We Do Not Want To Choose As Much as We Want To Be Chosen
Inspired by a Conversation with Raymond K. Hessel on Philip Rieff, Belonging Again, Tragic Sociology, and Health
The book Belonging Again wouldn’t exist without Philip Rieff, and so any chance I can find to discuss the genius is more than welcome and appreciated. Owain at Raymond K. Hessel gave me that opportunity, and I appreciate the line Raymond highlighted from Rieff, which (to paraphrase) is that we do not merely seek to increase our range of choice, but to live in such a manner that we feel chosen. The difference between “choosing” and “chosen” entails an entire “symbolic universal,” a full range of cultural mediums and designs which make it possible for people to feel “free in” versus only “free from.”
There is a wide range of thinkers who admonish that we mustn’t ever forget that there are different kinds of freedoms (Isaiah Berlin, for example), because once we forget this it becomes extremely unlikely that we’ll seek the right kinds of freedom in “the right order.” The word “order” today is hard to use without connoting in people’s mind oppression and control, but classically, say in Augustine or Dante, “order” was simply the way a structure or meta-structure had to be built so that it worked and functioned. There is a certain “order” a car has to be designed and built in if the car is to work, as there is a certain “order” a house must maintain so that it doesn’t burn to the ground. “Order” is necessary, and though it can prove oppressive, so can freedom, for when we are given too much freedom, we are existentially overwhelmed by feelings of responsibility. How do we find the right balance? Not easily, and we certainly won’t if the category of “Tragic Sociology” isn’t one in our heads.
The Fragility of Goodness by Martha Nussbaum is an excellent text that explores in detail what it means to call something a “tragedy,” and I reference her work often. Basically, a “tragedy” is “a trade-off of competing goods,” and Dr. Nussbaum argues convincingly that Greek literature made a point to highlight how humans constantly end up in situations where they must choose either more freedom or more equality, more justice or more innovation, and so on. For Dr. Nussbaum, a society that lost this “mental model” of “tragedy” was in significant trouble, because then people would be under the impression that it was possible to “have it all” and vote accordingly. And when this eventually turned out not to be possible (as inevitably would), the response could prove dire.
Both “givens” and “releases” are goods, not just “releases,” as we might be tempted to think according to the modern zeitgeist. Rieff himself uses the language of “constraints” in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, but I think that makes it harder to grasp why his vision of society is a tragedy, for “constraint” so greatly favors a negative impression. Alternatively, for things to be “given” to us makes it sound like we have received gifts, and furthermore “givens” reduce our cognitive load and make us like scientists, who must work assuming the accuracy of previous discoveries, or else scientific progress would prove impossible. “Givens” are “grounds” upon which we can stand, and it is good to have a place to stand; unfortunately, where we can stand can also tempt us to “stand in place” and never move. This suggests the possibility of fundamentality and “the banality of evil,” which Hannah Arendt warns us about and that Belonging Again explores regularly.
“Releases” are areas in which we are not bound and/or where “we are set free,” and certainly we do not have to argue much with modern people that freedom is good. In the Western world today, what we have to emphasize is how freedom can prove bad, which is what Rieff, inspired by Freud, sought to clarify. As our range of choice increases, especially if not thanks to technology, that means societal structures and institutions are likely in decline, and without those we lack a system “in” which we might fit and thus find “freedom in.” Where that proves impossible, we might gain choice, but it will be increasingly difficult for us to feel “chosen,” which is to say for us to feel wanted, “rightly ordered,” and part of something more.
It's funny to think that our world today makes it hard to feel “chosen,” seeing as individual achievement, self-satisfaction, consumerism, and ego-pleasing are so emphasized, but indeed it would seem that egotism is what develops where resources to be “chosen” decline. Egotism is to center on how we feel, what we’re doing, and what we want, while “Being Chosen” (perhaps “Chosenism”) is where we must rightly order and/or sacrifice our feelings and desires for something more. We have responsibility to something beyond ourselves, and it is up to us to prove worthy of that call. It is not merely that we must choose something, but that we must make choices according to a call. To be “chosen” is to have our choices organized and bound, which is to say we have a standard according to which we can make choices and determine how best to exercise our freedom. Without this “binding,” it would seem the only standard left is “ourselves,” but without a “call” that means all we can do is make decisions according to “what we want to do.” Yes, where we are “bound,” we might be oppressed, but again recall that we are discussing “Tragic Sociology” here—there is no “solution,” only an endless dance.
