudits.

Money is not capital -- it is just a part of capital.  Capitalism is a system of (unjust) privilege based on economic, political, cultural, etc., resources.  The political and economic systems are not independent of each other.  The "political" system is a part of the "economic" system, and the "economic" system is a part of the "political" system.

Embracing oneself -- and comforting oneself -- as one used to be -- perhaps vulnerable, etc. -- and as one will be -- old.  Bridging the gap between the baby and the elder.

Kant and Socialism

Acting purely as the sentient (finite, mortal) being, there are no right or wrong actions, only good or bad ones.  Our immortality is not an empirical reality.  Whatever we do, we do as beings whose every action is merely an empirical phenomenon.  Our actions are all of this world.  Therefore, the only rightness or wrongness they can have is within the context of empirical phenomena -- the Manifold.  The individual being, mortal and finite, cannot be the basis of right and wrong -- there is no private morality.  Acting as a human being, one acts within the larger context of society (as opposed acting as a mere sentient being).  There is a sense in which a person can say: "Because I am a finite and mortal being, my actions must make sense to me, because this is the only life I have."  But this contention reflects back on itself and becomes: Because I am a finite being, and this is the only life I have, the only meaning it can have has to be outside itself."  If then happiness is good, and creating happiness is right, then it cannot be just my happiness that we are talking about.  And when what is right, I am doing what is right for me to do as a social being.

"National identity" is the identity of elites, no matter what their race or origin.  The privileged among immigrants worry about getting their proper share of the pie, while the rest of us, immigrant or not, worry about the next month's rent -- about the crumbs we assumed we were assured of, but which are now threatened.  Those who have the privilege of worrying about making their proper contribution to Canadian heritage, already belong to the privileged, whether they know it or not.  Yes, it is true that much talent is wasted.  But that is because of the injustice of the system.  The system systematically destroys talent and potential, where of immigrants or others.  It balances everything in the scales of profit, rather than the good of society.  So the "underprivileged" are, by definition, excluded from making a contribution to "national identity."  The working class has no country.

Notwithstanding all the differences of background, attitude, and so on, that divide me from a certain co-worker, the fact remains -- and it is perhaps the most tangible and real factor -- that he and I, for the foreseeable future and during a relatively long past -- are stuck with each other.  We are, in other words, in an identical situation.  Therefore, after all is said and done, and even after disagreements and disputes are considered, the most rational and course of behavior is tolerance.

A similar argument can perhaps be constructed for the case of the various groups that make up Canada.  For better or worse, we are all here now.  Therefore, the most rational course and behaviour may be simple tolerance and active bond-forming.

The Gift (an atheist's religious moment)

The recent arguments over the political correctness of Christmas celebrations have again made political correctness itself an issue.  Though many people would wish political correctness away, the reality is that it has always been with us in one form or another, sometimes with a name, and sometimes without.  For example, at some point during the 1960s, people in North America stopped calling Afro-Americans “Negroes,” and started calling them “Blacks,” though no-one thought of the switch as “politically-correct” – it just seemed the right thing to do.

So it may be more productive to try to understand how and why ideas and concepts become politically incorrect, because the process is usually a symptom of an underlying problem – a problem that the battles over political correctness frequently prevent a solution of, and simply mask by creating new names and concepts.  For example, the real problem with the word “Negro” was that it categorized a section of the population in a negative way – that is, the word did not add any positive information to one’s ideas about a particular person.  It simply signified that the person was not “White” – which, in reality, means nothing.  Americans, rather than dealing with the word’s negative stereotyping, simply replaced it with another word – Black – that had the exact same problem – although one would not have dreamed of saying so in the ‘70s, for fear of being labelled a racist.  In other words, objecting to the board “Black” on the grounds that it was a label that arbitrarily put a wall of exclusion around a large section of the population – this objection would have made one an exclusionary racist!

On similar grounds, one would quite reluctantly propose that the labels “Afro-American,” Afro Canadian,” and so on have very little positive content, and primarily save to exclude.  The point is so obvious that did resists getting pinned down.  An Afro-Canadian, an Italian-Canadian, a Chinese-Canadian, and so on, is doubtless the beneficiary of a rich cultural heritage.  But as soon as each of those individuals is labeled in the customary way, their positive cultural heritage becomes a wall that separates them from the rest of society.  An Afro-Canadian, etc., is much more than just an individual who has been influenced by two cultures.

So, as hinted before, it may be more productive to try to understand how concepts become politically correct, rather than trying to invent concepts that are completely correct –not to speak of the fact that such concepts may be so neutral as to be meaningless.

