Debt & Penance : Hannah Arendt

From my latest book “Debt en Penance”.

To me as a psycho~sopher Hannah Arendt is one of the most interesting persons in this book, especially by the term “Animal Laborans”. Originally the word “animal” is a being with a spirit.

Although “Animal Laborans” implies a working human being from a higher purpose politics are part of that. Most philosophers talk about the “reason” that arises the human mind. Perhaps “reason” is one of the 3 mental dimensions or constructures, introduced by Jean Gebser by using language regarding Descartes’ triptych “1-perceptions~ 2-mental experiences~ 3-realizing perceptions (reasoning)”.

In association with Marx’ “sub- & supra” classes I recognize here an analogous structure. At first the division between individuals who think they have to work day-in-day-out ~ the sub class ~ and those who think they don’t in a certain way ~ supra class. Does the image of a hard working individual really originate from the Church ~ regarding e.g. the Dutch Calvinist culture ? Where Protestantism is more a self-manifesting attitude and the Calvinism is strongly based upon sober life and hardworking, both as a response against the wealthy Catholic Church.

The other division is where Arendt talks about striving for a mystical experience with a higher power with intellectual love and a philosophical reconciliation there exists a small group of individuals who can and lots of people who won’t be capable to achieve this state of mind, as a transcendental process. They deal with the religion as preached here on earth. The second division implies to me that we talk about some kind of intelligences. The word “intelligence” actually means “actualizing of a potential” as I composed it from the Greek language. I talk about a spectre of lots of intelligences. “Reasoning” is one of them. The words “intelligence, integrity and integrality” are within the same energy spectre that implies that they (can) interfere with each other. While the term “integer” means or implies “undamaged/unhurt/healed entity” the intelligence has an important role in this process, so a lack of some intelligence makes the integral result of this integrity incomplete. The individual is not integer for that moment.

Today reasoning is often confused with logical dialogues. Logical dialogues are about the content of causality and possible determinism; the world of facts & figures, rules & control. Talking about reasoning when someone enters the public domain like civil servants do without controlling their reasoning, then they won’t be able to deal with the facts and reality that is desired ~ pragmatically speaking like Voltaire meant. Hannah Arendt proposes that individuals who do anyway, survive and make small or even huge mistakes are not accountable for their decisions. These deeds are only banalities.

She mainly pointed with this remark to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s during her job as a reporter in “The New Yorker”, phrased by her quote “The greatest evils in this world are committed by nobody’s” ~ referring to her defensive reports about Adolf Eichmann. About Eichmann she said : ”The alarming to the person Eichmann was surely this man was neither perverse nor sadistic. This normality that was worse than all the horrors of WW-II together”. The banality of the evil caused an enormous controversy among her audience and the Jewish society. Is this a kind of “Anger-History” (see also Max Weber)?

How can we deal with this views of points of Arendt during this crisis ? Isn’t there a kind of invisible hand from the financial world that makes Ministers follow, in return they make their civil servants follow them ? Can we really make the Ministers, civil servants and small bankers responsible for all activations that emerges from this crisis ? That the recovering of the economic system now is done based upon facts & figures and ignores all what has to do with human values ?

Are “animalia laborantes” nonchalant or “mentally lazy” in a way while they do not choose to compete in the debates with civil servants and ministers anymore ? Is this an evolutionary “easy-lay-down” or an tricky “comfortably-numb” state of mind created by smooth talking people ? So if all banalities are evil and are attained by nobodies, are these nobodies not simply yourselves ? Is this state of comfortably-numb a restriction of mankind within decisiveness or a limited use of intelligence in order to create higher consciousness and the will to identify yourselves ? Now that others have tried and done can they be blamed they did it their way ? Isn’t it so that the leader you become, is the leader you deserve ?

That is why this new Youthful Election System ~ YES* ~ is so valuable; from a younger age mankind is stimulated to reflect and identify him/herself in the community, enlarging this “area” while growing up. The results can be transposed in choosing the right individuals with whose ambitions and ethical values you can cope with ~ identify with. Everybody can according to Hannah Arendt. This election system implies also that individually s-electing “soulmates” can be done every moment of the year. The cycle of 4 years is bypassed with this dynamic election possibility. What do you think about the duration of 4 years ?

Note afterwards : Is it strange that there are so many followers and only a few leaders ? Regarding it in an esoteric way ~ “as huge as tiny” ~ where the milky ways and solar systems represent nations and communities and they present some spiral dimensions like we know in our DNA. How many galaxies exist with how many leading more or less concentric stars and with how many planets and moons in their orbits around these stars and act like human “animalia laborantes”?