What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society

by Paul Verhaeghe

  Biologically speaking, such classification into higher and lower orders is nonsense. We would do better to speak of more or less complex life forms, and to stop regarding complexity as synonymous with progress. Apparently, we find it very hard to surrender the old ideas about ourselves and to take seriously the radically new message of evolutionary theory. Change is inherent to life, happens by chance, and is undirected. The view of evolutionary change as progress, with ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ rungs, is a Christian interpretation. This becomes even clearer when we perceive that this notion of progress is linked to personal effort: the harder you try, the faster you evolve. Thus, without realising it, we make the switch from biological evolution to social and even individual progress.

  Both society and humans are perfectible, according to the new credo.

  Perfectibility

  The expression ‘survival of the fittest’ is almost always ascribed to Darwin. Actually, it was coined by Herbert Spencer, an influential contemporary of Darwin’s, who translated the latter’s evolutionary theory into rather catchy phrases, so that it came to be applied to society. Evolution — understood to mean progress — might well be based on chance mutations, but surely that didn’t mean we had to resign ourselves to our fate? We could give chance a hand, couldn’t we?

  This provided an important added twist to ideas about change: it could be steered, preferably in the right direction. This was the aim of social Darwinism, an ideology that caught on in the late-19th century. Its adherents saw society as a living organism that evolved like any other, and whose individual cells (social classes and races) were sick or healthy, fit or unfit. Here, too, we see an important shift in meaning. Darwin used the term ‘fittest’ to mean ‘best adapted to an environment’. In the wake of Spencer, it came to mean ‘most successful’ — that is to say, ‘strongest’. Certain groups or classes are stronger, laying claim to all resources; others are weaker and will gradually die out, in a phenomenon regarded as a natural process. According to this line of thought, social abuses are not socio-economic phenomena but diseases, ‘cancers’, whose carriers are ‘parasites’ that must be eradicated.

  From a naïve evolutionary perspective, the remedy was clear. Weak groups only hold the rest back. They are contagious, even, and must be removed without delay by promoting natural selection. This led to eugenics as a tool of social Darwinism: the strongest were encouraged to reproduce, while efforts were made to curb the reproduction of inferior specimens. Even nowadays, some scientists get excited at the notion of ‘sperm shopping’ (a reproductive strategy whereby females hunt for the best sperm) — assuming, of course, that their sperm is in the middle of the window display and that they can administer it themselves.

  From the 19th century onwards, social Darwinism was advanced as a scientific justification of racism and power abuse. It was used to defend colonisation: ‘Negroes’, ‘Indians’, Aborigines, and other ‘savages’ in overseas regions were portrayed as races that had dropped behind in evolution, being only a rung higher than brute creation. It constrained immigration: ‘Chinks’, ‘Polacks’, and ‘Wops’ arriving at Ellis Island were subjected to strict scrutiny, and those deemed unfit were sent back or only granted entry after sterilisation. It led to racial laws: the Nazis first eliminated the sick elements of society (the mentally and physically disabled) before proceeding to a more ambitious programme, the eradication of ‘degenerate’ races.

  The same ‘scientific’ reasoning that justified this kind of racism also shaped 19th-century attitudes to social problems. Failure was seen as a sign of intrinsic weakness and disease; to provide help in such cases was counter-productive, because it merely prolonged the survival of groups who were doomed to die out anyway. Herbert Spencer, for example, was very much against government intervention in social matters, and social Darwinists invoked Thomas Robert Malthus, a British economist who thought that population growth precluded utopian progress.

  Social amenities were abolished to stop the poor reproducing. In 1834, under the influence of the Malthusians, Britain introduced a new Poor Law that defined poverty as a moral shortcoming. The next step was to set up workhouses, in which the poor were condemned to forced labour. (Charles Dickens sets the birth of Oliver Twist in just such a workhouse.) And certain social Darwinists saw even the workhouses as too great an indulgence. The poor should be given no relief at all, because a welfare state was unnatural.

  And evolutionary theory wasn’t just applied to social classes and races. Colonialism strengthened Western Europe’s conviction of its own superiority. So it didn’t take long before this self-same way of thinking — ‘struggle for life’, ‘survival of the fittest’ — was taken up at the level of the Western European superpowers. When Hitler claimed that the German people had the moral right to conquer the territory of inferior peoples when they needed more Lebensraum, he was voicing the notions that prevailed in his day and age. These days, we forget that fascism was a supposedly progressive ideology that sought to create the perfect society based on the science of the time.

  Science was indeed the inspiration behind the idea of steered progress — that’s to say, a science that conflated measurement with knowledge. A striking feature of the exclusion of individuals and races in the first half of the previous century is that it was based on criteria that were considered objective, and underpinned by data ranging from height, weight, and skull measurements to intelligence tests and other psychological examinations. Scientists could then pronounce: these are the good; those are the bad. Picture the possibility of a modern equivalent: say, large-scale tests on children to establish as early as possible whether they suffer from disorders (disorders that we claim are genetically determined), with the aim of then labelling them and shutting them away.

