There is something about the modern condition that renders it hospitable to a rebellious outlook. That means in the mind one wants to rebel against something, but really there is nothing in particular to which one objects, only a protest for the sake of protest. Francis Fukuyama sees it as the prelude to the Last Man that Nietzsche announced so dramatically. The natural and final culmination of that is queer theory, the will to be different for no other reason than just to be different. Typically one thinks that this is natural and part of being human. As a matter of fact it’s not. This desire to be rebel and revolt for no reason is in fact symptomatic of an inner spiritual unrest, lack of satisfaction, lack of certainty and understanding. Don’t for one second think that this is squarely due to the secular, post-metaphysical and post-religious conditions of modern life, for even within religion, forces have been at work to distance the individual believer from the inner sanctuaries of religion found in spirituality and mysticism. It is in these halls that one can satiate the inner thirsts for contemplation, beauty and repose.
By the same token, religion can also be an avenue to satisfy the most perverse and erroneous of ideas. That means even within religion there should be an internal mechanism to counter the rise of such fringe tendencies that are bound to take people away from the faith by insisting exclusively on a fascist ideology based on a squarely exoteric, literalist and superficial approach to scripture. This usually involves the feeling of alienation, anomie and separation. The difference between that and the modern experience is that the ego (nafs) is disproportionately nourished to the point of obesity. Never before has there been any point in history in which the nafs is so jubilantly celebrated and rejoiced. Pop culture and cultural life is so replete with such nafs-pandering slogans—“be yourself!”, “assert yourself!”, “stand up for yourself!”, “speak up”, “obey your cravings”, “bring out the Devil in you”, “indulge yourself in pure decadence”, “just do it” (just do what really?), “no limits” (no limits to what actually?), etc. All religious traditions have always insisted that the lower self has to be subjected and subjugated by man’s higher self, the ‘aql (intellect) for example. The consequence of all this is that the nafs is so inflated that it becomes so volatile and easy to provoke. And it grows in potency day by day, so that ours is a “century of the self” borrowing Adam Curtis’ words (in a perhaps unrelated context). The bigger the nafs gets, the more power it yields over the other faculties – the intellect (‘aql) and the heart (qalb). The nafs is also closest of all these faculties to the physical body (jism). That means the more the physical body is nourished, the stronger it gets. One tactic or strategy that it employs is the appearance of being liberative. It promises individual that by doing so they feel they have more freedom and no restriction. What is not being told is that they are only pandering to the dictates of their lowest self. We have come to the point that we can no longer conceive of the desire as a prison, insofar as we have identified ourselves with our desires. In short, these desires are not only part of us, they ARE us—and we are them. Commercialist propaganda and consumerism have transformed us all into, not insan, but a mere aggregate of desires and functions. From this point of view, the man who spends his money on drinking parties is free, insofar as he has exercised his consumer right to purchase those alcoholic beverages. But from a standpoint of true human values, he is in reality a slave. The system holds him bondage by rendering him weak to confront his own desires. What is even more insidious is that it can be artificially induced and produced. If one has no such desire, they will be artificially produced in him. One way of doing that is by continuously depriving it from him such that a point is reached that mere need becomes a hysterical desire or craving. Its poisonous tentacles spread everywhere: in education, we are told to “think for yourself” (why not just “think”, full stop?). The youth of today expects to be pandered and listened to. The second he realizes that he has no place in the scheme, he feels alienated, dispossessed, and ultimately, powerless. To compensate for this powerlessness, he then decides to provoke the community, in order to be significant, to be the centre of attention, to be taken seriously, to be engaged and in the final analysis, to be powerful. To rebel against authority offers a quick solution to this inner spiritual predicament insofar as the disturbance caused is likely to attract attention. Sartre’s “better to be hatefully remembered than forgotten” perfectly captures this spirit. Revolutions and coup d’etat are but extensions of the same desires into a political context. That is why the likes of Edmund Burke and Gustav Le Bon strongly censured the rise of revolutionary fervor.
This problem may seem strictly personal and spiritual, but when it becomes public norm, has serious social and political ramifications. Revolutions, insurgences, riots, pogroms and civil discords are stirred because of it. But once it materializes at this level, it becomes more difficult to confront. Studies in crowd and mass psychology explain how these forces are so powerful that they are almost beyond control.
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