Manipulation
Perhaps the most correctly defining idea for our species after the label of the Homo sapiens belongs to one of our distant ancestors, the Homo habilis, the hominoid manipulator.
In truth, the notion of discovery and understanding embedded in the idea of sapiens and the concept of manipulation in the term habilis are entwined. Together they lead to technological development, creativity, the arts and sciences, and almost everything good we can imagine about humanity, but also to everything loathsome. In fact, there is probably nothing that encompasses all our positive and negative qualities so completely as the concept of reasoned manipulation, for not only has humanity manipulated our natural environment for better or worse, we are also constantly and unashamedly manipulating each other. Having said this, it is also true that the term manipulation has mainly negative connotations, and this reveals a great deal about the way we perceive each other as well as ourselves. It is as if we are born with an enormous potential but cannot help but screw it up when we put that power into practice. The result is the sense of guilt and guilt-ridden anxiety that was exploited by religions through the concept of sin. Nietzsche was probably the first thinker to unravel this ambiguous, psychological relationship we have with our manipulatory nature when he developed his idea of the will to power. It is the gifted nature of humanity which needs to be wrestled with in order to turn our inherent power into something positive – this is what Nietzsche believed. And in the essential part of his argument Nietzsche was right, but he failed to see the common sense embedded in our own sinful anxiety over our manipulatory nature. Let me repeat, we feel guilty about our blessed abilities to take control because when we do embrace it we tend to screw it all up.
For the most part, with or without the will to power on the one hand or any religious morality on the other, humanity is drowning in a deep sea of constant negative manipulation. This is done psychologically, through language and feelings, symbolically, through money, ideologically, institutionally and, as such, bureaucratically through the systems (government or private) that are set up to organise human societies.
Capitalism is an evolutionary result of the acceptance of our own negative manipulating instincts. It is the philosophical apologist for unbridled exploitation par excellence. To manipulate things is to be human, but it needs to be understood and processed in an ethical way by rationality in order to dampen those negative effects of manipulation and channel our manipulatory skills so that they flow through the positive fields of creative invention and artistry, focussing on survival rather than on a blind, self-destructive sense of manipulation that serves greedy desires related to over-consumption and wealth accumulation rather than any authentic human progress.
By focussing on the positive sides of our human essence we will be able to create a constructive, authentic mood for humanity which will lead to a more authentic human relationship or humane relationship between human beings.
From an existentialist point of view (and here we mean existentialist in the literal sense of the term, i.e., concerning the existence and the potential non-existence of conscious life in the universe) the decision that the dominant political forces manipulating humanity (our ersatz representatives) made when they multilaterally decided to embrace capitalism as the engine for all individual and social exchange, was a fatal choice. Fundamentally so because once the inspirations of the decision had been submitted to and absorbed on a global scale, it took on the form of a singularity, and by doing so made all alternative systems seem unfeasible in a practical sense.
This fundamental decision is grave because it has made all alternative decision making impossible despite the fact that changing circumstances have rendered the original principles and course of action toxic. Today’s principal problem stems from the manipulative decisions human beings made generations ago and its seriousness resides in the fact that we find ourselves incapable of escaping from the blunder.
Only by changing our stance on our system’s assumptions regarding the necessity of perpetual economic growth and on our submissive acceptance of the manipulatory, exploitive instincts of capitalism might we save the planet and save ourselves.
S.O.S. Paul Adkin
