202112182245 📃 a social system of love in preliminary outline

¶1. The ultimate aim of all of my studies, as sketched in 202111180034 📃 Existential-social criticism, a sketch, 202111111447 📃 clarifying private consciousness, [[ 202109171824 Ends for a political phenomenology ]], 202110071459 📃 Attempt at the Creation of a Social Technology 202110062343 📃 immanent structure of social communication and perhaps most ambitiously in [[ 202109041723 A sketch of my reading pursuits ]], is this: to develop a framework for the management of all human affairs not intentionally but consequently.

¶2. The sine qua non of human consequences is &nbsplove&nbsp, defined mystically as that sense of towardsness and directedness towards others which escapes definition and scientifically as the unqualified willing of others’ goods. These are definitions of essence. The sufficient conditions of love are so far inscrutable. The necessary conditions for it, however, include its superabundance and commonality — no man can claim love in a place where another denies it. Only that which is universally admissible as “love” is it as such. Issues of cognitive dependence on being in loving scenarios vs. viewing them from a far must be ferreted out at a later time. Let it suffice now to say that the bedrock of what I envision as “total management” of all affairs will be love-in-consequence, or that result of an action which all humans regardless of state or station would call loving.

¶2a. Remark: The basing of total management on love-in-consequence which is simultaneously love-in-common serves two aims. First, it castrates all men and molests all women who would dare harm others “out of love.” None can claim “love” as a pretext. Second, none can appeal to intentions and thereby open up the possibility of ulterior motives. Only what results in the public and can readily be examined by all is open for the criteria of love. Everything else is a sham nothing.

¶3. Here we immediately invoke Dasein as a thing which one is and yet as a thing which man must understand. In the former Man is immanently other from himself and is thus always more than himself. In the latter he is that which he knows of himself, a thing which is always less than the latter. The infinite that one is always superabounds one’s finite knowledge - it is the condition for this knowledge. If what is to be known does not superabound, we have only dogmatism, where knowledge is axiomatically taken as identical with its object. Barring this, we know that love above defined mystically will always escape its scientific appraisal and that the intentions in ¶2a will fall flat - ulterior motives will remain. What we open up here though is the space for the perpetual criticism of motive along the lines of mystical experience. When all commune with the One, all have sufficient grounds for the critique of others.

¶4. This is spatio-temporally mediated by concrete-instances of confrontation, which ought to be ritualized. A &nbspritual confrontation&nbsp is to be a juridical procedure, one in which each prepares things he or she takes to be at issue and, consequently, a third man must be present for the conduct of the ritual. The details of this must be sketched at a later time.

¶5. The idea of love-in-consequence demands a &nbspminimum scientific appraisal&nbsp. The idea here is a bare minimum life-condition which all would recognize as loving and made-of-love. As loving, it is recognized that the condition in which one lives furnishes love-for-self and love-for-other. In furnishing the former, it brings the person into a state which all would describe as yielding-love. Sufficient material examples include giving one’s time and space without duress. Sufficient formal examples include giving one’s emotions without duress. Qua self, care of self is furnished. Qua others, care of others is furnished. As made-of-love, all individual actions in a society yield the minimum condition for one to live lovingly. The above description of loving living is, then, universalized to all individuals so that all may practice it. This is &nbspmutual aid&nbsp.

¶6. The above has described this aid formally. The material description of mutual aid lies in the concrete havings, beings, and doings involved in the above formal-process. Men must have a minimal material, food, shelter, and clothing, and a minimal efficiency, power, status, and love-relations. Men must be secure, a predicate ascribable only in consequence of their material having, and in states of love, a predicate ascribable only in their efficient having. Men must have a minimal kind of activity, the likes of which will redound must completely to management (or clerical-logistical work) and labor (or productive-creative work). This is a rough sketch of the relations to be sought after. Such conditions are the material minimum guaranteed to each man as a consequence of his being a man. Nothing else is needed. When we look at any man, group, or supragroup and ask about whether they have these things, we are asking about the material conditions for men’s being-in-love. This is a minimum scientific appraisal.

¶7. Minimum scientific appraisal also asks about a man’s state of formal relations, a state which the ancients and medievals often called his spiritual constitution. Here we are primarily concerned with men’s being-towards-death and, consequently, their self-understanding of their security. Where security is self-understood minimally, we will expect to see deep corruption and thus low degrees of love. Where it is understood maximally, we will expect to see low corruption and thus high degrees of love. Here too we require ritual and science to furnish man’s state. First, we need all available land surveyed and divided for a minimum quantified equality-among-men. Second, we must find all land not currently capable of inhabitation. Third, we must subtract this from the first quantity, then determine the losses to be dealt with by thrusting ourselves onto expanding the first quantity. Here politicking may well take place, so that a coterie with ulterior motives produces measurements which serve themselves. For this reason we must look at this task another time. This brings us, however, to another pressing task to be dealt with.