A concept’s job is to unify a number of individual items into a totality.  For instance, as soon as an object is called a tree, it becomes a member of the established community of trees.  It is no longer just an object with a wooden trunk and green leaves.  It is now an object that share the characteristic of “treeness,” and everything that implies, with a large number of other objects of various sorts.  The name, however, forces our attention to certain aspects of the object, at the expense of other aspects.  For instance, we now tend to pay less attention to the fact that a tree is also a living being, a part of the same evolutionary chain we ourselves are a part of, an integral part of the biosphere oh, and so on.  Names begin by embracing, and end up rejecting and excluding.  The problem is that names begin by making a thing more than what it was, but then make it less than what it was.

Another example is the word “civilization.”  It originally signified an improvement on the state of nature, and a concept that unified the diversity of human achievements, imbuing them with singular significance.  But the very same process of making the human “a better nature” made the human something other than and opposed to nature.  Hence “civilization” became merely that which is not nature.  The rise was also a fall.

Social phenomenon turn from being acceptable into being unacceptable and politically-incorrect as they change from being something positive and affirming into something negative and excluding.  For example, discrimination against gay people and gay families became politically incorrect, not because some “wicked liberals” pushed for it, but because heterosexuality, from an affirmation of the love between a man and a woman, turned into a means of excluding and stigmatizing a large part of the population.

It is true that every affirmation and inclusion is also a negation and exclusion.  This is the essence of the human tragedy.  Yet the other side of the coin is that every negation and exclusion prepares the groundwork for a higher affirmation and inclusion.  A concept, at one point being of current significance and relevance, later becomes anachronistic and irrelevant, because it no longer tends to affirm and include.  The concepts Mrs and Miss at one point conferred a certain status on women.  Later, they served only to exclude women from the circle of independent human persons.  But the very concepts Mrs. And Miss served to focus attention on the dark side of the issue, and to prepare the groundwork for the next step.  Now, the positive concept Ms, as it serves to focus attention on the fact of human persons are merely divided by the excluding labels Mrs. And Ms., may serve as groundwork for a higher synthesis.

Another good example is Christmas, that is, its concept and what it means and used to mean.  From a time of sharing with the whole community and affirming one’s unbreakable ties to it, it became a time of rejecting those bonds through an affirmation of the self and of those directly bound to the self – that is, family and friends.  So it became a time of affirming the self, rather than affirming the Gift.  Long before it became politically incorrect, Christmas was a celebration of something received as a gift –with no money paid.  Christmas, from the exact opposite and negation of commercialism, has metamorphosed into the opposite.  It now divides and excludes – by ranking people into those who can afford expensive “gifts” and those who cannot, those who “care” and those who do not – turning love and caring themselves into commodities.  After all, those who  love the least, will care the least, are the ones most deserving of the Gift.

The diremption between finance and economics

The capitalist ruling class looks at the world from a perspective of dollars and cents, whereas the real world runs according to a different logic.  While they run around trying to calculate how much everything is worth, the real values of thing slip through their fingers.  This is not just in a subjective, say, “artistic” or “moral,” sense, but rather it is the case that the diremption is at the same time objectifying itself as the apparent contradiction between a prospering financial system and a receding economy.

The Hypocrites [a group in very early Islam]were considered to be condemned to eternal damnation not because they pretended to believe what they didn’t  truly believe.  Rather, it was because they used religion to gain worldly advantage.  They were “nice” not because they believed that brotherly love was the only road to true salvation, but because being nice meant that they would be at the top of the list when good jobs opened up, so to speak.  There are therefore no outward signs of true religiosity; there are no particular characteristics, such as “niceness,” that can be associated with religiosity.  If society happens to associate certain characteristics with saintliness, the truly saintly will make sure they do not exhibit such characteristics.  Anything that leads worldly advantages is of the Devil.

[This was on the occasion of a dispute between June Callwood and a group of immigrant women]  Justice is a feeling.  June Callwood’s idea of feelings is a Western one.  Her opponents don’t say “You are an oppressor if you don’t agree with us.”  They say “You are an oppressor if you refuse to understand our point of view,” that is, “if you refuse to admit that your categories are not the only possible ones.”  Problems are not centered around poverty and so on.  They are centered around hierarchical structure and dichotomous thinking.  Logic is fine as long as it is not used to perpetuate and justify oppression.  The struggle against repression in all its forms as primary.  Her opponents are not “post- modernists.” By classifying them as such, she only proves her own ethnocentrism.  These are Western categories.  Postmodernists are a group of highly-privileged, mainly European, intellectuals, who can afford to debase logic.  The oppressed can’t.

