“And that's what makes the artist stand out, what makes his existence necessarily tragic — his desire to be liberated from a world in which he is necessarily confined. But the majority of people in this country have not proven themselves capable of remaining independent in the face of so relentless an enemy. And the result is a pitiful, vacuous, and passive consumer, what a lot of thinkers, most notably Ortega y Gasset, have called mass-man,” he says, now with less passion. “The emptiness of which I speak results in what Wilhelm Reich called the emotional plague, which is more of a personality type defined by extremely antisocial tendencies than a disease.
“Look, the point is that the will of most people in contemporary society lacks uniqueness. This is not an accident. The volition of mass-man is manufactured and polished by an economic system that seeks efficiency in both consumption and production. It's just the nature of capitalism, especially now in its more mature stage. So maybe the elite are not evil; they just don't realize that the mechanisms that they endorse and get rich from squelch individuality. We have been surrounded by forces that seek to prevent critical or existential thought, that seek to diminish any knowledge of history seen through a universal or unpatriotic lens, that seek to ingrain in us the idea that capitalism is not confined to an historical epoch, but that it is the natural order, the only condition under which man will not end up in the throes of ignorance, superstition, and penury. The education system encourages this. The media encourages this. The pharmaceutical industry encourages this. And these industries not only own the means of production in their respective fields; they own the government as well. They have come to control every element that comprises the context of mass-man's daily life; consequently, they now control the definitions of symbols, the symbols by which man navigates through this world.”
“This sounds like a cult.”
“What?”
“What you're telling me. This sounds like the introduction to a cult. It's good versus evil, us versus them. It's not that simple. It's not like the richest people in the world got together and concocted this plan to control the entire population by removing Thucydides from the curriculum of every high public high school in America.”
“Look, the A-R-E is not a cult. The A-R-E is about more than that. Look, what I'm saying is this: To Keens, the paradigm of the slave and master was outdated, bunk. The master, one with an orientation of domination, will be capable of justifying anything because this person sees everyone else as a slave, a pawn. This is a person without integrity, a person of caprice and malice. The slave, one with an orientation of submission, is equally repulsive. The slave capitulates to irrational power structures, not out of fear, but under the impression that such cowardice is moral, even virtuous. He claims these virtues to be founded upon integrity, but there is no integrity in slavery, just as there is no integrity for the master for whom ethics is a practice in rationalizing whim and fancy.
“The two are obviously dialectically opposed. Moreover, neither is desirable. Keens felt that this could not be internalized; one cannot be either master or slave without accepting an absurd form of dualism. So, to him, the A-R-E was an attempt to find a synthesis between the two that would consequently abolish the two not only on a societal level, but on a personal leveclass="underline" the abandonment of egomania on the one hand, the abandonment of irrational deference on the other. But it was more than that, too. It's difficult to explain, but here's the long and the short of it:
“Every individual is an amalgam of experiences. These experiences create the individual's personality and preferences, the way in which they interpret the world in which they live in, the meaning they predicate upon symbols and signifiers. Now, a lot of people have personalities that are founded upon archetypes within any given community. John Wayne's typical character in his movies, for example, is an archetype, which, mind you, is more significant than a personage. Many American men have come to identify him as an archetype, perhaps even the paragon, of masculinity. They consequently strive to replicate his behavior and mannerisms. But this desire is not entirely genuine. They feel as though society wants them to do this. It is the desire to be the other that the other desires, but it is simply not a possibility. As a result, any individual who follows this road will be forever in a state of becoming, even though there is no possible way to satisfy this desire. On the one hand, it is simply impossible — you can’t be what you are not. Furthermore, no individual fully wishes to be like any one archetype. Each individual wants to emulate several archetypes, and these archetypes are often at odds with one another.
“Eidolonism is the attempt to remove the impulse to become one or several archetypes. Most instantly recognize the contradiction in the argument — if one is an amalgam of experiences, then their experience of wishing to be an archetype is a necessary part of their personality. This is true, Keens would concede, but it misses the greater wisdom of an imperfect, perhaps only nascent, philosophical movement. If the various archetypes that one seeks to emulate are in contradiction, then one cannot ever exist without some form of inner turmoil that leaves the personality in a constant state of agitation. How do you extricate the individual from this dilemma? Simple: strive to remove the archetypes. That's the goal. It's virtually impossible to achieve it, I know, the A-R-E is supposed to be about realizing the beauty of a human in his or her individuality — this includes a person's past, present, and future, as well as everything that is either corporeal or spiritual, but it does not include the numerous archetypes imposed upon those who live in this or that society, nor does it include any meaning cast upon a symbol that the individual feels is dubious or inauthentic.
“But to fully appreciate oneself, one needs to appreciate others. One needs to feel comfortable, to have a context within a community of which they feel unencumbered. Furthermore, one needs to appreciate the greats from the past — not only because they are brilliant, but because that's how one comes to really understand the individual self in a historical manner. Then again, Keens wanted people to abandon their prejudice, which, in a sense, meant that they had to abandon certain elements of their history. Prejudice, after all, is created by history.”
“So one must realize the beauty of history by abandoning it?”
“No…I mean, yes. But not how you put it. One must recognize their place in history, but one cannot dwell upon the history. If one is living in the past, then one is stuck in a state of becoming. The goal is to be. And one can only really be when they see themselves within the context of their surroundings.