  Science and the enlightened society

  In the previous chapter, I showed how Western religion led to a reinterpretation of identity and ethics. Its function was taken over by science, which has gradually robbed the various religions of their dominance. So the next question is how science determines contemporary thinking about identity and ethics, given that previously broad notions of science have made way for an extremely narrow interpretation of it. Scientific principles and methods are now applied to just about everything, including the social sciences. This approach is known as scientism, and is currently very dominant.

  At the dawn of the Enlightenment, expectations were high: scientific knowledge would pave the way to the best possible society. The design of society had been debated for half a century by intellectuals in French salons, and their guiding principles were simple: any behaviour that causes people harm is wrong, while whatever promotes their happiness is right. Their goal was to achieve ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’, as it would be worded by the founder of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham. The radicals among them were atheists, which had far-reaching ethical implications. If there were no God to dictate what was good and evil, people would have to think about that themselves. Equally, if there were no reward or punishment in the life hereafter, these would have to be meted out on Earth, according to a system based on insights into human nature.

  The study of human nature was crucial to the philosopher Denis Diderot because it would underpin the new social order. What was humanity’s true nature? What determined identity? Diderot identified three main characteristics — reason, passion, and empathy — that he also saw as the pillars of a secular society. Radical Enlightenment thinkers regarded passion as the driving force, to be steered by reason and informed by empathy. They saw the denial of passion as a consequence of religion, which abhorred all things physical and focused exclusively on the spiritual.

  Unfortunately for Diderot and his circle — the ‘wicked company’ of Philipp Blom’s eponymously named book — their ideas were so dangerous that very little of their work could be published, unlike Voltaire and Rousseau, whose books were spectacularly successful. The half-baked notions of the latter two, a blend of religion and rea
son in a romantic natural setting, were proclaimed a secular religion in the years after the French Revolution, with la Raison as its divinity. It was a deeply ironic situation: the regime that had closed all churches installed a female figure as the goddess of liberty and reason. She was even given a name, Marianne, and to this day her image adorns French courts and town halls, from which all religious symbols (such as the cross, headscarf, and keppah) have been banned in the name of reason. Initially anonymous, she was later given an official face. Brigitte Bardot, clearly a bosom friend of reason, is the best known of these embodiments.

  When the churches were transformed into temples of reason, the ideology of the French Republic literally took the place of the former religion. Just as in the case of religion, everything was fine as long as there was only a single ideology. But whenever a number of religions or ideologies laid claim to being the one true belief, wars broke out in the name of faith or reason.

  Since that time, secular religions have followed hot on each other’s heels, each with their promise of a new and better world: socialism, communism, fascism, and, most recently, liberal democracy. Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation of the latter as marking ‘the end of history’ again conjures up the idea of a ladder with a substandard beginning and a glorious end.

  Once again, it’s not hard to see the legacy of Christianity in these different ideologies: the better society, Heaven on Earth, is always located in the future, and requires a great deal of effort and sacrifice. It makes me think of Freud’s laconic response after being told that communism would create a social paradise, albeit after an initial period of revolution involving the necessary sacrifices and privations. He said that he had no doubt at all about that early period, only about the end result.

  But what about that most important difference between religion and ideology: faith versus reason?

  Be reasonable!

  The stress on reason, too, can be traced back to classical Greek natural philosophy, though the reason of the Enlightenment was defined much more narrowly. For Aristotle and his contemporaries, it went without saying that both individual and social life were best based on intellectual virtues — note the combination of intellect and virtue — founded on logos. Entire libraries have been written on the interpretation of the latter concept. Suffice it to say that, nowadays, logos is too readily reduced to reason that can be calculated, being based on empirically measurable data. Logos was originally seen as something much broader, as was the notion of science that went along with it. It is worth dusting off a couple of ideas relating to the ancient Greeks’ view of logos.

  First, these days, the word ‘science’ conjures up images of banks of computers operated by white-coated boffins — men as hyper-rational as Mr Spock, albeit without the pointy ears. There is no room for passion; the official thinking is that science must be value-free and objective. Aristotle and his contemporaries would have been amazed at such naïveté. Science is inherently value-laden because it involves looking for answers to fundamental questions about life. So it’s no coincidence that Aristotle elaborated his views on knowledge in two treatises on ethics, because he saw knowledge as subservient to morality. There’s no such thing as value-free knowledge, just as there’s no such thing as passion-free science. Yet this has been increasingly strongly denied in recent decades, as conceptions of science have got narrower and narrower.

