Society is not fixed; not static… It is not a monstrous and opaque force that rules over our lives from on high, like the thunder bolt of might Zeus; inexorable fate that is fulfilled through our sorrows.
Society is what we are. What we have been, what are are, and what we will make of ourselves.
Of course, each innumerable “I” that composes this “we” can do very little to change society in its vastness and complexity.
And so we have to accept it. This is a matter of practical necessity, and a matter of “growing up”… The thing is, though, that adults sometimes make it almost impossible for children to grow up into well-adapted adults. Sometime they do this by traumatize children, by denying them basic stability, or abusing them physically or sexually. But sometimes they do this with the best of intentions. Afraid of all the dangers that society presents to their children, they present themselves as the “law” of society, the “essence” of society. And so their children never learn to relate to society, but only to their parents; only to the “law,” the “essence” — and indeed the “law” or “essence” of society that has take on a human, individual form.
Now, if they accept society, it is as an individual submission to a foreign will. Sometimes this submission will go so far that they will identify with the will, reproduce it: they become authoritarians, parents and teachers, without ever having begun to grow up. Or they rebel, but against a society that, personified in the one person, one law, they think they can overturn, and change. They rebel, because they think there is something to rebel against, other than that to which they themselves belong.
Once you have grown up, however, you realize that criticism, far from representing either a rebellion against the “law,” is of the very essence of society; is a necessary part of the metabolism through which it transforms and changes itself. This criticism, however, begins with self-criticism and systemic reflection…
But now that we’ve reached this point, things get tricky. We can accept society and at the same time criticize society. But this maturity, as admirable and philosophical as it is, poses a new danger. Each one of us becomes split into two: the practical self, who gets on with the world, who lives life, and the theoretical commentator, who sits back and reflects and criticizes, infinitely and endlessly. Our maturity now has taken on a monstrous aspect: we are one part bureaucrat, one part troll. (A cog in the machine, and a “critical critic”) Children see us, the enlightened ones, the matures one, — the successes — and they are repelled. And they rebel against our maturity, and we, in turn, fall back into simple moralizing. Accept! We tell them… Don’t criticize, not yet! Put your own house in order… Critique is a special pleasure reserved for the mature, the grown up… Like sex! Like Alcohol!
But perhaps we adults, having taken our criticism far enough, will begin to see that even our maturity itself is not beyond reproach. Our criticism, for all its pleasures, does not change anything. And yet, just as the intention of a proposition is truth, the intention of criticism is change…
We realize, moreover, that our subtle, bureaucratic, academic minds, — our wonderful maturity — has incapacitated us… We realize that for change to happen, for criticism to become practical, a kind of immaturity is necessary. Society cannot just present itself as endlessly entangled complexity. It must take on a form that can be opposed. And yet we also realize that attacking this form will always amount to tilting at windmills, since the form that can be opposed is always just a figment…
A peculiar alliance presents itself as necessary: an alliance that no narrative can frame and control… These alliances flash into existence during times of revolutionary change. The results are always unpredictable, violent. The revolution always devours its children. And one will also wish that things had turned out differently… But it is one thing to refuse to condone, after the fact, the violence of the new, or even to seek to steer things to a better course. It is another to use this as excuse for offering carte blanche to the violence of the old, of the existing…The enduring terror of what has been.
Explanation:
