The treatment of ambivalence and the proper social response
If there is problem in the attempt of inserting a certain number of results into a given social context, it is because there is a tendency to confuse justice with psychology and psychology with justice. The confusion and invasion of territories is nothing but the result of lacking definition of fundamental concepts, which do configure a general reality being possibly understood as symbiotic from inner symbiotic to outer symbiotic).
That this confusion has its roots in the lacking differentiation of understanding and soul, of man and woman, at the end, can be considered as obvious, and thus, there is little probability a global solution be found in the time to come.
What does differentiate the moral from the just? Again a puzzle for Sask. Justice is a social organization which does only consider crimes from the apparent side. Whether there is moral justification or not, justice has just to consider a certain number of proofs or facts, involving the possibility to be established of an accident or self defense (eg), which are the only justified crimes in most legal bodies. It does certainly not have to get into the question whether someone is bright enough to provoke someone’s aggression in order to justify a crime in self defense. It does not have to get into the question of justification of the murder, although it may consider factors that do diminish the weight of the crime. In other words: it does not have to consider the moral aspect of the crime, but just it’s appearance on the surface of social reality.
Morality on the hand, a vague, dubious concept in our times, almost starving through the strangling made on it by modern psychology, is an inner disposition that does rule human’s behavior from the point of view of inner law, and not of social law. The difference that did never appear clearly to
Sask, is that you can’t say for example, adultery is immoral. The fact of breaking a contract (of marriage) is not just (and should be suspended to civil punishment as such), the possible morality or immorality is though of difficult determination. As such, you could say that there is immorality in the disposition to break law or contract, which means, that the disposition can exist even if you never break the contract for reasons of convenience or image, and thus, you are immoral while you look just. On the other hand, you can never say that there is immorality if there is a justification which seems strong enough so as to convince the one you have made the contract with. Even if it is a tacit agreement.
I did often consider cases where I saw men in some kind of meeting where they had to give in to pressures pushing to a marginal language involving some kind of ‘dirty agreement.’ Dirty agreements, even if commercial, do have a rather dirty sexual expression, which usually follows. Were it then to be preferred that this expression fall on a common house wife, or to find some other kind of expression? Considered from this point of view, I would not have considered the kind of adultery as immoral but as … highly moral. Being immoral the general situation or context that does not allow a restoration of general moral behavior. On the other hand, immorality appears where someone does justify this kind of adultery by saying that ‘the general context is like this’, which is to say, letting the context justify gravest inner dispositions. There were certainly times where the human being did wisely differentiate both aspects of his nature, and did as well punish through law (justice) as through social exclusion (moral) depending on the character of the crime. Thus, someone who ‘doesn’t keep his word’ is not submitted to legal punishment, should though be punished through social exclusion, as it is an obvious lack of moral disposition.
The other terrible misunderstanding having been brought up by ambivalent psychological theories is resting on the concept of ‘punishment’. For a modern psychologist, the very use of the word may imply sadist dispositions, which on the other hand, does nothing but reveal his very strange concept of justice.
Well considered, justice, and thus the necessarily following concept of punishment, is nothing but a socially integrated tool of education. Human beings do learn two ways: either through understanding (very rare, Aristotle said), either through fright. And the basic education of a human being is the possibility of understanding himself as a being submitted to law, which is to say, to reason, and not to instinct. Strangely, it is surprising to discover, that most of the ‘punishment’ is based on the cloud of meaning surrounding words like ‘police’, ‘judge’, ‘prison’. Taking the last, you will soon discover that by putting under the word ‘prison’ a meaning involving: ‘most agreeable place where you have holidays for free in a most interesting tribal organization’, the whole weight of the supposed punishment disappears. If on the hand, you push sadism to the limits by conveying that a society is ‘brutal means of making prevail injustice favoring bastards’, you will soon think that you have arrived to a paradise by having been put to jail. Of course this is a limit construction, possible precisely when the very meaning of justice is disappearing from common understanding.