  The second forgotten Aristotelian notion is that there are different forms of knowledge, each with their specific field of application. One form has findings that are universal and therefore independent of context (as in, two plus two makes four, whatever the situation). The other form’s findings are specific, and influenced by context. In the field of psychology, for instance, the concept of a personality disorder would be invalid in a culture that had no notion of ‘personality’.

  Up to 20 years ago, this distinction could still be dimly perceived in the modern view of science (arts and humanities versus hard science) and in the education system — though the old contrast between grammar schools and technical colleges is fast disappearing, making way for a ‘competency-based’ approach to education. There is an overriding conviction that everything can and should be understood in scientific terms, using propositions that are universally applicable and unaffected by context. Research (which must, of course, be value-free) is based on actual measurements (everything being measurable), and produces data that can then be objectively processed.

  That such narrowing down can take place in the name of reason is odd, to say the very least. After all, Aristotle distinguished between different forms of knowledge on the basis of an extremely rational conclusion: universal, context-independent knowledge only has a very limited field of application. Indeed, truly important knowledge — in his view, the knowledge needed to administer the city-state — fell entirely outside that sphere, which was why he set greater store by other forms of knowledge.

  Nowadays, that wisdom has been lost, and the scientistic view is that hard science can be applied across the board.* More specifically, it can be applied as a rational, perfectly controllable, and predictable instrument, independent of context, in the form of evidence-based protocols. Translated into Aristotelian terms, those protocols will be valid at all times and in all situations, because they are based on generally accepted scientific knowledge. Curiously enough, a form of science wars has now sprang up, in which various groups of scientists battle it out, each underpinning its beliefs with facts and figures. ‘Evidence-based’ science is increasingly coming to resemble a religious conflict in which warring parties square up to one another, each firmly convinced that they are in the right.

  [* In After Virtue, Alasdair McIntyre asks the reader to picture a world in which the findings of mathematicians, chemists, and physicists are constantly contradicted by other research. Natural science would be in grave disorder. In the scientistic interpretation of social sciences this happens constantly, yet none of those academics loses any sleep over it. Which means, according to McIntyre, that they don’t take their own model seriously. In Making Social Science Matter, Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg examines the Aristotelian concept of knowledge, using it as a plea for a new methodology of social science that would replace current attempts to turn it into a travesty of natural science. As a young fellow psychiatrist once said to me in desperation, ‘What’s with those psychologists — they all want to be doctors!’]

  Earlier on, I queried the nature of science’s impact on our identity, and the extent to which it differs from that of religion. The fact is that, when the originally broad concept of science is reduced to scientism, such differences are hard to find. Indeed, one is more struck by the similarities.

  Both religion and scientism instil in the individual a split identity that springs from a sense of deficiency. I am evil and sinful, or irrational and stupid. If I make enough effort, I can become good or rational, and those in power will help me by continually monitoring me and rewarding or punishing me. If large groups persist in their sinfulness (unbelievers) or stupidity (reactionaries), those in power have to take radical measures: mass conversion, re-education, or if needs be, eradication. Even perfectibility has its limits.

  Both religion and scientism regard present-day humans as imperfect; true perfection will only be found in the hereafter or in a distant future when society is run according to truly scientific principles. In both cases, this requires considerable personal sacrifice. Believers must pray and work hard to attain God’s mercy. The ignorant must study hard, and if necessary seek psychological counselling in order to attain reason through the proper insights. The post-modern scientistic view is more pessimistic: we will have to wait for a genetic modification of the human race that will fit us better for the post-industrial society that we have created.*

  [* That this idea has become more widespread is evident from the fact that it represents the closest thing to an optimistic notion in the cynical world of The Elementary Particles, the book with which Michel Houelle
becq achieved his international breakthrough. His first novel, Whatever, describes with painful beauty the origin of that cynicism.]

  In both cases, passion is prohibited; either it is sinful and we should resist it, or it is primitive and irrational and we should turn a blind eye to it (if needs be, with a bit of a snigger), but we certainly don’t need to take it seriously. Changes will be prompted by reason and research; and humans, as rational creatures, will of course choose the right path.*

  [* The current rationalists are the opposite of the earlier Romantics. The latter sought refuge in untrammelled passion, the former in calculated reason. The immaturity of both approaches is most evident when either view is taken to pathological extremes, leading to hysteria in the case of Romantics and obsessional neuroses in the case of rationalists.]

  Adherents of religion and scientism are both highly intolerant of other beliefs and schools of thought, and assume that their views are the only right ones — in the case of religion, because they are God-given; in the case of scientism, because they are scientifically proven. Both consider themselves superior to unbelievers and the ignorant. The Polish political philosopher Leszek Kołakowski rightly observed that many scientific truths are even less open to discussion than religious ones, and that debating with the disciples of scientism is even more hopeless than with religious believers (‘Surely the figures speak for themselves!’).1 Ironically, the former invoke their so-called critical thinking as a reason for rejecting any other approach to science.