In this other brand of blitzkrieg, panic is the main force of organized terrorism and it is no longer the discipline of the troops as the lack of discipline of the hoards that has become decisive. – Paul Virilio
The Political Ontology of Clones
While we once saw the kinds of decadence of (for example) late Rome, as being the marker of its fall as a place, a civilization and perhaps a certain way of life—today we are not just looking the fall of a particular civilization, insofar as the fall of an ontological conception of man, itself. Yes, many will be aghast at the idea of claiming a stage of ‘inevitable’ technological progress as being a fall, but whatever it may be, such as cloning, bio-technical management, wiring our brain to computers, or some sort of bio-technical class based system already experimented with in the early years of the 2020s, we can say that bourgeois values which—for all their failures—left some designation open for a conception of ‘rights’, which could be sorely missed, and remain painfully illusive when trying to think up new ways of applying them to bio-technology.
These rights, we could say, were largely failed attempts at creating a border around the human, ontologically(and politically speaking) which took up the task of Christian notions of a sinful hubris in crossing the boundary of the analogized body-temple. To protect from prosecution, scapegoating, irrational punishment and so on, were what rights created a barrier against. But why such rights-based societies seem totally lost when new technologies threaten this barrier, is the greatest mystery of all.
We could say that the other barrier (you know, the God-barrier) and its absence, could play a role in our state of lostness. The world after the death of God creates more than just the last man, historically speaking, but it also creates a being with no more meaningful boundary to bio-technical intervention. How the end of historical struggle, the last man and bio-technics interplay, is a criminally neglected topic of thought. We can say it pertains to one connecting theme. That is: Copies. The sameness of the last man—having lost that fundamental aspect to his nature which makes him historically unique, irreducible; and gives him depth—is analogous to the view of man necessary for bio-technics to be possible: cloning. That is, of his nature being mimicable through a collection of information or a pattern of highly predictable behavioural patterns.
Speaking of mimicry, it should be noted how much mimicry has played a role in social development, especially since mass media became a pillar of civilization. Our technologies have become indistinguishable from both our consumption and production in ways which put—not just human interests—but the ontological status of man itself, into question. Marx understood this through social mediations of value such as money, wages, surplus value and commodification. Yet, this century poses questions to not only the social status of humans as free or sovereign, but ontologically, of the human, itself. Marx was one of the first philosophers to see the peculiar corruption and force of productive means which create value. In this sense, man’s own creations, adaptivity and innovative power was his own enemy, and not simply the threat of foreign conquerors and armies. We are in a similar position again today, except the stakes are twice as high.
Close readers of these essays will see the attempt to grasp pre-modern understandings of the body, such as the Aristotelean view of skin as a medium and not as an organ. We could say that the purely bio-mechanical view of the body which emerged in modernity assumed more than simply a reductionist project, or a loss of value for religious feelings which the cause and effect theories of scientific reductionism stole from the human mind. Even more so, it could easily be seen as a desire to make the definiteness of which the body signifies (aging, pain, dying, scarring) something which once reduced to bio-mechanist understanding, would open up the grounds to reverse such ‘negative’ influences over it; not avoid and certainly not endure, but reverse these experiences of finitude. Was reverse engineering of life to dilute it of its unwanted aspects, the original motivation behind modern science? —and so the last man (a mere biological copy, void of spirit or negativity), the inevitable consequence?
Zizek’s analogy (we want to consume coffee without caffeine and beer without alcohol), which observes our desire to consume everything today without its ingredient of negativity, includes more than simply consumer goods. In fact, more so than ever, it marks the strange era we occupy where to simply denounce the progressivity of consumption is implausible. Now, so is the choice of owning its negativity or uncontrollable side effects. This negativity is, in fact, a sign of techno-faith that innovative commercial breast feeders who make the last man’s daily life metaphorically nourishing, are always keeping in mind; that being the need to keep progressing while simultaneously filtering out all the negativity from these processes.
