Social homogeneity and interconnectedness, in the absence of applied external directional force, remain inherently dialectical structural notions: simultaneously constructive and destructive. They produce coherent, harmonious, and functional groups only by means of devouring the autonomous, self-conscious, and purposive individual. Coherent, harmonious, and functional they may be; yet, insensibly brutal, purely instinctive, and total aliens to cognitive reasoning they also become. A horde is that which we get out of this configuration; for the individual is lost—more precisely, exterminated.
Any person who is acquainted with Enlightenment philosophy—namely, the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke—ought to, philosophically speaking, distinctly identify two states of nature [emphasis added]: a pre-social state of nature, and a post-social one. For civil society is a human construct. In the second part of “A Discourse on the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind,” Rousseau (1755) observed, “The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.” (Rousseau 86)
“This is mine,” per se, denotes private property. And private, in turn, pertains to the individual rather than the body of commoners. Of all things which could be classified as private, however, nothing can ever be more sacred, inalienable, and divinely endowed unto all men than one’s own person—i.e. his individual self [emphasis added]. Every other private possession may be subject to contention but the individual self: the right to one’s own person is beyond any contestation; leastways, amongst free conscious men. As John Locke (1690) aptly put it,
“Sect. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person [my formatting]: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he has mixed his labour with, and joined to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property [my formatting]. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.” (Locke 49, 50)
The celebrated Kant (1784) had also revered the freedom—and with equal enthusiasm, the cultivation—of the individual mind, in an essay, “Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”:
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage [in other translated versions, the term used here is bondage]. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance [my italics]. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance [my formatting]. Dare to know! (Sapere Aude.) “Have the courage to use your own understanding,” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.” (Kant para. 1)
Thereon, it is amply evident that in the greatest wakening of human intellectualism and consciousness, i.e. the Age of Enlightenment, the intellectual and independent—most importantly, the self-aware—individual was championed. So, what has become of the individual in the social order—in this Age of the Imbecile that we live in?
In fact, the most pressing inquiry at present has nothing to do with ‘what’ has befallen the individual, neither its underlying causes. But it is foremost a question of ‘how’; since we ought to understand the manner in which events have developed and took place i.e. its progressional course; so that we might possibly contemplate the means by which that could be reversed, and the outcome—that is, the death of the individual—could be undone.
That social homogeneity and interconnectedness (i.e. cohesion) are imperative conditions to the foundation of prosperous communities and societies, nations, or states, remains a categorical sensus communis. Nevertheless, intellectually speaking, their great and chief end should not go any further than achieving a unity of mind. Yet, it is absolutely critical to emphasize—though it ought be vividly apparent to the meanest intelligence—that ‘a unity of mind’ herein means accord vis-á-vis matters particular to the domain of what is common for the community, society, state, or whatever social order it may be; and, that accord is arrived at upon sufficient intellectual and rational deliberations; wherein reason reigns supreme; whence each member has, individually, participated to the best of their ability via contributing their individual input thereto; all the while their individuality is preserved. It is NEVER [emphasis added] that all members should entertain the exact same thought or idea, merely the transcendent conclusion drawn from the cluster of contributions, tested and refined in the crucible of reason, that only the best of each, practicable within the body of the whole, might survive therein to attain the sought common end.
To elucidate this concept of ‘unity of mind’ further, I shall consult the authority of Hugo Münsterberg, who so emphatically suggested that,
“The harmony and soundness of society depend upon its inner unity of mind. Social organization does not mean only an external fitting together, but an internal equality of mind. Men must understand one another in order to form a social unit, and such understanding certainly means more than using the same words and the same grammar. They must be able to grasp other men’s point of view, they must have a common world in which to work, and this demands that they mould the world in the same forms [emphasis added] of thought [my formatting].” (Münsterberg 195)
In any era, wherein the abnegation of sound reason is prevailing; and intellectual engagement is loathed at best, altogether discarded at worst; social homogeneity and interconnectedness are left to the power of their internal momentum and aleatory thrust; with no external directional force applied on them; they distort and corrupt ‘the unity of mind’ to be understood and carried on as single-mindedness: so much so that a horde of cognitively-crippled, absent-minded, and most troubling yet, undistinguishable members is formed.
Each member, having relinquished his independent cognitive faculties, departs from their state of being as res cogitan (thinking thing), and emerges wholly as an animalis socialis (social animal). They renounce the powers of reason and worship those of suggestibility. Such are the guiding forces of hordes. They propound absent-mindedness masqueraded under the guise of single-mindedness and conformity.
