Kantian Autonomy and Fuller's life as a Verb

I am a verb

 To summarize from the pulpit, don't let yourself get thin by allowing the oligarchic imperatives of corporate existence diddle your mind, instead stay thick, be a traveller through your own Jungian Shadow not someone else's, remember the responsibility of a transcendent creature, accept "answerlessness" and live as a verb. 

 In the end we make our own meaning and as we do so we make our own world so let's join with Baxter and spend happy hours defining and redefining our understanding of the meanings that surround the sound "Heteronomy"which rhymes with Deuteronomy, the final book of the Torah where Moses, having talked with Yahweh, defines Jewish Identity so that the Israelites themselves didn't have to. "Hear, Oh Israel: The Lord our God, The Lord is One." Cleverly of course, after forty years of wandering Moses had made his point and he died before he entered the Promised Land.

 As the opposite of Autonomy, Heteronomy can be thought of as a Promised Land. A land which if ruled by an external force that is not your own unregulated autonomous will, could be a land of milk, sliced white bread and honey.

 Buckminster Fuller had a thing for Geodesic Domes and developing new priorities in thinking. He preferred to think of people as self organizing not other organizing integrities. He decided he wasn't a noun he could walk away from and forget, he was a verb, a going somewhere word and he always would be. Fuller was 87 when he died on July 1st 1983.

The Thick and the Sacred

Wellhead and Pump

 The analogy of "thick" and "thin" starts with an acceptance of the legitimacy of Jung's understanding of the role the "Shadow" plays in our daily interactions with self, with others and with our place in the world. Here we can see the nation as represented by its government as a shadow in our psyche.

 The ideal government offers its People what the Ancient Egyptians called "Ma'at."  Ma'at was the opposite of "Isfet" or chaos, injustice, violence and evil. For three thousand years, Pharaoh's job was to maintain a stable ecology by keeping isfet at bay. Pharaoh, as the Pillars of Ancient Egypt, did this by representing the state as a Jungian shadow of cosmic order, truth and justice which was allowed to float through the psyche of Ancient Egyptians.

In the distinctions we have made between "somewhere" and "anywhere" ma'at would be defined as the preservation of the "Sacred Somewhere" against the "Profane Anywhere." In the somewhere/anywhere understanding the "thin individual" will allow the Shadow of the State to dominate, he will render unto Caesar and in the process he will turn Caesar sacred. The "thick individual" hasn't surrendered his shadow, he is not a cog in a benevolent machine, he is quicker to risk the dangers of reclaiming his own sacred.

Defining the Problem

Top Down Abuse

 "The stable ecology of the state" and the metric "how willing a symbiosis is it, or is it forever maintained through a familiar top down brutality," have captured, then chained our imagination to a "cultural logic" that "normalizes deviance," ignores the poorly designed and failing O rings on the space shuttle Challenger as well as several centuries of wisdom for a like on Facebook. In short a society of manufacturing abuse is a top down that completely inhabits us.

A Graveyard of the Soul

Reddish Pink Sun in The Morning

 Jung's Shadow, it can be argued, protects the sacred. Let's start today with where the Shadow sits in the Symbolic Order, Lady Macbeth and a reappraisal of jealousy, then return to the swamp monsters of Conservative Social Values by looking at the expression "A stable ecology is the graveyard of the soul."

Alright chaps. When Macbeth and Lady Macbeth killed King Duncan, they got blood on their hands. Lady Macbeth did her best, they'd done a good job, a valuable job, she advised Macbeth - "A little water clears us of this deed." Her point was that water would wash away the physical evidence and all evidence of their guilt, leaving them rich and powerful and pure as driven snow. But "Out Damn Spot" those blood stains haunted Lady Macbeth, she saw them in her dreams they poked at her in the daytime. And why? Jung would have seen what he called a Shadow from the ocean wide subconscious where Lady Macbeth kept her repressed memories, feelings and passions looking back with disdain.

Here, with his Shadow, Jung had his chance to kick the sociobiologists in the gonads. "Jealousy" Jung believed, became manifest when I projected what I have failed to achieve onto others, making it easier for me to criticize someone else rather than attempt to interpret what my shadow is trying to tell me. And the point about the Shadow, the Shadow doesn't go away, ask Lady Macbeth if you don't believe me. It's the ultimate Street Corner Boy and I am the object of constant wolf-whistles.

 The question, "what are conservative social values?," like freedom, is better understood by what they are not. Take for example the Pope's encyclical of the 1890's that described the duty of Christians as citizens in Industrial Societies. To protect the family the Pope out right rejected socialism, instead the encyclical promoted just wages, workers' rights to organize unions, private property rights, and the state's duty to protect the working class. This encyclical laid the foundation for "Modern Catholic Social Teaching" it influenced politicians and workers movements. In the USA it remains the basis for what Baptist Educational Establishments refer to as "Christian Leadership" in their mission statements.

It's entirely possible that nuances between Catholic and Baptist understandings of the soul are as disparate as their understandings of marriage and baptism itself, but such monotheistic groupings do not have a monopoly on "Sacred and/or Profane." The priority of the family in almost all Christian teaching has resulted in the sacredness of the wedding vow as the basis of a family and society.  Whether it's "Christian Leadership" or "Catholic Social Teaching" the sacred forms the foundational values upon which the edifice is erected. I don't believe Adam Smith, Ricardo or Karl Marx saw themselves as in the business of formulating sacred foundations.  They wanted something that worked.

 And this is where we find ourselves forced to look at the expression: "A stable ecology is the graveyard of the soul." There's always a premise, the premise here goes along these lines: "Dignity is found in Freedom. Freedom is inherently unstable." The Reasonable Creature that Kant thought we are will always be unfinished. I think we can say Jung's Shadow reminds us of how far from the sacred we are.