On the subway I saw someone reading a letter in a foreign language.  It reminded me of what it used to be like to read a letter from home (the reader’s seriousness was especially striking and nostalgic).  With a letter in front of me and in my hands, the lost world used to be present – actually there in tangible form.  But gradually the letter became a piece of a world far away and lost.  The letter taunted me.  It said it came from there, but that I couldn’t go there.  Eventually, it became a dead object that meant nothing at all.

The old paradigm: all providing for all, because each existed in all, and all have to provide for each, as an intrinsically valuable part of the whole.  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need;” not according to his work or contribution.

The new paradigm: The contribution of each to all creates an obligation of the part of all to help each.  Each contributes to all with the sole motive of creating that obligation.  And all helps each only because of the contribution of each – each has no intrinsic value – in fact, each is not a part of all – because, for one thing, there is no all.

Justice vs Efficiency

Bob Rae said a while back that he was trying to reconcile social justice with economic efficiency.  But that is a false dichotomy.  The issue is not social justice vs. economic efficiency, because that is like saying the issue is social justice vs. social injustice, i.e., which is better.  “Economic efficiency” means profitability.  It does not mean an optimal way of doing things, where by optimal is meant the way that takes all costs and benefits into account, and therefore seeks to have the maximum productivity with the minimum possible costs and the maximum possible benefits.  Therefore, the most costly and destructive way of doing things may in fact be the way that is most “economically efficient.”  Social justice has never been, and will never be, reconcilable that “economic efficiency.”  The best proof that the advocates of economic efficiency have social justice as the furthest thing on their minds is that they can “rationally” ask whether social injustice is economically efficient.

Abortion

Abortion, according to progressives, is a kinship issue that does not belong in the sphere of public policy.  One problem with this position is that it is ahistorical.  For abortion to really be a kinship issue, the kinship sphere would need to exist.  But in the current society, the universal sphere of kinship is in every direction invaded by the mass culture of alienation and exploitation.

Real Empowerment

Empowerment has been misunderstood as taking control.  Interpreted strictly, this is wrong, as it presupposes a hierarchical way of thinking.  Empowerment must necessarily be understood as collective.  In other words, collectivity is essential, rather than accidental, to empowerment.  A community is empowered to the extent that it is a community.  A feminist analysis is essential to an understanding of empowerment.  The corollary is that to the extent that there is “control” as “power over,” a community is disempowered.  We must neutralize the effects of Gramsci’s thinking on the analysis of social action.

The label "Equal Opportunity Employer" is no credit to a company if it happens to be an "employer of last resort" -- security, janitorial services, and so on.   Companies should in fact be discouraged from trying to present "equal opportunity employment" statistics as a credit to themselves.  A reverse-reverse-discrimination is in order -- such employers should be expected to have a proportional (to total population) percentage of non-visible minorities, that is, of "white" people.

Absolute commodity: commodity that is valued not only for the function it can perform, but also in itself as a thing -- as a manufactured object existing outside the self and yet subject to position by the self. Hence the relationship is not only one of use, but also, significantly, of ownership.  This is a primitive stage of commodity society, such as used to exist in the "advanced" countries, and still exists in pseudo-capitalist third-world countries.  In the "advanced" countries, however, this stage has more or less been transcended.  The commodity, of course, still exists, yet its nature has undergone essential changes.  The commodity is valued for its use, as well as for its contribution towards a "higher," more "enlightened," or more aesthetic life.  So the facts of possession, and correspondingly, the cherishing of the object as an object have become far less important.

Now as has been pointed out by some, the pre-capitalist, capitalist and post-revolutionary societies represent a continuing progression, and not a circle closing back on itself.  Therefore, the revolution does not lead to a society of craftsmanship and pre-capitalist values and norms, but rather to a society of higher values and norms than earlier ones -- a more "spiritual" society, if you will.  The Western attitude towards commodities noted above, may be seen as part of a movement in this direction.  So, what may have been seen, from a different point of view, as a greater attachment to objects, and hence a more "materialistic" attitude, appears entirely differently as seen from another point of view.  The point again is that the post-revolutionary spirituality is very different from the relatively primitive, pre-capitalist spirituality.  Hence it is an error to expect the current attitudes to be moving back to those of a previous epoch.  In other words, when we see a movement in a direction even farther away from what we are used to think as spirituality, we shouldn not automatically assume that the movement is towards a degradation of spirituality.  To state the dialectical obvious then, "spirituality" itself is subject to development and transformation.