The Idea of Europe

It is hard to think calmly these days. After the atrocious bombings in Paris and now Brussels there is probably not much to say but what little there is might be worth repeating.

This is, to some, about 'accounting'- there is a horrible sentiment that I increasingly hear being expressed: "Why should we have sympathy for them when so many people in Iraq and Afghanistan have been killed directly or indirectly because of their misguided policies?"

And so, the logic continues, this is just those without any power, the dispossessed, striking back at the powerful with the only weapons they have.

Of course, it's conveniently forgotten that whatever the degree of validity to those views there may be there is the uncomfortable truth that the vast majority of people who have been killed at the hands of these fanatics are, in fact, other Muslims. In the land of the pure, support for these groups from General Z onward (in the name of 'strategic depth') has resulted in a terrible blowback and a radicalization of parts of the society. 

And, of course, it's also conveniently forgotten that lots of the tyrants, dictators and autocrats who brutalized their own people were Muslim (at least nominally) and that they were supported by western powers. So, my view really is: a pox on both your houses. Or, in other words: the little boy has it absolutely right: you have to piss on power (as Ian Buruma notes in a NYRB article written five days before the attacks). 

From the same article, a quote by Benda:

"Europe won't be the result of a simple economic, or political transformation. It will not really exist without adopting a system of moral and aesthetic values, the exaltation of a certain way of thinking and feeling.."

Now, in itself, this is a fascinating idea. From the outside it seems as if there has been little else but an economic transformation (and the political one, as far as the trends indicate, is a transformation that is seeing the dismantling of the social democracy consensus and a lurch to the right (or even worse, the far-right). 

Badiou is quite right to say that the market provides a false idea of universality. And one might add, of unity. What if the economic system is actually undermining the very notion and possibility of independent aesthetic values? Ditto morality. 

And it's not just the market per se but the attitudes and 'culture' that accompanies it. If Macintyre is right then the fragmentation of value at the workplace, educational institutions and more generally in life itself means that there is no real consensus on what constitutes the 'good life' over and beyond the value-neutral liberal stance that the freedom to pursue whatever one wants is the right of each individual. 

So, being bereft of any notion of the common good (the previous Pope's idea that that itself was underwritten by a common faith, a shared symbolic order, cannot be ignored), coupled with an economic system that favours individuality over solidarity and equality means that any discussion about the establishment of genuine political communities is severely limited. Dahrendorf (from memory): no political democracy without economic democracy. 

The fragmentation of value (which is, no doubt, partly exacerbated by immigration) isn't necessarily the same thing as a vibrant pluralism. In fact, quite the opposite! Not only does it entail the loss of coherence at the individual level as well as the loss of the idea of a common good; further, it allows for a dull uniformity to be imposed on us by states and corporations. The 'subjectivization' of the individual cannot but be a political act (an act, precisely, of de-politicization..."It's the economy, stupid").

"But Benda also believed that the idea of Europe should remain utterly rational, abstract, devoid of tribal sentiments." 

In other words, is being boring the only anti-dote today against barbarism? 

~
Elizabeth Smither:

The dark brilliance inside the 'No'.

Yes, I mean no. Have always meant no. Start my sentences that way, since I'm unwilling and unable to speak about myself. You see what I'm saying, no? Inside: the perpetual no, no matter how life drifts by. 

No to ideology, to state and religion, too. No to the life of the mind, since I get my artificial stimulants elsewhere. No to the individual, but to society also. No, a thousand times no to technology, to tribe, cast and class. No to 'the east' and no to 'the west'. No to the poet, the intellectual, the journalist and other fakes.