Taking justice as means of education appears quickly, that it defines the ways that do allow concepts to prop out in minds that are still fighting between instinct and reason. For an animal, the concept of ‘robbery’ or ‘stealing’ does simply not exist. It takes what is in front of him, and does usually restrain himself to a very large notion of territory. This means, that one of the basic notions differentiating an animal from a human being is the notion of property as such, as property can only be defined through law, and law a human concept, much more developed than the notion of instinctive rule. The fact of attaching something to someone through a law is the foundation of the notion of property and this notion, (which on the other hand is the basis for the development of the notion of the ‘individual’ or person, as a certain number of thoughts, words, creations are attached to a singular, thus differentiating the one from the whole differently to animals or even tribal organizations, where all is from all in a certain archaic way) can only be developed through clearest definitions of the concepts of stealing, robbing, undue appropriation, etc. From this point of view, it clearly appears that justice is the only means to allow the very configuration of concepts there where the context does not allow the formation of these concepts by themselves.
As well as for other fundamental concepts supposed to determine the human being as such.
Punishment is thus not a sadist’s tool in order to get rid of repressed anger or even irritation. It is nothing but the force of opposition to instinctive forces allowing through its very presence the formation of concepts, which are at the origin of the possibility of the becoming of a particular identity. In this sense, justice has to deal with more sophisticated crimes or deviations of the rule of reason, if it has to deal with populations which are supposed having acquired already a certain number of fundamental concepts. It is obvious, that in more archaic societies there are behaviors that are not even considered as crimes, just because it is so sophisticated that it can hardly be of general danger as it can’t be understood in it’s consequences, and on the other hand, the legal can be defined otherwise, because the common mind does accept proofs which are rejected only by more developed constructions.
In fact, justice is the clearest proof showing the differences in development of the human species. Ruling over main concepts as good and bad, just and unjust, determining by its presence social ascension or rejection, it builds the core of concept’s assemblage a human being builds his existence on.
You would understand now,
Sask, how difficult it is to build up new thought. Metaphysics, defining concepts in different ways, assembling them in different logics, does govern fundamentally over all aspects of human organization as it does alter and change the very basis of the understanding of justice. It is the smallest and most sophisticated babuschka inside of a whole series of many babuschkas which do order human’s life.
Fundamentally the different babuschkas are put one inside the other the following way: Metaphysics, justice, administration (with army and police), economy, science, politics, art.
Usually, metaphysics is nothing but the description of a given order, reason why it becomes so difficult to understand when time passes. If you want to understand Spinoza, you would have to study the social organization in
Holland in the XVIIth Century. Or Descartes, or Kant. Rarely a thinker does go beyond the given structures, exactly because the incompatibility in concept would destroy him (Socrates). He just gives the definition in universal terms of concepts as conveyed by the society he is living in.
What happens though if someone is crazy enough to try to develop metaphysics that do not fit into the general social order as established? Either he goes mad (Nietzsche), either he uses as reference something much deeper than what is conveyed by social organization, as he necessarily needs a referential in order not to loose the very order of words, and this can only be life in itself. Be it thus, though, the metaphysics in question will only refer itself to the mechanisms of understanding and never to the social organization as such. It would warrant the appropriate understanding of what is given, and in no case, involve changes of the established. Clearly, it would position itself against those ways of understanding which do bother an appropriate understanding, which on the hand, may involve social changes in positioning (loss or acquisition of importance and thus of remuneration), but it would never be at the origin of revolutions or of violent disturbances, which would be caused by those thus relegated to second positions.
Or put in other words: things are never bad as they are, because they are (justification through existence), what may be bad is the way we look at things. That the social is not only determined by laws, but also by the movements determined by our way of looking at things, does explain why the very fact of conveying changes in understanding may have as a result violent interactions. If you have been investing in lies for 20 years, it is quite difficult to assume losses in social and economic position from the very fact of the lies being revealed, and thus, you will violently try to suffocate the possibility of another understanding becoming common. On the other hand, lies having as consequence the systematic oppression of main parts of population, it is difficult to see why to give in to the pressure of the few against the wellbeing of many.