One has to wonder how much of human life itself is now implicitly part of this unwanted negativity; a negativity which the diet-obsessed consumption and the sterile emotional efficiency of the modern institution, feel threatened by—and feel the need to ‘liberate’ us from? Cloning would be, of course, not sold to us as a grey, totalitarian conformity. Rather, conformity has triumphed, not through the command/control politics of 20th century totalitarianism. But, as the quote from Virilio on the top the page indicates, through the indiscipline of individuals caught into a web of mimetic thought and consumption patterns; mass producing their individuality, bio-technically.
Endurance and Restraint
The bio-mechanical theories of body are underwritten with the psychological desire to have our cake and eat it too, so to speak; to hold onto certain hyper-appetitive theories of human nature (such as homoeconomicus) while at the same time, lock and step in tandem with the cult of health and safety, to remove the possibly of negative, uncontrollable, painful or contradictory phenomena which may emerge from the attempt to fulfil our abundant consumptive desire. If only we could understand the body as a reductive mechanical whole, we could then simply, technically reverse any such ‘trauma’ that may be done to it over the course of life. This theory of life is as much a desire to ‘liberate’ us from the trial of endurance, as much as anything else.
Yes, a nihilistic ‘liberation’ from the task of endurance is at the forefront of our modern era. To endure time is replaced by expediency. To endure conflict is replaced by the emotional efficiency seen in behavioural psychology or institutional management. To endure mortality replaced by the hopes of techno-Gnosticism. To endure pain by modern medicine. To endure heartbreak by social atomization. To endure war by consumption and diplomacy. The list goes on. We have lost the ability to endure — and to know when to endure — and this is the fundamental problem with last men, whose status as properly human has in the past, been defined by his endurance.
If we were to think about why—relating to the Platonic triad of the soul—that the appetitive components of ourselves emerged victorious over the spirited ( and at some point even the rational sides), it would have to be contemplated that a failure and outstanding ignorance concerning endurance, could be the answer.
In this light, we need to investigate the opposing force to the appetitive primacy of homo-economicus: those old traits that have been seen as antiquated, irrational and even barbaric: Ironically enough, restraint and heroism.
Plato’s emphasis on this aspect of the human soul is wilfully downplayed by modern intellectuals that obviously have personal deficits in this department. In one section of Republic, Socrates even argues to get rid of any poetry that shows heroic characters expressing grief or confusion, or of any depictions of the afterlife as unpleasant. The risk of unpleasant depictions of the afterlife has the risk of off-putting the education of the new members of the Republic who should ‘prefer death in battle to defeat and slavery’. 1)
The influence that Spartan society had over Plato is likely understated, and his interest in certain elements of ascetic-warrior virtue is likely both associated with the idea of a state that expects political obligations which go beyond the more familiar pleasantness of the family. Of course, reason does place itself on the ‘top’ of the spiritual hierarchy in Plato. But, it also depicts a certain engagement of endurance-based virtue and philosophic thinking. Endurance was of course, the most exaggerated and central principle which Sparta embodied. A question of just how influenced Plato was by Sparta is for another time. For now, we can say that endurance is the Spartan quality which has been unrecognizably important to the ideas formed by Plato, which a certain reading of Plato makes apparent.
Plato’s underappreciated works, already mention in the last section, Laches, are good examples of the meeting between military and warrior types with a new era of philosophers. In Laches, Socrates meets with a group of wealthy Greekmen, including one general and one more rationally inclined( Lashes and Nicias) They attempt to decipher the value of a certain form of military training for their sons. (training in heavy armour)
The dialogue is more or less a question of ‘what is courage’; a question which is central to the first large portion of the Republic. The dialogue presents two opposing views which we can assume Socrates means to synthesize. Laches, the stubborn but noble soldier who believes courage is overcoming fear and pain and sticking to one’s post in battle. He is virtuous of character and well-intended, but is at risk of being narrowminded when it comes to the totality of virtue and doesn’t leave room for the possibility of a sort of endurance (overcoming of fear and pain), which may be misdirected or ‘foolish’.
Nicias in the other hand, plays the role of the rational, calculative type. He sees courage as something of a predictive exercise in the ability to calculate the utility of when to take risks and when not to. He is dismissed as having a view of courage which is only future-orientated (today we would say predictive), and not as something which encapsulates the whole of being (a continuum). He is rational but lacks character.