¶8. We must establish two understandings of having, being, and doing, which together I’ll call Existence. There is &nbspExistential Stasis&nbsp and Existential Process. In Existential Stasis, we understand that minimum “bare life” with which a man must at minimum live without considering any opportunity for himself. That is, if the man were totally unconscious and had no friends or family, what would happen to him? From here we must ascend to full agency, such that all men of all kinds of agency are taken care of. For, in the first place, Stasis is a kind of being-here which denies change. It is that living-now and going-about-one’s-affairs which denies possible change in these affairs. It examines life as a present and only as such. Love must comprehend this view of humanity in itself. It must do this alongside &nbspExistential Process&nbsp, which has “ends-in-view” towards things to be done. This is life self-understood historically and in movement. This is the most typical view of legislators and businessmen — they have laws-in-view to pass, accounts-in-view to fulfill, and investments-in-view to reap. This is man’s self-conceived temporality, which is both a history and a futurity simultaneously. If Love views this alone, however, it denies the minimum presence-here, Stasis, which all men must face as they fall out of the social-interactive manifold which is the Existential Process.

¶8a. Remark: The Existential Process is essentially the concert of social relations sketched by Marx throughout his entire career. The Existential Stasis is, contrarily, that minimum condition in which all men involved in this process find themselves as they remove themselves from the process. This is “being-at-home” in that state of pure repose which all men and women desire once the grind of the day-to-day is left behind. The Process must secure the Stasis and the Stasis must secure the process.

¶9. The &nbspsecuritization of the *totality*&nbsp of the above demands a supervision, a supreme human agency acting as overseer and coordinator. Thus a federation of polities or mutual aid networks is needed, if only from a purely scientific standpoint. For, in short, all management from without (as transcendent) is scientific and will stand opposed to the mystical immanence of aid networks and relations. Money has up till now acted as the mechanism by which men have sought to secure mass systems since, as a discrete value-quantum, it binds consciousness to its objects out-of-death and hence rationally by invoking the avoidance impulse. Seeking money-as-security, men thereby rationally seek to manage and control others. This is the scientific means of attaining security. The mystical means, contrarily, attends to social capital as that immanently-given suchness which one senses about his or her peers. The mutual binding of emotions is at hand, here.

¶10. The question for the self-security of the totality out-of-love, then, rather than towards-death (or rather in that state once being-towards-death has been accepted and is no longer deemed a raw necessity of consciousness, once it has been sublimated through universal love-relations), is a matter of rallying the avoidance impulse out of love rather than towards death. For, the height of love is death, that calm repose where one loves the One so deeply that he yearns for nothing more than his merger with it — here Reason has collapsed in on itself and become an all-devouring Cronus. What we are after instead is a unity-in-difference, or a One-in-Many. Preliminarily, this might be achieved through status rituals. It might also be achieved through a sense of healthy competition and an ideology of managerial superiority.

¶10a. Remark: The above &nbspideology&nbsp (or “noble lie,” cf. Republic) may look something like this. At the most immanent lies the heart of mysticism — here are social activists and the lovers of men face-to-face. At the most transcendent lies the heart of all science — pure knowledge of humanity. Let those who subscribe to the scientific ideology strive to become statesmen. Let those who subscribe to the mystical ideology become men’s men. Let neither be truly superior to the other, since the categorial men (the scientists) demand extension of their categories to particularists (the mystics), who in turn require an ordering of their acts into categories (scientifically). In this infinite circle, no group claims true superiority. It redounds only to mind of the man who selects his role to frame his position among men as superior.

¶11. ¶1-10 above assume a pro tanto view of love as love — they have viewed the criteria of love out of love, that is, romantically. We must now interrogate the same cynically or out of death. For, it is the romantic-aspirant impulse which has sublated being-towards-death into true thought-out-of-love. It feels and senses its own security and, knowing, strives to create and set in stone what it understands mystically. Being-towards-death in its crude-analytic form, however, only seeks to pry into the logics of the status quo for its own gains, for its own security and, thereby, its own self-enclosure. It may do this (a) as purely self-enclosed or (b) as pathologically self-enclosed. In the former, both appearance and essence are removed from men — here are the hermits. In the latter, however, men show off commodities for the sake of others’ approval, all the while their innermost thoughts are closed off from even themselves, shielded by the diverse world of things they have accrued and shown. Pathological self-enclosure is far harder to deal with, for it is the essence of all human corruption as a being-towards-death so sophisticated and cunning that it may well be acting even against one’s own conscious wishes. This death drive understands itself as a life drive, though not a love drive. This too makes it more complicated. From the pathologist’s standpoint, all men are out to get them (if only in a severely inchoate sense - only the most paranoid would say this outright). Consequently, life can only seem to be a “getting one’s own” over and against all others doing the same. It is this kind of “Nash Equilibrium” in which the Self stands against a general Big Other that pathological self-enclosure thrives.