Unfortunately, a great many all too often mistake labor and compensation for social contribution, productivity, and, most erroneously, personal development. But with no active conscious cognition, no single person may claim ownership of their labor as established by Locke—by virtue of adding unto any element or process their sui generis ingenuity, which should be readily distinguishable from that of all others. When everyone simply partakes in action, and not in mind [emphasis added], recognition—except for functionality—is impossible to manifest. Hence, their perception of their own distinctive self, their individuality, begins to peter out.
For a horde is mobilized without the members thereof entertaining any sense of direction or purposiveness. They blindly mimic whatever transpires around them. They each shudder at the very thought of having their own personal understanding; their own sense of direction and purpose; due to the fear of being identified as aliens to the horde and be subject to its ferocious retaliation—which they might not be able to withstand. Yet, that is sheer survival instinct at play here, not mindfulness. The result: masses ensnared in a state of perpetual intellectual nonage; from which they never make the transition unto maturity—unto independent individual understanding, that is.
We further know that the unintellectual organization and mobilization of men in hordes subjugate them to their subversive appetite. For as Richard Watson laid it out, “Without some degree of education, man is wholly the creature of appetite. Labor, feasting, and sleeping divide his time, and wholly occupy his thoughts.” (Cocker 615) Moreover, conventional wisdom has taught us that appetite breeds brutishness—more so, the destruction of civil society. Having that said, social prosperity and sustainability hangs entirely upon the present-minded and tamed [which I shall explain momentarily] individual.
So, the remedy to revive, or reinvigorate, the deceased, or the moribund, individual lies within the folds of the ‘unity of mind’ set at the crescendo of social homogeneity and interconnectedness. Educating the masses—not in the common connotation of the word, as in schooling; but, in the true sense of the word, i.e. paideía (παιδεία)—is perforce the first act that must needs be performed towards achieving such unity. As paideía, understood in an enchanting literal and philosophical synthesis, translates into “tame thyself!” [see “The Lost Paideía ‘παιδεία’: Why Is Education Failing?”] (Nasif, 2021)
And by taming one’s self, one exercises restraint in behavior and conduct (ne quid nimis!): the manifestation of the greatest virtue of all, according to Socrates, i.e. temperance; whence the individual is set on the path thither self-knowledge; and such science may not be recollected properly [since, by the authority of Socrates, all science is reminiscence] in separation from one’s existential teleology (i.e. purposiveness) vis-á-vis creation (i.e. the corporeal world) and all creatures therein; that in order for man to understand other men, he must needs understand himself first by becoming self-conscious [emphasis added]. Thence, he arrives at the overarching truth: that him being identical to everyone else forces a state of inertia (idleness) upon the social organization, of which he is a member; or, worse, bring it to demise, given that it fails to cope with the world’s evolvement; for by the virtue of uniformity the need for cognitive engagement is altogether deferred to external suggestions; and, that the synergy produced from the synthesis of his individuality with that of the others comprising that social organization is a conditio sine qua non for defining that order’s identity and constitutes the impetus for its development; therefore, the independence and integrity of his individual mind—more precisely, his private intelligence—along those of others must be maintained at all costs to ensure the continuity of their social order.
Simply put, the grand and chief end of social homogeneity and interconnectedness should only seek an ‘internal unity of mind’ of the social organization—which is the accord of individual and independent minds—and never allow for single-mindedness—that is, a masqueraded absent-mindedness [emphasis added]—to germinate within it; for single-mindedness breeds uniformity, the most innate characteristic of hordes; and, hordes upon exterminating the individual bring social orders to inevitable demise.
Reference
Cocker, Benjamin F. Christianity and Greek Philosophy. Apple Books; New York: Carlton & Lanahan, San Francisco: E. Thomas, Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden, 1870.
Kant, Immanuel. “Kant. What is Enlightenment.” Columbia University in the City of New York, originally published in 1784, www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021.
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Apple Books; Publisher: Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1980 (originally published in 1690).
Münsterberg, Hugo. Psychology and Social Sanity. Apple Books; New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1914.
Nasif, Alan. “The Lost Paideía ‘παιδεία’: Why Is Education Failing?” Intelligence Scoop – A Blog Addressing Politics, Sociology, and Philosophy, Economics, and Psychology, 29 May 2021, www.intel-scoop.com/the-lost-paideia-παιδεία-why-is-education-failing/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind. Apple Books; Publisher: Academy of Dijon, 1755.