The obvious conclusion is that some form of synthesis is the answer, some healthy medium of wisdom and endurance (or in the description of Guardians and auxiliaries in the Republic, of nature and cultivation). This ultimately leads to the understanding of the nature of endurance, proper. When is restraint noble, and when cowardly. When is fierceness heroic and when wretched? This is obviously something which cannot be simply defined, verbally. It is brought forth through trial, through phenomena, through an intimate overcoming of the corruption of pleasure and the power of fear, alongside the guidance of wisdom.
Yet, the underlying form of this dialogue perhaps gives us the real dilemma, which occupies the passages of the Republic and how it educates and forms a worthy leadership class.
Education as Post Historical Malaise
Lysimachus and Melesias, the eldest of the characters here at the dialogue Laches, call upon Socratic inquiry because they feel a certain unworthiness common those who have inherited great civilizations without having been intimately involved in the struggle to create them. ‘Both of us often talk to the lads about the many noble deeds which our fathers did in war and peace—in the management of the allies, and in the administration of the city; but neither of us has any deeds of his own which he can show. The truth is that we are ashamed of this contrast being seen by them and we blame our fathers for letting us be spoiled in the days of our youth, while they were occupied with the concerns of others; and we urge all this upon the lads, pointing out to them that they will not grow up with honour if they are rebellious and take no pains about themselves; but that if they take pains, they may, perhaps, become worthy of the names which they bear.’ 2)
We could say—referring to the Platonic triad of the soul—that these men have been defined by their desire (hence the term ‘spoil’). Their thymotic selves feel the weight of this emptiness. Socrates enters as a way of enquiry into this feeling of unworthiness and (possibly) as an emerging higher standard of greatness. What they lack, is the same feeling common to the ‘last man’ today: a lack of spirit (thymos), from which endurance (in its wise and noble form) brings forth. It is not simply a question of can we endure, but also for what; and do we even have any trust in the feelings which lead us to this conclusion? After all, what leads us to the just application of endurance is not a logical conclusion but a deep and intimate sense of justice.
Both inquiry and courage is what the last man lacks, and these are both at the centre of this dialogue with some of the characters even expressing a similar emptiness common to ‘post-historical’ peoples.
The pedogeological complexity emerges when (like in other dialogues like Protagoras), that this task of teaching virtue is taken up. These men wished their fathers had taught them to be great, yet it appears to be such a complex endeavour exactly because greatness requires something beyond mere educational mimicry. In other words, the paradox of this dialogue lies in the fact these men ask Socrates to tell them what courage is in the form of a simple definition (which obviously doesn’t work) so as to simply copy it. We are not sure if they are angry at their fathers for ‘spoiling’ them or if they are angry their fathers for not telling them precisely what virtue is so they can mimic it.
This leaves us in a very complex relationship to what we inherit (weather that be a name, a house, a social role, a nation and so on). The danger of mere mimicry stems from an intuitive feeling that one lacks spiritual character and definition from living a life of too much assumption and comfort and not enough inquiry and bravery. It is no wonder that virtue is seen in both the soldier Laches(those who endure) and those that inquire (philosopher, Socrates), in this dialogue. This is directly opposed to those who simply consume (the spoiled children or wealth and powerful men) and the overly predictive Nicias who seems to argue for a simple blueprint of knowledge which can then be applied in dangerous situations like war.
Perhaps the problem with the last man is that his desires to be great are always demands for some authority to simply tell them explicitly how to look and talk and live ( like great men). But, they are not quite great men; in simple terms they are copies. The last man lacks both the inquiry and struggle which lead to virtue. And to what extent, we should ask, is the primacy of this ‘spoiled’ appetitive man, doomed to be fixated on copying, or what we would call today, a sort of status seeking mimicry, a consumer behaviour and self-indulgence of superficial social worth, which takes on some form of mimesis.
Notes:
1)(386c) Plato’s Republic p 77 Penguin classics, translated by Desmond lee
2)Plato’s Laches page 6 translated by Benjamin Jowett, Kessinger publishing