Multiculturalism would be Unanimous if it Weren't for Your Damn Tribe of Individuals!

So, we've covered Berdyaev's thoughts on the Eternal Being and its image and likeness down herebelow. But herebelow the image can never be a solitary and isolated monad; rather, it can only exist in society -- which should not be surprising if the Eternal Being is a becoming society of three.

To quote the eternal being themself, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness." And "let them..." Let them what? Doesn't really matter in this context. We're more concerned with the them and with the Us-them parallel clueniverses.

Thus we move on to the Social Animal -- who is also the political beast, or the mimetic subject, or the half-awake herdling, or the grumpy outsider, or the unassimilated crank. Unlike, say, ants or chimps or leftists, we have countless ways of expressing our groupishness -- even by denying it.

Bion, who wrote a book on the subject, situated man in the dialectical space between what he called our nariciss-ism and and our social-ism. Pathology lies at either extreme, i.e., elevating the individual at the expense of the group, or prizing the group at the expense of effacing individuality. Historically it has been almost impossible to maintain the ideal balance, as in the pre- or non-leftist United States.

A society is an organism. However, unlike other organisms, the parts retain their autonomy and identity (or at least have much more of each), and aren't completely subordinate to the whole. Indeed, they can even rebel against the whole. Of course, there are times that parts of a body rebel against the whole, as in cancer or any autoimmune disorder.

Is there a sociological analogue of cancer? Yes, of course. There is, for example, the unorganized cancer of criminality, and the organized criminality of leftism, which again destroys everything it touches. Under the best of circumstances leftism is an autoimmune disorder, in that (like Obama) it fails to recognize foreign invaders and instead attacks its own citizens.

But the left's worst crime is against freedom and therefore individuality, i.e., creative being -- which is why "political correctness" is not a glitch but a feature of leftism. It is essential to leftism, in that the latter simply cannot exist in the absence of ThoughtCrime. Individuals must not only be forced to do certain things, but to believe and even be certain things.

This follows the left's inverted metaphysic whereby essence is a function of existence. For example, a black person who has the incorrect beliefs -- say, Clarence Thomas -- revokes his blackness; or a woman who rejects the feminist agenda -- say, Sarah Palin -- becomes something other than a woman, just a dung-eating monster of the leftist imagination.

Dehumanization is at the cardiopathological heart of the left, since humans who do not conform to their image of the group are ostracized. You will no doubt notice that this is precisely what all primitive tribes do.

For the tribal mentality, "humanness" is defined as membership in the tribe, not as a universal essence. Those outside the tribe are barbarians, not quite human. Thus, the same rules of morality do not apply to those outside the group. Over the past five years, we've all seen this double standard play out, as Obama has been permitted to get away with things for which members of our tribe would be impeached. And rightfully so.

Eight years ago (or whatever it was) Obama and Biden claimed that ending the filibuster would be a crime against mankind. Now? Same thing. It depends on what you mean by "mankind," for a crime against non-leftists isn't a crime at all. Compare the media coverage of the false claims against the Duke lacrosse team vs. the true claims against their murderous accuser. It is as if the unreality really happened, whereas the reality didn't happen at all.

Another critical difference between left and right -- and this is something highlighted by Chesterton as well -- is that we include the dead in our tribe.

In fact, we also include the unborn, because our temporal space isn't confined to the moment. We don't assume we are the wisest generation in history -- the ones we've been waiting for! -- and are therefore entitled to fundamentally transform what it took generations of sacrifice to build. Nor do we consider it moral to force the unborn -- those we suffer to live -- to spend their lives paying off the debt for the leftist spending spree that has been going on since they took over congress in 2006.

An organism is distinct from a mere mass or agglomeration; rather, it is a diversified whole, with both horizontal and vertical organization. Just as the body has a head, a heart, and hands, society has its thinkers and doers, its priests and warriors, etc.; but we must be free to discover our particular destiny, our part in the whole. Thus, as Berdyaev observes,

"In the relationship of ethics to the social question, we meet the tragic conflict between the value of freedom and the value of equality." I have yet to meet the leftist who understands that freedom and equality are at antipodes, for absolute equality requires the obliteration of freedom, just as absolute freedom would redound to an absence of equality.

"Absolute equality would have left being in an unrevealed condition, in indifference, i.e. in non-being." Thus "the revolutionary demand for return to equality" results in a plunge into non-being and "the denial of meaning in the whole creative process in the world....

"The demand for a forced leveling, which comes out of the lower levels of chaotic darkness, is an attempt to destroy the hierarchic, cosmic order which was formed by the creative birth of light in darkness, an attempt to destroy human personality itself as a stage in hierarchy, as born of inequality."

Precisely.

Which is why the worst evils result from forced equality under the guise of "goodness." Evil goodness, thy (current) name is ObamaCare.

I believe Berdyaev would say that God is freedom-love-creativity; each of these transcendentals presupposes the others, and personality -- or personhood -- is a function of their dynamic play. Thus, "Personality is very closely linked with love. Personality is realized through love: by means of love solitude is conquered and communion is achieved."

Furtheramor, "Love presupposes personality: it is the relation of person to person: personality goes out of himself into another personality, comes to know this other personality and confirms it for eternity." In short, "The 'I' becomes a personality through love," as every baby knows (or fails to know) more deeply than knowledge.

For "Love is dual: it predicates two persons, and not some impersonal identity. And the secret of love is related to the fact that one personality is never exactly identical with another, that the other person is 'Thou.'"

Although elsewhere Berdyaev expresses some peculiar ideas about sex, here he affirms the Raccoon principle that "male and female are cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories." There is a "cosmic mysticism of male and female," hence, what we call dilettrantic yoga, since we are all beginners at this -- or must always begin again, since no one else's yoga (union) can be ours.

(All quoted material from Berdyaev.)