The Oscillating Mind

I've been studying Hegel pretty hard this week, and last yesterday I got caught on an interesting section describing patriotism, hedonism and romanticism. It expressed something of what I've been groping for in my understanding of society.

Forgive me my mistakes, but as I understand what Hegel is saying; consciousness, having realised that the universal principles of reason are to be found in action, identifies itself as a particular with the nation as an expression of the absolute. In the nation, all people are equally recognised (I assume under the rule of law) and are held to be of one essence. The essence of the nation is taken to be expressed in the manners, language, culture, etc. All people are taken to be equal and the activity of another is taken to be activity for the activity of all. This pretty much describes this ideal I hold sometimes of a socialistic rationalistic utopia. Although I would add that the nation should attempt to hold itself to universal principles so that it can act as a mediator between the particular and the universal.

Hegel, however, seems to understand it a little better than I did. The individual in a nation will always at some point be made aware of the independent singleness of their continuation of existence. But in the form of the nation this independence can only appear as a quantity, and it is a tiny one, at that. But this tiny, insignificant quality relates to the whole essence of the individual. If I understand Hegel correctly, the individual always ends up understanding themselves as the antithesis of the nation state. I don't know if I do understand Hegel here, but I think non-identity is an important characteristic here. Individuality is the essence of the individual, but it can only be understood as what is non-identical with the customs and laws of a nation.

Now, the nation of the nation contains everything that exists within that nation, but it can only contain individuality as a series of distinct, vanishingly small quantitative categories. Non-identity (i.e. individuality, eccentricity, etc) as a quality cannot be directly assimilated into the nation because the content of a nation is its laws, history, language, etc. So non-identity expresses itself in forms of culture which are no longer non-identical, but are only representations of the non-identical. For instance in laws defending the right to free speach, or in the repitition of Monty Python jokes which are taken as an example of "quirky" British humour, etc.

So the individual has to understand itself as not the nation. Which is a shame. I'll skip Hedonism, because Hedonism is boring. But the idea of a romantic consciousness fascinates me because it expresses a tendency I have noticed in the modern world. But my explanation of it is going to be even more basic and wrong: The individual sets its own heart as its guide and tries to solve the problems of the world through compassion, beauty, etc. But when it manages to do this, and other people start listening to their hearts, the movement no longer exists as a movement based on the individual, instead it is a social principle. So the success of romanticism leads to it becoming the opposite of itself.

These two forms of consciousness seem to me to explain our present culture very well. When we wish for patriotic unity, we fall down because we can only express our own identity as that which is different to the individual. When we follow our own hearts we find that our hearts desire is still the betterment of society and are drawn into social networks that are antithetical to our own self-consciousness.

I used to see this all the time in Paganism and in the New Age; where there is a nearly universal belief in the goodness of community which often comes into conflict with the subculture's existence as a self-consciously non-mainstream group dedicated to self-interpretation of spiritual insights.

This explains how I feel, at least. I try to forge an identity as a part of a group, but this can never be complete because they contradict the very essence of the essence of the ideal of interpreting the universe as a free entity. So I oscillate. And this in the end gets nowhere.

Hegel may yet know the answer. But it seems to me that what is needed is a society which has as its essence non-identity as a quality. This would mean a society in which creativity and diversity is the sole reason for social existence. But this would involve a unity of identity and non-identity, meaning that that which is not a social quality would have to be understood as the most important quality of society... this could be difficult. I'll think about it.