Where there is no “given” order to things, “release” and “feeling good” are rational, and so why not choose them? Indeed, there is nothing there to say we shouldn’t, so your guess is as good as mine. And so people choose according to the best standard they have available to them, which is generally their feelings (for these are most “at hand”). Indeed, if there is no “greater order,” then “greatest reality” seems to be emotions (more so than even ideas), for we indeed feel things, and thus we know that can be a standard for our choices that is “actual.” As none of us can step outside of our consciousnesses, so none of us can escape emotions and “raw experiencing,” and it’s hard to think anything can be more real than these entities with which we are “locked inside” ourselves. It is only rational then for us to live and organize our rationality according to that standard. Where there is no “order,” it is not necessarily that people are egotists because they are selfish, but it’s because they are rational. Emotions are the most “given” phenomenological foundation for rationality available—it would be foolish to think otherwise, yes?
We seem to believe that, in the end, the most rational ideas win, that history is a process through which we become more rational. There is truth to this, but I believe it is mostly because we make so many mistakes that we eventually stumble into “what’s best,” not because we knew what’s best from the start. Rather, we just had enough time to make mistakes until we eventually figured things out without destroying ourselves along the way (a process requiring long stretches of time that may no longer work, seeing as we are now equipped with nukes). Even if it is somehow true that history tends to be a process in which we get better at figuring out and accumulating “what works,” I think it would be a mistake to assume that the majority is currently rational according to a standard of what is actually best.
Generally, I believe the most therapeutic ideas are the ones which rise to the top and spread most easily, which is to say the ideas that make us feel best. And this makes sense, especially today, because where there is no order or social system into which we can “fit,” then “the therapeutic” is easily the most (phenomenologically) evident standard (of truth) to organize our rationality (and since rationality lacks any transcendent grounding of its own, “autonomously,” there is nothing “in” rationality to stop us from doing this, as described in The True Isn’t the Rational, as perhaps the Enlightenment wanted to believe there might be).
Considering this, we could say that social orders are necessary to keep “the therapeutic” and “the rational” from blurring and becoming two-sides of the same coin. We all constantly seek pleasure and comfort: the very act of eating food or uncrossing my legs is done “to feel more comfortable” and/or “to feel better.” So all-consumption and omnipresent is my desire to “feel better” than I hardly notice it at the core of my decision-making, and when it comes to eating a snack or uncrossing my legs, that’s one thing, but if this orientation consumes all aspects of my life, that will mean we are in a world of “autonomous release” or “an unbound pleasure principle,” and that is where we end up in radical egotism and all the existential anxiety that arises when we have “pure freedom from.” Where there “givens” though, my natural orientation toward “the therapeutic” is “bound,” and with this is becomes possible for me to live in a world where there is a meaningful distinction between “choice” and “chosen,” and furthermore I can maintain distinctions between “the therapeutic” and “the rational.” If this distinction is lost, then “the therapeutic will triumph” for good reason.
In closing, to be “chosen” is to be set on a path, which risks us developing a “Savior Complex,” but that depends on the particular details of our “call” and how we respond to it. To be “chosen” is to risk thinking too highly of ourselves, but to be an egotist is to join the feast which devours the world into crumbs. There is always risk, and there is always tragedy—we forget this at our own peril. Yes, perhaps the language of “chosen” risks too much being absorbed into egotistical self-conception, and indeed perhaps a better language might be “called” or “attuned”—I would have to think on that point. Here, I think it’s useful for understanding the presented argument to consider the language of “choice” with “chosen,” which also highlights Rieff’s critical framing. For Rieff, what our elites today choose to do will have a big impact on where we end up, and so we can only hope that we again will return to a world where “elitism” is defined according to “ethical caliber” and the like. Our fate might hang on this development, for if we live according to “autonomous release,” this will “rationally” eventually bring us to a world where we encounter the consequences of “an unbound pleasure principle,” consequences we might lack the resources to handle precisely because we “rationally/therapeutically” did not live a life that chose us more than we chose it.
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