BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol II, No. 15
Apr 13, 2005

 
 
 social criticism by
 Vicente-Ignacio de Veyra III

 




CONTENTS

Literary website:
Warphoto 



 
A Criticism of Criticism?
Part II

THE FALLOUT from a serious reading of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky cannot be oversimplified. As archaic portraits of man’s constant corruptibility, his books could lead one -- at one extreme -- to accept the books’ premises and conclusions, and push one in consequence to retreat from social life to live a hermetic one qua final escape from such inevitable Hobbesian societies as Dostoevsky portrayed, societies of naturally evil humans. The universality of this constancy of evilness is dramatized by Akira Kurosawa’s transport of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot to a post-WWII Japan setting through the movie The Idiot -- reasserting the already impact-ridden premise that good men are few and far between to a position of a geographical (and possibly biological) absolute.


VHS jacket of Kurosawa's The Idiot

What this means for the intelligentsia is simple. Social criticism is ludicrously futile and thereby unnecessary.

 

FORTUNATELY, though, not all works of art have the social vision of Hobbes. Some inspire luxury, visions of travel, foreign taste, imagination, skill, and an appreciation of the world’s richness; especially in such arts as music.

Consider, for example, a listen to the music of The Gipsy Kings. Replete of Spanish guitar mastery/virtuosity and rhythmic and melodic richness and the magical use of lingual phonemes in song passages, one can hardly be inspired to pack one’s bags for the mountains and be in the company of understandably predatory animals. One will simply be convinced to reassert one’s colorful utopia for the social circus of esthetes, philosophers, and criminals. One will be inspired to connive with beachcombers in the consumption of beach food.


The Gipsy Kings

But, as per the lessons of history, esthetic utopias of love and dancing will also drive one to consider the necessity of providing protection to one’s loves and dancers. Cities of richness have fallen to the most rustic of civilizations whose prime philosophy was one of simply coveting others’ labors’ produce.

But I don’t mean just cities. Such utopias of love and dancing could involve no more than an individual with a rare utopia among his differently-cultured laughing neighbors, so that for his utopia he might needs provide both the defensive literature and physical artillery for the purpose of maintaining his esthetic cultures safe within his person and yard.

What this means for humanity is simple. It would seem that Hobbes would be more right than Dostoevsky in implying human corruptibility to be not a frustration – as Dostoevsky might have viewed it – but as an animalistic normality – as Hobbes have clearly asserted. Potential hermetic solutions must therefore consider that perhaps humans in social settings must not be looked upon as different from animals. Corruption is therefore just a human expression of the predatory instinct of animals to eat their fellow dogs if they could get away with it. So the vicious cycle of at one moment wanting to retreat from society and at another moment wanting to be in fun communion with fun social events may have found a solution in this Hobbesian approach.


Thomas Hobbes

Animals too have social expressions of togetherness and filial fun as much as recurrent outbursts of cannibalism and terror.

So, at the end of the day, does this still state the futility or unnecessary presence of social criticism? It would seem so. Given that final axiom qua ultimate understanding of mankind’s behavior, why social-criticize?

 

MAY I conjecture that perhaps philosophy’s role is the provision of mental abstract approaches to living while social criticism’s lower status has the simple job of fulfilling one’s defense mechanisms against the recurrent predatory actions or threats that philosophy has marked?

And so, therefore, by our above logical circuit we have arrived at the rationale for social criticism’s stature as necessary literary artillery to be placed at the borders of those who need to protect their loves and dances.

So how does social criticism do it, through the simple animal instinct for self-preservation?

Fortunately, human intellect/intellection is inclined and cursed to see itself as having the capacity to go beyond those instincts. For instance, one may not simply consider one’s position as in the manner of senators’ and congressmen’s weighing a certain law by its benefits to their family corporations. A more “intelligent” or human view might even consider subtle benefits.

 

 

For instance, the lower classes may just be as guilty of the unvirtue of mere self-preservation when it clamors for a departure from such taxes as consumption taxes. For a more subtle assessment beyond the animal instinct will lead us to consider that consumption taxes could also change our consumer culture. Buying certain things which our consumption-based economics have taught us to buy may be reassessed in terms of value or necessity. Do we really need a CD collection? Would not ten music CDs suffice for a whole decade’s musical needs? Do we really need Styrofoam? Obviously, consumer taxes have their cultural benefit, regardless of whether it is iniquitous or not. Then again, does an iniquity even happen when a low-wage earner consumes a mere movie each month while the rich factory owner consumes a hundred? Does the higher consumption status provide the “higher state consumer” a happier life? Consider, for another instance, that the ownership of a car – while bringing one to a media-hyped position of luxury and advantage – actually may bring to its owner several anxieties as maintenance costs and scheduling, corrupt traffic police avoidance, aircon and engine pollution guilt, and so on and so forth.

Even animal-level criticism of oppressive acts can be sublimated to more human levels. For example, oppressions may actually benefit a people in the long run. Constancy of oppressions as may be witnessed by the Philippine intelligentsia upon its subject peoples may actually be necessary – for how long is a mathematical cum psychological mystery – for a people that has not ever learned to fight its oppressors. Perhaps a century more of such oppressions and laughing abuses will lead this people to hang one final day its sinning politicians in some square of accumulated human knowledge. Burgeoning oil price hikes, too, may actually be necessary for people to realize – say, after five more centuries – that perhaps our slavery to fossil fuel consumption can be worthy of our ability to rebel and get away from.

 

There is so much in present society that smacks of the corrupt noise of self-preservation, from the voices of politicians with their corporate or bank account interests to the screams of mass elements who have to learn there are products to be derived from a boss’s kick. Clamoring for a reform of those kicks will not remove those kicks, nor even the protest against the kicks keep the kicks from taking another subtle shape. Sometimes a more human assessment of things will be the real social criticism, the more human social criticism the more useful criticism that will allow one to take in an oppressive kick and consider its (near or far) future benefit.

 

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Posted 04/13/05. Send comments to: bananacue_republic@yahoo.com

 



"There is so much in present society that smacks of the corrupt noise of self-preservation, from the voices of politicians with their corporate (interests) to the screams of mass elements who have to learn there are products to be derived from a boss’s kick."