¶12. The sublation of pathological being-towards-death into being-out-of-love occurs through security, a fact which must be adduced severally through (1) a constitution (2) minimum guarantees (3) a minimum scientific analysis. On these grounds, ready-to-consciousness, it is conceivable that most men will become secure in themselves. Cynically, however, many will as yet want further prestige, further materiality, and further formal relations. They will want these out of the crude-analytic futurity described in ¶11. As unstoppable, the cunning of reason proceeds ad infinitum. These can, however, be mediated so far as the Nash Equilibrium above collapses such that the minimum social calculation defeasible by consciousness of its surrounds finds it worse to act in its analytic manner. It must find self-enclosure to be inferior to love on most counts. Of course, it will never truly find it as such, for the self and its body will remain for most men a sine qua non of their being which is ineluctable and therefore the most sturdy (enter a disfigured cogito). As such, all things without will appear as essentially flexible, untrustworthy and, therefore, open to manipulation where possible. This unconscious maneuvering of possibilities cannot be avoided. We can only hope to reduce it.

¶13. Therefore, we are after a structure of human relations which comprehends in itself a moment of &nbsprandomness&nbsp, such that crude-analytic futurity will be totally thwarted. Only when randomness is explicitly understood as a matter for-us can futurity be completely denied — no man can predicted what is totally beyond him. In this impotence, all things redound to mere human scheming, a matter which can be relegated to the scientific managers and their judiciaries. Freed up from the possibility of prediction as a towards the accrual of material resources, men will be compelled to keep the love-machine running. All will relegate themselves to this: managing resources and loving others. This final end of man is the complete system we are after. There will be nothing left to strive for out of fear, for all security will be a matter of fact. The arts will flourish as men in their infinite ingenuity create out of love and joy for Mankind itself, not as a Baconian rapist of Nature but as a creator alongside her, having accepted her Otherness as randomness and allowed fear of death to fade into oblivion. With all control taken out of the hands of anxious elites and put in the hands of the social process, none will have the power to create coteries and cliques - no cronies with special powers will be conceivable. All society will be a vast machine, and its products will be love.

¶14. There is a rigidity and uneasiness in this conception, since love is often associated with organism. Organism is but one vantage of Nature, whose breast simultaneously feeds the Mechanical, as Aurora and her cousin Nyx were both born of Chaos. For, in the deep Organism that is Nature, a recursive Mechanism of self-correction and self-facilitation lives, if only in wide swaths of time. The social mechanism of which I speak only wants the same - to live in accordance with Nature, the mark of Wisdom. No one will experience a mechanical grind of living, nor will love be squeezed out artificially. Rather, by mechanism, I mean only that love will be predictable and ready-to-hand for all, an actually that none need speculate about. What we envision, then, is a final corrective to the Hegelian-Marxist-Frankfurt tradition, one which understands its otherness inside itself. No Utopia is to be driven at per se, but only incidental to the design of the mechanism whereby the totality operates. For, at this moment, Man’s tools of political and economic management are rusted and crumbling - no wonder his lack of security! States, property, and money must fall away. In their place, new tools with which to carve reality at its joints must be instituted, a carving which at once feeds Man and brings him into unity with what gives him life.

Preliminary outline for a System of Love:

1. love (¶1)
   1. mystical-immanent (¶3)
   2. scientific-transcendent (¶3)
   3. in-consequence and in-common (¶2)
2. ritual confrontation (¶4)
3. mutual aid (¶5)
   1. provisions
      1. formal (¶5, ¶7)
      2. material (¶6)
   2. revisions (minimum scientific appraisal) (¶5)
4. Self-Understanding (¶8)
   1. Existential Stasis
   2. Existential Process
5. Self-security now (¶9)
   1. scientifically: money
   2. mystically: social connection
6. Self-security in Eutopia (¶10)
   1. preliminary means
   2. ideology (¶10a)
7. Inauthentic being-towards-death (¶11)
   1. pure
   2. pathological
8. Randomness and authentic being-towards-death (¶12-13)
9. the totality in final view (¶13-14)

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