Another basic difference between you and me would be that I don’t mind letting the human being shout and cry, get drunk or ill, get lost in the desert or land in prison, if this is to have as an effect the possibility of acquisition of fundamental concepts. In no case I would say that someone who is in prison is necessarily immoral, I would just say, that he is going to life’s school. Whether he learns something or not, is his own problem, the question is to give him the means of doing so. This is why my ‘judgments’ may seem so hard, while I do consider them the last expression of pity.
Look for example at the possibilities of quite harsh dealing with ambivalence:
In fact a schizoid character is the most unhappy person in the world. Incapable to synthesize or give name to feeling, and thus to refer his life’s path to a determined construction based on the fundamental feeling of well being, he just floats behind objects or situations that have been referred to him as being the mark of value, what ever they are.
If you shift from the conveyed appearance (you are necessarily happy), to the references in language for identity (believe to his sayings), you will soon discover that the very fact of considering him in identity does allow him to show himself as he is. The inner logic that does organize the perceptions of reality is thus revealed, and may quickly bring to the light the most contradictory foundations, while precisely, the very fact of doing as if you thought that it is certainly the best way of doing, does keep the schizoid in complete confidence.
Usually there are two possibilities: either the schizoid is already involved in criminal activity (Aguilera, Chiriboga, Zimmermann), or the logic does involve a cover for a certain number of illegal activities (Villarreal, Ordoñez). In the first case, the confidence acquired through the belief given by someone, does confront the schizoid to justice. In the second case, you may break the links to crime through financial and social pushes to the social borders which oblige to a consideration of fundamental ways of thinking. To cover unconsciously a certain number of crimes is not illegal, and though dangerous.
You may ask yourself, why a schizoid is necessarily involved in criminal activity. Because the very foundation of social organization is the preservation of the notion of ‘home’ in feeling, and all law is based on this. As the schizoid is unable to guide himself through feeling, he converts the feeling into an ‘image’, which does on the other hand break all law through the very shifting of the notion from inner reality to outer appearance. Consequently, the very logic of transformation of the feeling to a determined image does give the logic of cover for a variety of crimes, he may not be aware of, as for him , his very social integration is the warrant of legality. Thus, by pushing the schizoid to the limits of survival, he is obliged to consider himself as ‘illegal’ or in his own terms as ‘immoral’. For a schizoid a ‘poor’ is always immoral, because he doesn’t keep ‘appearance’, which is for him the passport to the legal. It is an evidence, that to say ‘someone who smokes is immoral’ is schizoid logic, as it can hardly be attached to any inner moral disposition whatsoever.
Could it be thus thought that a social mechanism could oblige the schizoid to attach his thought to his feeling at least in some way? Although there are many types of schizoid structures, most of them involving sharp contradictory identities in parental environment (race, social position, nationality, culture, custom etc) or from family to social environment, as the block of thought (let us say generalizing as transmitted by father) does not fit the inner movements (as transmitted by the mother), the lack of possibility of transmission from one to the other provoking sometimes a cut between the understanding and the psychic life, it is obvious that most of the schizoid characters do come from homosexual environment, as there is a real impossibility to think the nature as given, and even less, the social integration of the given nature (no general compound of insertion). Logically the individual does badly choose between a social marginalization keeping his nature, or a social integration refusing his particular nature. The first makes of the homosexual a criminal, the second, a schizoid.
It seems impossible in actual ‘ideology’ to think of a solution which would avoid either the one or the other, as there is no place left for a nature whose logic has simply no bridges of insertion to another one, whose fundamental aim has been for hundreds of years the elimination of those.
The construction of an alternative logic is not excessively easy, though partly possible. In any case you could say that the very fact of restoring the link to feeling, even if this involves strange social behavior is already more than covered criminality through repression. Of course Sask would never agree with that, but the schizoid with certainty.